Emerging new work patterns
In the 1990’s much thought was given to a variety of options that would help make the jobs that are available accessible to more people. It was envisaged that people would spend less time working with work being shared out amongst more people, with more time for leisure. Whilst there has been an increase in job sharing and part-time employment, the window for early retirement has now closed due to the pension crisis. Indeed, with longer life expectancy in the developed countries, workers are now having to work longer and according to OECD, “in an era of population ageing, we can no longer afford to waste the valuable resources that older workers offer to business, the economy and society”. Whilst sabbatical breaks do occur, workers are often under threat due to work pressures which have resulted, in some cases, in longer work hours, often unpaid. Nevertheless people still seek the “job satisfaction” expressed by Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop plc: “This new generation in the workplace is saying “I want a society and a job that values me more than the gross national product. I want work that engages the heart as well as the mind and the body, that fosters friendship and that nourishes the earth. I want to work for a company that contributes to the community”.
Whilst work has always been a central activity in most people’s lives, it’s thought that the future will bring great changes in what people do as work and in how work is organised. James Robertson’s book Future Work, whilst published over twenty years ago, still contains ideas and arguments relevant to today’s society. There will continue to be many jobs and most
people will continue to want to work whilst enjoying more leisure than in the past, however the real challenge is to move to new kinds of work and new ways of organising work. The key to understanding this change is a move to what he calls own work — to forms of work paid and unpaid — which people organise and control for themselves for their own purposes, as individuals, in groups, and in the localities in which they live. This transition from traditional employment to own work can be seen as an evolutionary development — the next stage in a progression towards freedom, responsibility and fuller participation in the life of society, a progression that was marked in earlier times by the transitions from slavery to serfdom, and from serfdom to employment.
It’s interesting that the transition to own work is not seen as being achieved by a comprehensive plan rather it will be achieved by people deciding to “do their own thing”. The emergence of new work patterns could be viewed as a historic opportunity for a liberation of work, which will take growing numbers of people beyond the factory mentality of the employment age. It will come in growing numbers of people, conscious of sharing the same vision of the future of work, finding new ways of organising work for themselves.1
Self-employment and the Co-operative Movement
One of the most interesting new patterns in work reflects a new morality: for example, producing goods that are ecologically sound. There is also evidence of a revival of craftwork and cottage industries, which express the creativity and enthusiasm of the workers.
The co-operative movement reflects the concern that workers should have control over their work, its products, the work environment and management. Co-operative enterprises are distinguished by the fact that they are owned and operated
by the people who work in them, and that decisions are made on a democratic basis. It is through the co-number of
operative movement that large numbers of people are being trained in the skills of group work, group responsibility and group relationships. And it tends to be not just their own immediate working environment that concerns them. It is common for the
members to feel a sense of responsibility for the welfare of the wider community.
The co-operative movement is growing and, in a difficult commercial environment, enterprises owned by the workers are proving that they can survive. One of the most famous and successful cooperatives in Europe, where they have been a feature of the working environment for many years, is the Mondragon Co-operative Group in Spain. This movement
links together 70,000 people who work in approximately 150 separate but linked co-operatives. It is considered the world’s largest worker co-operative and has its own university with some 4,000 students.2 It also has its own social assistance
programme and banking system, the Caja Laboral Popular (CLP), which in 2003 had a client base of over 1 million people with 336 branches. The CLP lies at the heart of the group. Individual workers bank with the CLP knowing that funds will be used for the development of the group and the promotion of new jobs and new co-operatives in the area. All workers are shareholders, investing their own capital and labour in the enterprise. Underlying Mondragon is a spiritually based vision. “Let us make richer communities, rather than richer individuals” is how the Caja advertises itself.
In the UK, the John Lewis Partnership is an employee-owned business with 26 department stores, 179 supermarkets and 64,000 employees with a turnover exceeding £5 billion a year. The Partnership’s ultimate purpose is the happiness of all its
members, through their worthwhile and satisfying employment in a successful business. Because the Partnership is owned in trust for its members, they share the responsibilities of ownership as well as its rewards — profit, knowledge and power. Parallel to normal management structures is a separate system of democratic partnership bodies, one for each main
operating unit. All partners are represented through the group-wide Partnership Council, which appoints five non-executive employee directors to the main board and has the power to dismiss the chairman. Staff can also demand responses by management to anonymous criticisms and comments via the in house magazine.3
Work in the Developing Countries
In developing countries appalling levels of unemployment and under-employment are a dominant feature. Hundreds of millions of people in the Third World are today without paid work or grossly underemployed. Denied the opportunity to earn sufficient income through productive work, they are unable to meet basic needs for food, housing, education and
health-care. The picture becomes all the more tragic when we realise that it is the young people that suffer most. Without the welfare agencies that are available to the unemployed in the West and the North, communities and families in the Third World unable to support themselves through their own labour are forced into abject poverty. The desperation of their
plight also opens them to many forms of ruthless exploitation.
One of the most heartening responses to the problems of unemployment and under-employment in the Third World is the growing number of labour intensive, small-scale community development projects which are helping to provide work for the
poor and a level of income that enables them to meet their basic needs, while at the same time enabling them to regain control of their lives. Community development is about working together. It is about a local neighbourhood community sharing such resources as time, energy, labour and land in order to raise the individual and collective quality of life. It is
about the sensitive introduction and use of technology which is appropriate to the resources and needs of the community. Thousands of rural and urban development projects are a true expression of a new pattern of work emerging in the Third World today. Many of the ideas being pioneered through these projects are now being adapted and applied in self help
development projects in deprived communities throughout the Western world.
According to the International Labour Organisation, pressures from an increasingly competitive work environment combined with lack of support for family responsibilities are leading to considerable conflicts and stresses for workers trying to “juggle” work with family responsibilities. It is sometimes assumed that in developing countries family responsibilities are not really a problem since workers can appeal to traditional family solidarity and find some relative who can help look after dependents. However, evidence suggests that family support for the domestic and caring responsibilities of those who work outside the home is less and less available and increasingly problematic, particularly in urban areas.4
The ILO website refers to the concept of decent work, which sums up the aspirations of people in their working lives. It involves opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their
concerns, organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives, and equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and men.5
Outsourcing
A recent article 6 on the economic impact of Outsourcing offers a good synopsis of this phenomenon, which intensified in the 1990’s with the growth of the Internet and as technology led to lower costs of computing. Cost savings could be made if jobs were transferred abroad at significantly lower cost. So, for example, British Airways announced plans to get their accounting done in Mumbai, US hospitals are getting x-rays read by medical technologists in India, cries for help on computers and queries on all kinds of subjects are answered from call centres in India. India’s educated, low-cost, English-speaking workforce is an eager participant in the global service economy. Many services are now traded internationally
over electronic media such as the Internet, fax and telephone.
There is anxiety in the West about outsourcing. In the past, when low skill manual jobs were transferred to low-wage countries the labour force could retrain and acquire higher skills; however, with more skilled white collar jobs being outsourced workers fear for a secure future. Outsourcing is in the public eye because it is easily noticeable, for example,
when a UK or American company or organization shifts its entire call centre operation or accounting operations to India. Whilst many of the jobs being outsourced are low skill and low wage — such as call centre jobs, billing, processing, and credit card services — there is also the outsourcing of highly complex software services. For example, a medium
sized Indian company, Mastek, was responsible for the IT infrastructure for London’s traffic system; Sasken, a Bangalore-based firm supplies cutting edge telecom software to many of the world’s leading communication companies. Unlike software products, software services can be sold at a fraction of the cost of the UK or US counterpart and can be shipped
over the Internet. Outsourcing presents a clear break from the historic pattern of low-end jobs going to developing countries; skilled jobs are now being outsourced; thus it is feared that acquiring a higher level of skills will no longer offer a secure future for the worker in the developed world.
As a contributor to employment in the Indian economy, outsourcing employs no more than one million workers in a total labour force of 450 million. However there are indirect impacts: the software sector generates exports which brings in
foreign exchange which, in turn, helps to improve productivity through purchases of foreign machinery and technology; also foreign exchange reserves provide a cushion for sudden changes in India’s balance of payments. But perhaps the most noteworthy effect on the Indian economy has been a change in the entrepreneurial culture with business leaders no longer coming exclusively from leading business families.
Whilst outsourcing of services continues to grow rapidly in both “low end” and “high end” services, the impact on India is mainly through indirect means and not through direct employment. Consequently, its contribution to the overall
economic picture and poverty alleviation is small.
Bonded Labour
Bonded labour — or debt bondage — is a form of slavery and in 1999, the UN estimated that some 20 million people were held in bonded labour around the world. According to Anti-Slavery International, “a person becomes a bonded labourer when his or her labour is demanded as a means of repayment for a loan. The person is then tricked or trapped into working for very little or no pay, often for seven days a week. The value of their work is invariably greater than the original sum of money borrowed”.7
Bonded labour has existed for thousands of years. In South Asia it had its roots in the caste system, and continues to flourish in feudal agricultural relationships. It was also used as a method of colonial labour recruitment for plantations in Africa, the Caribbean and South East Asia. Bonded labourers are often subjected to physical and sexual violence and may be kept under surveillance, even armed guard. Despite its illegality in most countries people without land or education are forced to sell their labour to survive in exchange for a sum of money or a loan. War provides another area for exploitation,
with children being forced to serve as soldiers or sexslaves in war zones.
The global economy is now seeing further exploitation with the growth in people-trafficking. Those trafficked may be forced to work as domestics, in prostitution, as labourers, and in many other jobs although a distinction should be drawn between
economic migrants who work freely and those who are exploited and threatened. Trafficked people are often indebted and when they arrive at their destination, they find that the job they were promised does not exist but they still have to pay a debt, which could be anything up to US$40,000. This amount can then be inflated through charges for accommodation, food
and interest on the loan they borrowed. The trafficked person is not paid what they were promised; often they are not paid at all.
Bonded labour often operates outside of the normal economy and in some cases workers are “managed” by “gangmasters”. This can lead to tragedy as was highlighted in 2004 when 20 Chinese cockle-pickers were drowned off the North-West
coast of England by the rising tide in the darkness.
Despite UN prohibition and the fact that it is illegal in most countries bonded labour continues to exist because governments are rarely willing to enforce the law or to ensure that those who profit from it are punished.
1. This is a brief summary of ideas from James Robertson’s book Future Work. The full text of this book is available free from his website in pdf format http://www.jamesrobertson.com/books.htm#futurework
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_cooperative
3. http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk
4. http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/condtrav/family/index.htm
5. http://www.ilo.org/public/english/decent.htm
6. “Outsourcing” by Ashok Kotwal & Milind Kandlikar, October 2005 (6 pages), Invited article in Oxford Companion on Indian
Economy.
7. Visit www.antislavery.org website for more background information
Whilst work has always been a central activity in most people’s lives, it’s thought that the future will bring great changes in what people do as work and in how work is organised. James Robertson’s book Future Work, whilst published over twenty years ago, still contains ideas and arguments relevant to today’s society. There will continue to be many jobs and most
people will continue to want to work whilst enjoying more leisure than in the past, however the real challenge is to move to new kinds of work and new ways of organising work. The key to understanding this change is a move to what he calls own work — to forms of work paid and unpaid — which people organise and control for themselves for their own purposes, as individuals, in groups, and in the localities in which they live. This transition from traditional employment to own work can be seen as an evolutionary development — the next stage in a progression towards freedom, responsibility and fuller participation in the life of society, a progression that was marked in earlier times by the transitions from slavery to serfdom, and from serfdom to employment.
It’s interesting that the transition to own work is not seen as being achieved by a comprehensive plan rather it will be achieved by people deciding to “do their own thing”. The emergence of new work patterns could be viewed as a historic opportunity for a liberation of work, which will take growing numbers of people beyond the factory mentality of the employment age. It will come in growing numbers of people, conscious of sharing the same vision of the future of work, finding new ways of organising work for themselves.1
Self-employment and the Co-operative Movement
One of the most interesting new patterns in work reflects a new morality: for example, producing goods that are ecologically sound. There is also evidence of a revival of craftwork and cottage industries, which express the creativity and enthusiasm of the workers.
The co-operative movement reflects the concern that workers should have control over their work, its products, the work environment and management. Co-operative enterprises are distinguished by the fact that they are owned and operated
by the people who work in them, and that decisions are made on a democratic basis. It is through the co-number of
operative movement that large numbers of people are being trained in the skills of group work, group responsibility and group relationships. And it tends to be not just their own immediate working environment that concerns them. It is common for the
members to feel a sense of responsibility for the welfare of the wider community.
The co-operative movement is growing and, in a difficult commercial environment, enterprises owned by the workers are proving that they can survive. One of the most famous and successful cooperatives in Europe, where they have been a feature of the working environment for many years, is the Mondragon Co-operative Group in Spain. This movement
links together 70,000 people who work in approximately 150 separate but linked co-operatives. It is considered the world’s largest worker co-operative and has its own university with some 4,000 students.2 It also has its own social assistance
programme and banking system, the Caja Laboral Popular (CLP), which in 2003 had a client base of over 1 million people with 336 branches. The CLP lies at the heart of the group. Individual workers bank with the CLP knowing that funds will be used for the development of the group and the promotion of new jobs and new co-operatives in the area. All workers are shareholders, investing their own capital and labour in the enterprise. Underlying Mondragon is a spiritually based vision. “Let us make richer communities, rather than richer individuals” is how the Caja advertises itself.
In the UK, the John Lewis Partnership is an employee-owned business with 26 department stores, 179 supermarkets and 64,000 employees with a turnover exceeding £5 billion a year. The Partnership’s ultimate purpose is the happiness of all its
members, through their worthwhile and satisfying employment in a successful business. Because the Partnership is owned in trust for its members, they share the responsibilities of ownership as well as its rewards — profit, knowledge and power. Parallel to normal management structures is a separate system of democratic partnership bodies, one for each main
operating unit. All partners are represented through the group-wide Partnership Council, which appoints five non-executive employee directors to the main board and has the power to dismiss the chairman. Staff can also demand responses by management to anonymous criticisms and comments via the in house magazine.3
Work in the Developing Countries
In developing countries appalling levels of unemployment and under-employment are a dominant feature. Hundreds of millions of people in the Third World are today without paid work or grossly underemployed. Denied the opportunity to earn sufficient income through productive work, they are unable to meet basic needs for food, housing, education and
health-care. The picture becomes all the more tragic when we realise that it is the young people that suffer most. Without the welfare agencies that are available to the unemployed in the West and the North, communities and families in the Third World unable to support themselves through their own labour are forced into abject poverty. The desperation of their
plight also opens them to many forms of ruthless exploitation.
One of the most heartening responses to the problems of unemployment and under-employment in the Third World is the growing number of labour intensive, small-scale community development projects which are helping to provide work for the
poor and a level of income that enables them to meet their basic needs, while at the same time enabling them to regain control of their lives. Community development is about working together. It is about a local neighbourhood community sharing such resources as time, energy, labour and land in order to raise the individual and collective quality of life. It is
about the sensitive introduction and use of technology which is appropriate to the resources and needs of the community. Thousands of rural and urban development projects are a true expression of a new pattern of work emerging in the Third World today. Many of the ideas being pioneered through these projects are now being adapted and applied in self help
development projects in deprived communities throughout the Western world.
According to the International Labour Organisation, pressures from an increasingly competitive work environment combined with lack of support for family responsibilities are leading to considerable conflicts and stresses for workers trying to “juggle” work with family responsibilities. It is sometimes assumed that in developing countries family responsibilities are not really a problem since workers can appeal to traditional family solidarity and find some relative who can help look after dependents. However, evidence suggests that family support for the domestic and caring responsibilities of those who work outside the home is less and less available and increasingly problematic, particularly in urban areas.4
The ILO website refers to the concept of decent work, which sums up the aspirations of people in their working lives. It involves opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their
concerns, organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives, and equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and men.5
Outsourcing
A recent article 6 on the economic impact of Outsourcing offers a good synopsis of this phenomenon, which intensified in the 1990’s with the growth of the Internet and as technology led to lower costs of computing. Cost savings could be made if jobs were transferred abroad at significantly lower cost. So, for example, British Airways announced plans to get their accounting done in Mumbai, US hospitals are getting x-rays read by medical technologists in India, cries for help on computers and queries on all kinds of subjects are answered from call centres in India. India’s educated, low-cost, English-speaking workforce is an eager participant in the global service economy. Many services are now traded internationally
over electronic media such as the Internet, fax and telephone.
There is anxiety in the West about outsourcing. In the past, when low skill manual jobs were transferred to low-wage countries the labour force could retrain and acquire higher skills; however, with more skilled white collar jobs being outsourced workers fear for a secure future. Outsourcing is in the public eye because it is easily noticeable, for example,
when a UK or American company or organization shifts its entire call centre operation or accounting operations to India. Whilst many of the jobs being outsourced are low skill and low wage — such as call centre jobs, billing, processing, and credit card services — there is also the outsourcing of highly complex software services. For example, a medium
sized Indian company, Mastek, was responsible for the IT infrastructure for London’s traffic system; Sasken, a Bangalore-based firm supplies cutting edge telecom software to many of the world’s leading communication companies. Unlike software products, software services can be sold at a fraction of the cost of the UK or US counterpart and can be shipped
over the Internet. Outsourcing presents a clear break from the historic pattern of low-end jobs going to developing countries; skilled jobs are now being outsourced; thus it is feared that acquiring a higher level of skills will no longer offer a secure future for the worker in the developed world.
As a contributor to employment in the Indian economy, outsourcing employs no more than one million workers in a total labour force of 450 million. However there are indirect impacts: the software sector generates exports which brings in
foreign exchange which, in turn, helps to improve productivity through purchases of foreign machinery and technology; also foreign exchange reserves provide a cushion for sudden changes in India’s balance of payments. But perhaps the most noteworthy effect on the Indian economy has been a change in the entrepreneurial culture with business leaders no longer coming exclusively from leading business families.
Whilst outsourcing of services continues to grow rapidly in both “low end” and “high end” services, the impact on India is mainly through indirect means and not through direct employment. Consequently, its contribution to the overall
economic picture and poverty alleviation is small.
Bonded Labour
Bonded labour — or debt bondage — is a form of slavery and in 1999, the UN estimated that some 20 million people were held in bonded labour around the world. According to Anti-Slavery International, “a person becomes a bonded labourer when his or her labour is demanded as a means of repayment for a loan. The person is then tricked or trapped into working for very little or no pay, often for seven days a week. The value of their work is invariably greater than the original sum of money borrowed”.7
Bonded labour has existed for thousands of years. In South Asia it had its roots in the caste system, and continues to flourish in feudal agricultural relationships. It was also used as a method of colonial labour recruitment for plantations in Africa, the Caribbean and South East Asia. Bonded labourers are often subjected to physical and sexual violence and may be kept under surveillance, even armed guard. Despite its illegality in most countries people without land or education are forced to sell their labour to survive in exchange for a sum of money or a loan. War provides another area for exploitation,
with children being forced to serve as soldiers or sexslaves in war zones.
The global economy is now seeing further exploitation with the growth in people-trafficking. Those trafficked may be forced to work as domestics, in prostitution, as labourers, and in many other jobs although a distinction should be drawn between
economic migrants who work freely and those who are exploited and threatened. Trafficked people are often indebted and when they arrive at their destination, they find that the job they were promised does not exist but they still have to pay a debt, which could be anything up to US$40,000. This amount can then be inflated through charges for accommodation, food
and interest on the loan they borrowed. The trafficked person is not paid what they were promised; often they are not paid at all.
Bonded labour often operates outside of the normal economy and in some cases workers are “managed” by “gangmasters”. This can lead to tragedy as was highlighted in 2004 when 20 Chinese cockle-pickers were drowned off the North-West
coast of England by the rising tide in the darkness.
Despite UN prohibition and the fact that it is illegal in most countries bonded labour continues to exist because governments are rarely willing to enforce the law or to ensure that those who profit from it are punished.
1. This is a brief summary of ideas from James Robertson’s book Future Work. The full text of this book is available free from his website in pdf format http://www.jamesrobertson.com/books.htm#futurework
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_cooperative
3. http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk
4. http://www.ilo.org/public/english/protection/condtrav/family/index.htm
5. http://www.ilo.org/public/english/decent.htm
6. “Outsourcing” by Ashok Kotwal & Milind Kandlikar, October 2005 (6 pages), Invited article in Oxford Companion on Indian
Economy.
7. Visit www.antislavery.org website for more background information