Union Building Conference 2018

Union Building Conference Thinkpiece.

New norms of work? A discussion paper

Since the mid-to-late 20 th century, there have been considerable changes to work and employment in advanced economies like the UK. Media reports tend to focus on technological developments, like robotics, but working lives have already changed greatly, and not only because of technology. The extent and details may vary, but most commentators suggest  Many working people don't earn reasonable pay, or even enough to live on  Many have insecure employment, and not as much work as they want (or need)  The boundaries between work and free time are less clearcut than in the past  Partly as a consequence, working hours are longer  More people today work for themselves, running their own businesses, working freelance or self-employed (although that last status is of course debatable for some of them, such as the 'taskers' in the gig economy)  Even workers who are in conventional employment are expected to be more responsible, self-managing, innovative, future-focused and, in a word, entrepreneurial. Of course, some of these changes may offer improvements, like more autonomy and more personal engagement and satisfaction. It has been suggested that one reason for the rise in self-employment is that people want to be able to work flexibly. Nevertheless, many social psychologists take a more critical position. Who do the changes favour and who do they disadvantage? Are they making it more difficult to be a 'good' worker today, especially for certain categories of people? Perhaps a future focus comes more naturally to younger people, but responsibility is a quality associated with maturity and therefore perhaps with age. However, a requirement to be engaged and flexible will be more challenging for people with heavy responsibilities in their lives outside work, for instance, as parents or carers. Also, flexibility sounds good when it refers to a worker being able to choose what work to do and how intensively to do it, but less so when the flexibility advantages the employer: apparently about half of UK workers are so flexible around working hours that they now work overtime for no pay! Many of these changes are no longer experienced as change but instead are accepted and accommodated. They are part of a 'new normal' for many workers, yet normality is a complex concept. For example, flexibility is a new norm in the double sense of being a description of the behaviour of many workers, and also what people accept as necessary, or feel that they should do without question (even when it disadvantages them). So in this second sense, 'normal' is a prescriptive term, implying a value judgement. Yet these two senses of 'normal' are not always in sync. This can be seen in the example of the many parents who are also workers. The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/good-work-the-taylor-review-of-modern-

1