Changing Work Patterns

Written by Vincent Cable MP and published in House Magazine on Sun 1st Dec 2002

A generation ago the patterns of work were dominated by manufacturing, mining and men.

Production lines, the rhythms of factory life, the status of craft skills, the rituals of organised labour: these provided the framework for what were called - and still are - 'industrial' relations.

That portrait is now barely recognisable. Under 15% of the workforce are employed in the manufacturing or energy sectors, 23% work in the public sector, 44% in private sector service employment.

Almost as many women work as men; 70% of women of working age - and 65% with dependent children - as against approximately 80% of men (forty years ago 45% of women worked; 95% of men).

It is now very much the exception rather than the rule for women to spend their married life as 'housewives'.

There are new patterns of working; while the majority of workers still have full-time jobs (18.8 million), a growing number mainly women work part-time (6.3 million) are self employed (3.2 million) or have a 'portfolio' of two or more jobs (1.5 million). Tele commuters - almost 400,000 so far - work from home.

These changes do not have their origins in the political world but are caused by technological change, the globalisation of production and communications, changes in consumer tastes and deep changes in social attitudes and behaviour.

Policy, legislation and organisations - unions; management - are struggling to catch up.

One of the implications of the new labour market is the growing preoccupation with work life balance issues, making work compatible with family life.

There has been a succession of measures - statutory maternity pay, additional maternity leave, paternity leave - designed to lessen the conflicts of interest involved in parenthood and work.

A key new measure in the current Employment Bill is the right to ask for flexible working arrangements and to have the request considered reasonably. I very much welcome this initiative.

It has been criticised as threatening to management, but management still has the final decision. There is however a legitimate concern in business that some other work life balance regulation is excessively prescriptive and intrusive as in the case of the Working Time Directive.

While it is in the long term interests of business to adapt to workers expectations of greater flexibility, and government should reinforce the trend, heavy handed and bureaucratic form of regulation will be, but counter productive.

A second set of implications is a blurring of the boundary between employment and self-employment. Growing numbers of workers in creative activities with a high 'intellectual property' content have a loose and flexible relationship with the companies which contract them.

A failure to understand this point lay behind the bitterly unpopular IR35 tax change affecting IT and other consultants. The government simply did not understand that there were hundreds of thousands of highly qualified, often internationally mobile, people who have opted for lower levels of work benefit entitlement and lower taxes.

Attempts to force many of them into conventional employee relationships may raise a little more tax but will drive others out of business and offshore.

A third is that the changing pattern of employment creates opportunities for some groups but disadvantages others. When work is flexible and physically undemanding there are opportunities not just for women with young children, but for older people with alert minds and useful experience.

With growing doubts about the value of pensions, growing numbers of people in their 60's and 70's will want, and need, to work full or part-time. Currently we are far from an environment in which older workers are encouraged to work. Current arrangements, including compulsory retirement and widespread age discrimination, will have to change quickly.

By the same token there is a diminishing role in the labour force for young men with no qualifications beyond muscle power and willingness to learn a craft skill. That is why the failure of the education system to address the needs of the bottom 20 to 30% who do not acquire minimal qualifications is so crucial.

Lastly, the emerging labour market militates against traditional forms of labour organisation and collective discipline. The legislation of the 1980's had already undermined them. These days, unions retain the power to inflict serious damage only in the public sector.

But there is a danger of the pendulum swinging too far in the opposite direction. There are contexts - call centres are one - where workers do need protection. Flexible employment may well generate many industrial grievances for which employers need representation. Some part-time or temporary workers are easily taken advantage of and lack security.

For these reasons there is a role for progressive unionism which recognises the realities of the new work patterns.