The Repercussions of Work: Achieving Social Sustainability in and beyond the Workplace

Juliet Webster
Employment Research Centre Department of Sociology Trinity College, Dublin Address for Correspondence: 22 Northchurch Terrace London N1 4EG Tel/Fax: +44 20 7249 2504 Internet: Juliet.Webster@btinternet.com Abstract of paper to be presented at the conference Unity and Diversity: the contribution of the social sciences and the humanities to the European Research Area, Bruges, 29-30 October 2001 The achievement of human-centred forms of work organisation has long been an objective of many individuals and agencies concerned with improving the quality of employment in Europes organisations. Under the broad umbrella of quality of working life, we can identify a number of different intellectual and policy concerns. These include human factors and human-centred technological systems approaches to technological design and implementation (Corbett 1988; Brodner 1990), work design projects concerned with creating a positive relationship between the implementation of new production concepts and the improvement of working conditions/employee development (European Commission 1997; Pramborg 2001; Hvid 2001; LO 2001), and policies for the promotion of decent work work carried out in conditions of freedom, security, equity and human dignity (ILO 1999). Central to many of these ideas is the premise that improving the quality of working life is not only morally desirable, but is also more economically and competitively sustainable than taylorist approaches to the design of work. However, the focus is in the workplace itself, and quality of working life efforts generally stop at the factory gates (or perhaps it is more appropriate in a service-based economy to say at the office doors). The main elements of quality of working life are usually identified in terms of the forms of organisation required, skills requirements, employee development practices, and desirable forms of social dialogue. The implications of the design of work for the quality of life outside and beyond work are less well-explored. Feminist studies of work and employment have, however, been central in promoting a better recognition of how the conditions of work affect and are affected by the sphere of unpaid work and private life. This is because such research has highlighted the fact that the conditions of womens paid work cannot solely be understood by reference to their status as employees. Womens position in the labour market the work they do, the training they receive, the skills they develop, the pay they earn, the status they have, their

working hours, and the labour market mobility they enjoy all these are fundamentally shaped by womens place in the domestic sphere and by their continuing responsibility for unpaid labour, particularly child- and family-care. This paper builds on that recognition of the intersection between quality of working life and life outside the workplace. It looks at the relationship from the opposite viewpoint, considering how the conditions of work affect not only the life chances of employees in the labour market, but also the quality of their daily lives within and beyond the workplace. It suggests that the concept of sustainability in relation to forms of work organisation takes on much greater salience when it is applied to the intersection of work with social and private life. Work and life, the paper argues, should be mutually enhancing not mutually diminishing. The first part of the paper examines some philosophical and political approaches to the quality of working life, for example approaches which are centred around sustainable work (Pramborg 2001). The paper suggests that the objective of social sustainability builds on this work by linking the improvement of working conditions and the labour market position of employees to the improvement of the conditions of their social and private lives. Promoting social sustainability allows for a broadening of policy efforts beyond issues of human-centred work systems, beyond productivity and profitability, and beyond the protection of the environment, to include the domain of domestic, (psycho)social and civic life. The second part of the paper examines some contemporary developments in working life. The paper draws particularly upon research carried out under the European Commissions Targeted Socio-Economic Research Programme into the nature of womens employment in the context of changes in technology, work organisation and working time in European services. Project SERVEMPLOI examined the implications of these changes for womens skills and expertise, their opportunities for progression and for the gender regimes in their workplaces and thus the equality of opportunities. The results of this project, when taken in conjunction with the findings of other related research, suggest that many contemporary developments in working life are antithetical to the objective of improving social sustainability. The paper identifies and discusses the following specific problem areas: Fulfillment of human potential within and beyond the workplace The dynamics of contemporary technological and organisational change often perpetuate and extend the existence of routine work with little knowledge content in many occupations. This problem particularly affects women, who are already disproportionately clustered in low-grade jobs. The paper argues that the prospects for human development tend to be very limited in the routine jobs which still comprise a significant proportion of contemporary work. Despite an increasing policy emphasis on human resource management for increased competitiveness, many women in junior jobs are unable despite their skills to move out of those jobs and into more highly valued, more highly paid work. They are stuck at the

bottom of the labour market. This affects not only their motivation and morale in the workplace, it also affects their overall sense of their own value and their sense of what they can achieve in life. More prosaically, it affects their ability to benefit from equality of opportunity and to enjoy better or equal pay for the work they do. This, combined with womens continuing responsibility for the domestic sphere, means that women remain the prime sufferers of absolute and relative poverty. Working Hours & Work-Life Balance In some European workplaces, there is already a long-hours culture. There is in addition to this a tendency for opening and operating hours to be extended. In many countries, working time is being deregulated, and work is increasingly colonising other areas of peoples lives. Many organisations require employees to work flexibly in a variety of ways, including on zero hours contracts, and on call contracts. For these employees, work is becoming more unpredictable. Research suggests that working time flexibility is largely imposed upon employees, rather than being a matter of choice. For employees, and particularly for female employees, what matters is not so much what hours they work as the fact that they have control over their working hours. This is particularly the case in countries where childcare is not routinely provided by the state, and is only available on a private basis. When work is extensified, it becomes even more difficult for employees to manage their childcare needs. Female employees may reject promotion and advancement in the workplace because they cannot manage the demands of extended working time made in more senior positions. The extensification of work and the loss of control over working hours also create profound problems for employees in fulfilling other areas of their social, their private and their domestic lives. They are inhibited from doing extra-curricula activities, hobbies, voluntary work, and out-of-work training and learning. They see their partners and children briefly. Social networks become more fragile. Personal physical and mental well-being Stress and burnout are commonplace in contemporary work, affecting just under onequarter of all employees. Again, there is a gender dimension to this issue: women make up the majority of front-line customer service workers. They also constitute around 70% of call centre workers, who routinely suffer burnout as a result of the pace and nature of their work (Belt et al 1999). Stressful work and long working hours, are stealing time from private life, and particularly from sleeping time, so again work is colonising an increasing part of waking and sleeping hours. Bullying can be related to contemporary forms of work organisation, particularly delayering, in which management is less structured and more reliant on charismatic figures like team leaders. Harassment and abuse by the public are growing aspects of front-line customer service work. Such front-line work tends to be female-dominated; indeed, many organisations recruit women expressly for their skills in dealing with customers, and train them in anger management. Increasing abuse may be partly linked to perceptions of poorer service levels, and customer frustration expressed, for example, through phone rage. This therefore constitutes a problem not only for service employees, but for users as well.

Family life and childcare Across the EU, women form a growing percentage of the paid labour force, and now make up approaching half of the European workforce. Yet for many, participating in the labour market presents them with profound childcare problems and enormous resulting stress which is often passed onto their families. The paper examines some experiences of women, their children and their families in these situations. Women are inhibited from taking jobs where working hours are flexible and from applying for promotion into management positions because of the long hours culture of management work. Where they are forced to work long hours or to work unsocial hours, they may become alienated from their own children. Grandparents who care for their grandchildren full-time often do so after retirement and when they are elderly. Some find it difficult to do so in the context of failing health. All generations within the family pay the price for the extensification of work and the absence of formal childcare.

Despite the negative aspects of work, which the paper argues disproportionately affect women in various aspects of their working and domestic lives, research shows that work is good for women in terms of their health and well-being. Women in paid work have between 3 and 5 years more life expectancy than women who are not in paid work. The paper concludes by suggesting some areas of action to promote sustainable work. References Belt, V., Richardson, R., and Webster, J. (1999) Work Opportunities for Women in the Information Society, Report to the European Commission, University of Newcastle, Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies. Brodner, P (1990) The Shape of Future Technology: the Anthropocentric Alternative, London, Springer-Verlag. Corbett, M. (1988) Ergonomics in the development of human-centred AMT, Applied Ergonomics, 19, 1, 35-59. European Commission (1997) Partnership for a New Organisation of Work, Brussels, European Commission. Hvid (2001) The Developmental Work, Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing, 11, 2, 89-101. ILO (1999) Decent Work, Geneva, International Labour Office. LO (2001) The Rewarding Work Organisation, Stockholm, LO. Pramborg, A. (2001) Sustainable Workplaces, in Wennberg. A (ed) Work Life 2000 Quality in Work, Scientific Reports from the Workshops held for the Work Life 2000 Conference under the Swedish Presidency of the European Union, Malm, 22-24 January.