THE drive over decades towards mass automation and integration of workplace tasks is not the central reason for the inexorable rise of employee insecurity. Bear with me on this.
From the lowly copy boy in the heavily labour intensive newspaper industry of old to the high flying flight engineer on a long haul Boeing 747, computers have been made to collude with job merging schemes to deliver glibly labelled “efficiencies”.
The greatest theoretical physicist of our time, Professor Stephen Hawking, lends support to the view that eventually the planet could be taken over by machines. Using the mathematical logic that underpins artificial intelligence, man will design these objects to a stage where his creations will be clever enough to determine for themselves that even their inventor is surplus to requirement.
Yet none of this, science fiction or fact, is praying unduly on the average worker’s mind compared to the here and now issue of the manner in which he/she is engaged by employers – and what he/she is paid for undertaking that employment.
It’s as well the much published globe-trotting University of London social economist Professor Guy Standing – a vociferous proponent of these perhaps more mundane root causes – exonerates technology for its bit-part role in his version of the job anxiety topic.
As he was in Italy following a hectic schedule, and I was in a somewhat less exotic Renfrewshire, video conferencing courtesy of Skype proved an invaluable aid to our discussion.
I was interviewing him for The Herald Business magazine which gave a nod to his latest book – A Precariat Charter: from Denizens to Citizens, in which he has included a 29-point checklist of alterations to accepted economic policy making – in order to explore the plight of the Precariat in the context of the Scottish commercial landscape. The Precariat, the author explains, is an underclass emerging through insecure, or precarious, employment arrangements.
Afterwards, we turned to the problem as it might be viewed from the standpoint of employees. He brings forward fascinating, even compelling, propositions.
People have demonstrated a capacity to adapt to a new organisational order but in so doing, Standing believes the aspirational horizons of those in lower and now also mid-wage work have been artificially limited by zero hours contracts and pay at levels below a sustainable living standard – or misalignment of job remit with the worker’s educational attainment and monetary expectation.
As a consequence, Britain’s productivity is weaker.
Governments in the lead global economies need to think again, he insists. Don’t be too quick to team him with Chancellor George Osborne when you hear that the professor supports the abolition of working tax credits.
“Not for the same reasons as the Conservative Government,” he immediately clarifies. “Alternative benefits are needed. But tax credits are basically a subsidy to employers encouraging them to pay low wages that will be topped-up by taxpayers.
“The employer has no incentive to use the worker efficiently. We have a situation where contract systems (referring to terms and conditions) and the tax credit system encourage low productivity.”
Relatively weak productivity figures in the UK, ignoring star performers like the Nissan car plant in Sunderland (the sector’s most productive in Europe), has vexed UK Governments for years. Based on this academic’s chief thrust, the lowering of taxes for businesses to pay for the proposed National Living Wage – while barring access to benefits deemed by the Chancellor to be unnecessary in light of his “pay increase” – isn’t the answer.
“I support a Living Wage – but I don’t think it on its own solves the labour market problems,” Standing adds. “Traditionally throughout the 20th century, when productivity went up wages went up in parallel. In the last 20 years, real wages have stagnated or declined, and productivity has gone up.
“In the UK we have made things worse because we’ve got these zero hours contracts. A lot of people are “nominally” in jobs. The unit that is called a “full-time employee” is usually not a full-time employee.
“Don’t be surprised that, with somebody who is nominally in a job, productivity isn’t very high. We are actually producing low productivity by the nature of our labour contracts. This is part of the problem.”
One dimension of Standing’s Precariat class is that they rely almost entirely on low or irregular financial remuneration. That’s compounded by little or no access to rights-based benefits, a corollary of a shift to means testing by the UK and other European governments.
Osborne is quoted as saying that he would find it difficult to live on a zero hours contract basis, but there is no legislation proposed to ban the practice. Prudence, or a prop to in-work statistics?
A universal basic income is a good idea to give fundamental security and personal value, Standing expounds. But it must come with the rights that go with it and more progressive policies. He implies the Scottish Government’s ambition to control welfare alongside tax might offer a blueprint for all.
The professor’s parting shot is telling. “This is the first working class in history which has a level of education, on average, that is higher than the level of labour they have to perform.”
Critics will dismiss some of Standing’s prescription as utopian reverie. But national investments made using a longer horizon philosophy could add weight to its credibility.
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