Transcript Chris Warhurst and Sally Wright

Key concepts and thinking
around decent work/
good jobs
Chris Warhurst & Sally Wright
University of Warwick
Structure
1. Why intervene in job quality
2. All the world wants a good job
3. The prescription to practice gap
4. Need to make decisions
1 Why intervene? The bottom line benefits
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Countries with more high quality jobs have higher rates of employment
and employment activity (EC 2002)
Job quality improvements increase the employment rate and decrease the
unemployment rate (Siebern-Thomas 2005).
Sectors/countries with higher job quality are more innovative, with higher
productivity (Patterson et al. 1997; Toner 2011)
Job quality a feature of more effective skill utilisation within firms (Skills
Australia 2012)
Job quality is positively correlated with job satisfaction (Clark 2005)
• job satisfaction is negatively correlated with absenteeism (Clegg 1983)
and turnover (Freeman 1978).
2 All the world wants a good job
‘What the whole world wants is a good job’ (Shorten 2012).
• No trade-off between job quantity and job quality; significant correlation
between employment rates and components of job quality (Erhel &
Guergoat-Larivière 2010).
• Even with crisis, policy-makers recognise that job quality is important for
individual, firm and national wellbeing:
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EU – raise employment participation, improve job quality
ILO – ‘decent work’; ‘better jobs for a better economy’
OECD – ‘more and better jobs’
Both a public good (e.g. employment gains) and a private gain (e.g.
individuals: wages/job satisfaction; firms: productivity/innovation)
• Demands to create good jobs or improve bad jobs e.g.:
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‘new deal’ (Grimshaw et al. 2008)
‘new social contract’ (Kalleberg 2011)
‘make bad jobs good’ (Osterman 2008)
All the world wants a good job (cont.)
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Countries and firms can make choices about job quality. Similar firms in
same markets facing same competitive pressures make different choices
about job quality (Metcalf & Dhudwar 2010) and governments allow them
to (Edwards & Sengupta (2012).
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e.g. in/secure employment, progression opportunities; zero-hours contracts.
Capacity for change boosted if supported by workers; and workers want
intrinsic elements of job quality (Gallie et al. 2012).
Task to identify the factors that underpin the choices and decide ‘what we
want [our future places of work] to look like’ (Shorten 2012).
3 Understanding the prescription to practice gap
So why isn’t common sense common practice?
Important to appreciate the ‘4Ws’
What
Which
Who
Where
What are we talking about?
 Decent work – inc. labour force participation rates, union density,
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male/female unemployment rates, public expenditure on social
protection – more labour market than job focused.
Quality of working life – job enrichment but really focus on work e.g.
rotation, task complexity.
Employment enrichment – terms & conditions of employment e.g. pay,
training and development opportunities.
Job quality includes both work and employment e.g. task complexity and
pay.
And is it only ‘employees’ who are included? What about selfemployed/contractors?
Need to avoid concept confusion and be clear on what/who the focus is.
What are we talking about? (cont.)
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Lack of consensus currently about what job quality is and how it can be
assessed.
Differences by discipline e.g.:
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Economists – pay; sometimes skill (but as a proxy for pay).
Sociologists – skill (task complexity) and autonomy(task discretion).
Psychologists – job satisfaction and well-being (e.g. recognition, growth).
Differences within disciplines e.g.:
• Sociology and contingent/casual contracts.
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Are indicators objective e.g. pay or subjective i.e. derived utility, or
subjective perceptions of the objective (Knox et al. 2015)?
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‘good’, ‘decent’, ‘bad’ jobs not self-evident but a minimum benchmark needed
 Data limitations currently e.g. LFS or EWCS. Assessment and measurement
based on what’s possible or what's needed?
 Multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional underpinnings to job quality.
Which jobs need intervention?
Focus tends to be ‘bad jobs’ but good and better jobs can go bad or get worse:
Skill level
Top
Intermediate
Routine
E.g. UK creative industries, good but
bad for women – working patterns
problem (Eikhof & Warhurst 2015)
E.g. US auto industries, good gone
bad, undermining of wages and
working hours (Rothstein 2012)
E.g. Hotels, bad made worse with TWA
use; wage insecurity (Vanselow et al.
2010); add zero-hours contracts
Easier to agree on bad than good jobs – and more pressing need?
Who intervenes?
 Firms with product markets strategies e.g.. HSE (Keep 2000).
 Can transfer good HRM (Feuerstein & Mayer-Ahuja 2012)
 Government: block the low road, pave the high road (Carre et al. 2012) i.e.
regulation e.g. labour standards (Theodore et al. 2012) and persuasion
e.g. contract compliance (Klein 2008) or funded education e.g. sociotechnical approach (Klein 2008).
 Also as model employer (e.g. living wage and Glasgow City Council).
 Trade unions: traditional role – delivered better jobs in US auto industry
from 1950s e.g. pay and benefits (Rothstein 2012); but lower density now.
 Community organisations e.g. London Citizens and cleaners (Lloyd et al.
2009).
 Individuals, making ‘lifestyle’ choices e.g. ‘Jenny’ in Pocock & Skinner
(2012).
 Back to subjectivity; what workers want from job varies by worker
characteristics e.g. sex, age, education (Sutherland 2012).
Where to intervene?
 Some overlap but various potential points of intervention.
 At work?
 Job: e.g. work design, work intensity
 Firm: e.g. ownership type, organisational size, payment systems.
 Industry: e.g. CBA, training arrangements (Pocock & Skinner 2012).
 Before work/off the job?
 Education & training: influences point on entry into labour market (Keep &
James 2012; shapes management thought (Klein 2008).
 Parallel to employment?
 Government – local, national, supra-national: e.g. EPL, labour standards, ‘social
wage’ (Bartik & Houseman 2008; Zuberi 2006).
 Community: e.g. living wage, consumer/human rights campaigns
 Key Issue: what works best and why?
4 Concluding remarks: decisions needed
 Consensus on the benefits of job quality; development of ‘mutual
interests’ agenda possible.
 Challenge comes with intervening to improve job quality.
 Different points of departure and different points of arrival i.e. 4Ws.
 E.g. If low pay the issue (what, which), have pay policy imposed by government
(where, who).
 Need to decide where want to go, and then where to start and how to
deliver.
 Remember minimum standards in H&S and pay for example once had to
be achieved and are now uncontested; same possibility for job quality.