Key concepts and thinking around decent work/

good jobs

Chris Warhurst & Sally WrightUniversity of Warwick

Structure

1. Why intervene in job quality2. All the world wants a good job3. The prescription to practice gap4. Need to make decisions

1 Why intervene? The bottom line benefits

• 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:• 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.:• ‘new deal’ (Grimshaw et al. 2008)• ‘new social contract’ (Kalleberg 2011)• ‘make bad jobs good’ (Osterman 2008)

• 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).• 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).

All the world wants a good job (cont.)

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, 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 self-employed/contractors?

Need to avoid concept confusion and be clear on what/who the focus is.

What are we talking about? (cont.)• Lack of consensus currently about what job quality is and how it can be

assessed.• Differences by discipline e.g.:

• 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.

• Are indicators objective e.g. pay or subjective i.e. derived utility, or subjective perceptions of the objective (Knox et al. 2015)?• ‘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?

Top

Intermediate

Routine

S

kill

level

Focus tends to be ‘bad jobs’ but good and better jobs can go bad or get worse:

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. socio-technical 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.