Radically rethinking work

Circumstances are apparently altering the way in which we conceptualize work and the practical ways in which we do it. I am not totally convinced that this shift is as profound or as permanent as people suggest. A cursory glance at news coming out of Leicester, where it seems that people are working in sweated conditions, compelled to be in work even when unwell, and being paid a mere £3.50 an hour, suggests that, for all that seems to have changed, much is remaining the same.

Equally, the translocation of the workplace to the domestic setting carries some benefits, largely in respect to flexibility - but is equally freighted with drawbacks, around issues such as the intensification of work when the division between home life and one's occupation is indistinguishable. The workplace was somewhere we went, a dedicated space - managed and paid for by our employers - where one would attend to tasks in hand.

Now, we find ourselves doing that work in our homes, giving a whole fresh meaning to the term "workhouse". And all of this reminds us should serve to remind us of the traditional but unacceptable division of labour that can often exist at home, where there is both the things we need to do in our new "workhouse" and the unpaid - and oftentimes unacknowledged - business of "housework". In this setting, there is not just the actual work to be done; there is also the fact that it is invariably women that carry the mental load in the domestic setting.

In January 2019, the Autonomy think tank produced an insightful document that argued strongly for a four day working week. Their report anticipates the discussions that have arisen out of the COVID19 crisis - and, at the same time, offers a persuasive model for thinking about a transition to a more meaningful and less harmful way of working.

In the Executive Summary, they make the following case, which has considerable resonance as many of us seek to do our work in the midst of a pandemic:  

We show that there is no positive correlation between productivity and the amount of hours worked per day: working to the bone does not make ‘business sense’. Reducing workers’ hours is therefore not necessarily detrimental to the success of an enterprise. A further implication of this is that in many cases there would be no justification for cutting wages in tandem with reduced working hours (as productivity can often be maintained or even increased). (p8)

Now, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, we see new - and admittedly very provisional and as yet unpublished - research that makes the case that reducing hours does not adversely affect the mental health of those implicated, whereas the loss of work most certainly does. Hence, the argument is advanced that we should "cut hours, not people". This is at a time, of course, where the furlough scheme has been seen by some employers as a testing ground for the package of redundancies that they feel obliged to deliver in the current climate.

All of which shows that we can either have a superficial conversation about the workforce and the workplace, off the back of our current circumstances - one that will leave the relations of production and the social culture of work largely untouched.

Alternatively, we can have a radical discussion about all that we know is wrong about work (and have known for some time) - the focus on "busyness", the lack of meaningful autonomy, the compression of voice that occurs in our persistent hierarchies - in order that we can use these circumstances to begin and see through a root-and-branch revision of our relations to the idea of productive work.