Britain’s economy has long since made the shift from manufacturing things to providing services. Now there is a danger that this service economy is becoming a servant economy.
That is the view of the economics professor and biographer of John Maynard Keynes, Lord Skidelsky. He worries our attitude to work has hardened to a point where a cadre of managers and professionals is charged with bossing around an increasingly casualised workforce – one that is forced to contort domestic lives to suit the whims of those in charge and the profit motive.
These workers must be prepared to work late and arrive early. They must work weekends when needs must and switch from task to task when it suits the manager. Worst of all, they must learn on the job through a method that can be likened to osmosis, with all the attendant stress and anxiety that goes with the absence of rigorous training or clear instruction.
Managers, to give them some credit, behave in such a way to cope with the vagaries of business life, where so many decisions are tactical reactions to the capricious demands of shareholders and consumers.
Skidelsky believes the sense of inevitability about this new form of serfdom is misplaced. He fully supports shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s refusal to accept that the only badge of honour worth having in the 21st century economy is one marked “flexible”, at least where that flexibility is at the discretion of the employer.
In his report How to Achieve Shorter Working Hours, Skidelsky proposes that the government take on a new role as an “employer of last resort” – not just supporting people out of work to find a job, but giving them a job where no others exist.
Never before has a government provided such a guarantee. If it happened, workers would have the power to bid up wages and extract higher benefits, though the report recommends everyone focus on shorter working weeks as the goal.
As Skidelsky says: “A reduction in hours of necessary work should be a natural and desirable outcome of a progressive society. This requires the imagination to think of futures beyond just GDP growth.”
McDonnell seized on the report and last week told the Labour conference he would push for a blanket 32-hour week. The report suggests a more nuanced approach, with some industries pushed harder towards this than others – starting with the public sector, which could demand compliance as the price of winning a contract.
Without doubt the resistance will be fierce, and not just from managers and professionals threatened by improved workers’ rights. Workers who seek to maximise their earnings will also vote against it, just as they did in the 1980s when the Tory party encouraged them to put self-reliance above all else, and unions did their best to make collective action look like an attempt to preserve a vanished past rather than the future of their members.
The playwright David Hare discusses the underpinnings of individualism in his new play Peter Gynt, which is running at the National Theatre until 8 October.
Following the same theme found in Skidelsky’s writing, Hare told the Herald: “The important thing is to knock on the head this idea that a spiritual journey is a journey you take alone. I think that has become a fashionable idea in the 21st century, that you can grow your own garden, but I don’t think that’s the case. In my life, my garden has grown through sharing things with other people, and anything important in it has come from that. I don’t think the idea of being rich, famous and alone is a good way to be.”
In the play, Gynt – an amoral capitalist from humble origins who creates a fortune and then loses it while treating those around him shabbily – says: “Life’s a hell of a price to pay for being born.”
No one wants to work, treat those around them like economic pawns to be moved at will, then retire with as much money and assets as they can amass without any regard for the society this behaviour creates. But many are driven to do it and few seem to question why.
If a jobs guarantee and a shorter working week are to be the bedrock of a fairer employment market, along with the regeneration of a once proud manufacturing sector, then so much more needs to happen. The basic costs of living, which drive workers to scramble for money above all else, need to come down, especially housing.
As important is a fresh look at management and the lack of it in the workplace. A jobs guarantee is worthless without better managers, trained to celebrate the collective efforts of their colleagues and with time to plan for the future.
