MB writes: Lost, it would appear, in the government’s focus on productivity as the ruling motif of the workplace is any consideration of the human costs of work in the new economy. I had hoped that Julia Gillard might bring a focus on industrial democracy and the quality of working life to her role as Industrial Relations Minister, but, to date, that’s a hope that appears a futile one. Nevertheless, I agree with David Coats that we need to politicise “bad work”, as I’ve suggested before, and that may well be a contribution largely to be made by civil society. Anyway, when I read this post at The Global Sociology Blog, I thought it cohered well with this effort, and so I asked SocProf if we could post it at LP, and I’m delighted that she agreed.
Dominic Huez, an MD specialized in questions of labor-related medical conditions, has a book out, Souffrir au Travail: Comprendre Pour Agir, that connects illness and suffering to management practices. He recently had a chat hosted by Le Monde. Here is the digest version of what was discussed.
Rejecting “stress” as the proper concept to define his subject, Huez prefers to use “suffering at work” as the correct one that can be caused by a lack of recognition by one’s peers or bosses. In a very Durkheimian fashion, he explains that the dynamics of recognition are essential to one’s identity-at-work and to one’s health.
For Huez, there are two main mechanisms at the root of psychopathologies at work (in both senses):
The intensification of work, the reduction of margins of maneuvers, the disappearance of breathing spaces for employees
The disastrous consequences of “new management” where the reality of work is not taken into account but where individuals are managed by indicators that measures individual performance for the extent of its deviation from prescribed results. Evaluation of performance becomes threatening device because the point is to judge people not the work really accomplished but on personality aspects and appearances. Under such conditions, there can be no system of recognition or collaboration that lead to psychosocial risks based on the risks of falling down. The illusion of autonomy may in reality be isolation without cooperation.
Indeed, what Huez describes here is something that social thinkers such as Ulrich Beck (see especially Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences as well as The Brave New World of Work), Zygmunt Bauman (see especially Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty, Liquid Fear, and The Individualized Society) and Richard Sennett (see especially, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, The Culture of the New Capitalism, Respect in a World of Inequality, and The Craftsman) have described in more sociological terms when they analyzed the changes in the world of labor and their personal consequences.
This lack of recognition of crafts and commitment is especially visible in the fact that suicides at work are more likely to be from people who are the most committed to work, not those who are disengaged. But when one examines the statistics of suicide at work, it is not surprising to find that they happen in labor units that experienced precarization of work in the global context. These suicides also happen more and more at the middle management levels, these that are subjected to paradoxical and double-bind-type demands, and are now also more likely to experience the precarization of their working conditions.
Huez discusses also the devaluation of the work by older workers. This is well in line, again, which Richard Sennett’s argument that the New Capitalism does not value experience or craft but potential skills that are non-specific. This again ties back into the lack of recognition.
Experience and craft is something that one build over time and applied to a specific domain of work, whereas potential skills are something that is more or less subjectively assessed as a potential of the person irrespective of the task at hand because what is precisely valued is the capacity to solve problems in a variety of environments (which is the essence of the job of consultant, for instance, no long-term ties, short-term contracts in a variety of settings that require not craft or experience but problem solving skills).
Is there a gender component to suffering at work? Well, of course there is. Women suffer more than men. Why?
One explanation, for Huez, is The Second Shift. Men can assume work burdens, safe in the knowledge that their wives or female partners are taking care of the kids. There is no such backup for women.
The second, and more convincing explanation according to Huez, is that women are more likely to be subjected to organizational constraints, more pushed around and more likely to be judged by standards concerning what is considered proper for women, how much they conform to culturally-expected “feminine qualities.” Therefore, they are expected to pay more attention to relational aspects and to be more attentive to others. Generally, the level of expectations, both in terms of productivity and relationships, is higher and more pressing on women.
Ultimately, what it all boils down to is the meaning of work for one’s identity. And in the context of precarization, devaluation of identity, generalized insecurity, lack of recognition, unrequited demands for commitment and new management double-binds, this is a tighter rope to walk, with pathological consequences.
No one responded to this yet?
Astonishing.
Err, why, Paul? It’s after midnight! Believe it or not, if you look at the site stats, there aren’t too many folk around here at that hour.
I think it’s a great post – thanks SocProf. In terms of translating some of these concerns into social action, it strikes me that articulating them with the “workplace health and safety” discourse and trying to transform that from within might be productive.
Adelaide follows the more accurate Central Time Zone settings.
We used to do even better in Adelaide, until our politicians started following the eastern states repressive tolerance measure known as Daylight Saving and surrendered even more of our sequestered sleep time to our employers.
OK, I accept much of this article, but is this really a phenomenon of “New Capitalism”?
The “intensification of work, the reduction of margins of maneuvers, the disappearance of breathing spaces for employees, and “lack of recognition of crafts” are effectively a product of ‘Fordism’ and ‘Taylorism’ — which are well over 100 years old. They are hardly ‘new’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management
And keep in mind, folks, that without Taylorism, every car would be hand-made by craftsmen, and cost as much as a Porsche — and you probably would never be able to afford one.
I’d love to know what Paulus’ theory on home affordability is, then.
It’s a little more complex than that, historically, Paulus, because first you get Taylorism, and then you get Fordism which involves reasonable wages, stable work contracts and unionisation, and sits within a particular mode of regulating the capitalist economy which tends towards oligopoly production and corporatist governance at the level of the nation state. What we have now (overall and as a global tendency) is new ways of dividing up and deskilling work often through the nature of the contract as well as through the mode of work organisation. And a globalised mode of production. Hence – post-Fordism.
Thanks to Mark for posting this here.
To respond to Paulus, I have a book review on Richard Sennett’s The Culture of New Capitalism that addresses what’s specific about the new economy.
Pleasure, SocProf – thanks so much for agreeing to cross-post!
I meant also to contrast the networked nature of the firm and of the production process with bureaucratic mass production as another significant historical change @ 6.
Sure, but it’s still based around ‘conveyor belt’ principles, division of labor, time-and-motion study, deskilling, and so on, isn’t it? And that’s what I read the article to be about. Summed up in one phrase: “the intensification of work”.
If this creates problems that directly lead to stress and illness, as Huez suggests, then stable contracts and better pay might not help that much.
But is there any solution? Is productivity a bad thing to focus on? Should we (somehow) try to foster a business culture where targets and deadlines don’t matter? Where companies enjoy monopoly or oligopoly power (like Ford originally), and barely try to compete?
Dunno. Anyway, SocProf, could you post a link to that review?
Mark, you’re highlighting what in retrospect seem the Good Points of fordism. But the fordist postwar boom can be seen as based on a conjunction which seems anomalous given what went before and what has come after: the deskilling of labour conjoined with rising and secure wages.The odd conjunction explains why, in the early 1970s, writers such as Harry Braverman bemoaned the prevalence of fordist work (ie, deskilled work for men) and, a decade later, writers such a Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison were bemoaning its disappearance (ie, high and securely waged work for men):
Yes, Anthony, I know that was very schematic. Aspects of Braverman’s critique are a little questionable – for instance the long term trend to deskilling – whereas what tends to happen is deskilling in some occupations/industries combined with the emergence of others which are then deskiled, but I didn’t mean to indulge in some nostalgic Fordism lovin’…
Paulus, I think “recognition” is actually the key. Work intensification can be resisted (and not just formally), but it’s much easier to do so on the basis of a secure work contract and employee “voice”.
Which is done the same way reliably over and over again, but faster and faster, right?
Interesting post.
One point I’d take up is that productivity doesn’t have to be the enemy of a rewarding working life.
Isn’t there a whole strain of management theory about happy, engaged workers being more productive?
Yes, there is, and I should have clarified that – what concerns me is the focus on productivity narrowly understood – Gillard, for instance, appears to have decided that limited collective bargaining rights plus flexibility is the sine qua non.
paul @ 3 – You may, like me, remember that golden age when we still had our proper time zone (1 hour behind the eastern states), rather than the bastard child we have now, which was introduced, I think, by Dunstan to get us a bit closer to Melbourne business’ hours (irrelevant in this post-telephone age, I would have thought).
Oh, by the way, I hate Daylight Saving time as well.
Yes David; remember the times when you could actually get up AFTER the sun rose. Such decadence is unspeakable in these times of bracing reform.
It was just Dunstan’s (sure it wasn’t Bannon?) fault tho, it was both lots, with big business ominously breathing down the back of their necks, accept for those holding Eyre peninsular farwest electorates, who found themselves up at the equivalent of midnight- for lunch.
Thankyou to Mark and SocProf, for this personally interesting post.
I have first hand experience of ‘suffering at work’. I was diagnosed 10 years ago with fibromyalgia and severe depression, after a couple of years of work related ‘stress’. I am positive that a great deal of my problems came from the lack of recognition, on both a personal level (my work) and the amount of work required. I worked at Centrelink for 13 years, the last five at the supervisor level.
I’m glad you found it relevant, Debbieanne.
The recent stats on the health and safety of Centrelink workers are significant in this regard, I’d suggest as well.