Changing Modes of Employment: Problems of Skill
Development and Qualities of Work
Leuven, October 27-28, 2011
Catherine Casey
Professor of Organization and Society
School of Management
University of Leicester, United Kingdom
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Objectives
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To review trends in flexible organizations and
employment practices
To draw attention to questions of flexibility:
of skills and training
and of concerns for quality of jobs and development
of workers.
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To draw further connections between those questions
and wider social concerns for inequality and social
cohesion.
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Introduction
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Dynamic and flexible labour markets have become a salient
feature of contemporary economies.
Macroeconomic policies of liberalization at supranational and
national levels in the European Union have facilitated the
dispersion of changing modes of employment and encouraged
greater labour market participation across the population.
Flexibility of employment has become so widely commonplace
across industries that a newer generation of workers is policyencouraged to expect flexible, impermanent employment.
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Policy emphasis on education and skills
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Accompanying liberalized flexibility has been a highly visible
policy promotion of knowledge-based and innovative economies
which are expected to require higher levels of skills across a
wider population in society.
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The dispersion of changing modes of employment and greater
participation in employment and in education and training
systems has undoubtedly brought many benefits to EU
economies and societies.
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But equally undoubtedly, it brings particular costs and concerns.
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Prevailing economic views:
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Education and training increase the wealth of nations and
improve the knowledge, skills, and employment prospects of
individuals.
Education and training systems require further modernization
and rationalization to stimulate more productive and competitive
economies.
People with higher skill levels are better able to fend for
themselves in labour markets and are less dependent on the
welfare state.
But….
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We observe:
uneven dispersion of knowledge-based economies, and
absorption of higher skilled workers
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polarisation of labour markets, persistent low-skilled and lowwaged worked
Lowering wage premium for higher skilled workers as education
systems expand
and
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Further pressures on individuals to gain skills and ‘good’ jobs
Disparagement of lower-skilled jobs, and workers
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Flexible firms, flexible employment
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Much literature addresses the rise and dispersion of flexible
organizational and employment practices:
organizational structural contingencies, subsidiarization,
horizontal networks, multi-employer worksites, strengthening
vertical integration
Industrial relations researchers point to uneven distribution of
benefits and advantages incurred for employers in relation to
workers
growth in contingent, temporary, low-commitment jobs
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Flexibility and skills
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Many lifelong learning educators, HR trainers and policy-makers
point to possibilities for workers’ skill development in the midst
of flexible employment.
Other researchers point to economic organizational imperatives
to reduce labour costs by minimizing skills training and
qualification benefits.
The strategic use of temporary workers discourages, or avoids,
provision of opportunities for further skill development.
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That avoidance is a rational organizational action of cost
minimization.
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Flexibility and skills
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Flexible employment – in terms of temporary contracts – falls
unevenly on lower skilled jobs and workers.
Some elite sectors of workers in specialist ICT, project
development and consultancy work may maintain flexible
arrangements of their own design.
But the majority of flexible employment is found in firms’ use of
low skilled jobs.
From the firm’s vantage point, flexible employment enables
contingent utility of skill levels with low, or no investment
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Divisions of skill
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Firms increase investment in sectors of workers at the core of
production activity.
Those workers typically receive permanent contracts, further
skills development opportunities, more favourable conditions.
Research reports that temporary workers, including agency
workers, receive little or no further training opportunities in their
placements.
Temporary workers must gain and develop their skills base
themselves.
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Skills and competencies
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UK research (Ackroyd 2010) reports that manufacturing industries
frequently employ temporary workers who are formally low-skilled.
These workers may be deployed in teams which share tasks and
require cooperative and communicational skills which may be
considerable. But those skills are not recognised or remunerated.
Informal skills learning and utilisation is required.
But the temporary status of the worker’s job enables the
employer’s formal discounting of that learning and provision of
low wages.
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Informal skills learning
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Meunchhausen (2008) reports that in regard to competencies
development “enterprises make a clear distinction between the
permanent workforce and the temporary workers”.
Temporary workers are routinely excluded from skill
development opportunities at work.
temporary workers rely on informal skills learning opportunities
gleaned from asking established co-workers
They report that their principal skills development lies in their
ability to be adaptable:
frequently changing work situations with different co-workers
is temporary workers’ salient skill.
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Skills applications
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Casey and Alach (2004) report on women temps utilising their
formal skills base and developing their competencies for fast
learning and adaptablity
They report on women (in their NZ sample) expressing pride
and confidence in their skills of adaptability and independence
Importantly, their study focussed on women who had selfchosen to work temporarily.
The role of choice of self-initiation, against employer
prerogative, may be a decisive factor in the well-being and
skills development or utilisation of temporary workers.
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From permanent to temporary
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Casey et al. (2012 ) report on the shifting of baggage handlers
and security workers (formerly employed on continuous
contracts) into subsidiaries in German airport firms.
Qualified baggage-handlers are replaced by low skilled workers
on temporary contracts.
New employees receive only the minimum required training to
perform specific activities and in health & safety.
The workers’ temporary contracts ensure their exclusion from
skill-gaining opportunities in baggage handling and security
qualifications.
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Flexible, temporary, individualised workers
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Contingent workers frequently fall outside union capacities to
collectivize and organize them
they typically lack capacity, skills, confidence to engage in direct
negotiation with employers
Flexible organizational forms and employment relations intensify
demand on workers while providing weakened avenues of
participation in the regulation of workplace life.
Organizations utilising higher numbers of contingent, temporary
workers see a fall-off in works council formation.
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Quality of jobs
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Researchers point to hidden costs to organizational workplaces as
well as workers’ experiences through effects of employer-required
flexibility of employment relations and skill development on
various qualities of working life.
Low-commitment jobs encourages highly instrumental
orientations to work and workplaces.
Workers involuntarily employed on temporary, low-commitment
contracts experience difficulty in constructing coherence and
intrinsic satisfactions in work as well as earning sustainable
wages.
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Quality of jobs
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Poorer-skilled workers, or workers who are unable to utilize their
skills gained in formal education and training systems, are denied
opportunities to participate in the regulation of quality of work.
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Research reports t(Bradley 2009) that temporary workers feel
treated as ‘second-class citizens’ by the union in their workplace.
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Temporary jobs incur a tendency for reduced quality of jobs and
work life over time.
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Expectations of impermanence reduce commitments on the parts
of employers, workers and unions.
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Polarising workers
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Labour market polarisation is generally observed at a macro
level
But it occurs within organizations deploying flexible structures
and employment relations
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Skills, wages, and conditions gaps widen between sectors of
workers – even those on continuing contracts.
Leads to:
lack of workplace trust and collegiality,
lack of participation
Increased localised inequalities and conflicts
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Advantages under-utilised
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Flexibility is not necessarily equated with a neo-liberal, employerbiased agenda
Flexibility of organizations and employment can be utilised in
ways that lead to new forms of relationships for actors within
labour market work.
The potential of ‘a new working life’ remains rich.
Flexible organizations and working lives can be designed in
democratic societies in ways that more widely and evenly
distribute advantanges.
But…
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Social concerns
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Flexible work is more typically linked to contingent organizational
practices which engender precarious jobs
Precarious jobs lead to a more generalized precariousness for
sectors of the population.
Conditions of sustained low pay and precarious employment
affect significant dimensions of a person’s life in addition to
income.
People holding temporary and intermittent jobs are at greater risk
of poverty and social exclusion than those on continuous
employment contracts (Debels 2008; Gallie 2004)
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Social concerns
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Esping-Andersen (2009:55-56) reports: “We are witnessing a tidal
wave of rising income inequality... With only one or two
exceptions, all the OECD countries have experienced widening
income differentials over the past decades; in some cases, like
the UK and the US, dramatically so.”
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Predominant practices of flexible employment risk worsening
gender gaps in workplaces and societies.
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Conclusion
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There is no doubt that flexible organizations and employment
practices can have much potential to enable the development
of a new working life and relationship to economic participation.
But there are significant gaps in the utilisation and formation of
skills and competencies under conditions of flexible work.
Workers are under greater policy pressure to gain and maintain
employable skills, yet uncertain of employers’ demand and
utilisation of them.
Flexible work, if shaped predominantly by firms’ strategic
economic interests, has deleterious effects on work and skills
development.
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