The uncertain new world of labour

December 11, 2018 5:49 AM

New world of work leaves 'precariat' living on edge [Reuters] - "In 1997, Pierre Bourdieu[1] argued that the 'precariousness' of modern work was a big problem. The French intellectual claimed that the decline of secure jobs and clear career paths led to 'the destruction of existence … to the degradation of every relationship with the world, time, and space'. Everyone, he said, was affected, because no one could escape the fear of being rendered precarious." (previously)

Could the existence of a precariat be a fervid fantasy of left-wing malcontents? Arne Kalleberg, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, has studied the phenomenon for years. His latest book, 'Precarious Lives: Job Insecurity and Well-Being in Rich Democracies',[2] combines a magisterial collection of the statistical evidence with a summary of the theories which purport to explain what is going on.

His conclusions are less definitive than Bourdieu, who died in 2002, might have liked. While it is hard to measure the fear in people's hearts, there is little evidence of widespread or increasing unhappiness among workers. Between 2004 and 2010, the average level of "perceived subjective well-being" actually increased in Germany, Spain and the UK.

Kalleberg focuses on those three countries, plus Denmark, the United States and Japan. He finds a nearly universal pattern: less clear job paths and less protective labour laws. However, caution is needed. Almost all of the changes have been more marginal than dramatic, and many are reasonable responses to social shifts, notably the decline of traditional "male breadwinner, female homemaker" household.

While precariousness does not shine brightly in the numbers, it is not an empty concept. Work life is indeed very difficult for at least two groups of workers in most developed economies. The first is people living at the margins: migrants, former prisoners, the poorly educated and socially detached. They often get stuck with below-subsistence wages and inadequate help from welfare states.

It is not clear whether the plight of these people has worsened in all developed countries. In the US, though, the decline is clear. The interaction of weak welfare provisions, high private payments for healthcare and low job protection has created a large precariat - people close to the edge of economic disaster.

The other struggling group is closer to the top end of the social spectrum. The expansion of university education has not been matched by an expansion of attractive entry-level professional positions. Kalleberg theorises that the slow start to solid careers helps explain the increasing age at which young adults leave their parents' homes and start their own families.

As far as the economy is concerned, though, 'Precarious Lives' leaves the reader with one general conclusion: a well-designed and well-funded welfare state can help limit precarity. The Danish government's "flexicurity" model, which combines flexibility for employers with income security and help finding new jobs for employees, puts it at the bottom of almost every index of insecurity. The US is mostly close to the top.

Despite the clear virtues of welfare states, Denmark has few imitators. On the contrary, the trend in developed economies is towards declining protection of workers. With that background, Kalleberg is pessimistic. He calls for a renewed effort by governments and employers, and solidarity among workers.

One way to help struggling workers: A guaranteed job[3] - "[G]uarantee that adults in participating communities who want to work can do so, in a job that pays a living wage and provides benefits like health insurance, paid sick leave, and paid family leave – all while helping to advance critical local and national priorities that are currently under-provided, like child and elder care, infrastructure, and community revitalization."

In recent months, several proposals have emerged for the federal government to guarantee people have access to jobs that pay a living wage for those laboring -- but not getting ahead -- in industries from retail to health care. New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker filed legislation to test guaranteed jobs in 15 rural and urban areas cross the U.S. A report from the Center on Budget Priorities suggested job guarantees might give some regions facing an economic abyss a path back to better times. And a recent paper from the Aspen Institute proposes that "higher-wage" tax credits might encourage businesses to pay workers more.

Turns out the tens of millions of Americans who have jobs but live on the financial edge might be the most attracted to a job guarantee -- a phenomenon that has the potential to radically shift labor markets, according to a study from the Hamilton Project at Brookings Institution.

While the proposals vary, this sort of federal jobs program could include a subsidy in the form of tax breaks to local retailers to ensure that jobs exist, or it could be a government-paid job cleaning up a park or in construction, building roads and bridges.

Booker's proposal, for instance, "would guarantee that adults in participating communities who want to work can do so, in a job that pays a living wage and provides benefits like health insurance, paid sick leave, and paid family leave – all while helping to advance critical local and national priorities that are currently under-provided, like child and elder care, infrastructure, and community revitalization."

Germany's welfare experiment: Sanction-free 'basic security' - "Fear of sanctions is demotivating the unemployed from getting a job, a new study aims to show. Meanwhile, Germany's political left is mulling a welfare reform to refit the system for 21st century work."

A basic principle of social security in Germany is this: The best incentive to get people into work is to cut their payments if they miss an appointment, or fail to finish a training course, or refuse to sign an "integration agreement" in which they pledge to do all they can to find a job...

The Hartz IV system, he said, has a major psychological impact on people: "Uncertainty, unpredictability, and uncontrollability — the feeling, so to speak, of not having one's world under control," he said. "That's one of the strongest stress factors we know. I can quote you any number of studies that make clear uncontrollability and unpredictability has consequences, and one of those consequences is demotivation."

..."Hartz IV has caused a lot of problems," Sven Lehmann, the Greens' labor spokesman, told DW. "It's been in force for 15 years, and we know that poverty has grown, the low-wage sector has grown, and the middle classes are scared of falling into that system and then won't be able to decide what they want to do." Removing sanctions, and thus removing fear, can only help the economy, he added.[4]

also btw...

• Economic Freedom - "If you were to quit your job right now, could you still afford to take care of your basic needs? Could you pay for food, shelter, clothing, and so on? If you are retired, what if your company suddenly stopped paying your pension? If you are supported by a spouse or partner, what if you left that person? If you could no longer meet your basic needs, then you are not economically free. Your decisions on how much of your labor to sell and whom to sell it to, whether to stay with your partner or not, which city or rural area to live in, are not free decisions."
• Informational Freedom - "Can you read any book you want to? Can you listen to all the music that has ever been recorded? Do you have access to any web page at all you wish to consult? Can you easily see your own medical record? Other people's medical records?"
• Psychological Freedom - "Imagine that our society has achieved economic freedom and informational freedom. Would you make good use of those freedoms? Or would your existing beliefs, fears, and emotional reactions hold you back from engaging in the Knowledge Loop? Or worse yet, would you have all your attention drawn into systems designed to capture it for their own benefit?"

oh and...
-With a Green New Deal, Here's What the World Could Look Like for the Next Generation
-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Push for a Green New Deal Is Not Just Good Policy—It's Political Genius

posted by kliuless (23 comments total)

"welcome to earth!!! convince people to give you money...................... OR DIE !!!!!"
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 6:17 AM on December 11, 2018 [8 favorites]

Capitalism seems to be a giant calculating machine designed to find the exact point between helpless desperation and actual revolution where the capital return on labour is maximized. When we decided that corporations didn't have to care about anything except return on investment, that's what me made: a vastly complex polynomial optimizer that turns blood and suffering into cash. Like, way to go, humanity. We've monetized pain, except of course those who win the game aren't those who play it. Golf clap, slow nod. Is it time for champagne? Joe, do make sure the servants mop the floor right away, I don't want the marble to stain.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:05 AM on December 11, 2018 [17 favorites]

My daughter asked me recently, after watching some nature documentaries, whether ‚animals know anything at all about humans.‘ Jokingly, I replied, ‚Yes, they go home to their burrows and watch documentaries about humans!‘
She really liked that and made up a little skit and part of it went (in a fake David Attenborough voice):

‚These are humans, living in what is called a ‚city‘. In order to survive in this environment, they need money. Otherwise, they starve!‘

(She‘s 7, which I mention not to brag, but to point out how pervasive and obvious our society‘s precarity really is.)
posted by The Toad at 7:33 AM on December 11, 2018 [17 favorites]

Well mods, yes I'm going to say it again. My apologies but:
BURN IT ALL THE FUCK DOWN! EAT THE RICH! KILL YOUR TELEVISION!

and other similar thoughts. have you perhaps considered this as performance art, beautiful for a brief shining moment but destined to disappear...
posted by evilDoug at 7:39 AM on December 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

I've spent the last year living in a two-bedroom condo in Ottawa, and the owner rents the other room out on AirBnB, mostly to people coming to Canada through the Express Entry immigration program. These are well-qualified economic migrants, and for the most part, the stories they tell about why they are coming are about the precariousness of their lives back in their home countries. They all had good educations and good jobs, but they felt like any slip in their life -- a long illness, a child with special needs, a bad boss, a run in with the political elite -- would just destroy them, because their home country had no social safety net, no backstop for temporary problems that would allow people to maintain a decent standard of living, no rule of law that would protect them from abuses by their employer or their government.

It's terrible to imagine that soon there will be nowhere to escape that kind of precariousness.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:04 AM on December 11, 2018 [7 favorites]

a lot of americans then?
posted by entropicamericana at 8:21 AM on December 11, 2018 [13 favorites]

We're all driven by self-interest to varying degrees, but the voracious, unending greed of the people running things is really beyond imagining for most of us. Thinking about it for too long is like trying to keep your hand on an electric stove element which has been switched on; eventually it's too much and you have to draw back for your own well-being.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:37 AM on December 11, 2018 [4 favorites]

Now, if only the experience of that sharp burning pain actually goaded us into turning off the power to the element...
/metaphor
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:46 AM on December 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

Simone de Beauvoir would have been able to help Bourdieu be less confident in our ability to actually experience the fear of precarity. We are really good at finding something to grasp onto to deny all kinds of existential fear.

I am so lucky to have gotten a decent (if precarious, but not adjunct-level precarious) job in academia. My parents grew up in the Depression, and I received the implicit message that if you don't know where your paycheck is coming from next month, you might as well pack it all in. The Gig Economy is basically my nightmare.

Things are going to have to reach such a level of terrible for a general strike to occur that I feel like many of us just need to build our own little sharing communities. Surely there's no history of those going badly, right? Right?
posted by allthinky at 9:24 AM on December 11, 2018 [3 favorites]

It’s been said before, but always bears repeating: capitalism is amoral, and without sufficient regulation will (I believe) kill itself. But not before things get much, much worse. I see capitalism as having the mindset of any cancer - that is, growth for growth’ sake, until you kill the host.
posted by dbmcd at 10:12 AM on December 11, 2018

*mutters darkly in marxist*
posted by The Whelk at 10:26 AM on December 11, 2018 [10 favorites]

The weird thing is that I've spoken to a lot of conservatives, and they like the idea of a guaranteed-jobs program. I don't think you'd have to work hard to sell it to people. The framing would have to be different than if you're trying to sell it to liberals, but it's not anything like the challenge of trying to sell, say, single-payer healthcare. It's something I could honestly see happening if there was a desire to implement it.

It's like modern conservative voters have largely forgotten that the WPA came straight out of the New Deal; it's just become part of the weirdly amorphous "good old days" narrative. (Or maybe they don't know TR from FDR. I've never wanted to burst that bubble in the conversations I've had that touched on it.) At any rate, best not to look a gift horse in the mouth. If we can sell them on the WPA, let's bring it back.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:29 AM on December 11, 2018 [6 favorites]

This post is depressingly well-timed. After a month of waiting, I finally heard back from my last best job prospect of the year, a place where I already know everyone in the office; I got a form email telling me they’d selected the better candidate.

I have a job! But it’s part time retail, with no benefits or healthcare. Thank god for the Fight for 15 (and anyone who thinks $15/hr is too high for minimum wage, feel free to pay my bills). I still can’t make ends meet, and with loan payments I’m deep in the red.

This is where I think people get the feeling that they’re superfluous, that any attempt they make at art or whatever could just as well be done by a dozen other people. It’s capitalism! Because being in this situation drives home the point that you have no inherent value under capitalism, and that you’re only worth as much as you can pay.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 10:41 AM on December 11, 2018 [5 favorites]

I haven't read it yet because paywall, but I note the interesting contrast between the headline "Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They're Not." and the link "One way to help struggling workers: A guaranteed job" in the post.
posted by eviemath at 11:30 AM on December 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

@ jacquilynne i'm one of those people headed to canada from the US through the express entry program...motivated by things like the cost of healthcare and education and a lack of faith that certain social programs will be functioning here when i am in my old age. these articles are good. now i have a new word, precariousness, to use in my attempts to explain to americans who have never left the country why i would want to move somewhere else or go to school somewhere else away from my family. and some evidence for it beyond my non stop low grade background anxiety!
posted by zdravo at 12:04 PM on December 11, 2018

every so often i meet a canadian who truly believes that the US is where the opportunity is. and it's true that wages are generally higher in the US, and taxes often lower. none of them ever understand how precarious the health care situation there is -- not in advance, at least. that kind of precariousness can't really be explained. they have to get down there and live it before they really understand.

it's not a good sign that more and more people, at ever-higher levels of the socio-economic ladder, are coming to understand what precarity feels like, but experiencing it seems to be the only way for people to actually get it.

the dark part of me would like to know whether arne kalleberg has ever had to scramble as an adjunct, and how much of his research and teaching labour has been shouldered by academics more-precariously-placed than he.
posted by halation at 1:52 PM on December 11, 2018 [8 favorites]

The weird thing is that I've spoken to a lot of conservatives, and they like the idea of a guaranteed-jobs program.

Ah yes, privatized prison labor! That's a guaranteed job.
posted by stet at 4:36 PM on December 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Pierre Bourdieu was very bourgeois. He, for example, considered trading and bargaining to be low-class. He favoured facilitated forms of entry into the art market that were hierarchical and respected establishment pathways. In that light, Bourdieu believed that precariousness was a given, and that someone who was precarious by nature of their explicit or implicit social capital would not be taken seriously in the marketplace.
I have long wondered what Bourdieu would have made of the contemporary art market today and the ease at which new creators from precarious backgrounds enter the art market. In 2011, I theorised that a counteraction to Bourdieu's theory of social capital is role-as-resource, whereby people use their explicit skill basis to enter into a role and cement that role until they are able to exert "verifiable" expertise and gain social capital as a provider, through bargaining, trade or sale. This is particularly prevalent to the arts and media marketplace, but can be found across a large number of industries that have gained technological footing Bourdieu did not live to see. His theories are outdated as a result, and it's time for new hypotheses and experimentation on the subject of how to develop footing to move past precariousness and unleash entrepreneurship.
posted by parmanparman at 5:02 PM on December 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

Stumbled across this while writing a comment in the Marxism thread, and poked around a bit for anything more recent on the same issue. Worker ownership isn't a panacea, but it seems there have been some pretty solid if small advances in the past few years. TThe "at will" nature of most work, as well as the ever-present threat that medical emergencies - or even something like your car giving up the ghost - can leave you stranded financially, is a big part of precariat life even for people who are pulling down decent paychecks. The opposite of insecurity is security, not affluence. A higher degree of worker ownership - or, more important in my opinion, worker control - is more likely to tackle that side of the problem as well.
posted by AdamCSnider at 7:46 PM on December 11, 2018 [5 favorites]

"If you were to quit your job right now, could you still afford to take care of your basic needs? Could you pay for food, shelter, clothing, and so on? If you are retired, what if your company suddenly stopped paying your pension? If you are supported by a spouse or partner, what if you left that person? If you could no longer meet your basic needs, then you are not economically free. Your decisions on how much of your labor to sell and whom to sell it to, whether to stay with your partner or not, which city or rural area to live in, are not free decisions."

By this definition I've never lived an economically free life as an adult, and I've never been in a position to make a truly free and consensual decision about employment or marriage. Not once.

Damn. That's depressing.

I wonder if I'll ever experience what it might be like to make a free choice about either of these things before I die?

I'd like to think so. But I'm 51 and I still live in the U.S. despite my best efforts to get out, so my odds don't look good. I've been decrying the injustices of structurally coerced wage labor nearly all of my adult life, to no avail.

Yonatan Zunger makes a similar point about coerced labor:

“When we weaken people’s ability to say “no,” we take power from them and put it in the hands of people who can demand things from them; we take wealth from them, we take time from them, we take the very energy of life from them.

“If you cannot afford a few extra days or weeks of unemployment while you look for a better job, it doesn’t matter what exists on the market; you will take the conditions you are offered. If you cannot get transportation from where you can live to where a job is, it doesn’t matter what kind of job is there; it is not available to you. If you have obligations of child care or elder care, if you have people depending on you and nobody else to do this task, then it doesn’t matter how much value you create by doing it; jobs which don’t allow you to do that are not open to you. If you do not have the opportunity to negotiate or to get any better deals, you are living in an effective monopoly, no matter how notionally “free” the market is to others. The benefits of free trade are not for you; instead, you trade for what you can get, or die. The difference in value between what you could have gotten in exchange for your labor in a free market, and what you will actually get in this unfree one, is captured entirely by those who have made the market unfree.

“…when we hear the language of free markets, it’s almost invariably to talk about their virtues, and the very real fact that most of the most important trades the average person makes are not even remotely free gets papered over. The fact that some people can walk away from a deal, while other people can’t, is covered up with words about “job markets” which hide the fact that buyers and sellers of labor aren’t having even vaguely similar conversations.”

posted by velvet winter at 10:53 PM on December 11, 2018 [12 favorites]

If you are retired, what if your company suddenly stopped paying your pension?

What's a "pension?"

I'm nearly 45 years old and I've never had anything more than a 401k with matching numbering in the low single digits. For my generation, "retire" is something our parents talk about doing.
posted by Fleebnork at 6:09 AM on December 12, 2018 [6 favorites]

We must extend the freedom and democracy given in the political sphere to the economic sphere.we must curtail the authority and power of the owning class just as the power of the aristocrats was weathered away.
posted by The Whelk at 7:42 AM on December 12, 2018 [2 favorites]

Or maybe they don't know TR from FDR.

Texas, at one point, removed all mention of the New Deal from textbooks; even though it's (usually) on the timeline now, it's glossed over in actual teaching, other than notes like, "the minimum wage remains one of the New Deal's most controversial legacies."

I had a liberal education, and I still got most of my knowledge about the WPA from Livejournal and following related links. Conservatives have heard nothing about the New Deal or the WPA other than a handful of buzzwords that add up to "it was evil." When similar plans or options are brought up to them, they like them just fine, as long as you avoid those buzzwords.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 7:21 PM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]