Emerging varieties of work

University of Bristol Law Research Paper Series, 2018

Discussion of a world without work usually comes accompanied by either fear or fantasy of a workerless world. A hashtag search on twitter for #futureofwork yields many photos of robots, yet very little insight into how such a world will emerge and its relation to the one in which we currently carry out our working lives. In this paper we argue that behind projections of a workerless world, and behind fears of a lack of jobs, are the continuities of dynamics already in play, and that these are capitalist working relations. This working paper firstly offers a contextualisation of the ‘future of work’, shaping new understandings of what is meant by the ‘worker’ in the contemporary context. Whilst acknowledging technical changes in the contemporary context of working relations, we argue that it is the continuities and contradictions in current labour market dynamics that more usefully identify the challenges for both conceptualising and regulating contemporary work. Highlighting the spatial challenges to contemporary workplace governance we look at three factors: the mobility of work, the mobility of things as trade, and the ‘new workers’ (hyperflexible workers employed through platforms and other new arrangements of work that are made possible by technological advances) to identify key continuities in the factors and actors of the so called ‘future’ of work. To contextualise these factors as they manifest in particular sectors, we consider the cases of care work and agricultural work, both areas which have been subject to great speculation over projected transformation. The paper then turns to the challenges of law and regulation and demonstrates how work is enmeshed in legal developments which go far beyond labour and employment law. In conclusion, we argue that there is need for a radical new conceptualisation of work, in both social and legal terms, yet this must be grounded in recognition of the continuities of capitalist relations of production and accumulation, rather than the fears and fantasies of a worker-free future.

The Handbook for the Future of Work, 2024

The Handbook for the Future of Work offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of a series of key debates concerning the changing nature of work and employment. The temporal focus is primarily on the last twenty years, and arguments about technology, automation and capitalist transformation, as the economic landscape shifts and new work practices and relations are established. The book is timely insofar as it intertwines the radical promises, threats and implications of this rapidly changing landscape with more formal/mainstream narratives and discussions of work and employment. In this sense it addresses a growing interdisciplinary interest by distinctively going beyond a narrow focus on the role of technology that dominates too much of the conversation on the future of work, opening out to broader debates about the character of capitalism at a time of crisis, conflict and contestation over alternatives. No single volume currently provides a detailed insight into the different domains in which the challenges – and opportunities – of technological advancement in the workplace have been considered, nor the way this multifaceted and dynamic process of economic transformation calls into question the centrality that work continues to play in our social and political imaginaries. The Handbook for the Future of Work accordingly serves as a crucial resource for navigating the complexities of this new intellectual terrain. This introductory chapter sets out the book’s thematic coverage by outlining its substantive content, including detailing how writing about the ‘future of work’ has quickly become a vitally important component of contemporary political and economic critique both inside and outside of the academy.

2004

Abstract: A widely held supposition is that goods and services are increasingly produced and delivered for monetised exchange by capitalist firms in pursuit of profit. The result of this view of an ongoing encroachment of the market is that there is only one perceived future for work and it is one characterised by an ever more commodified world. The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically this discourse.

Work is a central feature of everyday life, but what do we actually mean by 'work'? On the surface work seems to be a straightforward idea: we all have to do it to earn a living; it takes up a lot of time and eats up our 'leisure'. Yet work does not mean the same thing to all people, across all cultures and throughout all times. In fact, work—its meaning, organisation and practice—is going through an intense period of transformation right now in all parts of the world. Where work is carried out, who performs it, how it is conceived and organised are all changing, in part because of the increasingly central role digital technology plays in carrying out everyday life. Just imagine how hard it would be to find employment without being able to search for a job on the internet. Think about how you would keep in contact with your friends, family and colleagues without a mobile phone. Changes to work are also due to the expansion of global capitalism and rise of new modes of production (how people organise themselves to produce goods and services), premised on the ideal of fast-moving and flexible knowledge-based economies. It would be tempting to emphasise the globalising tendency of these changes, but in actuality these are highly uneven in and across national borders and are not driven or determined solely by one all-powerful homogenising force. In this chapter we probe changes in contemporary work and the links between work, technology and identity. What is the place of work in our everyday lives today? What is the role of digital technology in complicating traditional divisions between 'work' and 'leisure', 'production' and 'consumption', 'public and 'private'? What are the other factors besides technology that contribute to these changes? Work is less secure and stable today than it has been in the past, and some have described these new conditions of work as 'precarious work' (Fudge & Owens 2006). Who is most affected by these changes? When addressing these questions, we are concerned not only with common experiences, but also with variations within societies and cultures that lead to distinct expressions of work, organisation and identity. After reading this chapter, you should be able to: ~ Understand that work has different meanings and histories ~ Provide some explanation for why and how work is changing, with particular attention to the role of digital technology ~ Understand how changes to work impact on the relationship between 'work and 'life', on 'production' and 'consumption', and on identity processes ~ Understand the impacts that these changes have on a range of social groups, such as youth and the aged. C h a p t e r

Organization, 2023

This introduction to the special section "Does Work Have a Future?" begins by reviewing the main ways work stands at the crossroads today. We identify three core disputes with the potential to disrupt the future of work but which also harbor resources for affirmative futures of work: the precariousness of work and lives under existing economic arrangements; the emergence of care work as a source of social and environmental value; and technological change. We then consider the demands for new meanings and new valuings that the manifold disputed status of work formulates. Finally, we highlight the contributions the four pieces making up this special section give to that momentous question of whether work has a future. Keywords Affirmative futures, care work, dystopian futures, future of work, meaning of work, post-work Debates about the future of work have reached something of a crescendo over recent years (Breen and Deranty, 2021). Whether it be increased employment precariousness, technological automation, wage stagnation or attacks on organized labor, there is a consensus that we are at a particular

2018

Futures of Work, 2018

2018

As technological progress, automation, and digital platforms have entered the labour market and are expected to progressively change its dynamics, material and discursive neoliberal practices are directing technology towards the maintenance of the socio-economic status quo. This thesis aims at demonstrating that, albeit technology has the potential to contribute to the building of a post-neoliberal society, the neoliberal narrative has managed to appropriate critical arguments to legitimize exploitative practices aimed at avoiding the shift to an alternative order. The first chapter introduces the issue of automation and the main studies that have been led about the topic, together with an analysis concerning how the conception of a future without work has changed after the neoliberal turn in the late 1970s and 1980s. The second chapter addresses the notion of platform capitalism, notably the practices through which digital platforms are utilized to foster underpaid and unpaid labour as well as surplus value extraction and the narrative utilized to justify those practices. After the analysis of the digital and gig economies, the chapter concludes with a brief outlook of a set of proposals for the future of the digital economy. The third and concluding chapter addresses future perspectives concerning welfare and economic policies, highlighting the risk of neoliberal appropriation of counter arguments and proposals, providing the Universal Basic Income (UBI) as an example.