Abstract
The book addresses one of the most salient social and sociological problems of our time, unemployment. Using a Marxist theory approach and an institutional analysis to understand the ongoing changes in the labor markets of advanced industrialized countries (AICs), the authors argue that, due to new forms of behavior and means of accumulating capital by transnational corporations, the world of work is in a process of structural transformation that is creating irreversible forms of work exploitation, rising and widening inequalities, and permanent unemployment.
The authors adopt an historical perspective to contextualize some of the structural factors that explain the permanent character of unemployment through (post)modern times and the disappearance of more stable, life-long, and socially inclusive jobs.
Beyond the skills-mismatch explanation, which originates from the shift from manufacturing to services and emphasizes workers’ individual characteristics and responsibilities, the authors contend that a more complete interpretation of structural unemployment is to be found in three other elements. These are related to downsizing, outsourcing, offshoring, the replacement of many jobs due to technological development, and structural financialization. Though they are often underanalyzed by social scientists, these elements not only deserve further examination but also need to be interlinked. To put them together is one of the book’s major aims.
The book is organized into three parts. The first part corresponds to an introductory chapter and provides the theoretical approach privileged by the authors, which is anchored in a neo-Marxist class conflict approach combined with an institutionalist, Weberian analysis. In this first section the authors contextualize and describe major transformations in the world of work associated with the proliferation of low-paid, insecure jobs and an overall increase in massive unemployment. They discuss the concept of unemployment, how it is measured, and the criteria used to indicate and explain its structural configuration. For Janoski, Luke, and Oliver, these criteria are of five types: length of high and persistent unemployment levels; the increasing mismatch between the creation and the filling of new jobs; duration of unemployment; declining participation rates of the workforce; and frequency of cyclical crisis as a consequence of financial instability with more intense consequences for some specific groups of workers (e.g., ethnic minorities). As expected, Chapter 1 also gives us an overview of the different parts and following chapters of the book.
In the second part (Chapters 3, 4, and 5), the authors examine the shifts that have been affecting labor markets namely in AICs in a detailed and also historically contextualized manner. The interpretation of these trends is particularly rich in terms of practical examples that allow us to adopt an informed perspective of the consequences of unemployment in people’s lives. It also guides us within a diachronic description of crucial events (e.g., technological innovation, new forms of production and organization) that have been transforming labor markets over the last few decades. The empirical data under examination is collected essentially from multinational corporations that Janoski, Luke, and Oliver categorize as representatives of three new forms of lean production. The first one is lean production 1 (LP-1), also named as ‘Toyotism’ because Toyota is identified as the most complete application of the definition of lean production (Liker, 2004). For lean production 2 (LP-2), the authors single out Nike, Apple, and General Electric as examples of firms that are more concerned with short-term profits than firms like Toyota, and therefore extensively outsource and offshore external expertise. Walmart, the largest American corporation measured by employment, is named as an organization that uses lean production 3 (LP-3), because it employs all the principles of lean production and exacerbates the interaction with other firms within modular networks.
In the last part of the book, the authors compile policy recommendations (Chapter 6) that should help governments and other institutions counteract employment difficulties and alleviate structural unemployment. The authors claim that unemployment has to be conceived as an enduring, structural phenomenon so that it can be efficiently addressed with simultaneous short-term and long-term strategies in various domains, from education to targeted investment and fiscal policy, at the national and international political levels. The promotion of more effective active labor market policies, together with policies intended to increase innovation and promote stability is considered crucial. Another complementary type of intervention should encourage technological innovation and entrepreneurship.
One of the ideas that originate in this book is that a new social contract is being constructed, in which the main responsibility for unemployment rests with the individual. As an alternative – developed in the concluding chapter – the authors suggest that a more protective and human working environment along with the recognition of citizens’ rights (as workers) needs to be anchored in new forms of understanding among employees, the state, and corporations. The authors present some suggestions related, for example, to a new way of conceiving transnational corporations as ‘persons’ with rights and duties along with new forms of control at a global level.
Another salient contribution to the literature on work rests on the analysis of the causes and the consequences of long-term unemployment. Revisiting Goffman’s concept of ‘stigma,’ Janoski, Luke, and Oliver emphasize the stigmatizing condition of being unemployed for long periods of time, and take into consideration that this is a problem that affects individuals’ physical, social, and economic condition as well as the societies where they live. In this case, using a sociological lens we can reinterpret the current meaning of unemployment and how its extended duration (and the lack of other alternatives) contributes to reconstructing individuals’ ‘social identity’ (Goffman, 1963). The point here is also related to the need for more active and structured governmental and institutional intervention in order to prevent a break in social cohesion.
The book reveals how private corporations have immense responsibilities for the deregulated, imbalanced functioning of worldwide (labor) markets and emphasizes that individuals’ characteristics and skills actually play a minor role in the entire process. But if we consider, as the authors suggest, that the responsibility and effective control by national governments and internal organizations should be strengthened, perhaps their own disruptive characteristics, inefficiencies, and (internal) obstacles should also be addressed in a more detailed and politically salient way. In fact, it is also due to their lack of regulation and concern about job creation and guaranteeing the protection of their citizens that these worldwide trends and disruptive transformations in the world of work have had such a sizeable impact.
The authors express a rather pessimist view of how work, as one of the most essential mechanisms for the promotion of social integration (Kallberg, 2011), is being affected in various disturbing ways. Thanks to a complete, realistic analysis of current transformations, complemented by the identification of objective, strategic solutions to overcome employment problems that AICs in particular have to overcome, this is a book that one hopes can inspire politicians, policy makers, and engaged academics to rethink and rebuild new forms of collective action.