Abstract
We are grateful to Françoise Carré, Angela Knox and Mark Stuart for their generous and insightful reviews. They pinpoint our primary concerns – the need to address the challenges presented by the growth in low-end service jobs, rising over-qualification and reduced levels of autonomy and discretion experienced particularly by professional workers in the UK. We argue that work organisation has to be at the heart of any discussion of skill and how to enhance the quality of work. International comparative research that helps to explain similarities and differences in work organisation can offer valuable insights into what is possible and how change can come about.
The challenges, as the reviewers acknowledge, are both intellectual and political. Intellectually, they require theoretical approaches that extend existing frameworks from their original context, typically unionised manufacturing plants, to often non-unionised service sector jobs that are ‘grounded’ within the local economy. Mark Stuart observes our wish to distance ourselves from ‘Varieties of Capitalism’, an approach which is ‘power-light’ and largely discounts collective labour and an active role for the state. It also has surprisingly little to say about work organisation, even in manufacturing. Our aim was to develop an institutional analysis where power relations between state, capital and labour are central but which is sensitive to sectors and the role of organisations. Surveys have their place, but rich qualitative studies can provide more fine-grained insights into systems of skill formation, levels of autonomy and how workers are managed.
We also need, as Angela Knox remarks, to have some clear understanding of ‘skill’ and ‘skilled work’. We provide our definition in Chapter 2, having written elsewhere on the subject in some depth (Lloyd and Payne, 2009; Payne, 2017). We see little prospect that low wages will be rectified by revaluing ‘soft skills’ in roles where labour is easily substitutable and the ‘skills’ sought by employers are in plentiful supply. The reason why pay and job security are higher for cafe workers in France and Norway is not because the jobs or their holders are considered more ‘skilled’ but because of labour market regulations and pay-setting institutions. At a political level, low wages have to be tackled, whatever the skill content of the job.
One target to keep firmly in our sights is human capital theory which continues to fuel a policy preference for supply-side approaches to skills for economic ends. While one can argue that there has been some reframing of the ‘skills problem’ as bodies like the OECD have put ‘skills utilisation’ on the table, skills-supply approaches largely prevail. For neoliberal countries, in particular, it operates as a useful political device that substitutes for more direct interventions in the economy and labour market that could enhance skill demands and job quality more broadly.
There are methodological challenges in undertaking international comparisons of jobs, as our reviewers note. Is one comparing like with like? Our starting point was to identify who provides these services – fitness instructing, 16–19 vocational qualifications and coffee/sandwiches in a seated environment – and to uncover national differences in broadly comparable jobs. The structure of a sector, whether that is the dominance of large chains in fitness and cafes in the UK, the predominance of small employers in the fitness industry in France, high-quality cafes in Norway or the use of new public management in the education system in England and Wales, are integral to the study and explanations of differences. The approach, therefore, was not to abstract from these differences by trying to select ‘matched cases’ but to ensure that the organisations were broadly reflective of the ‘sector’ in each country. Other types of hospitality outlets may offer different outcomes, for example Françoise Carré mentions ‘traditional cafes’ in France, where a more professionalised waiter service is a common feature, and which could offer opportunities for worker mobility. Although our research showed little evidence of movement between the two types of cafes, the question of worker mobility out of these jobs, particularly for non-students, warrants further research.
While it is often helpful for academics to have a simple and neat story to tell, the one which emerges in our book is rather complex. Some findings need more explanation. If cafe work is a low-skill job in all three countries, why do those in Norway have more autonomy? Our tentative answer lies, as Françoise Carré notes, in how ‘power struggles permeate management thinking and worker expectations of relationships at work’. However, we stress the need for more research. The same applies to ‘the role of social relations and power struggles’ at the organisational level, which Mark Stuart identifies as being ‘underdeveloped’ in our book. We agree on its importance and suggest that to uncover these kinds of dynamics requires more in-depth, possibly ethnographic, studies over a longer timeframe (e.g. Connolly, 2010). Furthermore, if low-skill jobs are set to stay, some level of over-qualification seems inevitable; what then does this imply for instrumental, economistic approaches to ‘learning for earning’, an issue not raised by the reviewers?
The main message of our book is that progress is possible. The work of teachers in Further Education in England and Wales can be organised in more positive ways which includes a full-time model of employment. Cafe workers and fitness instructors can have better-paid jobs with security of working time, even if their work is not significantly more skilled than in the UK. Simplistic policy borrowing rarely works but lessons can be learnt. ‘Planet Norway’ is not a utopia; struggles and defences are required there too. Nevertheless, the outcomes for workers and society are invariably better where trade unions can influence and pressure governments to regulate capital for the benefit of labour. This may seem cold comfort for progressives in neoliberal countries where institutions and labour are hollowed-out and weakened, but there is still much to play for. Progress requires recognising there are alternatives, a collective demand for better work, and the political mobilisation to make this possible. If our book can stimulate debate around such possibilities in an ‘Age of Over-Qualification’, we will be more than happy.