Decent Work

Opportunities and Challenges

Fiona Christie, Marilena Antoniadou, Kevin Albertson, Mark Crowder, Fiona Christie, Marilena Antoniadou, Kevin Albertson, Mark Crowder

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781801175883
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Development
• Index: Business

Exploring contemporary challenges and opportunities for the realisation of Decent Work, this edited collection reviews the origins of the concept and helps to demonstrate its working in practice. Using a Decent Work lens to explore the realities of eroding work conditions in typical and atypical work, the analyses presented here argue that urgent action is required to address these issues for the benefit of individual workers, and society as a whole.

Prepared by researchers and collaborators associated with the Decent Work and Productivity Research Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK, this volume provides insights from an exceptional blend of authors presenting high-quality research from multiple disciplines including economics, labour market studies, organisation studies, sociology, psychology, career development and education. These unique and wide-ranging contributions position Decent Work as valuable to important questions about the future of work, and emerging interdisciplinary research about work.

Addressing changes to today's work and employment relationships – including the roles of governments, employers, and trade unions – this volume offers suggestions for how public and private sector policy and practice can support the realisation of Decent Work, while also theorising the concept's contested nature, and exploring urgent and practical possibilities to secure fair and decent working lives for all.

Part 1
Setting the Scene: Decent Work

Chapter 1

Prologue – In Search of Decent Work

Marilena Antoniadou, Mark Crowder, Fiona Christie and Kevin Albertson

Abstract

‘Decent work’. The very phrase conjures up a range of images and interpretations. But what does it mean for practitioners? What does it mean for academics? Much has been spoken, and even more has been written, but there is still little consensus as to how these questions can be answered. This book aims to offer some answers by exploring the increasingly relevant topic of Decent Work from a range of perspectives. This initial chapter introduces readers to the purpose, rationale and structure of the book. It offers a description of the concept of Decent Work and introduces readers to the work of the Decent Work and Productivity Research Centre of Manchester Metropolitan University.

Keywords: Decent Work; working lives; productivity; gig economy; equality; atypical work; employment

An Introduction to Decent Work

By the term ‘work’, we mean an individual's offering of their time to undertake paid employment or self-employment. These offers of ‘time for money’ or ‘time for resources’ take place in the ‘labour market’, a theoretical construct in which suppliers of time are matched with those who have a demand for labour services holders and means of compensation such as finance or other resources.

At the time of writing, the labour market is undergoing radical transformations, with the global economy in a four-decade long synchronized slowdown (Dorling, 2020; Lea, 2019) and with the number of ‘good jobs’ (jobs that give a measure of security of income to allow workers to plan for the future) being sufficient for only one-third of the adult population around the world (Gallup, 2019). Moreover, the unprecedented circumstances resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic are threatening to exacerbate a crisis in employment, potentially reducing wages and salaries, decreasing the safety of working conditions, impacting on the treatment workers can expect and impinging on employee mental health.

As in any market, in the labour market the gains from trade are more easily realized by those who hold market power. The concequences of the pandemic on the labour market, reduce the demand for labour impacts on relative power imbalances in the market. This heightens the risks of employers misusing the power; power that arises from controlling a scarce resource (access to the means of production). As a consequence, there is the potential for employers to shift the costs and burdens of the pandemic onto workers. The current crisis also alters the routine of employees, for example, the need of carers of the vulnerable to engage in physical distancing and/or parents to engage in homeschooling. Yet employees risk disciplinary action or dismissal if they fail to turn up to their place of work even where government guidelines recommend they are to stay at home in order to avoid serious and imminent danger. In contrast, others are required to work in environments where adequate protective equipment is not provided and physical distancing rules are not strictly adhered to. Clearly, individual employees cannot reasonably be expected to avert the danger posed by Covid-19; nonetheless, the crisis should also not deprive them of their basic right to safe working conditions.

Amidst such radical changes in the world of work, international organizations, global leaders and scholars have provided much needed guidelines about the quality of work that people should be able to access in contemporary society (ILO, 1999, 2013, 2017; Yoshida & Torihara, 1977). Their guidance has yielded an aspirational statement about the kind of work that ought to define the lives of all individuals who work and who wish to work: Decent Work.

The concept of Decent Work conveys the broad and varied dimensions associated with work today and encapsulates them in an expression that everyone can appreciate. But what does the concept of Decent Work really cover? And what might be the current issues and future progress of Decent Work globally? As a means of answering these questions and creating a knowledge base that will help to foster relevant research, we have instigated this book, which has been written to help academics, managers and those aspiring to a career in management, and workers themselves to understand and deal with the issues and opportunities they face in offering or achieving Decent Work in contemporary contexts.

A unique aspect of this book is the integration of empirical real-life cases from experienced professionals and leading academics that offer readers a greater understanding of Decent Work issues and opportunities. We explore issues surrounding Decent Work for individuals, organizations and society as a whole and what can be done to shape a decent future for workers and work.

Decent Work is paid employment where the return will at least sustain a person's life and provide sufficient additional resources to allow them to take part in society and achieve reasonable human aspirations. However, the concept is more holistic than mere subsistence. Decent Work is not just about employment and social and income security in the formal economy but is also relevant in framing questions and discussions about unregulated wage workers and the self-employed.

It cannot be assumed, of course, that the labour market will naturally deliver work of a quality or quantity that is decent. Since the 1980s, increasing global competition has resulted in pressure being applied to working conditions generally. The workers' democratic means to resist has been weakened by legislation undermining trade unions and privatization and marketization combining to make even public sector jobs increasingly precarious. Such pressure is systemic, as employers struggle to survive in the face of downward pressure on prices from global competition.

There is special emphasis in the book on the changing nature of the current workplace with a focus on the gig economy, precarious work and the informal economy. In particular, the book explores the growing interest in critically appraising claims of a growing so-called ‘gig economy’ of informal employment, looking at who this affects most and how, and critical reviews of the productivity of this way of using labour. At the time of writing, the Covid-19 pandemic was underway, a situation that has disproportionately affected people in lower-paid jobs and those working in ‘essential’ sectors. Indeed, it has highlighted that often those who carry out the most essential jobs are also amongst the less well paid. Challenges for such workers are addressed in the chapters on atypical and gig economy workers.

Moreover, the book includes chapters that examine contemporary human resource practices and evaluate their impact on productivity and the quality of working life; it also highlights the extent to which current employment relationships enable workers to influence the quality of their work experience and their productivity. It further investigates the extent to which the rewards available from work are both fair and equitable and drive worker productivity. Finally, it includes research that portrays how sustainability thinking and reporting has evolved in recent years to include staff/employees and discusses how this enables the co-evolution of wider sustainability action alongside enhanced Decent Work practices.

Centre for Decent Work and Productivity

This book is informed by the research of the members of the Centre for Decent Work and Productivity of the Manchester Metropolitan University Business School. The Centre was established in 2018, bringing together researchers in human resource management, organizational behaviour, economics, business strategy, entrepreneurship, career development and equality and diversity to think across disciplines about the future of work. The book has grown from material originally prepared to promote the work of the Centre. Its motivation is to address, at this time of global change, the shortfall in academic literature adequately to cover the Decent Work and productivity agenda. The Centre comprised four knowledge platforms considering different aspects of employment with respect to:

(1)Work and working lives;

(2)Work capabilities, innovation and productivity;

(3)The Sylvia Pankhurst Gender and Diversity Research Centre; and

(4)Work in small enterprises.

From each of the above areas, members of the Decent Work and Productivity Research Centre acted as contributors to this book and consider the application of ideas and practices on stakeholder and identity groupings (e.g. in relation to gender, class, ethnicity, disability, age, occupation) and in different settings (e.g. small and medium-sized enterprises [SMEs], industries, countries). Additional contributors are co-authors with Research Centre members. In sum, the book discusses the concept of Decent Work, which conveys components of employment, social protection, workers' rights and social dialogue. Specifically, it integrates research from the four knowledge platforms of the Centre and contains chapters that cover a range of challenges, which Decent Work and productivity face.

Collectively, the knowledge platforms also address the seven challenges, which we believe Decent Work faces, and relate to areas of specialism within the Centre. These are:

(1)The Changing Nature of Work;

(2)Workplace Well-being;

(3)Vulnerable Workers in Employment and Self-Employment;

(4)Creating Greater Diversity and Social Mobility in the Workplace;

(5)Generating Decent and Productive Work in Small Enterprises;

(6)Designing Decent and Productive Work in Health and Social Care;

(7)Using Knowledge to Generate Decent Work and Productivity for All.

The above challenges are integral to the chapters from multiple authors who are experienced and well-recognized in this field.

The aim of this book is to highlight a collection of key challenges and suggest ways to tackle these challenges, with the main intention to promote and raise awareness on Decent Work. The book combines chapters from authors who see the concept of Decent Work from different angles, but with the same aspiration to see both the concept and the realization of Decent Work flourish in the formal and informal economic arena. There are implications for senior management and policymakers who might facilitate new approaches for operationalizing Decent Work.

Book Structure

Following on from this first introductory Chapter, Part 1 of the book sets the scene of Decent Work; an overview of debates about the concept is provided in Chapter 2; the history and future of work from a social, economic and political perspective is explored in Chapter 3; and Chapter 4 looks at the concept of Decent Work from a psychological perspective.

Part 2 includes chapters on several opportunities for stimulating Decent Work, namely: equal opportunity policies and outcomes in Chapter 5; the role of employee value and sustainability thinking in Chapter 6; and the ways that entrepreneurship skills can be developed to facilitate Decent Work in Chapter 7.

Part 3 emphasizes the widespread prevalence of atypical jobs as one of the main challenges of Decent Work. The employment regulation of gig work is discussed in Chapter 8, by comparing two distinct geographic contexts. In Chapter 9, we explore work patterns for self-employed contemporary musicians in the United Kingdom, and in Chapter 10, we utilize a critical employment relations approach to evaluate precarious work in the tourism and hospitality industry in Greece.

Ultimately, Chapter 11, our Epilogue, summarizes key issues covered in the book and considers how research may continue to influence the Decent Work agenda so that it can clearly and forcefully set standards for work that is safe, secure, meaningful, dignified and consistent with the best aspects of the human spirit. There follows an outline of the chapters with a brief description of each.

Part 1 – Setting the Scene: Decent Work

Chapter 1: Introduction

By Marilena Antoniadou, Mark Crowder, Fiona Christie, Kevin Albertson.

We begin by introducing the readers to the purpose, structure and style of the book. Specifically, Chapter 1 offers a description of the concept of Decent Work and introduces the work of the Decent Work and Productivity Research Centre of the Manchester Metropolitan University. These elements enable readers to gain a comprehensive introduction to the emerging field of Decent Work and appreciate its growth and influence in the contemporary workplace.

Chapter 2: What Is Decent Work? A Review of the Literature

By Lucy Brill.

The literature surrounding the conce...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• About the Contributors
• List of Contributors
• Part 1 Setting the Scene: Decent Work
• Part 2 Organizational and Policy Drivers: Opportunities for Decent Work
• Part 3 Atypical Jobs: A Challenge to Decent Work
• Index