This book examines employee welfare in British and German companies from the nineteenth century to 2006, with a focus on the employment relationship and its co-evolution with the welfare state. Maintaining that employee welfare is a key feature of the modern employment relationship , the book shows how welfare supported industrialisation in the nineteenth century, cemented the standard employment model of the 1950s and 1960s, and revolves around corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the 2000s. Moreover, the book introduces new perspectives on the gendered nature of welfare and work, and the relationship between employee welfare and industrial relations. Research literature on welfare to date only sporadically discusses employee welfare, regarding the state as the main actor alongside a few other institutional organisations. Similarly, studies from the sociology of work, where industrial relations , gender relations and labour processes are more prominent, have tended to neglect the area of employee welfare. This book expands upon research to date and sheds light on welfare in the employment relationship, which is provided by employers voluntarily or in agreement with employee representatives, with three core questions: What have been the specific features of employee welfare in the significant periods of industrialisation, post-Second World War prosperity and the service economies of the 2000s? How has it shaped and been shaped by the governmental welfare system? And what is its function for the employment relationship?
Employee WelfareâŚ
The first task is to define employee welfare. Many US-American companies had enacted several in-work welfare programmes by the 1930s because they regarded it as a legitimate tool of their personnel policies (Brandes 1976; Jacoby 1997). Jacoby argues that in-work benefits helped to create the modern American corporation, even though it declined in importance after the New Deal, the expansion of a welfare state and the institutionalisation of private welfare arrangements (Jacoby 1997). The US Bureau of Labor Statistics defined in-work welfare as âanything for the comfort and improvement, intellectual or social, of the employees, over and above wages paid, which is not a necessity of the industry nor required by lawâ (Bureau of Labor Statistics 1919, 37; see also, Abrahamson 1997, 498; Brandes 1976, 5â6). Both Brandes and Jacoby are writing about a specific time period and placeâindustrialisation and the rise of big businesses in the US. More importantly, their arguments imply that in-work welfare is most likely to take place and evolve in the context of a weak welfare state and as a strategy to fend off workersâ unionisation. This situation in the US contradicts the knowledge we have about such set-ups in Germany and the UK, where we can still find welfare in companies despite governmentally organised welfare and a comparatively high worker unionisation.
In Germany, the concept of betriebliche Sozialpolitik or occupational social policy is well established, comprising any means of enhancing the financial and intellectual situation of workers (Pohl 1978; Reichwein 1965; Schmähl 1999). It is not just an ex-gratia offer made by employers but comes with an expectation of reciprocation attachedâit is policy. This differs from Jacoby in that betriebliche Sozialpolitik can include workersâ associations or movements as reciprocating agents by striking mutually beneficial bargains. It can also be linked to the governmental welfare system by overlapping responsibilities and benefits. For the UK, Martin and Titmuss have argued that occupational welfare describes all those welfare measures that are taken by companies for employees (Martin 1967; Titmuss 1976). It can be distinguished from the welfare state and social welfare in that its purpose is to support exclusively employees, unlike that of the social rights for citizens in the welfare state (Marshall 1950) or that of the fiscal welfare granted by states to companies (Titmuss 1976).
More so in the UK than in Germany, the available definitions of in-work welfare take exclusively the employee as the unit of analysis and exclude possible effects on employeeâs families. Welfare schemes in both countries were open to family members or at least affected their lives.
The book therefore uses the concept of âemployee welfareâ, understood as:
- 1.The commitment of companies to securing and enhancing the well-being of their employees and their families, via direct coverage or indirect effects;
- 2.In addition to the financial compensation of labour; and
- 3.Either voluntary or fixed by law and collective agreements.
This definition allows the inclusion of family members of employees, on the basis that employees replenish their well-being and social comfort both inside and outside of companies. It is also broad enough to include the various welfare benefits to be discussed later in this book. Employee welfare can be described as a social deal and goes beyond the âeffort and security bargainââthe mere exchange of labour for wages (Burawoy 1979). The social deal incites the employer to provide welfare and thus establish a certain standard of living among their employees, exercise authority within the company or present themselves as responsible and thus legitimate in society. In return, the employee can expect a wage, relatively good working conditions and defined rules of interaction with the employers. The employee also promises to work exclusively for the employer and to adhere to the employerâs value system in order to reap the agreed benefits.
âŚThe Welfare StateâŚ
It is surprising that employee welfare appears little in current welfare-state discussions. Analyses of welfare systems and their connections with the employment relationship to date have overwhelmingly focussed on welfare provided by the state, and fall under the long shadow of Esping-Andersenâs seminal work on the worlds of welfare capitalism (Esping-Andersen 1990 and more generally see, for example, Goodin et al. 1999; Kaufmann 2003; Pierson 1991; Seeleib-Kaiser 2008; Taylor-Gooby 2004, 2005). It is well known that Esping-Andersen assigns Germany to the corporatist regimes within his framework and the UK to the Anglo-Saxon category (the third being the social democrat variant). The regimes differ along key features in political party representation of worker and employer interests, the roles of political, social and economic actors and the types and universality of welfare benefits provided. These features are the foundation for Esping-Andersenâs de-commodification index that describes the degree to which market, state and ultimately living standards are connected, even if such a sharp distinction was problematic (Clasquin et al. 2004) and new developments blur the distinction even more (see, for example, Butterwegge 2006; Evers and Heinze 2008; Huo 2009; Lessenich 2008; Thelen 2014; Trampusch 2009). Nevertheless, welfare literature still tends to use Esping-Andersenâs work as its point of departure for affirmation, criticism and revisions (see, for example, Achterberg and Yerkes 2009; Baldwin 1996; Bode 2004; Bonoli 2005; Esping-Andersen et al. 2002; Ferrera and Rhodes 2000; Goodin et al. 1999; Kaufmann 2003, 2005; Lessenich and Ostner 1998; Taylor-Gooby 2004, 2005).
Two points of critique are to be raised. Firstly, the heyday of welfare states was arguably the 1950s and 1960s, when employment levels were high and states greatly expanded the scope and level of welfare services. In this period, the Fordist employment relationship of lifelong employment and good working conditions was the dominant model (Bosch et al. 2009; Bosch 2004; Osterland 1990; Standing 2009a, b). One problem surrounding current debates on the welfare state is that the welfare institutions they describe were modelled around the dominant, Fordist model, which is slowly disappearing while institutions still rely on long and uninterrupted contribution periods, for example. Revitalised forms of employment, such as self-employment or arrangements for working parents, are disadvantaged with their breaks between periods of work (Bonoli 2005; Butterwegge 2006, 2014; Emmenegger et al. 2012; Taylor-Gooby 2004; Zoe and Deakin 2014). Politics have addressed the problem mainly by strengthening private provision, not by adjusting the mandatory contribution periods (Orenstein 2008; Bateman 2007; Blackburn 2002; Ebbinghaus 2011; Häusermann 2010; Holzmann 2013; Naczyk and Seeleib-Kaiser 2015; OECD 2012a, Pemberton et al. 2006). Although some authors clearly identify this underlying problem of many welfare institutions (Ferrera and Rhodes 2000; Osterland 1990), welfare state research literature still focusses on the existing welfare institutions.
Secondly, studies on welfare institutions come with a focus on the state. This is problematic because other welfare providers, such as NGOs, churches and other groups, are neglected or examined from a biased perspective. On the one hand, even where states have devolved or privatised welfare institutions to local and non-governmental institutions, these are still controlled by contracts and the stateâs intermediary role in redistributing financial resources from contributors to welfare institutions and ultimately recipients. On the other hand, Oude Nijhuis recently contended the view that trade unions are generally in support of the welfare state (Oude Nijhuis 2013). He points out the importance of internal mechanisms and structural conditions for forging a consensus between different occupations and sectors, based on the example of British and Dutch trade unions. In contrast to the Dutch unions, British trade ...