Let's Transform Work! Recommendations and Proposals from the Commission on the Work of the Future

A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Jürgens, Kerstin; Hoffmann, Reiner; Schildmann, Christina Research Report Let's transform work! Recommendations and proposals from the Commission on the Work of the Future Study der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, No. 376 Provided in Cooperation with: The Hans Böckler Foundation Suggested Citation: Jürgens, Kerstin; Hoffmann, Reiner; Schildmann, Christina (2018) : Let's transform work! Recommendations and proposals from the Commission on the Work of the Future, Study der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, No. 376, ISBN 978-3-86593-286-0, Hans-Böckler- Stiftung, Düsseldorf This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/173273 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/de/legalcode www.econstor.eu KERSTIN JÜRGENS, REINER HOFFMANN, CHRISTINA SCHILDMANN LET’S TRANSFORM WORK! RECOMMENDATIONS AND PROPOSALS FROM THE COMMISSION ON THE WORK OF THE FUTURE KERSTIN JÜRGENS, REINER HOFFMANN, CHRISTINA SCHILDMANN LET’S TRANSFORM WORK! This title is No. 376 in the Hans Böckler Foundation’s Study series that continues, with sequential numbering, the edition Hans-Böckler-Stiftung series in electronic form. PROF. DR. KERSTIN JÜRGENS, born in 1970, is Professor of Micro sociology at the University of Kassel, Germany. She has been researching change in the world of work since the 1990s. REINER HOFFMANN, born in 1955, is President of the German Trade Union Confederation and chair of the executive board of the Hans Böckler Foundation. CHRISTINA SCHILDMANN, born in 1973, is head of the scientific secretariat of the Commission on the Work of the Future. She is a specialist in labour market policy, (gender-neutral) digitali- sation, care work and family policy. KERSTIN JÜRGENS, REINER HOFFMANN, CHRISTINA SCHILDMANN LET’S TRANSFORM WORK! RECOMMENDATIONS AND PROPOSALS FROM THE COMMISSION ON THE WORK OF THE FUTURE Translated from the German by Andrew Wilson © Hans-Böckler-Stiftung 2018 Hans-Böckler-Straße 39, 40476 Düsseldorf, Germany www.boeckler.de Let’s Transform Work! by Kerstin Jürgens, Reiner Hoffmann and Christina Schildmann is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC-BY-ND-NC). The text of the license can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode. The license refers to the original material only and does not extend to material from other sources (marked as such by a reference), such as images, pictures and quotes, the use of which may require separate permission from the respective copyright holder. Originally published in German under the title Arbeit trans formieren! by transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, Germany. Copyright © 2017 by transcript Verlag, Bielefeld. Cover: Manja Hellpap, Berlin with use of images from Shutterstock.com: 9comeback, Zapp2Photo, Aila Images Book design and typesetting: Manja Hellpap, Berlin Printed in Germany ISBN e-book: 978-3-86593-286-0 ISBN printed book: 978-3-86593-287-7 CONTENT Introduction 6 The Commission 13 PARTICIPATING IN THE WORLD OF WORK 16 STANDARDS FOR DIVERSITY INCOME 48 REVALUING WORK EDUCATION AND TRAINING 78 GERMANY, THE TALENT FACTORY WORKING TIME 108 TIME SOVEREIGNTY IS THE SOLUTION WORK ORGANISATION 140 PEOPLE TAKE CENTRE STAGE MIGRATION 166 COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY FRAMEWORK FOR CHANGE 190 SHAPING THE FUTURE Prospects 222 Glossary 226 References 228 INTRODUCTION JOINING FORCES TO SHAPE THE WORK OF THE FUTURE Just a few years ago it would have been impossible to put together a text in the same way as the present publication was compiled. Count- less meetings and telephone conversations would have been necessary in order for all the authors to discuss and agree on the various drafts. Today, thanks to modern information and communications technologies, we can work together on texts regardless of geograph ical dis- tance, access all the necessary data, compare the various versions of documents and make all the stages in the writing and editing process visible. However, it is not only the drafting and editing of books or other texts that today rely as a matter of course on the use of digital technologies and collaboration in virtual networks. These forms of digital working have long since gained entry into the whole of eco- nomic life and affect the daily lives of us all. This has not only radical- ly changed work routines and ways of working together but has also given rise to new work tasks and completely new business models. When the Hans Böckler Foundation set up the ‘Commission on the Work of the Future’ in 2015, it was clear that the task facing the new body would not be an easy one. Its 32 members, drawn from the super- visory boards and works councils of large companies, the creative economy, trade unions, government ministries and various areas of academic research, were asked to reach agreement on the change in the world of work and, in doing so, to focus in particular on two questions. Firstly, what will the work of the future look like? And secondly, what are the new challenges facing employment policy makers? In order to find answers to these questions, the Hans Böckler Foundation took the conscious decision to ensure that the Commis- sion would be composed of equal shares of academics and practition- ers and that the chair’s duties would be divided up in the same way. At the same time, the Foundation refrained from setting the Com- mission closely defined objectives or obliging it to produce a final 7 programme. Rather, an open discussion space was to be created with- in which as much light as possible could be shed on what was still largely uncharted territory for researchers and employment policy makers. The members of the Commission were requested to enter into genuine dialogue about their views and ideas for shaping the work of the future. In other words, they had been invited to join the TO JOINING FORCES Commission not so much as representatives of their organisations but rather as experts on work and employment, in both the present and the future. THE FUTURE OF THE WORK SHAPE The composition of the Commission and the involvement of out- INTRODUCTION side experts meant that a wide range of different perspectives and expe- riences, priorities and positions, questions and expectations could be utilised for its joint deliberations. For all this diversity, however, Com- mission members shared a curiosity about the radical changes that technological progress will entail and which are only beginning to be- come apparent. And they were equally united in their desire that their thoughts and ideas should help to ensure that the world of work offers as many people as possible a good quality of life and a secure future. The Commission’s work was shaped by a shared conviction that organising work in a way that puts human beings centre stage would make a significant contribution to social cohesion and the strengthen- ing of democracy. The importance of this aspect became crystal clear over the two years of the Commission’s deliberations. Over this peri- od, we saw how right-wing populist movements were gaining sup- port in Germany and across Europe. And beyond the borders of the EU, on the other side of the Atlantic, we had to watch as the funda- mental democratic principles of peaceful coexistence have been in- creasingly called into question. This report presents the key findings of our Commission’s deliberations. Since the aim was to sketch as sweeping a panorama as possible of the conceivable paths along which the work of the future might develop and the requirements that might have to be met, it was not our aim to submit a final report presenting the ‘agreed policy position’ of all the Commission’s members. Given the body’s hetero- geneous composition, it was evident from the outset that this would not be possible. We opted instead for a different way of presenting the results. The present publication begins with an analysis of the changes taking 8 LET'S TRANSFORM WORK! place in the world of work. We describe the principal driving forces of these changes as identified by the Commission, outline some possible development paths and enumerate the resultant challenges for business, society and policy makers. As a team of authors, we filtered out those key ideas and proposals from our debates on which there was a broad consensus among Commission members and on this basis formulated a whole series of concrete proposals or recommendations, presented in the text under the heading FOOD FOR THOUGHT. The ideas outlined in the sections thus marked were decided and voted on by the Commission as a whole. It was also our intention that this final report should provide an insight into the issues that gave rise to considerable controversy on many points but also, in many cases, to enthusiastic debate.

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