Demos Demos Has Received Invaluable Support from a Wide Range of Organisations Including: Northern Foods, Cable & Wireless P

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Demos Quarterly

Issue 5/1995 Demos Quarterly is published by

Demos 9 Bridewell Place London EC4V 6AP

Tel: 0171 353 4479 Fax: 0171 353 4481 email: [email protected]

Editorial Team: Geoff Mulgan Helen Wilkinson Martin Bartle Ivan Briscoe Joanna Wade Zina Saro-Wiwa

Printed in Great Britain by EG Bond Ltd

Design and art direction: Esterson Lackersteen

Special thanks to: Simon Esterson Andrzej Krause

This special issue of the Quarterly forms part of the work of Demos’ 7 Million Project Contents

FEATURES Well-being and Time 1 Geoff Mulgan and Helen Wilkinson Time preferences: the economics of work and leisure 35 Robert Lane Finding time to live 45 Ray Pahl The end of work as we know it 53 Jeremy Rifkin The all-consuming work ethic 65 Gary Cross

TRENDS Time in our lives: facts and analysis on the 90s 71 Bob Tyrrell Bad timing: attitudes to the new world of work 81 Nick Winkfield Demos 5/1995

The New American Dream? 95 Juliet Schor The post-modern work ethic 99 David Cannon Time in the global village 107 Carol Samms

POLICIES An intimate future of time 113 Theodore Zeldin Time rights in the 1990s: an international survey 121 Ivan Briscoe Lean time and global competition 135 Oliver Sparrow Time Keynesianism 139 Jonathan Gershuny Signs of the Times 147 Whose flexibility? Policies for changing times 149 Patricia Hewitt The 24-hour city 157 Franco Bianchini Time Facts 163 Books on Time 177

REGULARS Project Working Papers 181 Media Watch 185

vi Demos The time squeeze

Time is our most precious – and most wasted – resource.After decades when politics focused primarily on income, attention is turning to how we spend our time. In part this reflects prosperity. Richer societies tend to be more concerned about how to live, as well as having enough to live. But this renewed concern also reflects the tensions that are accompanying a profound transition in the ways in which time is organised. This shift, from an industrial to a post-industrial order of time, is affecting almost every area of life: offices and supermarkets, schools and television, parenting and pensions. Its promise is to increase individual autonomy, cut waste, and foster more fulfilling time uses. But few are yet reaping these benefits. Right across society there is a sense of time being squeezed. And policy has lagged behind, as it always does, with a lengthening series of failures: the growing imbalance between overwork for some and zero work for others; poor management of public spaces and transport which has forced up the times taken to get to work, to care for (and transport) children, even to shop; and severe stress for millions – particularly women – trying to juggle competing responsibilities. In this special issue we aim to move the argument forward. Drawing on history, economics, psychology and culture we set out a new approach to time, and propose three areas of change:

Autonomy: we recommend a series of policies to support greater autonomy and flexibility around work, leisure

Demos vii Demos 5/1995

and leave, together with policies for the re-engineering of public institutions and time patterns. Reliability: alongside a more fluid and flexible environment we argue that people need things to rely on.We make the case for policies to sustain sabbaticals, parental leave, and stronger commitments both from employers and what we call deployers. Quality: finally we argue that it is no longer enough simply to increase free time.We need policies to encourage better use of time, in work and in leisure, through the rethinking of schooling and adolescence, the auditing of work environments and the cultivation of fulfilling leisure.

For millennia people have used their time simply to survive. Today, with productivity 25 times what it was 150 years ago, and with lifetime working hours 42 per cent less than a century ago, we can enjoy a far richer range of opportunities for living. What is at issue is whether government and politics will help or hinder.

viii Demos Well-being and time Geoff Mulgan* and Helen Wilkinson†

Without work, all life goes rottesn. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies. (A. Camus)

Introduction Time isn’t what it used to be. The old ways of managing time are fast disappearing. Fixed jobs, shared rhythms of shopping and leisure, marriage, work and retirement; all are on the way out. Three interrelated drivers of change have made them redundant. The first is technology which is transforming the nature of economic life with vastly greater flows of information and much tighter control over time. The second is the continuing rise of a culture of choice and freedom which, among other things, has encouraged women to take control over their own lives and reject the old domestic division of labour. The third is economics: the simple fact that an hour’s work is now worth 25 times what it was in 1830 brings with it the sense of time as a much more valuable resource to be managed, planned, and used more intensively.

*Geoff Mulgan is Director of Demos. †Helen Wilkinson is Project Director of the Seven Million Project.

Demos 1 Demos 5/1995

The effects of these forces for change can be discerned in the charac- teristic language of the 1990s: just-in-time production and multitasking computers, 24 hour shopping and video-on-demand, time-share holidays and annualized working hours, late-night shopping and on-line learning, channel surfing and asynchronous e-mail. Together they offer an extraordinary promise of much greater personal control over time. But, as always in history, things are not so clear-cut. While one foot steps forward another steps back. So, although lifetime working hours have fallen by 42 per cent over the last century1, a large majority are suffering from stress because of the rising intensity of work and leisure (44 per cent of the workforce now report coming home exhausted). Ironically, both the overworked and the unemployed share the sense that their position is involuntary. Most adults have a sense of time being squeezed as they spend longer driving children to school, getting to the shops, even filling out tax returns, and as the world around them changes with bewildering speed (90 per cent of new goods are no longer on the market two years after their launch). But even though many people are desperate to find more balance between work and other parts of life, their families and their enthusi- asms, when people do get more ‘free’ time, few know how to cope. Retirement often brings illness and depression; the unemployed suffer the worst unhappiness of any group; a majority would work even if they didn’t need the money; and few find their leisure time very satisfying.

Good time and bad time This paradox is at the heart of the time issue. To explain it we need to go back to some basic principles, principles that can help us distin- guish good and bad uses of time. The first is a principle of choice. Wherever possible it should be a basic principle in a democratic society that people should be able to determine, so far as possible, how they use their time. The second is a qualitative principle. Good uses of time are those that give enjoyment, that develop our potential, that leave something

2 Demos Well-being and time useful behind. Bad ones by contrast are inert, useless mindless, unmemorable. Together these two principles help to give us a better perspective not only on the present, but also on the past and future. For by their standard, human history has not been a straight forward progress. The pre-agrarian hunter gatherers spent only 15 hours each week engaged in work – work which was often more demanding of intelligence than most work today. By contrast, backbreaking agricultural and the repetitive factory jobs that succeeded them did little or nothing to use or develop potential. Today, more than ever before, there is a chance to apply these principles to how we use time. The combination of far wider education and technologies that can automate many repetitive jobs offers an unprece- dented, opportunity to expand choice and improve quality: making time a servant of life. But far from ushering in a long-awaited utopia the world’s policy regimes show deepening confusion. None are pioneering new models for others to follow. Instead around the world there has been piece- meal and confused reform around such things as work-sharing and parental leave, education and old age.

A very short history of time Part of the problem is that no one has a clear understanding of the nature of time at the end of the 20th century. Instead political cultures still carry the baggage of the past, the distant attitudes of pre-industrial time and the still present culture of industrial time.

Pre-industrial time In pre-industrial societies, time is close to nature. Social life is ordered by the rhythms of the seasons, of day and night. People understand time cyclically, and in terms of key rites of passage through life, moments which were often experienced communally – birth, the transition from childhood to adulthood, from education to working life, from work to old age. In such societies time is rarely measured; instead

Demos 3 Demos 5/1995 it is present subjectively rather than objectively. It is local, based on slow and steady rhythms, and the main role of policy is to regulate the festi- vals of saints days, or seasonal celebrations, and the rhythms of the harvest (still reflected to this day in some of the techniques of accounting).

Industrial time In the industrial era, as Lewis Mumford pointed out, time takes on the character of the clock. It becomes mechanical, regular, removed from nature. It comes to be seen as a resource to be managed: in EP Thompson’s words, a ‘currency: not passed but spent’.People clock in to work, and society is conceived and organised around the machine-like regularities of the 40 hour week and all those other institutions that adapt around this accordingly: the school timetable, regulated shopping hours and so on. Moreover time is standardised: as late as the 1870s there were 80 different railway times in the USA and France still

4 Demos Well-being and time had 14 regional times before the 1884 conference in Washington which introduced a World Standard Time and created 24 time zones.2 Even today some countries persist in bucking the trend: many of the Maldives islands for example have different time zones. The clear logic of industrial time is towards homogeneity and syn- chronisation – a vision of the world perfectly captured in the production line of films like Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. Around these continuous production processes the most successful businesses strived to synchronise life and leisure to suit production, with shift working, and a host of measures from hire purchase to macro management to stabilise demand. As a result, in the nineteenth century policies came to focus on quantities of time: regulations for working time were introduced in Britain in 1802, in Prussia in 1839, in France in 1841. Political struggles were mounted to cut the working day, guarantee holidays and sick leave, with celebrated successes like France’s 1936 ‘conges payes’.Other policies established fixed age rights: rights to schooling, or pensions. For unions the key was to take control over time – and reduce it. For employers it was to get the most out of the time they had purchased.

Post-industrial time Post-industrial time is different again. Like the programmable digital watch, it is even further removed from nature, endlessly flexible and malleable.Activities can be precisely synchronised (to the nanosecond on modern telecommunications networks) or through techniques like just-in-time and zero-carry-forward. And as information comes to dominate the economy, time loses its materiality. Values become less solid than in the age when buildings or steel were at the heart of the economy. Obsolescence becomes the norm, and many of the most valuable things are shaped by their half-life (the time it takes for them to lose half their value) – things like chemical or genetic information, financial data or computer software.According to the philosophers, an extended present replaces the traditional distinctions between past, present and future.3

Demos 5 Demos 5/1995

As knowledge takes on a greater economic significance societies invest far more in time than in things: investment in the hours needed for knowledge and learning (most of it spent on schooling) is now greater than traditional capital investment in almost every industrialised society. In place of the ordered shared rhythms of the industrial age, time also becomes personalised and customised with the help of domestic goods (like the freezer or the VCR) that can store up services, to be drawn down at will. With personalisation also comes another important feature: just as the mechanical time of the industrial era helped to speed work up, so does the programmed time of post-industrialism. With the help of technologies, it becomes possible to perform many different tasks simultaneously, whether in work or in leisure, and to distribute functions in time and space. As Andrew Grove, Chief Executive of Intel put it ‘We’ll all be able to work ourselves to death – because ubiquitous computers mean that our work will always be with us. And our competitors will always be working too’.4 Nor is it only work that becomes more intensive.More valuable time encourages ‘time deepening’ and intensification at leisure. As Staffan Linder put it 25 years ago in his classic The Harried Leisure Class, the modern citizen finds himself drinking Brazilian coffee, smoking a Dutch cigar, sipping a French cognac, reading the New York Times, listening to a Brandenburg Concerto and entertaining his Swedish wife – all at the same time with varying degrees of success.5 Today we could add to that talking on a mobile phone and checking the e-mail, while of course the Swedish wife would have traded her cocktails and sauna for a high-powered executive job.

Layers of time These three successive time cultures have never been uniform. Today only a minority experience post-industrial time in much of their life (perhaps the 0.5 m customers of First Direct, or the 200,000 on the Internet in the UK), just as 50 years ago many remained insulated from industrial time. Even today, a tiny minority of the very rich still enjoy

6 Demos Well-being and time the same work and stress-free existence as the aristocrats of the last century, while an equally small minority of new age travellers and unemployed are deliberately trying to go back to a more ‘natural’ way of life. As we shall argue, it is vital to acknowledge this lack of uniformity: many analysts have gone badly wrong by trying to generalise minority experiences. But it is equally essential to understand that differences can be functional. Every time culture turns out to rest on its predecessors. The industrial organisation of time rested on pre-industrial norms for women who were prepared to work without contract or payment in the home. In the same way today the world of the post-industrial worker would not be viable if it did not rest on a vast array of work which is still essentially industrial: repetitive, mindless, regimented, as well as on a pre-industrial base of domestic labour.

Autonomy and the 24 hour, 365 day society Despite these differences the post-industrial model of time dominates the age. It may still be absent from political argument. But it is centre stage in any serious discussion of business, technology, culture and the future of daily life. Its power is to offer a clearly visible goal that seems to solve many of our current problems: a 24 hour, 365 working year that challenges not only physical or temporal boundaries but also social ones. So in place of fixed shopping hours, it points to 24 hour shopping; instead of 8 hour days and shifts it points to a world of infinite flexitime; in place of a fixed period of school and university education, it suggests lifelong (even just-in-time) learning; instead of a fixed period for having children, child-bearing is spread into the late 40s, the 50s and even perhaps the 60s. Just as technologies permit instant and unbounded communication so are many seeking to pioneer new ways of accelerating things, of over- coming the limits of time.At one end there are the special programmes for gifted children designed to accelerate learning. At the other, new elixirs against ageing.

Demos 7 Demos 5/1995

The 24 hour, 365 day society has obvious advantages. It promises great efficiencies in fields like tourism or transport by reducing the need for investment for peak loading of summer time or the morning rush hour. It promises genuine full-time operation for manufacturing, distribution and retailing with obvious benefits for productivity. But its greatest promise is political and philosophical: the achievement of genuine personal autonomy,escape from the weight of tradition, and the chance for people consciously to shape their own biography. Just as it is in the economy that the techniques of time management have developed fastest so is it at work that this promise has first become visible. In those parts of the labour market where demand is high, employees can now make tough demands for job-sharing, sabbaticals, flexible hours and parental leave. Their experience has encouraged a plethora of optimistic writings. For example, William Bridges in his book Job Shift argues that we are heading towards a just-in-time workforce fuelled by self-sufficient ‘vendor’ employees.6 With the death of the job will come universal self-employment and portfolio work (that is, everyone doing a range of different jobs). Work, he and others argue, is being refashioned, as operational decisions are devolved downwards, sometimes even to the home, and as more democratic and open teams introduce a new, output oriented culture, hostile to hierarchy and the glass ceiling. Much the same story can be found in the writings of people like Tom Peters, John Naisbitt,Alvin Toffler or Rosabeth Moss Kanter.

The World of Work At first glance the mid-1990s labour market is indeed coming to resemble the vision of the 24 hour society. Britain, which first experienced the rigours of the industrial time culture is now pioneering its successor. Unlike other European countries Britain has now lost for good the standard working patterns of the past (see Table 1). 60 per cent of men and 45 per cent of women employees usually or sometimes work on Saturdays. 28 per cent of men work more than 48 hours each week (up from 22 per cent in 1982) while part-time work has grown from 12 per cent of employees in 1954 to 28 per cent today (with as much growth in the corporatist 1960s as the Thatcherite

8 Demos Well-being and time

Table 1 % UNITED KINGDOM % GERMANY (WEST) 60 60

50 50

40 40 30% WORK 38 HRS 30 30 23% WORK 40 HRS 20 20 10% WORK 40 HRS 10 10

0 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60+ 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60+ Usual hours per week in main job Usual hours per week in main job

% FRANCE % ITALY 60 60 48% WORK 40 HRS 50 50

40 40 50% WORK 20% WORK 39 HRS 36 HRS 30 30

20 20

10 10

0 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60+ 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60+ Usual hours per week in main job Usual hours per week in main job

Source: Ec LFs 1990.

1980s). On top of the 1.5 m working less than 16 hours in their main job, there are also 1.1 m working second jobs, with 5 per cent of people in work now having a second job, double the proportion in 1981.7 Flexibility takes innumerable forms. 3 m are now self-employed, and 1.5 m work in temporary jobs. Shift working is spreading from the emergency services and manufacturing to many offices and computer firms. 12 per cent of employees now work flexi-time, 9 per cent work annualised hours in fields such as accounts departments, travel agents and companies like Philips and British Gypsum, and 5 per cent8 work term-time only (notably at banks like NatWest9). Telework remains marginal (perhaps 3 per cent of full-time workers) but it is spreading,

Demos 9 Demos 5/1995 not only for consultants and journalists, but also for secretarial and data entry workers. Parallel changes are happening on the home/work interface. Millions of women have moved into the workforce during the same period that there has been a massive increase in domestic service work (up 5 times in a decade according to Mintel), in childcare services, and in domestic capital spending (on washing machines, microwaves etc). But one doesn’t have to look far to see that the results have been nowhere near as benign as the optimists forecast. Even at the top of the income scale, in the jobs of the cognitive elites, this new environment has not been without costs. For them the main problem is that the nature of the value they are selling seems to entail ever greater pressures to work harder. Elite jobs demand not only innate intelligence and knowledge, but also interpersonal skills, networks of contacts and trust. These skills are not easily transferable and with these types of work 3 workers working 50 hours each week are much more efficient than 5 workers working 30 hour weeks. As a result, in the UK, according to a Personnel Today, one in 8 managers work more than 60 hours, and 40 per cent more than fifty hours.10 According to another survey nearly one in four managers take work home several times a week, and a further 30 per cent at least one day a week.11 Needless to say these long hours impose heavy costs on families and on people’s capacity to maintain a hinterland of other interests. At the bottom of the income range, flexibility is also more often imposed than sought – with the important difference that rewards are declining rather than rising. Since 1979, the poorest 10 per cent of women part-time workers saw their average earnings fall by 4 per cent.12 Many of these are in domestic services, cleaning and catering, jobs which have scarcely changed over a century. Others are temporary jobs (6.5 per cent of the total), many held by students who now need to earn more to finance their studies. And at the bottom there is a significant minority of no-earner couples (14.4 per cent of households), suffering persistent unemployment and non-employment.13 In other parts of the workforce the picture is less clear. Despite intense middle level insecurity there is as yet little evidence either of

10 Demos Well-being and time longer working hours or of shorter job tenure (36 per cent of men had been in the same job for more than ten years in 1993 compared to 37.7 per cent in 196814). But even in these jobs there has been a continuing intensification of work, helped in large part by the speed of information processing and a re-engineering of control. According to one estimate a third of US employees are now monitored by computer.15 The need for constant ‘upskilling’ (one survey found that nearly 2 in 3 British workers report that the level of skills required for their job has increased in the last five years16) adds to work stress. But the key point is that although many of these changes are resulting in a more fluid and flexible labour market, few have yet experienced increased autonomy in any measurable way, and few feel that they have achieved a better balance between work and life. One symptom is that there remains a serious mismatch between the hours people want to work and those available to them. Over 70 per cent of British workers working over 40 hours want to work less, and although 53 per cent of women and 14 per cent of men would prefer to work part time, only 40 per cent and 3 per cent are respectively able to do so.17 Conversely the proportion of people who have had to take a part time job because no full time jobs are available has risen by 20 per cent since 1992.18 Despite the rhetoric, very few workers are really in a position to customise work to their own needs.

Dissatisfaction with change It is hardly surprising that many people are cynical of the optimists’ vision of the world of work. Indeed what’s most striking in the 1990s – as Nick Winkfield shows in ‘Bad Timing’ – is the lack of enthusiasm for it. A more flexible work environment appears, paradoxically, to have brought less personal autonomy, greater insecurity, more stress and less satisfaction. Change is coming more by imposition and fear than as part of a rising tide of freedom.‘Functional’ as opposed to ‘positive’ flexibility seems to be the order of the day. So although many may not fear change in itself, many do legitimately fear being on the receiving end of change, particularly those seeing their jobs swept away in new

Demos 11 Demos 5/1995 waves of automation (as Jacques Attali put it ‘machines are the new proletariat. The working class is being given its walking papers’). The symptoms of unease are particularly evident in the UK, which now works harder than other European countries and takes fewer holidays. As Bob Tyrrell shows, a remarkable 86 per cent of women workers say that they never have enough time to get things done, with 59 per cent of the adult population as a whole saying that they suffer from stress. In the same vein, a PSI survey in 1993 found that over half of all employees felt that stress had increased over the previous five years;19 and according to MORI over a quarter of British workers feel they have too much to do. Contrary to the optimists’ vision, MORI’s research also finds that the concept of employability and the idea of portfolio working is strongly resisted by at least half of British workers who still cling to the security of working for a large, reliable employer. Such anxieties have a very direct economic effect. Just under 80 million working days were lost from 1989 to 1990, an increase of over 20 million from the mid-1980s; time off work for stress related illnesses has increased by 500 per cent since the 1950s; and the ILO estimates that job stress costs the UK up to 10 per cent of GNP a year. Some of the stress and sickness can be ascribed to the inherent problems of cultural change. Every shift in time culture has been fraught with problems. The mindsets for industrial work took generations to take hold. They were as alien to people brought up in farms and villages as post-industrial work is to people brought up with the security of a job for life and a paternal welfare state. The rise of industrialism saw bitter battles as rural workers were forced into the rhythms of the factory. Today, few are psychologically or culturally well equipped for a fluid work environment of contingent relationships, although, unsurprisingly, the young are far better placed to adapt than the old. Even when employees try to give employees greater flexibility over how and when they work they meet resistance.20 Periods of rapid change inevitably leave people disoriented. But much of the resistance to change must be ascribed to bad leadership and a failure to devise strategies to make the benefits of post-industrial time enhance autonomy and fulfilment. Politicians still think in terms

12 Demos Well-being and time of income rather than time,and have in any even failed to assuage the legitimate fears of the losers. And business has steeped itself in a language of human resources which simply reinforces the image of people as disposable and interchangeable commodities.

Do services serve work? But there is also another crucial reason why change has been so unsat- isfactory For governments have failed to adapt other institutions – particularly services – to the new needs. One study at the end of the 80s found that between 7 am and 7 pm on a weekday, the average European consumer has only a 10 per cent chance of finding a service open at the times when they are free.21 Women’s changing position is at the core of this issue. Services were designed around the assumption that women would be able to shop, clean, cook, collect and care between 9 and 5 while men were at work. For example, in 1939, 31 per cent of workers went home for lunch; most could safely assume that a women would be there. Women were effectively informal service workers taking children to doctors and schools, or caring for the sick or elderly. Their ‘free time’ served as a buffer in the management of time. But today with dual-earning in a majority of house-holds, and with a rising proportion of single house-holds, many of these assumptions fall away. The synchronised world of public institutions and private services is now at odds with the labour market, and the pressure is growing for a more general policy on time that acknowledges the systemic nature of time – the ways in which all the elements are interdependent. Take, for example, public amenities. The combination of fear of crime, unfriendly public spaces and badly planned transport systems means that adults now spend 900 m hours each year escorting children to school (the proportion ofseven year olds going to school unaccompanied fell from 70 per cent in 1971 to 7 per cent in 1990). Add in the extra congestion caused and the total rises to 1,356 m.22 The average journey to work is now 8.2 miles, up from 5.2 miles in the early 1960s. Shopping and related travel time have also risen – from 45 minutes in 1961 to 70 minutes in 1984.

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Or take learning. Most governments are attempting to move towards encouraging lifelong learning, acknowledging the failure of education systems that function only in the first period of life (a third of all adults in OECD countries have only basic literacy and numer- acy). But much schooling still has more to do with passing time than learning anything, and few governments have achieved any substantial shifts in resources from existing tertiary education. Despite the huge success of the Open University in pioneering new models of asynchronous learning little has been done to build on it, for example in providing course packages on-line to the workplace or home, and the teaching profession has tended to resist rather than advance more flexible uses of technology. Or take services as a whole. There have been some steps to open the service economy to fit the needs of dual-earning couples: liberalising Sunday shopping, deregulating the evening economy, and ensuring longer opening hours for schools are all examples. There have also been experiments with shifting the time economy of cities,23 some of which are described by Franco Bianchini. But so far these have all been not only marginal but also fiercely resisted by major vested interests ranging from the church to trades unions. These are some of the problems that arise from the clash between an old and a new order of time. But systems theorists add a more subtle step to the argument, one which is particularly relevant to the likely politics of post-industrial time. In more complex systems, they suggest, there is bound to be more enforced waiting because so many more things need to be coordinated.24 In parallel, they argue, waiting is bound to become more visible in more prosperous societies, because it is perceived in relation to the many more things we would like to be able to accomplish. So although some imaginative ways of using dead waiting time are being experimented with: interactive terminals at railway stations and bus stops, for instance, time planning and time reduction strategies are almost certain to rise up the agenda. Unfortunately little of this seems to be understood by governments. Very little data on time use is ever published despite reams of statistics on money being dutifully collected and analysed. Powerful pressures

14 Demos Well-being and time for monetary efficiency have yet to be matched by any measures for time efficiency. Perhaps the best sign is the continuing pressure within the public sector to cut costs by passing them out in the form of wasted time to the public. The shift to tax self-assessment is one example: from government’s point of view this will be a simple cost saving – the added time burden is not taken into account as if the public’s time literally had no value.

Cutting working time as the solution For many engaged in this argument there is a simple solution: to cut working hours. Over the last 150 years annual working time in the industrialised countries has fallen steadily: from around 3,000 hours to between 1,400 and 1,800 hours (Japan still stands at over 2,000 hours, and worked 2,400 hours as recently as 1960) (See Table 2). The main reason for this fall of course is productivity: one hour in 1990 is 25 times as productive as in 1830.25But in the 1980s the decline in working hours stopped. The average British working week is now 43.4 hours, an hour longer than in 1983, and the decline has also ceased in other countries. Although economists have always been sceptical about work- sharing, during the 1980s a variety of schemes involving unions, employers and governments in mainland Europe were put into practice, mainly inspired by the need to stop redundancies. The French government led the way in the early 1980s by encouraging firms and unions to agree ‘solidarity contracts’ (involving early retirement, wage restraint, new jobs for the young and different working time flexibility options) and backed this up with a decree reducing the length of the statutory working week by one hour to 39 hours a week. This became part of a broader five year law in 1993 with incentives for companies and unions to reduce working hours, cut pay and recruit new staff.26 In Belgium legislation in 1983 required new public sector recruits to work for 80 per cent of normal time and at 80 per cent of pay for their first year. In Germany, by contrast the main pressure has come within industry, where IG Metall negotiated a series of deals for shorter working

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Table 2 Length of the working year in the principal developed countries from 1960 to 1990

2500

2400

2300

2200

2100 Japan

2000

Hours 1900

1800 USA Canada Italy 1700 Germany UK France 1600

1500 Sweden

1400 1960 1970 1980 1990

weeks and greater flexibility to protect jobs. The most celebrated was struck with Volkswagen and involved a four day week and a significant, but not proportionate cut in pay (16 per cent instead of 20 per cent). 20,000 jobs were protected while another 10,000 were saved by encouraging initial part-time work for the young, early retirement and training sabbaticals.27 Similar deals have been agreed in 10 other sectors in Germany; and FIAT’s 1994 solidarity contract designed to protect 3,400 jobs was based on similar principles, 28 involving nearly 9,000 workers in cuts in hours of between 30 and 80 per cent. Similar deals have been struck between unions and both Bell and Chrysler in

16 Demos Well-being and time

Canada.29 In each case high productivity,powerful unions and a strong competitive position made quite generous deals possible. Even Japan – which still has the longest annual hours at 2,000 – has made much of the need to cut working hours. A government report in 1989 stated ‘we must work hard but as a result we must take a rest’.Few concrete policies have been implemented (although 1994 legislation promised a 40 hour week within 5 years), but a cultural shift in attitudes to work may be achieving the same ends as a ‘grasshopper generation’ (kiri-girisu) refuses to work overtime and nights, organising life around the three ‘v’s: villas, visits and visas. Their commitment to leisure represents an overt rejection of the overwork culture that causes 10,000 deaths each year from Karoshi, and that, according to one recent survey, means that 124,000 of Toyota’s 200,000 workers suffer from chronic fatigue. So far, however, few of these schemes have achieved much success. Some deals at the firm level fudged the issue of costs, and thus potentially jeopardised jobs in the long-run (the UK engineering sector is one example). Others – like VW – make it hard to generalise because they involved relatively highly paid workers who could afford modest cuts in pay.31 Meanwhile government policies have been either too costly or too inflexible to achieve their desired results. France, which pioneered several new approaches, continues to be plagued by particularly high unemployment (and ironically has seen less redistribution of work from full to part-time and from men to women than deregulated Britain). Schemes to encourage early retirement so as to free up jobs for the young have proven prohibitively expensive (mainly because of the added pensions costs) as are policies to directly subsidise work sharing, such as Canada’s Work Sharing programme, not least because they subsidise many workers who would otherwise get new jobs. So it would be wrong to place too much faith in such schemes. Many feel like hangovers from a now lost era when men worked a standard working day which could be legislated downwards. Others (like the EU directive and Japan’s recent legislation) have so many exemptions that they are virtually meaningless. In general, as we shall

Demos 17 Demos 5/1995 argue, micro solutions offering individuals a range of choices have worked better than macro solutions that have tried to legislate time. One of the reasons may be that top-down rules clash with the principle of autonomy. Although a significant number would welcome shorter hours, others want to work hard:some part-timers (especially those below the hours threshold for National Insurance), workaholics and, probably, a good proportion of the 17 per cent of less skilled and manual workers who work more than 50 hours each week32 and need the money. Even on high incomes many choose to work harder because they value the extra money – and the opportunities it gives for more intensive leisure activities – more than the extra time. For them, it’s better to work to buy a CD or a tropical holiday than to create time to potter around the garden

Time Autonomy and the Search for Balance But although mechanistic policies to cut working hours have been dis- appointing they are in tune with an important cultural shift which appears to be gaining ground throughout the developed world: the desire for balance between work and the rest of life. For most the first priority is not more leisure but rather more time with family and friends. Surveys in the US have shown that a majority would be prepared to make substantial sacrifices for more flexible working arrangements,33 and one poll found that a third would accept a 20 per cent cut in income in exchange for shorter working hours. Some far sighted companies, and some public sector employers such as Santa Clara County in California and New York State are trying to meet these demands, with a move away from ‘Work Family’ programmes to ‘Work- life’ programmes (which give all employees, whether or not they have families, options for customising their work) and ‘voluntary reduced working time schemes’. Interestingly, these schemes are proving increasingly appealing to young workers. In the UK there are some similar signs: a 1995 NOP poll in the UK found that although 24 per cent of employees work over 50 hours each week, only 7 per cent want to. Moreover a quarter of all workers are

18 Demos Well-being and time

Table 3 People want fewer hours. Actual weekly hours & ideal hours.

80% 80%

70% 70%

Ideal weekly hours people 60% Actual weekly hours (inc. 60% would like to work unpaid & paid overtime 50% 50%

40% 40%

30% 30%

20% 20%

10% 10%

0% 0% 50+ 45-49 40-44 >40 50+ 45-49 40-44 >40 NOP 1995 NOP 1995

‘fairly or very dissatisfied’ with the impact of long working hours on family and leisure.34 Few are getting the balance they want in part because of the mismatch between actual hours worked and what they would ideally like to work. (See Table 3).

Policy Agenda

I Time autonomy and re-engineering for life-friendliness If macrosolutions have proven unsuccessful, what could be done to better achieve this balance? The first challenge, we believe, is to create a genuine framework for autonomy and flexibility: work-on-demand for employees, not just employers. How could that promise of autonomy be achieved? Clearly for many the priorities are fairly basic: to have the marketable skills to earn more

Demos 19 Demos 5/1995 and bargain for better treatment. But even for them, life would be easier if it were possible to trade money and time in more flexible ways. So far the policy debate has centred around new, and changing, time rights. The most prominent example is retirement, where the pressures to cut retirement ages have been displaced by a recognition that rising longevity requries people to work at least into their late 60s and possibly their 70s. Funded (and portable) pension schemes are widely recognised as the starting point for meaningful flexibility, while within state schemes the priority is to make it easier (as in Norway) to shift years of work between middle age and old age. The second area of debate about rights concerns part-time work. There are strong grounds for pro-rata rights for part-time workers to remove the disincentives against flexible working. Many countries (such as France and Germany) give part-timers equal treatment.Where these are rights on government such policies are desirable, as is the deliberate encouragement of part-time work in the public sector, and statutory requirements to consider part-time employees for full-time positions (as in Belgium and Germany). A clear policy against any discrimination on the basis of hours, including threshold requriements for rights and benefits, would be an important starting point. However there needs to be care to ensure that rights do not involve dispropor- tionate claims on employers, which would discourage part-time work which has thrived in those countries (the UK and US, Netherlands and Denmark) where regulation is minimal. But rights offer only a minimal starting point. To achieve true autonomy and flexibility rights need to be combined with financial arrangements for ‘buying’ time for parenting, education or travel. The financial services industry has a leading role to play – not least in allowing more flexible repayment schedules. In addition we need to develop:

lifetime rights to tertiary education combined with income contingent repayment schemes, secured on lifetime earnings and repaid through the Inland Revenue, would not only increase equity: they would also in practice be taken up counter-cyclically, thus reducaing wasteful unemployment.

20 Demos Well-being and time

rights to unpaid educational leave. These would be helped if governments allowed deferred salary to be assigned to a trust to finance time off, so that pay accumulates tax free until it is drawn down. In such cases employers could also be permitted national insurance rebates on that portion of income which is being paid into trust.‘Time banks’ of this kind (which already exist in Ontario) could be linked into personal and occupational pension schemes. rights to parental leave (and rights to reclaiming jobs for up to five years) combined with clarity about dividing the costs between the individual concerned, employers and government would have obvious benefits (this is the subject of a major current Demos research study). Canada, for example, offers both parents leave rights under Unemployment Insurance. Much the same rights to retain a job and to time off will be needed for making it easier to look after elderly or sick relatives. rights to sabbaticals. In more pressurised and longer lives, we need breaks all the more: opportunities to try out new tasks, to learn new skills or even just to have fun. At the moment sabbaticals are an elite luxury. They have no legal backing in the UK and few dare ask for them in insecure job markets. Some firms offer them to older employees (John Lewis, for example, gives 6, months paid leave after 25 years work) but these are a reward for service, not something integrated into the rhythms of life.

To make them more widely available, the law needs to provide support. France and Belgium already offer legal rights – 6–12 months in Belgium, 11 in France. The key is to provide an easy means for financing sabbaticals. Arguably, in an era of human capital, a mortgage for a sabbatical that will increase people’s employability should make more sense than a mortgage for a house (and fiscal incentives should be moved from bricks to brains). Perhaps in the long-run, as Theodore Zeldin suggests in his Intimate History of Humanity, every seventh year should be

Demos 21 Demos 5/1995 turned into a mandatory sabbatical. In the meantime however, the key will be for business and other leaders to set an example through their own lives. There are many different examples of this kind, where legal rights and private financing mechanisms combine. In the long-run the key is to develop more flexible funded schemes, probably under a public umbrella. Singapore’s Central Provident Fund is one example, which now provides funding not only for retirement and medical care but also further education, based on compulsory contributions for employee and employers which reach as high as 40 per cent, and which, crucially, are paid by employers regardless of whether employees are part time or temporary. If we are to live more flexible, and longer lives, we will have to learn to save more – and that burden will have to fall on both individuals and employers, fairly and evenly if there are not to be unaccept- able biases against those needing flexible work. New packages need to be developed and experimented with on a range of fronts. Most will have only limited take-up initially, although this will rise as the culture changes and as more firms introduce ‘work-life’ programmes in recognition of the greater productivity and loyalty they get from employees who can take time off for their commitments beyond work.35 In the interim however governments could do far more to reengineer their own time policies and thus reduce the pressures on their citizens. Few public institutions would not benefit from a proper time audit (as in many Italian cities), to discover how to reshape their policies to save time for the public: examples might include further extending school opening hours, as well as those of GPs surgeries, libraries or nurseries, sometimes with charges for those who benefit. Often audits of this kind would encourage more creative uses of information technology, not just as a management tool but rather as a tool for improving service quality, assisting for example with flexible learning, or preliminary phone-based diagnosis, and filling in ‘dwell- time’.In the same way regular time audits of government policies – such as road schemes or jury service, licensing and shopping hours – would have tangible dividends in terms of public wellbeing. A more sophisticated public debate about time might even touch politics itself, with

22 Demos Well-being and time a shift to flexible elections: held over a weekend and with polling stations relocated to public spaces such as shopping centres, as a prelude to the use of smart cards.

II Limits of time autonomy and the 24 hours world Clearly there is much to be done. But on its own this agenda of autonomy and flexibility doesn’t go far enough. Autonomy is necessary and desirable, but few would want to live in a totally flexible, unbounded time economy. Nor is such an economy likely. Throughout history times of transition have led some to extraploate from short-term trends to forecast permanent chaos, anarchy or fluidity. But the lesson of human history is that periods of flux tend to be followed by the creation of new fixed structures and reference points which in practice make flexibility easier to organise. Just as in language or music fixed rules and grammar enable an almost infinite flexibility, so in life does variety rest on some things being fixed. In the medium term four main barriers seem likely to block the achievement of the totally flexible world sometimes implicit in descriptions of post-industrial society.

the first are basic human needs.We now know much more about how time is inscribed in our biology. Psychologists have learnt how to get over our 25 hour clocks, our circadian rhythms, and fit these to 24 hours factories or international air travel. But in other respects we may be coming to learn about the limits to flexibility. Parenting is one obvious example where the clash between biological instincts and the demands of society or the workplace is leading to huge stress and may well encourage a swing back to the virtues of encouraging more relaxed enjoyment of the parenting experience for both men and women. More generally we are learning that few are well-suited to chronically uncertain work environments. the second barrier is interdependence. Individual choices inevitably impinge on others. This is less true for the 23 year old computer programmer than it is for someone with

Demos 23 Demos 5/1995

children. Too much personalisation of time may have unwanted effects. As Carol Samms shows, a MERIC study of families in five countries found that for many the most pressing need was more quality time to share together. third, time has systemic properties that mix public and private interests and cannot simply be solved by increasing choice and flexibility. One obvious example is the way that just-in-time production methods ironically increase the number of journey by trucks, worsen congestion and thus eat into the free time of others. Another is the way that the failure to preserve safe streets forces parents to drive their children to school, and the resulting congestion eats into free time for others. In 1971 79 per cent of 10 year olds were allowed to use buses by themselves, only 32 per cent in 1990. fourth, each shift in time culture leaves many excluded. Their time becomes literally valueless in the marketplace, however flexible labour markets are. They therefore become not only a drain on the time of those in work, but also a political barrier to change. For them the key is to find new ways of valuing their time: partly by reskilling them, by imaginative redesign of welfare policies to incentivse useful work, but also by creating new demands, backed both by money and by less orthodox forms of credit, like the twin monies described in Demos Quarterly 2.36

The new reliabilities These limits suggest that as well as flexibility: we also need new reliabilities (what Christopher Freeman and Luc Soete describe as a new ‘vertebrate structure’37) to replace those of the industrial age, reliable rhythms around which people can cope with a far more fluid world of time. If recent years have seen a marked deinstitutionalisation of work, with the decline of trade unions and managerial hierarchies, the challenge of the next period may be to achieve an effective reinstitutional- isation. The fully flexible model sometimes implies no structures between the individual and the task, and no sense of the workplace as

24 Demos Well-being and time a source of community, identity and psychic fulfillment. But for work to be more than just a source of income it must involve some reliable elements. What might these be? Conventional wisdom assumes the end of the job, of traditional employment and thus of security. The problem with this model is that it leads to irrational effects: under-investment in human capital, uncommitted workstyles, and cultures of distrust. Some employers understand this and in parts of the service sector and high-tech manufacturing firm like Rover, Forte and Marks and Spencers, are experi- menting with new forms of commitment, involving job security and investment in skills in exchange for greater task flexibility. But this model is likely to be relevant only for a minority. For others we would argue for extending an alternative model which we term ‘deployers’ – firms with a long term relationship with individuals which deploy their labour to others. This model already exists in many fields: in clerical and secretarial work, and increasingly higher up the income scale. Firms like Manpower (which is already one of the UK’s top ten employers with some 60–65,000 workers on their books) offer a model – selling people’s time to firms, but retaining a long term relationship and thus a commitment to training, pensions, parental leave and holidays. Logically, such firms might evolve to become owned by their members, with relatively light capital requirements. Another example of the ‘deployer’ model, is Health Care Associates of the Bronx (which also now operates in many other places), a cooperative of hundreds of women who have been taken off welfare to work in home health care, financed in part through the benefits savings to the state. This is just one example of how future welfare costs can be capitalised to create work and self-reliance. These types of arrangement could provide a more reliable core relationship in the workplace. They could be encouraged by tax policies. These now discourage long-term commitment but with, for example, tapering down employer national insurance after a certain period of employment, or incentives for Time Related Ownership schemes whereby longevity of employment is rewarded with shares, a more secure work environment could be fostered.

Demos 25 Demos 5/1995

For similar reasons we need a much stronger series of mentor roles for each individual; long-term relationships of care and help to assist people to enter work and then move between jobs, alongside the traditional relationships and commitments of parents and siblings. As we suggested in Demos Quarterly 2, there is a case for seeking a mentor for every prospective school-leaver, possibly with a nominal payment for their time. The basic issue underlying all of these policies is commitment. Across a range of fields the corollary of greater autonomy is that we need to encourage greater commitments: just as in personal relationships there is a case for reinventing commitment through contracts and precounselling for marriage or parenting, so in work we need to think far more imaginatively about the relations between employers and employee.

III Quality, time and ‘flow’: would the end of work be a good thing? We have already hinted at the anxiety lying behind much of the debate over time: the sense that material progress has not brought much improvement in how we use our time. It is an anxiety confirmed by every study of time use showing that most work and lesiure is not used well, whether the goal is happiness or personal development.38 The evidence we have shows that the most fulfilling activities are those entailing autonomy, demands on skills, and absorption. These have been described by the Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as the characteristics of flow. Flow can be found in many kinds of work: sports, music, arts and crafts, indeed any kind of task with structured goals which places a demand on people’s skills.39 It goes without saying that much work has been short of flow and it is this legacy of work as a burden which explains the attractions of many for greater free time. But why should we assume that leisure is inherently superior to work? Sociological analysis of time has long acknowledged that it is the quality of time experience that is key.40 And the analysis of flow

26 Demos Well-being and time

% of waking year 80

70 WORK HOURS 60

10 Mid 19th century 1906 1924 1946 1972 1983 1980 1992 0

Source: Young & Wilmott, DOE, Eurostat. tells a very different story to that casually suggested by advocates of a liberation from work. It shows that many people – and not just professionals – find leisure less fulfilling and challenging than work. In one major survey, for example, even assembly line workers experienced ‘flow’ more than twice as often in work as in leisure. The reason is simple: in general work is more likely to lead to flow, because of its structured tasks, feedback and challenge, whereas far too much leisure is passive, shapeless, unchallenging and literally unre- warding. This is surely one reason why 78 per cent of 25–34 year olds would continue to work even if there was no financial need (compared to 66 per cent of 45–54 year olds). It suggests that Ronald Reagan’s famous comment,‘they say hard work never did anyone any harm, but why risk it’,was rather off the mark.

Demos 27 Demos 5/1995

Indeed, although greater leisure has led to some more imaginative uses of time, most still use it in low-intensity activities. On average Britons spend over 25 hours each week watching television. In the 1980s only one in four men and one in ten women had taken part in an out-door sport or activity in the previous four weeks. Few know how to achieve the inner discipline to shape time and use leisure for genuine ‘re-creation’, and, as Csikszentmihalyi writes, we waste each year ‘the equivalent of millions of years of human consciousness [as] the energy that could be used to focus on complex goals, to provide for enjoyable growth, is squandered’.41 There are some signs of a less vegetative mindset amongst the young, brought up with more interactive games, able to use the remote control to multitask work and leisure unlike their parents. As David Cannon shows, they tend to be more demanding of variety, interaction and engagement.42 The phenomenon of ‘time deepening’ means that many are trying to do several things at once, accelerating leisure by driving through zoos rather than walking or substituting intensive sports like aerobics for tennis or golf.43 But most people are still bad at managing their time, preferring for the most part activities which fill time rather than using it. So what can be done? Often policy makers reach to education as the solution to everything. But this is one case where education and upbringing are indispensable. Unless people learn the inner discipline needed to use time effectively, they cannot be truly autonomous. For schools, designed to teach people the external discipline of fixed timetables, this may require nothing short of a cultural revolution. It demands the much greater use of personal interactive technologies, of simulations as opposed to rote learning to deepen understanding. It requires the integration into the core curriculum of community work and other types of activity which stretch interpersonal and other skills in place of individulaised logical–analytic work. All of these and more besides will be need to cultivate a more self-possessed and autonomous public. Policy discussion always sees teenagers as a problem. Part of the reason is that teenagers have little money, while the main options offered to them are dominated by adult values. It is hardly surprising

28 Demos Well-being and time that many are attracted to crime, delinquency and drugs which offer precisely the flow, challenge and absorption which adults can get legitimately.A wise society would offer them real challenges and excitement within the law, preferably by investing in self organised activities, including many away from home, far earlier than the age at which a minority goes to university. Perhaps teenagers could even be given credits for volunteering and community service to purchase access to these activities (interestingly research shows volunteering and charity as particularly satisfying activities, more even than sports and music).45 In work, too,there is an obvious vacuum to be filled.There are at present no institutions committed to monitoring or encouraging a better quality of work experience. Whereas consumer institutions are highly developed, well funded and effective, they have no parallels in work, even though work takes up far more of our life. Nowhere can one read regular assessments of the quality of work in major firms or public sector organisations. Trade unions have played a baleful role in this respect, seeing work largely as a contract of hours for money. They still could adapt to this other role – not, as in Europe, solely seeking new ways to liberate their members from work, but rather engaging with ways of making work better. Both of these examples point to a very unfamiliar political agenda – no longer just about rearranging or redistributing time, but concerned rather with its qualities.

From time necessity to time freedom Our core argument is simple. The tools at our disposal make it possible, as never before, to step beyond the inherited time uses that were dominated by the necessities of survival and reproduction. If the 20th century was about money – making it and distributing it – the evidence from values surveys and systems analysis, economics and psychology suggests that the 21st will be about time, and how to use it to achieve well-being. Today the momentum of post-industrialism is towards flexibility and autonomy. The benefits are flowing to those societies and individ-

Demos 29 Demos 5/1995 uals who can meet Italo Calvino’s definition of the qualities for the next millennium: lightness, quickness, exactitude, multiplicity. But, as we have argued, these are not enough. A truly fluid and dis- ordered world will leave the majority miserable. So alongside speed and flexibility we also need to remember the importance of balance: of mechanisms for finding useful activity for those left out by change; of public spaces for quiet and reflection like parts and churches where time stands still; of home life as well as work life. Indeed, in our view, this balance is the ultimate promise of the post-industrial order: not a subordination of all life to the requirements of a new techno- economic paradigm, but rather a more sustainable balance between the diversity of human needs. This is surely the challenge for politics. With a pervasive sense amongst millions that their lives are more stressed and pressurished than ever before, and with huge swathes of time wasted in traffic jams and unnecessary journeys, in bad work and bad leisure, there is a great untapped demand for policies that help make life easier, that make work a servant of life rather than the other way around. The political and commercial dividends for solving the conun- drums of time will be immense – as they were a century ago for the firms and nations that first adapted to industrial time. Those who learn how to capitalise time, liberate it, improve it will not only make life easier for their citizens and employees. They will also play a part in the next stage of human development, a further step from necessity towards freedom.

30 Demos Notes

1. Bruce Williams estimated a decline 10. Annabel Ferriman,‘OverWork: the from 154,000 hours in 1881 to 88,000 Nineties Disease’, The Independent in 1981,‘Shorter Hours, Increased on Sunday, 29 January 1995. Employment’,paper for OECD, 1984. 11. Andrew Jack, Makoto Rich, Emiko 2. D Howse, Greenwich Time and the Terazono ‘The Daily Grind of the Discovery of longitude, OUP 198; 7-9’, FT, 18.1.95 S Kern, The culture of time and space 12. ‘The New Divide: part time workers’ 1880–1918,Winfeld 1983. pay in the 90s’,TUC March 1995. 3. Barbara Adam, Time and Social 13. This phenomenon is analyzed in Theory, Polity 1990, provides an Paul Gregg and Jonathon impressive overview of recent Wadsworth, Oxford Review of thinking. Economic Policy,Vol 11, 1, Spring 4. Fortune, 14 June 1993, p. 70. 1995. A paper presented to the 5. Staffan Linder, The Harried Leisure International Year of the Family Class, Columbia UP,New York, 1970. Conference in Autumn 1994 also 6. Bridges W. Job Shift: How to Prosper showed that between the late 1970s in a World Without Jobs,Allen & and 1990 the probability of a Unwin 1995. workerless household having at least 7. ‘Part Time Work in Britain: Analysis one working member a year later of trends in part time work and the fell from around 60 per cent to 25 characteristics of part time workers per cent. in 1994’,TUC Economics and Social 14. IDS, op cit. 1995. Affairs Department, December 1994 15. Jeremy Rifkin, The End of Work: & ‘From the Jobs Mythology’,IDS The Decline of the Global Labour Focus 74, 1995. Force and the Dawn of the Post 8. Employment Gazette, July 1994. Market Era,Tarcher & Putnam, 9. Chris Brewster and Ariane 1994. Hegewisch, Policy and Practice in 16. Duncan Gallie and Michael White, European Human Resource Employee Commitment and the Skills Management, Routledge, 1994. Revolution, PSI 1993.

Demos 31 Demos 5/1995

17. NOP poll commissioned by the ETUCop.cit. Both give detailed TUC and reported on in.‘The Pros explanations of the VW model. and Cons of Part Time Working’, 28. A Time for Working. A Time for TUC, March 1995. Living, ETUC, op. cit. 18. TUC ‘Part Time Work’,op. cit. 29. Full details of these and similar 19. PSI, Employment Commitment and schemes can be found in the Report the Skills Revolution,op.cit. of the Advisory Group on Working 20. ‘Working Hours and the Time and the Distribution of Work, organisation of working time: published by the Canadian Collective Regulation or Individual government in 1994. Choice?’, Time for Working, Time 30. For analysis of the UK experience for Living ETUC Conference, see ‘The Economic Effects of 8.12.94. Reductions in Working Hours: The 21. Towards a General Policy on Time, UK Engineering Industry 1989–93’, European Foundation for the by Ray Richardson, Centre for Improvement of Living and Economic Performance, LSE, Working Conditions, 1989. Research Series 34, Department of 22. Mayer Hillman, One False Move, Employment, August 1994. Also PSI, 1991. Guiseppe Fajertag,‘Working less to 23. See examples set out in The Creative enable everyone to work?’,ETUC, City by Charles Laundry and Franco 1994 op.cit. Bianchini, Demos, 1995. 31. Even after the introduction of a four 24. Niklas Luhman, Politische Planung: day week, the average VW worker Aufsatze zur Sociologie von Politik still earns more than the average full under Verwaltung,Opladen, time German worker. Westdeutscher Verlag, 1971. 32. EUROSTAT, Statistics in Focus: 25. ETUC, A Time for Working, A time Population and Social Conditions, for Living,op.cit. 1995. 26. The law meant that if employers cut 33. The Changing Workforce, Work and working hours by 15 per cent, Families Institute,Volume No 1, accompanied by a pay reduction and 1993. recruited within six months new 34. NOP Poll commissioned by the employees equivalent to at least TUC, 10 March 1995. 10 per cent of the annual average 35. The Changing, Workforce, op.cit. workforce thier social security 36. The concept is set out in Demos contributions would be cut by Quarterly 2,‘Creating a Twin 40 per cent in the first year and Economy’. 30 per cent in the next. ETUC, 37 Chris Freeman and Luc Soete, work ‘Working Hours and the for All, Frances, pinter 1994. organisation of working time: 38. Michael Argyle, The Psychology of Collective Regulation or Individual Happiness, Routledge, 1994. Choice?’ op. cit. 1994. 39. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: the 27. Guiseppe Fajertag,‘Working Less to psychology of optimum Enable Everyone to Work?’ & experience.

32 Demos Well-being and time

40. Jahoda in the classic Dei Arbeitslosen 44. ibid. von Marienthal in 1932 pioneered the 45. ‘Who Volunteers and Why: the key qualitative study of time experience. factors which determine 41. For those living alone who are not volunteering’,Martin Knapp and members of a church, Sunday Justin Davis-Smith, The Volunteer morning is the lowest point of the Centre, 1995. Much of the data on week: without any external task, the psychology of generosity and people feel lost and depressed. helping behaviour is summarised in 42. David Cannon, Generation X and Geoff Mulgan and Charles Landry, the New Work Ethic, Demos 1994. The Other Invisible Hand, Demos 43. Geoffrey Godbey, Leisure in Your forthcoming. Life, Venture Publishing, State College PA, 1994.

Demos 33

Time preferences: the economics of work and leisure Robert E. Lane

In this piece I want to compare the benefits yielded by three activities: working, consuming, and enjoying leisure. The benefits I have in mind are ultimate goods: subjective well-being (the utilitarian’s happiness) and the humanistic ideal of human development, a complex good which may be illustrated by the following qualities: cognitive complexity, a sense of one’s own effectiveness, a sense of one’s own worth, and social maturity, which implies the capacity to get along with other people. I doubt if an intelligible assessment of the relative values of work, leisure, and consumption can be made without some such standards. There is a third ultimate good, distributive justice,which I will not treat here because, in my opinon, the salient emergent ideological issue of our time is not so much who should get what, as what is worth getting. One cannot define away the justice questions, but one can post- pone them until one is ready to specify what is to be distributed. The immediate question is this: how shall we allocate time to the three activities, working, consuming, and enjoying leisure? The answer depends ultimately upon their respective yields in happiness and human development, but also upon the relations of the three activities to each other. People have always had a choice between, on the one

Robert Lane is a professor in the Deparment of Political Science and institution for Social and Policy Studies and Policy studies at Yale University. He is the author of The Market Experience (Cambridge University Press 1991).

Demos 35 Demos 5/1995 hand, more work + less leisure + more goods to consume, and on the other hand, less work + more leisure + fewer goods to consume. The rise in economic productivity does not change this basic trade-off but it does change the terms of the debate. The choice has shifted from the preservation of life to interpretations of the quality of life, which, in turn, depends on how we think of the value of working and consuming and enjoying leisure. Of course, the evaluation of these activities further depends on what people do at work, what they consume, and how they pass their leisure time. Market economics makes the basic trade-off explicit: leisure and consumption are the working person’s rewards for the sacrifices or costs, or, as Marshall said, the ‘fatigue’ of work. The error in this way of thinking is twofold: the criterion of human development is omitted completely and happiness is identified with leisure and consumption.

Income and consumption Almost all of the many studies of quality of life in advanced economies report that above the poverty level, say, for 80 per cent of the population, there is almost no relation between happiness or life-satisfaction and level of income. This is not to say that changes in income do not give joy and sorrow, but people adapt rather quickly to any particular income level and the new level ‘becomes the standard for assessing their well-being. In short, the economists’ belief that money buys happiness is largely wrong. Elsewhere, I have1 called their misguided belief the economistic fallacy, although the belief that people in rich countries are happier than people in very poor countries is not a fallacy. If we look at the hedonic yield of commodities, instead of income, the conclusion is not much different. Bought goods and services rank only eleventh in a list of thirty sources of life satisfaction, well below, for example,‘things that you do with your family’ and ‘how secure you are financially’.2 Compared to working and enjoying leisure, consuming is the least likely to increase happiness or human development, with all proper exceptions for consuming education or culture.

36 Demos Time preferences: the economics of work and leisure

Leisure Accepting these findings about the low hedonic yield of income and consumption, what of the choice between work and leisure as sources of subjective well-being and human development? Here we find that a second part of the economists’ formula is wrong: leisure is not necessarily preferred to work. For example, in answering Juster’s question3 about what people actually enjoyed doing, that is, what are the intrinsic hedonic values of various activities, people tended to place first various social activities (playing with their children, visiting friends) and to place second their working activities. Their leisure activities (watching television, sports, do-it-yourself) came third: in fact, watching television was 17th in a list of 28 activities. Nevertheless, many scholars believe that leisure is the means for greater self-development, a consideration alien to most economists. For example, the French sociologists, Dumazedier and Friedman, the greens in Germany and elsewhere all claim that the dividends of our greater productivity lie in leisure time, time which will be spent, they believe, on self-development: music, the arts, creativity, and companionship. I disagree. What evidence we have shows that increased leisure, when it has been offered, has been devoted to increased watching of television – and not the programmes that might possibly lead either to human development or companionship, but rather programmes that, even if they are not violent or vulgar, do little to help people to cultivate their minds, tastes, or sociability. Among children, television is a substitute for normal sociable play4 and among adults, compared to the effects of other activities like reading, watching television tends to make people ‘more relaxed, cheerful, and sociable – but also ‘more drowsy, weak, and passive’.5 Watching television is a kind of anodyne that probably prevents active social interaction more than stimulating it, partly because heavy viewers tend to see the world as more dangerous regardless of their educational level, sex, age, and amount of newspaper reading. Nor is this the unfortunate selection of the ‘mindless masses’,for, as Wilensky6 points out,‘the educated strata … are becoming full participants in mass culture; they spend a reduced fraction of their time in exposure to quality print and film. This trend

Demos 37 Demos 5/1995

38 Demos Time preferences: the economics of work and leisure extends to professors, writers, artists, scientists – the keepers of high culture themselves – and the chief culprit is TV’.As for other leisure activities, when released from work, ‘increased time [was] spent in sleep, in resting, in personal care, and in automobile travel’7, not the kinds of activities the humanistic ideal had imagined, not the matching of skills with challenges that Csikszentmihaly and Wong8 said make for superior leisure enjoyment or, we may add, human development. Asked about the ‘meaning of leisure to them’,samples in Kansas City and in New Zealand chose the following answers most frequently:‘just for the pleasure of it’,‘a welcome change from work’,‘gives a new experience’,‘permits contact with friends’,and ‘makes time pass’.So far there is little to gladden the heart of the apostles of the humanistic ideal of human development through leisure, but, finally, in fifth and seventh places one finds ‘a chance to achieve something’, and ‘a chance to be creative. A few, of course, use their leisure to develop their potentials. As Bertrand Russell said, ‘To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached that level.’

Work A third part of the economists’ formula is also wrong. It is not true that work is the cost for which the benefits are leisure and commodities. On the contrary, much of our psychic income comes from the enjoyment of working. In a study by Andrews and Withey9, those activities which gave respondents a sense of achievement and of controlling their own lives made the largest contribution to satisfaction with life- as-a-whole. There is another, less formal test: let readers consider the sources of their own life-satisfactions: is it not true that their work satisfactions (and dissatisfactions) are more important to them than the commodities they purchase and consume? Of course work, can be equally or even more stultifying than leisure. Adam Smith10 was aware of this: ‘The man whose life is spent performing a few simple operations … has no occasion to use his understanding … and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is

Demos 39 Demos 5/1995 possible for a human creature to become’. Marx tells the same story of what he calls ‘the detail worker’. It is not surprising, therefore, that many manual workers report that they find little intrinsic enjoyment in their work and that pay is indeed the main reason for working. But when the question is framed differently, they also report that the most important thing about a good job would not be its pay but rather its challenge and companionship.11 Other evidence12 reveals that even in the lower occupational strata the desire to use one’s skills is often the crucial missing component.As for the enjoyment of work, there seems to have been a change in the post-war period. Thus, The Gallup Monthly (September 1991, p. 2) reports that whereas in 1955, 38 per cent of a national sample prefered hours on the job to hours off the job, by 1991 only 18 per cent held these preferences. It is almost certainly rising standards rather than deteriorating job conditions that lie behind the changing preferences for leisure time over work time. Against all advice from economists, some workers have nevertheless discovered that work can be enjoyable and perhaps even stimulating. But that is less likely to happen if the criterion for the way society arranges its work is solely productive efficiency. While there is a vast literature on work satisfaction and its contribution to life satisfaction, so far as I know, only Kohn and Schooler13 have hard evidence on the effect on work of human development. The essence of their findings, based on a ten year longitudinal study, is that where supervision is not too close, where the job has ‘substantive complexity’, and where work is varied and unroutinized, work experience measurably improves mental flexibility, self-esteem, sense of control and commitment to the job. The most important cause of these attitudes, say Kohn and Schooler is the presence of ‘opportunities to exercise self- direction’.And there is the further finding that challenging work actually encourages the selection of uses of leisure time that are also challenging. It seems that the road to better uses of leisure time is not through increasing leisure time but improving the character of work time. Long hours at work can, of course, exhaust the mind and fatigue the body so that leisure must be devoted to rest. Juliet Schor finds this to be increasingly the case in the 1969–1987 period. Nevertheless, Wilensky

40 Demos Time preferences: the economics of work and leisure found that it is those who work long hours who develop ‘leisure competence’,choosing the more challenging forms of leisure activities.And, in line with Kohn and Schooler’s findings, Wilensky also found that the main determinant of hours worked was whether or not a person con- trolled his or her own time; again the ‘opportunity to use self-direction’. Similarly Kohn and Schooler found that ‘working longer hours tends, in the long run, to be reassuring (for the production of the values they measured and that I mentioned above). Certainly one cannot conclude that job pressures … are uniform in their psychological import’.And in a footnote these authors comment: ‘Since all these job pressures might be regarded as stressful, these findings cast doubt on any interpretation that the effects of stress are necessarily deleterious.’ Like the quality of leisure, the quality of work is the clue to the quality of life and to the contribution of both leisure and work activities to happiness and human development. This is because the culture of work is purposive, constrained by cognitive standards, characterized by cooperative and goal-oriented relations; work is inclusive and achievement oriented. The culture of leisure is often unbuttoned; it is often exclusive and prestige-oriented (country clubs, dress occasions where dress is a stigma).As we have seen leisure is likely to be intellec- tually unstimulating, unconstrained by truth criteria, and marked by what Martha Wolfenstein once called ‘the fun morality’.14 In work, happiness is contingent on doing a task well; in leisure happiness may be quite free of contingency. Some philosophers mourn the loss of the value of being; I mourn the loss of the value of doing. But of course, where leisure challenges are similar to work challenges, the choice between work and leisure is a matter of indifference, but that is rare. And as we have seen, if society makes work challenging and reward- ing, leisure choices will also reflect these qualities. How have we chosen to use increased time made available by increased productivity? Taking a longer term view, Nordhaus and Tobin 15 find that since before the Great Depression American society has taken its productivity bonus in both: in one estimate about one half in leisure and about one half in higher standard of living. That is, Americans have reduced their work time at the same time as increasing

Demos 41 Demos 5/1995 their consumption. In contrast, Juliet Schor finds that in the later postwar period from 1969 to 1987 Americans have taken their rewards wholly in commodities. More than that, they have actually reduced their leisure in order to purchase more commodities than are made available by increased productivity, what she calls the ‘earn-and-spend cycle’,of which she is justly critical. Once we have discarded the economists’ formula and have begun to understand that beyond a certain level of affluence, increasing individuals’ incomes and stores of commodities offers neither greater life satisfaction nor human development, we are in a position to judge between the advantages of work and those of leisure. My preference for devoting time and resources to improving the character of work instead of increasing leisure time has nothing to do with the Protestant Ethic (how could it with hedonic criteria as part of the test?), but is based on the probable uses of increased leisure and the potentialities of work settings compared to leisure settings. As is evident from the economistic fallacy, there is little hedonic or developmental gain in increasing time devoted to more consumption.

42 Demos Notes

1. Lane R E, The Market Experience, 8. Csikszentmihalyi M and Wong New York: Cambridge University M-M-H,‘The Situational and Press (1991), p. 602. Personal Correlates of Happiness: A 2. Andrews F M and Withey S B, Social Cross-National Comparison’,in Indicators of Well-Being: Americans’ Strack F,Argyle M and Schwarz N Perceptions of life Quality, pp. 124, (eds), Subjective Well-Being: An 128. Interdisciplinary Perspective, 3. Juster F T,‘Preferences for Work and p. 193–212. Leisure’,in Juster F T and 9. Andrews F M and Withey S B, Stafford F P (eds), Time, Goods, and ‘Developing Measures of Perceived Well-Being,Ann Arbor,MI: Life Satisfaction: Results from Institution for Social Research Several National Surveys’, Journal of (1985). Social Indicator Research, 1: 1–26 4. Noble G, Children in Front of the (1974). Small Screen, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage 10. Smith A, The Wealth of Nations,New (1975), p. 76. York: Random House/Modern 5. Argyle M and Martin M,‘The Library (1937 [1776]), p. 734. Psychological Causes of Happiness’, 11. Jencks C, Perman L and Rainwater in Strack F,Argyle M and Schwarz N L,‘What is a Good Job? A New (eds), Subjective Well-Being: An Measure of Labour-Market Success’, Interdisciplinary Perspective,Oxford: American Journal of Sociology 93: Pergamon (1991), pp. 77–100. 1322–1357. 6. Wilensky H,‘Mass Society and Mass 12. Yankelovich D and Immerwahr J, Culture: Interdependence or Putting the Work Ethic to Work, Independence?’, American New York: Public Agenda Sociologcal Review (1964), p. 190. Foundation (1983). 7. Robinson J P,‘Changes in Time Use: 13. Kohn M and Schooler C, Work and An Historical Overview’ p. 311, Personality: An Inquiry into the Ch 11 in Juster F T and Stafford F P Impact of Social Stratification, (eds), Time, Goods and Well-Being. Norwood, N J: Ablex (1983).

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14. Wolfenstein M,‘The Emergence The Measurement of Economic and of Fun Morality’,reprinted in Social Performance, Studies in Larrabee E and Meyersohn R (eds), Income and Wealth, vol 38, Mass Leisure,Glencoe,IL:Free New York: National Bureau of Press. Economic Research (1973). 15. Nordhaus W D and Tobin J,‘Is Growth Obsolete?’ In Moss M (ed),

44 Demos Finding time to live Ray Pahl

Why do people work so hard? Was it ever thus? It has been calculated that a male employee born in the mid nineteenth century spent roughly 30 per cent of his lifetime hours in paid work, whereas a man born in the mid twentieth century will spend only about 10 per cent.1 We now spend more time in education and training and we live longer, but still the relief from toil has not yet appeared. Many contemporary illnesses appear to be caused by hurry sickness, triggered by an exaggerated sense of urgency. An American study noted that computer related distress manifests itself in the temporal schizophrenia of those who move in and out of computer time, and become less tolerant of interruptions, less patient with those who cannot respond appropri- ately to the speed of programs, less capable of slow reflection.2 Another argument put forward to account for contemporary unease and work induced anxiety is that people are afraid: of unemployment, of a decline in their standard of living and of downward social mobility. The assumption that in some previous golden age people were not afraid is hard to justify for anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of the English Poor Laws. There must be many others apart from myself who were threatened that if they did not desist from some activity they would die in the work house (in my

Ray Pahl is Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex and author of a forthcoming book, After Success: Fin de Siecle Anxiety and Identity.

Demos 45 Demos 5/1995 case it was whistling at meal times). But perhaps most people’s memories are not that long: the past for them is the 1950s when they mis- takenly imagine that most middle class male earners had careers in organizations and working class men had gently rising wages due to a combination of collective solidarities and inflation. History will provide support for almost any perspective on the work ethic, and associated stress and anxieties. It is hard to discover how ordinary people felt about their everyday working lives in the past. One plausibly authentic account is provided by Stephen Duck, a ple- beian poet, writing in about 1720 who complained about the burdens of the agricultural worker:

Think what a painful life we daily lead. Each morning early rise, go late to bed; Nor, when asleep, are we secure from Pain; We then perform our labours o’er again; Our mimic fancy ever restless seems; And what we act awake, she acts in dreams. Hard Fate our Labour ev’n in Sleep don’t cease:

Alas poor Stephen! He was firmly put in his place as a whingeing man in remarkably contemporary style by his contemporary Mary Collier, who wrote a rejoinder heavily influenced by late seventeenth century feminist thought. Not only did women also have their hard manual labour but, in addition, they had to do the cooking, cleaning and childcare:

We all Things for your coming home prepare: You sup and go to Bed without Delay And rest yourself till the ensuing Day; While we, alas! but little Sleep can have Because our froward Children cry and rave.

46 Demos Finding time to live

Stephen Duck and Mary Collier were writing in pre-industrial England. They faced the burdens imposed by inclement weather, heavy soil, bad harvests and too many pregnancies. Yet there were also many feast days and holidays: it is unlikely that Stephen Duck’s account of his miseries was accurate for more than perhaps a third or half of the year. Even in the late nineteenth century the tradition of ‘Saint Monday’ was kept in much of the Midlands (Monday was a holiday to recover from the excess drinking of the weekend). One example, provided by the nailers of Stourbridge in Worcestershire in 1874, showed that they had Sunday free, Monday for seeking orders and iron, Thursday for resting or idling and Saturday a weighing in day. This left a three day working week, when admittedly the hours were long – maybe from 5 am to as late as 10 pm. The working week was flexible and there were other, longer interruptions such as the summer migrations to help with the harvest. In the mid 19th century half of the workers in Stourbridge were still engaged in a task-oriented economy with highly flexible hours. ‘Those who worked in the home alternated between long periods of sustained hard work and an extended weekend in which they could indulge, if they wished, in the traditional Black Country pastimes of pigeon-flying, dog-fighting and drinking’.3 At the end of the 1980s I interviewed a small group of young investment analysts, company lawyers and bankers in the city who had all been to the same Oxbridge College. Most started work at 7.30 or 8 am and stayed in their offices until 6 or 7 pm and sometimes later. They had no time to do ordinary domestic tasks, and spent much of thier quite considerable salaries on expensive meals in restaurants. Some had to rely on regular trips home to their parents at weekends to get their laundry done. Even if they had the energy for sex they told me that they could not afford to get married to someone like themselves and have children. Their hours of work made commuting impossible and a large house in London with one or two servants seemed too much for them to contemplate at the age of 28. The mood of the 1990s is different: manic workaholicism still exists to be sure, but so also does a much greater awareness of work-induced stress. The ingredients are now familiar – even if precise quantification

Demos 47 Demos 5/1995 is still open to debate: contracting out, down-sizing, delayering and other manifestations of rational management have brought insecurity to large sections of the middle mass. Married women’s increased labour market participation, particularly in part-time employment, has made it more difficult to maintain the stereotype of the male full-time earner supporting ‘his’ dependant household.As Rosalind Coward has persua- sively suggested, women are increasingly torn between the competitiveness of employment and the competitiveness of parenting, but they may be more adept than men both at articulating their dilemmas and at coping with the difficult balancing of their tasks.4 In America the shift from characterising the middle class as ‘the contented class’ to seeing it as an ‘anxious class’ has taken place swiftly and has caused substantial political turbulence. Books like Katherine Newman’s Falling from Grace: the Experience of Downward Mobility in the American Middle Class (1988) or Barbara Ehrenheich’s Fear of Falling (1990),5 have documented the situation of the new ‘career- challenged’ middle class.

Managerial downward mobility generates a floating, ambiguous, … condition that can be as permanent as that of the disabled (Newman 93–4).

A Mori poll conducted for The Sunday Times in the summer of 1994 confirmed ‘a deep unease’ in Britain – greatest amongst the middle-aged middle class (those between the ages of thirty-five and fifty- four). The survey – focused on managerial, professional administrative and clerical workers in employment – showed that 35 per cent were concerned that they would experience redundancy over the next twelve months. For a quarter of the families redundancy had been a recent experience. The recession of 1990–1992 seems to have done for the middle class what was done to the manual workers in Britain a decade earlier. The Sunday Times’ report concluded ‘the comfortable life is over, the middle classes are working longer hours, without extra financial reward, just to hold on to their job!’

48 Demos Finding time to live

There are, indeed, scattered reports in the middle 1990s that people are staying longer at the office out of fear: for people to leave work early might imply that they are dispensable. Of course the idea that managers pretend to work harder than they do is not new. I found evidence for that in my study of managers undertaken in the late 1960s and Scase and Goffee reported similar results in the late 1980s.6 The novelty of the present situation is that now there are more women managers, and secondly there may be more concern amongst men to share parenting. The work/family trade off is becoming more of a problem for both men and women. So, if the age of the career is over and the concept of a job for life has disappeared, what is the most plausible pattern for the future? One fashionable idea is that of the longitudinal job portfolio where the mobile journeymen craftsmen of the computer age move between different forms of employment and self-employment, gradually improving their credentials and employability. For some natural entrepreneurs this is an exciting and challenging prospect as they busily take on new projects to look good on their CVs and happily network their way to being able to live on the interest from their cultural capital. Those who find this alarming will just have to adapt, say the hard-nosed gurus from the Business Schools, and little is said about the plight of those with a portfolio of Mac-jobs with no potential for accumulating cultural capital. In doing the research for my book7 I interviewed a number of people holding very senior positions in British industry. One such man, aged 45, was earning a substantial salary as an organization man, but was disarmingly frank about how he saw his future:

‘You talked about the shift from employment to consultancy. I think I’d find that a very difficult and threatening shift. I’d come to the conclusion that I’m an organization man. I ought to be flipping in and out of organizations and self employment … and I’d find that quite difficult to do. I think a lot of people are like that; they like the security of

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employment and self-employment to them is a threat … I’m very happy working in project teams, multi-discipline, multi- level project teams. I think I’d be quite lonely working as an individual, as a self employed consultant … I think I’m more of a social person than that … there are very few genuinely entrepreneurial people …’

This man has an exceptionally broad understanding of human resource management, but finds it very hard to practise what he preaches. It is clear that we have run full circle. For just over a hundred years men and women have suffered from the demands of an industrial capitalism that has turned them from the task-oriented nailers of Stourbridge, who enjoyed the autonomy of organizing their time, to the successful, yet insecure organization man of the early 1990s. Can we recover the enthusiasm for a task-oriented approach to work which is the way men and women have always worked until the very recent present? Can we help people to create the elusive balance in their lives to provide continuity, a degree of security and a stable sense of identity? In order to do this it will be necessary to take a fresh look at work and the social relations in which it is embedded. There is much to learn from those who are able to structure their work lives when they have the freedom to do so. This is an area much neglected by those exploring the latest trends in organizational behaviour. One rare example is provided by William Ronco and Lisa Peattie in Making Work. Self-created/Jobs in Participating Organizations (Plenum Press 1983).As more people are encouraged or obliged to work from home it is important that they are prepared for what seems new – but which is a historically normal – style of work. People have to learn to make both internal and external boundaries for themselves: within the new pattern of flexible and autonomous work arrangements people must now learn to create internal boundaries. They have to create for themselves categories of different kinds of tasks and segments of the work. They must learn to devise personal priorities and organize preferences.

50 Demos Finding time to live

The external boundaries are also necessary to separate work from non- work activities. Doing all this will not be easy. For example, as a writer, when am I reading for pleasure and when am I preparing myself for future work? These new balances involve a more holistic understanding of ourselves and what we want out of life. Sadly, Government schemes focused on training and enterprise have a too narrow view of the problem. Recognising the real dilemmas of people in their households with conflicting pressures from partners, children, parents, may be even grandparents and the added complexity of previous partners and step children would involve a massive broadening out of the narrow perspective of the Department of Employment or the Department of Trade and Industry. The fact that managers are now more wary and resistant to the demands of greedy organizations has to be recognised. When one ‘reluctant manager’ remarked to Scase and Goffee that ‘I don’t live to work; I work to live’ he deserves to be taken seriously.Very significantly, the results of the recent British Social Attitudes Survey show that in 1993, 58 per cent of the 18–24 age group and 57 per cent of the 25–34 age group were not prepared to let their commitment to work interfere with their lives. Only 37 per cent of the 45–54 age group showed this sort of reluctance. I believe that an important ingredient of the new politics of the late 1990s is this new search for balance between all aspects of life. People are afraid of the rampant individualism of the 1980s and they now need space to develop their own distinctive forms of and identity. The emphasis is too often on training for jobs that are not there or on preparation for self-employment seen primarily as a matter of accounting skills. However, the real challenge is to prepare people to manage the flow of different forms of work, both paid and non-paid, as these forms change through their lives.

Demos 51 Notes

1. Karl Hinrichs et al. (eds) Working 5. Newman (New York: Free Press, Time in transition (Philadelphia: 1988), Ehrenheich (New York: Temple University Press, 1991) HarperCollins, 1990). p. 235 6. R.E. and Jan Pahl Managers and 2. Ibid., p. 237 their wives, (Penguin 1971), R. Scase 3. Eric Hopkins.‘Working conditions and R. Goffee, Reluctant Managers. in Victorian Stourbridge’ 7. Pahl, R., After Success (Polity Press, International Review of Social September 1995). History 19(3), 1974, pp. 401–425 4. Rosalind Coward, Our treacherous hearts (London: Faber 1992).

52 Demos The end of work as we know it Jeremy Rifkin

The Information Age has arrived. Manufacturing and much of the service sector are undergoing a transformation as profound as the one experienced by the agricultural sector at the beginning of the century when machines boosted production, displacing millions of farmers.We are in the early stages of a long-term shift from ‘mass labour’ to highly skilled ‘elite labour’,accompanied by increasing automation in the production of goods and the delivery of services. Sophisticated computers, robotics, telecommunications and other cutting edge technologies are replacing human beings in virtually every sector and industry. Earlier industrial technologies replaced the physical power of human labour, substituting machines for body and brawn. The new computer-based technologies, however, promise a replacement of the human mind itself, substituting thinking machines for human beings across the entire gamut of economic activity. The implications are far- reaching. To begin with, more than 75 per cent of the labour force in most industrial nations engage in work that is little more than simple repetitive tasks.Automated machinery, robots, and increasingly sophisticated computers can perform many, if not most, of these jobs. In the

Jeremy Rifkin is President of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C., and author of Time Wars, and The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labour Force and the Dawn of the Post Market Era.

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United States alone, this means that in the years ahead more than 90 million jobs in a labour force of 124 million are potentially vulnera- ble to replacement by machines. With current surveys showing that less than 5 per cent of companies around the world have even begun to make the transition to the new machine culture, massive unemployment of a kind never before experienced seems all but inevitable in the coming decades. Reflecting on the significance of the transition taking place, the distinguished Nobel laureate economist Wassily Leontief has warned that with the introduction of increasingly sophisticated computers,‘the role of humans as the most important factor of production is bound to diminish in the same way that the role of horses in agricultural production was first diminished and then eliminated by the introduction of tractors.’ Nowhere is the effect of the computer revolution and the re- engineering of the work-place more pronounced than in manufacturing. The quickening pace of automation is moving the global economy towards the workerless factory. Between 1981 and 1991, more than 1.8 million manufacturing jobs disappeared in the US In Germany, manufacturers have been shedding workers even faster, eliminating more than 500,000 jobs in a single twelve-month period between early 1992 and 1993. The decline in manufacturing jobs is part of a long- term trend that has seen the increasing replacement of human beings by machines at the workplace. In the 1950s, 33 per cent of all US workers were employed in manufacturing. By the 1960s, the number of manufacturing jobs had dropped to 30 per cent, and by the 1980s to 20 per cent. Management consultant Peter Drucker estimates that employment in manufacturing is going to continue dropping to less than 12 per cent of the US workforce in the next decade. For most of the 1980s it was fashionable to blame the loss of manufacturing jobs in the US on foreign competition and cheap labour markets abroad. Recently, however, economists have revised their views in light of new in-depth studies in the US manufacturing sector. Economists Paul R. Krugman of MIT and Robert L. Lawrence of Harvard University suggest, on the basis of extensive data, that ‘the concern, widely voiced during the 1950s and 1960s, that industrial

54 Demos The end of work as we know it workers would lose their jobs because of automation, is closer to the truth than the current preoccupation with a presumed loss of manufacturing jobs because of foreign competition.’ Although the number of blue collar workers continues to decline, manufacturing productivity is soaring. In the US, annual productivity growth, which was at slightly over 1 per cent per year in the early 1980s, has climbed to over 3 per cent in the wake of the new advances in computer automation and the restructuring of the workplace. Many economists and elected officials continue to hope that the service sector and white collar work will be able to absorb the millions of unemployed factory workers in search of jobs. Their hopes are likely to be dashed. Automation and re-engineering are already replacing human labour across a wide swathe of service related fields. The new ‘thinking machines’are capable of performing many of the mental tasks now performed by human beings, and at greater speeds. Andersen Consulting Company, one of the world’s largest corporate restructuring firms, estimates that in just one US service industry – commercial banking and thrift institutions – re-engineering will mean a loss of 30 to 40 per cent of the jobs in the next seven years. A growing number of companies are deconstructing their organizational hierarchies and eliminating more and more middle management by compressing several jobs into a single process. They are then using the computer to perform the coordination functions previously carried out by people who often worked in separate departments and locations within the company. Harvard’s Gary Loveman points out that while better jobs are being created for a fortunate few at the top levels of management, the men and women in ‘garden variety middle management jobs’ are ‘getting crucified’ by corporate re-engineering and the introduction of sophisticated new information and communications technologies. Franklin Mint has cut its management layers from six to four and doubled sales. Eastman Kodak has reduced its management levels from thirteen to four. Routine office jobs are also being replaced by intelligent machines. The number of secretaries has been steadily declining in the US as personal computers, electronic mail and fax machines replace typewriters,

Demos 55 Demos 5/1995

paper files, and routine correspondence. Between 1983 and 1993, the country’s secretarial pool shrank by nearly 8 per cent to about 3.6 million. While the office is being revolutionized by intelligent machines, so too is every other area of the service economy. Retail establishments are quickly re-engineering their operations, wherever possible, introducing intelligent machines to improve productivity and reduce labour costs. Typical of the new trend is Sears Roebuck, one of the giants in the US retail sector. Sears eliminated a staggering 50,000 jobs from its merchandising division in 1993, reducing employment by 14 per cent.‘We are asking a fundamental question,’ says Anthony Rucci, Sear’s executive Vice President of Merchandising,‘Are our workers adding value?’ Intelligent machines are also invading the professional disciplines and education, long considered immune to the pressures of mechanization. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, business consultants, scientists, architects, and others regularly use specially designed information technologies to assist them in their professional endeavours.

56 Demos The end of work as we know it

Will the Information Age Create Enough New Jobs? For more than a century, the conventional economic wisdom has been that new technologies boost productivity, lower the costs of production, and increase the supply of cheap goods which, in turn, stimulates purchasing power, expands markets, and generates more jobs. This trickle-down-technology thesis has provided the operating rationale for economic policy in every industrial nation in the world. Although it is true that many of the products and services of the information Age are making older products and services obsolete, they require far fewer workers to produce and operate. Take, for example, the highly touted information superhighway – a form of two-way communications that can bring a range of products and services directly to the consumer, bypassing traditional commercial channels of transportation and distribution. The new data superhighway will employ an increasing number of computer scientists, engineers, pro- ducers, writers, and entertainers to programme, monitor, and run the networks. Nonetheless, their numbers will pale in comparison to the millions of employees in the wholesale and retail sectors whose jobs will be replaced by the new medium. In the past, when a technology revolution threatened the wholesale loss of jobs in an economic sector, a new sector emerged to absorb the surplus labour. Earlier in the century, the fledgling manufacturing sector was able to absorb many of the millions of farmhands and farm owners who were displaced by the rapid mechanization of agriculture. Between the mid-1950s and the early 1980s, the fast-growing service sector was able to re-employ many of the blue collar workers displaced by automation. Today, however, as all these sectors fall victim to rapid restructuring and automation, no ‘significant’ new sector has developed to absorb the millions who are being displaced. The only new sector on the horizon is the knowledge sector, an elite group of industries and professional disciplines responsible for ushering in the new high-tech automated economy of the future. The new professionals – the so- called symbolic analysts or knowledge workers – come from the fields of science, engineering, management, consultancy, teaching, marketing, media, and entertainment. While their numbers will continue to

Demos 57 Demos 5/1995 grow, they will remain small compared to the number of workers displaced by the new generation of ‘thinking machines.’

Sharing the Productivity Gains of the Information Age The new high technology revolution could mean fewer hours of work and greater benefits for millions. For the first time in modern history, large numbers of human beings could be liberated from long hours of labour in the formal marketplace. The same technological forces could, however, as easily lead to growing unemployment, increased social unrest, and a global depression. Whether a hopeful or bleak future awaits us depends, to a great extent, on how the productivity gains of the Information Age are distributed. A fair and equitable distribution of the productivity gains would require a shortening of the work week and a concerted effort by governments to provide alternative employment in the Third Sector, or non-profit economy, for those workers whose labour is no longer needed in the marketplace. If, however, the dramatic productivity gains of the hightech revolution are not shared, but rather used primarily to enhance corporate profit, to the exclusive benefit of stockholders, top corporate managers and the emerging elite of high-tech knowledge workers, the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots of the world will lead to social and political upheaval on a global scale.

Towards a Thirty Hour Workweek In the past, the productivity gains brought on by new technologies have been met with a steady reduction in the length of the workweek. Now, a growing number of observers are suggesting that we reduce work hours once again to as low as thirty hours per week over the next decade to bring labour requirements in line with the new productive capacity of capital. Some companies have already begun to adopt a thirty hour workweek. At Hewlett Packard’s Grenoble plant in France, management

58 Demos The end of work as we know it instituted a four day work week, but kept the plant running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Employees are paid the same wages as they received when they were working a 37.5 hour week, despite the fact that they are working, on the average, nearly six hours less a week. The extra compensation is viewed by management as a trade off for the worker’s willingness to operate under a flexible hours arrangement. Production has tripled at the Grenoble facility because the company is able to keep its plant in continual operation seven days a week rather than having it remain idle for two days. Still, in the United States, the argument persists that fewer hours at existing pay could put companies at a competitive disadvantage globally. One way to address the concern is the proposed solution being advocated in France. French business and labour leaders and politicians from several parties have embraced the idea of the government taking over the employer’s burden of paying for workers compensation, in return for an agreement by companies to shorten the work week. French policy-makers calculate that the hiring of additional workers will significantly reduce welfare and other relief payments, cancelling out any additional costs the government might have to assume by absorbing the payroll tax for unemployment compensation. Companies might also be extended generous tax credits for shifting to a shorter workweek and hiring additional workers. The size of the tax credit could be determined by the number of workers hired and the total amount of the increased payroll. The loss of revenue upfront, some argue, would likely be made up for later by the taxable revenue generated from more workers bringing home a paycheck. The Clinton administration has already floated the idea of providing tax credits to companies that hire welfare recipients, setting a precedent for a broader initiative that would cover the bulk of the workforce. Finally, the government might consider granting additional tax credits to those companies willing to also include a profit-sharing plan along with a reduction of the workweek to allow workers to participate even more fully in the productivity gains. Every nation should consider setting a goal of reaching a thirty hour work week by the year 2005. The thirty hour work week is likely to

Demos 59 Demos 5/1995 enjoy widespread support among working Americans harried by the stress of long work schedules. While many Americans have lost their jobs or are working only part-time as temps, those still holding on to a full-time job are being forced to work even longer hours. Many companies prefer to employ a smaller workforce at longer hours rather than a larger one at shorter hours to save the costs of providing additional benefits, including health care and pensions. Even with the payment of time and a half for over time, companies still pay out less than they would if they had to pay for benefit packages for a larger workforce. A growing number of Americans say they would readily trade some income gains for increased leisure in order to attend to family responsibilities and personal needs.According to a 1993 survey conducted by the Families and Work Institute, employees said they are ‘less willing to make sacrifices for work’ and ‘want to devote more time and energy to their personal lives.’ Balancing work and leisure has become a serious parenting issue. With a majority of women now in the work force, children are becoming increasingly unattended in the home. In the US, upwards of 7 million children are home alone during parts of the day. Some surveys have found that as many as one-third of the nation’s youngsters are caring for themselves. The decline in parental supervision of children has created an ‘abandonment’ syndrome. Psychologists, educators and a growing number of parents worry about the dramatic increase in childhood depression, delinquency, violent crime, alcohol and drug abuse, and teen suicide brought on, in part, by the absence of parental supervision in the home. A six-hour work day would mean that most parents would leave for work when their children left for school each morning and arrive home in the afternoon when their children came home. Labour unions, civil rights organizations, women’s groups, parenting organizations, social justice organizations, religious and fraternal organizations, and neighbourhood civic and service associations – to name just a few – all share a vested interest in shortening the workweek. Working together, these powerful constituencies could mount an effective grassroots campaign for the steady reduction of work hours in American society.

60 Demos The end of work as we know it

Creating New Jobs in the Third Sector Up to now, the marketplace and government have been looked to, almost exclusively, for solutions to the growing economic crisis. In the current debate over corporate downsizing, mass layoffs, and the emerging two-tier society, few pundits have considered the potential role of the Third Sector in restoring the work life of every country. The Third Sector is playing an increasingly important social role in nations around the world. People are creating new institutions at both the local and national levels to provide for needs that are not being met by either the marketplace or public sector. Jim Joseph, President of The Council on Foundations, in the United States, notes that in virtually every country ‘People are reserving for themselves an intermediary space between business and government where private energy can be … deployed for public good.’The Third Sector has grown dramatically in recent years and is quickly becoming an effective force in the lives of hundreds of millions of persons in scores of countries. Today, with the formal economy less able to provide permanent jobs for the millions of people in search of employment and with the government retreating from its traditional role of employer of last resort, the Third Sector becomes our last best hope for absorbing the millions of displaced workers cast off by corporate and government re-engineering. The Third Sector cuts a wide swathe through society. Non-profit activities run the gamut from social services to health care, education and research, the arts, religion, and advocacy. In the United States there are currently more than 1,400,000 non-profit organizations, with total combined assets of more than $500 billion. A study conducted by Yale economist Gabriel Rudney in the 1980s estimated that the expenditures of America’s voluntary organizations exceeded the gross national product of all but seven nations in the world. The non-profit sector already contributes more than 6 per cent of the GNP and is responsible for 10.5 per cent of the total national employment. More people are employed in Third Sector organizations than work in the construction, electronics, transportation, or textile and apparel industries. Britain’s experience is closest to that of the United States: it has thousands of non-profit organizations, and in recent years has engaged in

Demos 61 Demos 5/1995 a similar political debate over the role of the Third Sector. There are currently more than 350,000 non-profit organizations in the United Kingdom, with a total income in excess of £17 billion, or 4 per cent of the gross national product. In France,the Third Sector is just now beginning to emerge as a social force. In one recent year, more than 43,000 non-profit organizations were created. The social economy now accounts for more than 6 per cent of total employment in France, or as many jobs as are provided by the entire consumer-goods industry. The Third Sector in Germany is growing at a faster rate than either the private or public sector. Between 1970 and 1987, the non-profit sector grew by more that 5 per cent. In the late 1980s there were more than 300,000 non- profit organizations operating in Germany. By the end of the decade- just prior to unification – the non-profit sector contributed nearly 2 per cent of the country’s GNP and employed more people than the agricultural sector and nearly half as many jobs as the banking and insurance industries. In Japan, the Third Sector has grown dramatically in recent years, in part to address the many new social issues facing the country. The rapid restoration and reconstruction of Japan in the postwar period left Japanese society with a new set of problems, ranging from environmental pollution to care for the young and the elderly. The weakening of the traditional family, long regarded as the primary institutional mechanism for guaranteeing personal welfare, created a vacuum at the neighbourhood and community level that has come to be filled Third- Sector organizations. Today, thousands of non-profit organizations function throughout Japanese society attending to the cultural, social, and economic needs of millions of people. The industrialized nations ought to consider making a direct investment in expanded job creation in the non-profit sector, as an alternative to welfare for the increasing number of jobless who find themselves locked out of the new high-tech global marketplace. The government could provide an income voucher, for those permanently unemployed workers willing to be retrained and placed in community building jobs in the Third Sector. The government could also award

62 Demos The end of work as we know it grants to non-profit organizations to help them recruit and train the poor for jobs in their organizations. An income voucher would allow millions of unemployed people, working through thousands of neighbourhood organizations, the opportunity to help themselves. Providing a social wage in return for community-service work would also benefit both business and government. Reduced unemployment means more people could afford to buy goods and services, which would spur more businesses to open up in poor neighbourhoods, creating additional jobs. Greater employment would also generate more taxes for the government. A rise in employment would also cut the crime rate and lower the cost of maintaining law and order.

Financing a Social Income Paying for a social income and for re-education and training programs to prepare men and women for a career of community service would require significant government funds. Some of the money could come from savings brought about by gradually replacing many of the current welfare programs with direct income payments to persons performing community-service work. Government funds could also be freed up by discontinuing costly subsidies to corporations that have outgrown their domestic commitments and now operate in countries around the world. In the US the federal government provided transna- tional corporations with tens of billions of dollars in subsidies in 1993 in the form of direct payments and tax breaks. Additional monies could be raised by cutting unnecessary defense programs. Despite the fact that the Cold War is over, many governments continue to maintain a bloated defense budget. While the US government has scaled down defense appropriations in recent years, military expenditures are expected to run at about 89 per cent of Cold War spending between 1994 and 1998. In a 1992 report, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that defense spending could be cut by a rate of 7 per cent a year over a five-year period without compromising the nation’s military preparedness or undermining national security.

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Perhaps the most equitable and far-reaching approach to raising the needed funds would be to enact a special value-added tax of between five and seven per cent on all high-tech goods and services, which could generate billions of dollars of additional revenue – more than what would be required to finance a social wage for those willing to work in the Third Sector. Powerful vested interests are likely to resist the idea of providing a social wage in return for community service. Yet, the alternative of leaving the problem of long-term technological unemployment unattended could lead to widespread social unrest, increased violence, and the further disintegration of society. In the debate over how best to divide up the benefits of productivity advances brought on by the new high-tech global economy, we must ultimately grapple with an elementary question of economic justice. Put simply, does every member of society – even the poorest among us – have a right to participate in and benefit from the productivity gains of the information and communication technology revolutions? If the answer is yes, then some form of compensation will have to be made to the increasing number of unemployed whose labour will be needed less, or not at all, in the new high-tech automated world of the 21st century. By shortening the workweek to thirty hours and providing an income voucher for permanently unemployed people in return for retraining and service in the Third Sector, we can begin to address some of the many structural issues facing a society in transition to a high-tech, automated future.

64 Demos The all-consuming work ethic Gary Cross

Time is forever scarce in modern life despite terrific gains in productivity this century. Indeed growth and time constraints are linked. After 1914, war factories and assembly lines created a new productivity that challenged the old view that workers were forever enslaved to long hours of labour. Many, including J.M. Keynes in 1931, assumed that mass- production inevitably meant the satiation of needs, and the gradual dis- engagement from work. Keynes looked forward to ‘three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week’, the fruit of ‘science and compound interest’.1 In the interwar years advocates of reduced worktime claimed a share of productivity in successful movements for an eight-hour day (1919) and later paid holidays. Some went on to propose a progressive reduction of worktime. With this, they envisioned a new society built around personal autonomy and renewed social solidarities away from work. The depression of the 1930s stimulated a fresh set of political demands. These included the thirty-hour week in the United States and the forty- hour week in Western Europe. The goal was to increase employment and relieve overwork, thus redistributing both work and leisure. Between the world wars, intellectuals widely believed in a coming age of mass leisure. In Western Europe especially, political and

Gary Cross is Professor of History at The Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Time and Money: The Making of Consumer Culture (Routledge, 1993).

Demos 65 Demos 5/1995 religious organisations competed to influence the people’s new free time. A movement for ‘democratic leisure’ animated idealists on both sides of the Atlantic. They favoured a voluntary and decentralised system of holiday camps, organised excursions, and sports clubs to forge a social alliance against both politicised and commercialised leisure. They sponsored legislation for holidays with pay. Why then did we end up with a global industrial economy that con- stantly produces more work and goods but little time? Part of the answer lies in intellectual history. Both economists and humanists shied away from the implications of the progressive reduction of worktime. In the interwar period, economists realised that unlimited growth did not have to mean satiation of needs and thus a reduced incentive to work. Rather increased wages could induce the wage earner to accept a steady and perhaps even greater duration of work. This was because the expansion of psychological needs was unlimited, unlike physiological needs. During the depression, economists saw growth in output as the progressive alternative to the ‘stagnation’ of reduced workdays and the demoralisation of the idle. Many humanists also questioned whether time gained from shorter working hours would produce individual autonomy and community. This was because the same industrial order that made free time possible also created a culture of material accumulation and emulation, that contradicted classical meanings of autonomy and community. Ultimately this pessimism rested on the intellectuals’ inability to shape the development of mass culture. Their anxiety toward mass leisure was almost as common on the left as on the right. To these humanists, the economists’ promise of consumer choice was insufficient without meaningful work or cultural training. And most were pessimistic that either of these was possible in a era of mass consumer sovereignty. The movement for democratic leisure in the 1930s was an attempt to provide that cultural training. But it lacked the resources of its commercial and totalitarian rivals. And it was impeded by the contradic- tions between the high culture of its leaders and the popular taste of the working classes. In the vacuum a dominant consumer culture emerged that progressively absorbed people’s time.

66 Demos The all-consuming work ethic

Economic and political circumstances in the early 20th century also shaped the bias against liberating time. Business normally resisted both reduction of worktime and higher wages. But it had special reasons for rejecting free time. When employers lost flexible access to their workers’ time, they felt deprived of a ‘right’ to open-ended production. Reduced hours threatened to limit output, growth, and profit. Only a highly unusual confluence of international political reformism and labour power made possible a general reduction of worktime in 1919.Workers often preferred high wages to more free time. Periods of inflation, global competition, and job insecurity increased work discipline and encouraged a willingness to work overtime. The depression and the post-1945 effort to catch up with deferred consumption further biased worker towards money. Short hour movements in the depression of the 1930s were widespread and powerful.Yet their objectives were not only to spread work but to increase spending. Reduced worktime was intended to encourage mass consumption in higher wages and weekend leisure. American workers accepted the idea of ‘full time’ work-week of 40 hours as an alternative to the more radical idea of a 6-hour day/30-hour week. International competition (and the destruction of the German labour movement) helped to destroy the French experiment with the 40-hour week in the late 1930s. These events signalled the end of the ideology of the progressive reduction of worktime and the emergence of a political consensus around a democracy of goods. This leads us to a final set of explanations of why the 20th century has not produced an age of leisure. Increased consumption has been a more powerful compensation for bureaucratic and mechanised work than has increased free time. Inevitably this consumerist bias places a break on further reductions in worktime. This Henry Ford recognised in 1914 when he nearly doubled the basic wage of his assembly line workers. The 1930s depression especially reinforced the values of ‘work and spend’.In part, this was because the impact of economic hardship was very unevenly distributed. The jobless or underemployed were humiliated by their inability to participate in the luxury of others. They were also frustrated by often vain efforts to continue consumption

Demos 67 Demos 5/1995 routines around which so much of family life was built. Thus the depression heightened the meaning of money and work. It also devalued free time. For many of the unemployed, it became not leisure but a frustrating idleness. This experience reinforced the ideology of wage work as the organising principle of at least the male personality. Despite a slight trend toward increased women’s wage work, the depression reaffirmed gender roles of male providing and female domestic consumption. Job insecurity undermined paternal authority and ‘full employment’ restored it. Although some women may have increased their status as wage- earning wives, this did not compensate for the economic and emotional traumas caused by jobless husbands. For some women, at least, the depression meant the double duty of house and wage work. They or

68 Demos The all-consuming work ethic their daughters often happily abandoned this situation for ‘traditional’ roles after 1945. This bias toward goods and work reflected the social values embedded in consumer culture. The home (and the car) surely best exemplify the twin needs for social identity and individualistic distinction that George Simmel observed were key to understanding modern society. But domestic consumption went beyond social emulation. It made private time meaningful and was the reward for submission to the constraints of waged work-time.Another new arena of consumption – holiday spending – served similar social needs. Thus, time was freed in distinctly limited ‘moments’ of consumption opportunities during home-bound weekends and vacations away. Many challenges to consumer culture have appeared since the 1960s. These include volunteerism around cultural and social missions, green movements, and even renewed demands for shorter and flexible working hours. The victories of ‘full employment’over work sharing and lim- itless mass consumption over non-commercial leisure may not be final. They were the products of a unique period that culminated in the generation after 1945: the confluence of a mass-production economy and a mass-consumer social psychology. More recent technological changes may have permanently undermined full-time employment. There may even be a limit to consumer demand in advanced industrial countries. Recent trends toward the dual-income household may have finally undermined those separate gender roles that perpetuated a segmented and fixed balance of work and leisure. The physical and emotional stress within double-income families may create a new constituency for a real- location of time.The growing concern with overwork in the newly afflu- ent countries of the Pacific Rim suggest that there may emerge a favourable climate for a reduction of worktime that has not existed internationally since 1919, perhaps through what the Australian Donald Horne describes as a new ‘myth’ of a ‘full employment policy of the self.

Note 1. John M. Keynes, Essays in Persuasion (London, 1931), pp. 365–73.

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Time in our lives: facts and analysis on the 90s Bob Tyrrell

The way people spend their time speaks volumes about the nature of their lives, their priorities and their relationships. It is important to understand people’s beliefs, hopes and aspirations, but their actions often speak a lot louder than their words. Through our time use survey and our Planning for Social Change programme we have been tracking the changing patterns in time use of British adults (defined as people aged 16+) since 1985. This article reviews some of that research and speculates on some inferences we might draw from the results.

What ‘leisured society’? The first thing to say is that in recent years we have not witnessed progress towards the leisured society. For those in work, the hours occupied by work, travel to and from work and other essential activities (such as child care, personal hygiene, essential shopping and house-hold chores) have been increasing. Our research indicates that the available free time of full-time male workers declined by 4 per cent between 1985 and 1993. For full-time females the decline has been a little over 10 per cent.

Bob Tyrrell is Chief Executive of the Henley Centre for Forecasting.

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By international standards the British are veritable workaholics. European Commission data shows that British employees work on average a little over 42 hours per week, whilst the average German works under 41 hours and the average Belgian works only 39.5 hours. We do little better in holiday taking.A typical worker in Frankfurt will take 31 days per year (excluding public holidays), a Parisian 28 day whereas a London worker will take only 21 days. Unsurprisingly, attitudinal research from the Henley Centre’s Plan- ning for Social Change programme indicates very high levels of stress and feelings of time pressure. For example, between 1988 and 1994, those agreeing that ‘I never have enough time to get things done’ rose from 52 per cent to 57 per cent. Amongst full-time female workers, an astonishing 86 per cent agreed with this statement in 1994. Meanwhile, on the stress count, we found 59 per cent of the adult population agreeing with the statement ‘I suffer from stress nowadays’. Women agree with this statement between 10–20 per cent more than men of a similar age or working status. These feelings of ‘busyness’ are also being carried over into people’s leisure activity. Our research indicates that amongst the middle classes, time planning disciplines are almost as rigorous at weekends as they are during the week.We can now talk of people’s ‘productivity’ in terms of leisure as well as work time. A number of writers on leisure have noted this tendency with sur- prise and alarm. They argue that the essence of leisure is to escape these routines and disciplines. After all, one of the dictionary defini- tions of leisure is time ‘without hurry’.However what they miss is that the age when the man or woman of leisure had social esteem is long gone. The fact is work and the characteristics of working time have positive social value. From the time of the Greeks to the time of the 19th century, a ‘busy’ civil servant was one who lacked the capacity for worthwhile thought and activity. In the 60s there was an attempt to revive the leisure ethic and to create a set of social mores in which to be busy was to be distinctly ‘uncool’.That attempt now seems to be an abject failure. The filofax yuppie culture is alive and looks likely to survive well into the next millennium. Far from being ashamed to serve

72 Demos Time in our lives: facts and analysis on the 90s their children fast food at home or in McDonalds, today’s parents flaunt it. It is a mark of their worth. To be busy is to be needed, and staying at work all hours indicates how important we are – even if it means no time to give to family and friends. Maybe Fred Hirsch’s dire foreboding in his book The Social Limits to Growth is being borne out. Hirsch worried that ‘friendship’ might become a dying art. Friends were time-consuming and ‘risky’.In a harried age we couldn’t afford them. Was Hirsch right in his analysis that a time would come when we would seek to replace relationships with friends with a more efficient arrangement? In the pervasive use of the word ‘network’ I see a possible answer. People today seem to refer less often to their friends, and more and more often to their networks. The significance of this consists in the fact that ‘network’ carries much more explicit connotations of instru- mentality in and reciprocation from the relationship. Writers such as Charles Handy celebrate this as a positive development. Handy has written of the blurring of the distinction between work and non-work activity. He explains how he tells his children not to seek jobs but to look for customers. He anticipates an increase in the numbers of ‘portfolio persons’,individuals who without the prospect of lifetime employment in ICI or the Civil Service instead make a living by generating a portfolio of tasks in a life which involves constant and seamless movement between professional and personal spheres. I sense Handy may be right in the trends he anticipates. The ‘network society’ is becoming a metaphor for our times. He may also be right that it will be a positive and liberating experience. Individuals do seem to be developing one network for this purpose and another network for that. People are seeking relationships that are single stranded, unambiguous and purposeful.We want to be clear as to what we are in relationships for. The worry I have is that this may mean we are shun- ning those ambiguous relationships of friendship that might never yield a return for our investment of precious time which, our disciplines at work teach us, is money. If the ‘network’ is a metaphor for our times, network marketing is a literal expression of its manifestation in our lives. As many as 500,000

Demos 73 Demos 5/1995 people in Britain are involved in network marketing organisations such as Amway or Herbalife. Here the system works by turning your ‘friends’ into a network of customers or of distributors for the products of the organisation. Innocent enough perhaps. Nothing more than a way of allowing the family income to be supplemented in a time efficient and flexible way. But what happens to those friends when they don’t deliver?

What about leisure? In the light of what has just been said some of our research on the actual use of leisure time might at first appear to be contradictory. To talk with some degree of validity about British adults as a whole – regardless of their age, sex and class – we have to look at high participation activities and if we want to see which activities occupy a significant proportion of our available free time we need to look at those high participation activities that are also relatively high frequency and relatively high duration. In other words, we need to look at what everyone does on a regular basis and for a long time, every time they do it. On that basis, the picture that emerges is not of an active and busy population, but of one that is extraordinarily passive. The activities that the majority of the British do at least once a week (and when they do them they do them for significant chunks of time) are things like watching TV,reading and listening to tapes and CDs. Television watching is the most significant of these. 98 per cent of the population watch TV at least once a week. The average person spends over 20 hours watching TV. This means that TV accounts for nearly a third or our leisure time because the average available free time (after sleep, work, travel to work and essential activities are taken into account) is 65 hours per week. If we analyse TV ratings as well, one might be tempted to infer from all this that most people today have boring, meaningless lives which are made tolerable only by the vicarious relationships established with their ‘friends’ who star in soap operas or by the easy amusement offered by quiz shows.

74 Demos Time in our lives: facts and analysis on the 90s

So how does all of this square with my earlier suggestion that people feel a high degree of stress and pressure on their time, and increasingly approach their leisure with many of the disciplines traditionally associated with work? In part this is because it is impossible to make generalisations about time use and because the aggregate picture actually conceals as much as it reveals. Indeed, once we start to focus on lower participation activities we find some extraordinarily committed and active groups. For example, of the minority of the population who regularly participate in sport, who garden, cook for pleasure or devote time to certain hobbies we find that weekly participation is often as high as 15 hours. By the same token, there are huge variations in TV viewing hours around the 20 hours average, as there are variations in viewing of programme genres. In part also the answer may simply be ‘plus ca change’ Maybe people have always needed ‘vacant’ time and it just happens that a lot of this time is now spent in front of the TV and gets measured and studied by sociologists. The other way of squaring the findings is much more speculative, much more depressing and goes as follows. Large segments of the population are in a mildly pathological condition and very probably suffer extremely low levels of self-esteem. We are beginning more consciously to treat our friends as instruments, engaged by them only when a purpose is at hand and a return in prospect. At the same time we are content to ‘waste’ one-third of our free time in a state mid-way between sleep and wakefulness. Assessing these leisure trends and speculating whether they indicate positive or negative directions in society is only part of what we can do with the information we have. There are two other areas of speculation I would like to turn to in the final part of this essay.

The young aren’t what they used to be The first concerns young people. ‘Young’ needs to be defined differently for different purposes. However, in our 1995 Media Futures programme (a regular research and consultancy service offered by the Henley Centre), in addition to young adults we also looked specifically at children aged 10 to 15. This research indicates changes that arguably

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Table 1 The aliterate generation? Are young people abandoning the newspaper reading habit faster than their elders?

% reading daily national paper 85 1974 1993

50 All 15-24 25-34 35-44 45-44 55-64 65+ both reflect and will drive fundamental changes in cognition in the future. Table 1 looks at regular newspaper readership between 1974 and 1993. As you can see it has fallen for all groups, but most significantly amongst 15–34 year olds. Our time use survey suggests that since 1985 16–24 year olds are spending 25 per cent less time per week reading newspapers, compared to a 5 per cent reduction for the population as a whole. Couple this with the celebrated article by 16 year old public school girl Emma Forrest in the spectator in August 1993. In it she wrote:

… ‘to admit that I read a book for pleasure would be like admitting that I like to go to sleep with a wet fish under my pillow.’

76 Demos Time in our lives: facts and analysis on the 90s

Together this evidence on attitudes and on behaviour could well indicate the rejection by young people of a form of cognition that has been one of the dominant forms for centuries. Perhaps it signals the emergence amongst young people of what George Steiner calls ‘aliter- acy’ – the inability or disinclination to be engaged by the written word. The evidence from our Media Futures survey on the behaviour of the really young reinforces.In the special sample of 10–15 year olds we found that time spent in passive TV viewing was actually only 3 hours per day compared, for example, to 3.8 hours for 25–34 year olds and 5 hours for those aged over 60.When watching TV use of the remote control is ubiquitous. This device serves a number of purposes, including watching two or more TV programmes on different channels simultaneously.Amongst 16–24 year olds a fifth regularly use the remote for this purpose. Even more compelling evidence on the desire for interactivity amongst the young is found in the time spent on the home computer and on dedicated video games machines.Amongst our 10–15 year olds, average daily time spent is already 1.15 hours. For those aged 35 plus, such activity is negligible. We can legitimately speculate that new cognitive faculties are in the course of development. For example, perhaps in not so many years to come we will recognise ‘simultaneous comprehension’ to be a discrete faculty and even a distinct form of intelligence. Far from admonishing our children for doing their homework on their multi-media PCs whilst ‘engaging’ with (note, not viewing) an interactive television programme on another screen we will feel a glow of pride and satisfaction at their capacities. Equally,far from regretting the decline in their literary capacities we will soon recognise that literary intelligence is only one (as Howard Gardner has demonstrated in his book, Frames of mind) of a plurality of intelligence – and, arguably, one that is increasingly irrelevant in the world into which we are moving.

Men and women The final area of speculation concerns the meaning of certain features of male and female activity patterns. In some of the earlier statistics

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I gave there was a markedly greater degree of ‘harriedness’and of stress in evidence amongst women than amongst men.Why is this? The data indicates that women suffer a significant ‘leisure deficit’ compared to men in comparable groups. For example, both full-time working men and women have experienced a decline in free time in the last eight years. However, the decline has been much worse for women than it has been for men. (See Table 2.) Moreover, women were starting from a much worse free time position in the first place. The picture today is as illustrated in the Table 2 for the average full time male and full time female.Whilst there is an age effect – amongst younger generations there is greater sharing of household labour – even here the gap is significant. Although full-time working women work shorter hours than their male counterparts, this is more than compensated for by the other

Table 2 Disaggregated time use (hours per week, 1993)

Full-time Full-time males females

Paid Work 39.2 36.2 Travel to/from work 6.3 4.6 Total 45.5 40.8 Household chores essential shopping 1.6 3.1 essential cooking 4.0 7.7 cleaning the house 3.5 8.7 Other chores 3.6 5.8 Other less discretionary activities other shopping 1.6 2.5 child care 3.2 6.4 personal hygene 8.2 11.0 Total 13.0 19.9 Grand Total 71.2 86.0

Source: Henley Centre Time Use Survey.

78 Demos Time in our lives: facts and analysis on the 90s areas of non-discretionary activity where their levels of activity are much higher. Why is this? There are a number of reasons about which we can speculate, including the inevitable statistical reason.Working men are more likely to be in households with women who do not work, whilst working women are more likely to be in households where the other partner also works. Even so, the fact is that women of all categories (full-timers, part-timers, and housewives) tend to have significantly lower levels of free time than men. So what other reasons remain? We do not have any firm evidence on this from our work, nor am I aware of any other research that casts much light on the question. However, in principle two hypotheses suggest themselves. First, male intransigence and the myth of the ‘new man’.According to this hypothesis the key reason for this maldistribution of responsibility for essential domestic activities is male reluctance to get involved in this traditionally female sphere. For example, male competence in domestic management is often argued to be low and/or their threshold of tolerance of domestic chaos and lack of hygiene to be higher than that of the opposite sex. These so called male characteristics are advanced as possible reinforcing explanations for the persistence of the gap. Another hypothesis is that women are reluctant to allow men to participate fully in the domestic sphere. It is obvious that the two sets of explanations could be linked: women could be keeping men at bay because of their intrinsic incompetence. Alternatively, and more interestingly perhaps, they could be retaining control over a power base, even at great cost to themselves in terms of stress and worry. As a man feeling myself stray ing into dangerous territory, and in the absence of any objective research on this question. I will plead lack of competence to comment further on this subject.

Demos 79

Bad timing: attitudes to the new world of work Nick Winkfield

Much greater attention is now being paid to the stresses of working life in Britain. Last September, the European Commission reported that over a quarter of British men employed in industry and services worked more than 48 hours a week (the proposed European legal limit), and that this was more than three times the proportions in Germany, France, Italy, Benelux and Denmark. 22 per cent of British men worked more than 50 hours a week. From 1983 to 1992 the proportions of both men and women working over 48 hours a week rose, from 22 per cent to 28 per cent in the case of men, and from 6 per cent to 9 per cent in the case of women. The same report showed than 60 per cent of male, and 45 per cent of female employees in Britain ‘usually or sometimes’ work on Saturdays; again the highest in Europe. Britain has the highest proportion working nights. And so on. Since 1992, working hours have probably not decreased. The talk is all about longer hours, shorter lunch breaks and increasing levels of stress; particularly, but not exclusively, among middle and junior managers. It seems to be generally agreed that too much stress causes ineffi- ciency, or worse. Most people thrive under stress up to a point, but if the level is too high for too long, they may break down. Before that,

Nick Winkfield is Managing Director of SocioConsult, and a partner in MORI.

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Table 1 (a) Too much to do (all workers). (b) Too much to do (all managers).

50 50

40 40

30 30

20 20

10 10

(a) 0 (b) 0 70s 80/85 85/90 91/95 70s 80/85 85/90 91/95

Source: MORI Normative Database.

sickness and other forms of absenteeism rise; before that, there is a loss in efficiency and quality of work; and even before that there may be a decline in innovation and creativity.A survey by the Health and Safety Executive showed that up to 80 million days a year are lost through work-related stress. Organisations in both the private and the public sector are still down-sizing, or at best trying to increase output without additional staff. One of the recurring themes that we hear when we ask people what could be done to improve working life, is ‘hire more staff’. Data from over 300 MORI employees surveys show that over a quarter of all emplyees feel that they have too much to do,and many feel that the pressure on them is incompatible with the need for quality and customer service.(see Table 1).

82 Demos Bad timing: attitudes to the new world of work

Table 2 Fear of Redundancy

Q: How concerned are you about the possibility of being made redundant or becoming unemployed over the next twelve months?

Very concerned 21% 41%

Fairly concerned 20%

Not very concerned 26%

Not at all concerned 32%

Base: those in full or part-time work ϭ 1,231. Source: Socioconsult.

In the past two or three years there has been some evidence of decline in the frequency of complaints about lack of time, but they are still widespread, and the decrease may reflect people getting used to it rather than any decrease in the amount of work expected of them. So would it help to reduce working hours? The MORI research shows that while the workforce as a whole is less concerned about time pressure than it was, for managers the pressure is ever-increasing. As a result, managers are having to concentrate on the business ‘essen- tials’, and have less time for employee communications, and in particular for time consuming but ‘non-productive’ activities such as on-the-job training and the personal development of their subordinates. This effect is bound to influence employee motivation and performance. But there is more to work-related stress, and the challenge of making work more ‘life-friendly’, than long hours and time-pressure. A major factor is fear. A Socioconsult study in September 1994 showed that 41 per cent of the working population were very or fairly concerned about being made redundant or becoming unemployed over the next twelve months. (See Tables 2, 3 and 4).

Demos 83 Demo 5/1995

Table 3 Job Security

Q: Compared with this time last year does your job seem to you more or less secyre?

Much more secure 4% 24% More secure 10%

The same 50%

Less secure 17%

Much less secure 7%

Don't know/ no answer 12%

Base: those in full or part-time work ϭ 1,231. Source: Socioconsult.

24 per cent felt less secure in their employment than twelve months before. And 29 per cent were worried about whether they would receive the pension that their employers would in due course owe them. Another major factor is change at work. The same survey showed that about half the working population were coping with change well, but a significant minority were having real problems. (See Table 5). There is a possible side-effect of the current tendency toward open and flat structures.When asked to describe their current job, 65 per cent said that it involved dealing with people. But in describing their ideal job, this proportion fell to 39 per cent. Are people at work reacting against the breakdown of hierarchical relationships in the workplace,

84 Demos Bad timing: attitudes to the new world of work

Table 4 Pensions

Q: I am worried about my pension, I wonder whether I will get what they owe me. (How well does this correspond to what you think?

Exactly 16% 29%

Fairly well 13%

Slightly 13%

Not at all 16%

Don't know/ 43% No answer

Base: those in full or part-time work ϭ 1,231. Source: Socioconsult. feeling under pressure simply because of the number of people they now have to deal with? It is a plausible explanation, though not proven. sociocultural analysis has identified a tendency to want less structure, more autonomy and empowerment. An increasing tendency to network, ie to relate to larger numbers of people in everyday life, was also revealed. But these ‘leading-edge’ currents of change are still experienced only by minori- ties, and resisted by the more traditional elements in society. It is only to be expected that many, if not a majority, will be finding it difficult to keep pace. The people who thrive on change, uncertainty and lots of people-pressure will be the ones employers want to hire and motivate, because the latter see the future as one of contining change and uncertainty. For the star employees there will be increasing competition. But the less flexiable majority will still be needed by employers, and will still need employment.

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Table 5 Changes at work

Agree % Disagree %

I could cope with all the changes perfectly 57 26 well if I knew what was going on For me, changes at work mean new 45 38 opportunities Because of changes at work, I am under much 35 47 more stress nowadays changes at work are really making 19 63 my life a misery I would find it easier to cope with changes 16 66 at work if my home life were better The changes at work are having a bad 17 65 effect on my family and social life

Base:those in full or part-time work ϭ 1,231. Source: Socioconsult.

Women have traditionally been more flexible and better at net- working than men, and it is the men who are experiencing the greatest problems in coping with change at work. (See Table 6). Men account for more of the full-time workforce, and depend to a greater extent than women on work for their self-esteem. This is under threat not only at work but also from home and from social pressures.1 But within the work context, both women and men complain of ‘worthlessness’ – a word that has been used on many occasions during employee interviews. The explanation, and probably a part of the underlying cause, is in three parts:

I don’t know/understand what is happening I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing any more I don’t like my new role – this is not the job I joined to do

86 Demos Bad timing: attitudes to the new world of work

Table 6 Stress at Work. ‘Because of changes at work I am under much greater stress nowadays’ (How well does the statement fit your own personal feeling?)

Men % Women %

Completely 16 8 Fairly well 26 18 Not very well 21 22 Not at all well 22 30 Not stated 16 21

Source: Socioconsult.

This last is particularly marked in the public services, where employees believe they are now expected to place commercial consid- erations above ‘ethics’ and ‘service’,and deeply resent it. The key questions are: does it matter, and if so to whom? For society as a whole, so much unhappiness at work seems a high price to pay for the economic progress which we are promised it will produce – particularly since it is far from clear how the benefits of that progress will be distributed among the workforce and their dependents. However, the managers of companies under pressure to produce short-term profits, and of public service organisations under pressure to improve services while reducing costs, cannot be expected to behave in a manner which would sacrifice their shareholders’ or political masters’ interests. But meanwhile, managers may want to reflect upon the lack of confidence in management. (See Table 7). MORI research shows that more employees than not regard senior management (ie the people at the top) as unreliable and untrustworthy sources of information; and that this has deteriorated in recent years. This represents a crisis of confidence in our leadership, at work as well as in other aspects of life. It has always been a primary function of leadership to create a sense of certainty, continuity and confidence in

Demos 87 Demo 5/1995

Table 7 Confidence in Management

Agree % Disagree % Don’t know %

Business generally tries to strike a fair balance between profits and the public interest 24 67 9 In general, the people in charge know best 34 64 2

Base:all adult, 15 ϭ 2,143. Source: Socioconsult. the led. In this respect much of the British workforce has every reason to feel let down.And they are reacting in significant numbers by deprioritising work, and looking for satisfaction elsewhere. (See Table 8). Further evidence comes from working people’s attitudes towards flexibility. Table 9 shows the aspects of jobs where there is the widest gap between current reality and the ideal: an indicator of people’s priorities for change. Top of the list is pay, as always. Next are some positive motivators. But then we find a group of job-characteristics which are clearly not a part of the traditional motivational repertoire. They are mainly about the amount of time spent at work. At a first glance, the current trend towards flexible working hours, job sharing, and so on, is exactly what the employees want. But the reality may be different. The top managers, like their staff, are working harder than ever, and facing their own uncertainties. But they are much more in control of the situation than their subordinates, and it is control that makes the difference. Both sides want flexibility, but both want it on their own terms. So when respondents in a survey tell us that they like the new, flexible working arrangements,we need to take care:for many of them, greater flexibility in the way their time is allocated between work, family, leisure, etc, is likely to be good if they control it, bad if their managers control it.What assumptions, about their own freedom to choose, lie behind their responses? Work is still one of life’s main

88 Demos Bad timing: attitudes to the new world of work

Table 8 Deprioritisation of Work

“If work interferes with my personal life, I would put work in second place”

Strongly agree 14 55 Tend to agree 41 } Tend to disagree 35 41 Strongly disagree 6 } Don’t know 4 “Although I enjoy my work, my private life is more important to me”

Strongly agree 27 75 Tend to agree 48 } Tend to disagree 13 15 Strongly disagree 2 } Don’t know 10

“I try to keep an equal balance between my personal and working lives”

Strongly agree 13 80 Tend to agree 67 } Tend to disagree 13 14 Strongly disagree 1 } Don’t know 6

Base:all adult, 15 ϭ 2,143. Source: Socioconsult. satisfiers; but it is losing ground in favour of family, social life and outside interests. Underlying these statistics is a new current of change, which has recently been identified in several countries including Great Britain,

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Table 9 Current and ideal jobs

Ideal Current

Pays well 37% 67%

Great possibilities for 20% advancement 48%

Exciting 25% 52%

Chance to reduce 12% working without harming career 37%

Chance to take un paid 11% leave for a year and be able to rejoin 33%

Has quality 26% employees 46%

Full-time compressed 6% to 4 days a week 25%

Work partly at home, 9% partly at the organisation 27%

Chance to take 7% school hols upaind, f/t rest of year 24%

Base: those in full or part-time work ϭ 1,231. Source: Socioconsult. and is not primarily to do with work. In the past, people who expressed dissatisfaction with life in terms of time, said either that they had too much ofit,or too little.Now,some people are beginning to express their dissatisfaction, not with the amount of time they have to do what they want or have to do, but with the extent to which they can vary the pace of time in their lives. Sometimes they want to go fast, other times slowly. They want quality as well as quantity of time. (See Table 10). It is not yet clear whether this apparent sociocultural current will develop in its own right, or whether it is just a reaction to the pressures

90 Demos Bad timing: attitudes to the new world of work

Table 10 Attitudes to Time

Agree % Disagree % Don’t know %

It is important to me to be able 91 7 2 to live in my own time, without being under constant pressure I like to live in the fast lane to savour every moment of life 29 68 3

Base: those in full or part-time work = 1,231. Source: Socioconsult. of modern life, and will go away if these are reduced. It is relevant because it is not only the working people who express it; and if it is indeed a broader current, it will tend to reinforce the attitudes to work that we have seen to be evolving. So there is a significant minority, perhaps up to a quarter of the workforce, who are deprioritising work and looking for other outlets for their interests and abilities. The reasons are partly the long working hours, partly the increasing desire for life outside work, and partly the quality of the work experience: change, uncertainty, pressure of people, and sustained high levels of stress. Can employers be sure that it is the workers who matter least to the future of their organisations who are deprioritising work in this way? If so, a good manager will let them go, work hard to motivate the star performers that remain, and leave it to someone else to deal with the social consequences. Enter the case for legislation; but the employers, it would seem, need not change their approach. Or are employers ‘turning off’ some of the talent that they will need for the future of their organisations? Is the capacity to cope with uncertainty and stress really the sole criterion by which they should select the managers and skilled workers of the future? If other skills, such as leadership or innovative ability,will be required,how can employers be persuaded to take the longer and broader view, when it is evidently not in their own immediate or even medium-term interests to do so?

Demos 91 Demo 5/1995

92 Demos Bad timing: attitudes to the new world of work

Perhaps outside intervention is needed, if only to protect organisations from their own short-termism. It should be remembered that, according to this research, only a minority of the workforce are having real problems with current employment practices, and are either suffering from stress or deprioritising work as a result. But it is a significant minority. Ultimately, the question for employers is whether these employment practices are sustainable; and for concerned citizens, whether they are acceptable.

Note 1. Wilkinson, H., No Turning Back: generations and the genderquake. Demos, 1994.

Demos 93

The New American Dream? Juliet Schor

Americans have been, in my view, enmeshed in a cycle of ‘work and spend’ where employers prefer to work their employees hard because of a bias against short-term employees. This preference means that employers do not (and have not) offered their employees the opportunity to translate productivity growth into time off. Instead, companies offer higher incomes (at least in the good years). As consumers, workers then spend their higher incomes, and eventually become habitu- ated to it. They find themselves caught up in all sorts of consumption traps – keeping up with the Joneses, addictive consumerism, going into debt, spending their precious free time at the mall. In fact, the phrase ‘spending time’ itself illustrates the problem. Before we became such a materialistic society, people did not spend time; they passed it. In the last half-century, the trade-off for working long hours has been a dramatic increase in consumption. Since the late 1940s, the average American has more than doubled his or her spending. This is true for the lower, middle, and upper income classes. It is also true for the poor. Houses have doubled in size and square footage per person has doubled. 10 million Americans now have two or more homes. And these homes are full of appliances, gizmos and gadgets; dishwashers; air conditioning; stereos, colour televisions, and VCRs; cordless telephones;

Juliet Schor is Professor of Economics at Harvard University and author of The Overworked American; The Unexpected Decline of Leisure.

Demos 95 Demos 5/1995 lawnmowers and microwaves.When we look back over five decades it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we have become much, much richer in things.Yet we have become poorer in time. In my new work, I look more carefully at the spending side of the ‘work and spend cycle.’Do Americans wish they had more free time, as polls are increasingly finding? What barriers exist to reducing hours? How do they feel about their spending habits? Are they really ‘keeping up with the Jones’? In order to answer these questions, I am currently conducting a survey at a large telecommunications firm. The population I am looking at is not representative of Americans in general; it includes only employed Americans, at a higher level of income than the population as a whole. Rather, it is an attempt to look at the middle class employed Americans. To date, I have results from the first wave surveyed. Out of this group, 70 per cent rated their current pace of life as too fast. Depending on the particular option offered, between 20 and 50 per cent of the sample expressed a desire to reduce current working hours with associated reductions in pay (options included more vacation time, jobsharing, shorter weekly hours, and a four-day workweek). More strikingly perhaps, just under 70 per cent of all surveyed said they would like to reduce their hours, but couldn’t afford it. They identified debt as the major obstacle to doing so. A second barrier to shorter hours appeared in the survey: 57 per cent of those polled said that if they reduced their hours it would have a negative impact on their career success. These results are consistent with a July 1994 nationwide Gallup poll, in which one third of respondents said they would choose the option of fewer hours for themselves or their spouse, even at the price of a 20 per cent reduction in household income. These numbers are substantially higher than previous polls, in which very small numbers of Americans expressed willingness to trade current income for time. My survey also revealed substantial ‘anti-materialist’ or ‘anti- consumerist’ sentiment. 50 per cent of respondents said they often or always feel that they wished they lived a simpler life, in terms of how much they spend and the material possessions that they have.

96 Demos The new American dream

90 per cent believe strongly that we have become too materialistic as a nation, 82 per cent say young people are too materialistic, 66 per cent think Americans shop too much, and 64 per cent think they spend or buy too much. In a nationally representative poll conducted in February 1995 for the Merck Family Fund for which I served as a consultant, similar ‘anti-materialist’ sentiment emerged. Of course, it is difficult to translate these sentiments into action. 84 per cent of my sample felt they saved too little. The work and spend cycle is important here. As productivity growth is translated into higher incomes, the ‘norms of social decency’ rise. Expectations creep up with incomes. About half the sample said they feel pressure to keep up with the Joneses, and the most important source of that pressure (by a wide margin) comes from within themselves. Structural changes will be necessary to intervene in this cycle. These include worktime reductions; higher consumption taxes on private goods, especially status items; and greater incentives for non-status activities, such as saving, public goods, and leisure. 73 per cent of my sample thought they could spend less and live more simply, and the majority felt this would not affect (or would improve) their quality of life. (Only one-quarter said spending less would reduce the quality of their life). However, we need to recognize that much of our spending behaviour is habitual, almost unconscious. Almost 70 per cent of respondents said when they look back on their spending, they often wonder where the money goes. There are signs that the hectic pace of life, stress and excessive consumerism are becoming less appealing to a significant subset of Americans. In the Merck poll, we obtained the first estimate of ‘downshifting’, that is, voluntary changes in people’s lives which result in their making less money (eg changing to a lower-paying job, reducing work hours, or quitting work to stay at home). In the last five years, 28 per cent of Americans said they have made such a change, with the three options listed above comprising slightly more than 60 per cent of the downshifting population. People identified their motivations as wanting more balance, less stress, and more time in their lives, as well as more meaningful work or the opportunity to spend time with their children. Only 9.3 per cent said they were unhappy about the change.

Demos 97 Notes

Harvard economist Juliet B Schor prepared to pay the price in terms of less produced figures in her book. The income. Here she gives us an advance Overworked American; The Unexpected preview of some findings from the first Decline of Leisure’ to show that the phase of research for her next book average employee now works the which will focus on the ‘consumption’ equivalent of an extra month each year side of the work/spend cycle. She compared to 1969. questions whether we are beginning to see the first signs of a post material She now argues that a new kind of culture amidst the debris of the American consumer is emerging, who American dream. wants to work fewer hours and is

98 Demos The post-modern work ethic David Cannon

Last September the Student Industrial Society brought together a group of university students, employers and careers advisors for a one day colloquium at University College London. The aim was to explore the career expectations of today’s graduates. A novel aspect of this meeting was that every participant was given the chance to register their vote on key issues via electronic key pads provided by Option Technologies. When asked to identify features of ‘organisation of the future’ UK companies which are likely to survive and prosper long- term, the following three characteristics were cited:

Concern for health, quality of family life and a sense of balance for their employees Sincere commitment to accommodate the needs of women and to make them equal players at all levels Sophisticated computer software and hardware accessible and used by almost all employees

Although the 26 students at the meeting (18 from old universities, 8 from new universities with equal gender mix) ranked each of these

David Cannon is author of Generation X and The New Work Ethic, Working Paper One for the Demos 7 Million project and Director of Research for PRL Consulting.

Demos 99 Demos 5/1995 three factors highly, their perception of a future orientated company was one which paid particular attention to the health, quality of family life and the sense of balance of their employees. This feature was their number one choice. The 27 company representatives and the 6 careers advisors chose commitment to accommodate women as their top choice which came second for the students. Admittedly this is a small sample, not fully representative of the range of young people in the UK, however it is a signal consistent with findings from a larger programme of on-going research I have conducted on the attitudes of Generation X in the UK and North America. The message from the 1200 young people who have participated in that programme of research is clear ‘How you value my time will be used as evidence in determining how you value me.’

Changing Perceptions of Time Edward T. Hall argues in the landmark book Beyond Culture that understanding a culture’s concept of time is essential to gaining an understanding how a culture assigns meaning to events and how individuals assess whether their time is being valued. Hall gives the example of Americans and Northern Europeans being psychologically stressed in Latin American and Mediterranean countries because they often perceive members of these cultures as responding slowly and hence not valuing their time. What if young people’s perception of time is also different to that of older generations, who presently teach and employ them? Based on group and individual interviews with men and women between the ages of 18 and 30, three distinct trends in time perception were found. To date 66 focus groups have been conducted in North America and 81 in the United Kingdom. For the most part the study concentrates on University educated members of so-called ‘Generation X’.However, the sample does include young people who have not attended higher education and is balanced in terms of gender. Comparisons with past generations are based on present day reports from employers and teachers.

100 Demos The post-modern work ethic

Trend 1 – A closer Horizon The ‘future’ young people think about is short and becoming ever shorter. The future focus of most graduates interviewed was the next 2 to 3 years. It can be reasonably argued this has always been the case with young people. What appears to have changed is that despite having dreams for the future. Generation X does not put faith in the kind of long-term plans of their forbear. A plan assumes predictability, the sort of predictability which led young people’s parents, tutors and employers to mortgage their lives, selling present time for potential future gain. Professions such as accounting, medicine and law are still perceived as offering such future promise, but even these established success formulas are losing credi- bility. Outside the professions, the concept of paying long-term dues in the hopes of a future senior management position or partnership is held by a dwindling minority of young people. This loss of faith in the old psychological contract is not because Generation X think corporate employers are particularly deceptive, although some do. It is the result of a perception of most organisations as simply incapable of delivering future promises with any certainty, even if it is their inten- tion to do so. Barings is just one more name on a long list which con- vinces young people that mortgaging one’s life is a dangerous strategy.

Trend 2 – A Faster 24 hour Clock A shortened time horizon means a stronger focus on the present. Generation X is the first cohort to have grown up with high levels of invasive technology and media – television, VCRs, computers, telephones and fax communication. The result is two new views of time – one concerns when things ought to be done, the other the rate at which things ought to be done. Generation X lives in real-time. They see the day as having 24 hours in which they can eat, sleep, work and play when it suits them. In many ways life at university allows them latitude to do this. The big shock for young people comes when they arrive at the job and come face to face with the inflexibility of the work regime. They are surprised by

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employers who talk about working to results then assign ‘make-work’ and insist upon employees putting in ‘face-time’ at the office. The research showed young people’s number one complaint about their seniors on the job is that they waste time on needless politics and create situations which means doing the real work takes far too long.

102 Demos The post-modern work ethic

Computers, cellular phones and faxes are perceived by Generation X as means to work at different locations, at either 2 am or 2 pm. Willing to accept that their presence at work during certain ‘core hours’ is necessary, many young people in our study said they worked long hours at the office because ‘it looked good’ or because ‘everyone else did’,admitting much of this ‘face-time’ had more to do with positioning than productivity. As juniors in the world of employment young people typically comply. However, the deep cynicism about the world of work found to be growing over the 10 year period of the study is certain to have future ramifications. An equally important perception of time is speed where the rule of thumb is slow-frustration. In the 1960s a one minute television commercial in North America consisted of 8 to 12 images or camera shots.A recent soft drink commercial aimed at young people and aired on UK television consists of 22 images in a 30 second period-close to an image a second. Music videos and fast moving computer games are further examples of this accelerated rate of information presentation – short time bites that come at an ever faster pace. At work Generation X often sub-divide their working time into short segments concentrating on a project or part of a project for 10 to 20 minutes then switching over to work on something else. On the computer they may flip back and forth between different documents, taking short breaks for e-mail, a quick computer game or a visit with a colleague down the hall. Focusing long and hard on one aspect of a job was reported as frustrating by the young people in our sample. They told us that they get bored quickly if they cannot vary what they are working on. It is this need for fastclock stimulation which underpins Generation X’s crav- ing for variety. Conditioned by rapid technological stimulation and, in some cases, childhoods which offered a variety of amusements, many find formal education and employment painfully boring.

Trend 3-Blurred Lines between Work-time and Leisure-time Generation X does not hold the belief that leisure time is when one ‘rests up’ from work time. Almost all of the young people in our study

Demos 103 Demos 5/1995 were active in either sport, social life or a personal interest such as music, computers, shopping, films or travelling regardless of their socio-economic background. Dull, boring people who ‘need to get a life’ were typically characterized as individuals who lack multiple interests. The ideal is to have a varied life. This is what Generation X mean when they talk about a ‘balanced life’. They are not talking about a balance between work and rest – on the contrary, they want time off to work on other things. Even the so-called ‘Slackers’ prove to be energetic idlers. A recent article by Alexandra Geiser in Review – The journal of the International Business Forum (1994/5 Issue VII) entitled Japan’s changing work ethic describes how young Japanese workers are no longer willing to make the self-sacrifice on which much of the past performance of that economy has been based.Whether it is because Generation X is smarter than their predecessors or simply tempted by more available and immediate distractions is a debatable point – the message is clear, young people ‘want a life’ and employers who chose to ignore this strong desire do so at their peril.

The Question of Leadership Today’s leaders will be faced with a choice of fewer men and women, whether American, European or Japanese, willing to bear the sacrifices borne by their predecessors – the rewards for doing so having lost their guarantee. However, figuring out how to make work more stimulating and learning how to build an array of flexible systems that can reasonably accommodate a labour market with heterogenous demands will help enterprises to maintain a pool of ‘balanced’ solid citizens from which to draw their future leaders. Some grey haired directors view this call for accommodation as mollycoddling and argue that there will always be a supply of people willing to do whatever is necessary, ambitious people willing to make sacrifices. We agree, but in choosing to do so one runs the risk of putting an enterprise in the hands of bright young people who can easily lose perspective while working in windowless bunkers equipped with

104 Demos The post-modern work ethic micro-second technology that can make or break the most long established businesses overnight. Organisations who opt for this kind of leadership will find that there will always be a supply of Nick Leesons to do their work. Working to provide balance and perspective in the workplace is not only a humane issue, it is a strategic one as well.

Demos 105

Time in the global village Carol Samms

In our role acting as an antenna to the world marketplace, it is clear that fundamental social issues affect people deeply and the way in which they choose to live. Increasingly although some of these issues are felt globally, they may have different causes and expressions depending on life-stage and lifestyle. The use of time, the lack of time and the balancing and trading off that inevitably results first came to MERIC’s attention in mid 80s when research identified three main uses of time outside paid work; necessary time, committed time and free time.1 Necessary time involves activities essential to physical well-being such as sleeping, personal care and eating. Committed time refers to time spent on the maintenance of a family and a household. Free time involves those activities chosen because they provide relaxation or enjoyment. A ‘free time’ survey of 11 Western Nations in the 1980s2 found that leisure time was increasing. The Dutch were the most leisured nation and Americans the least. Predictably it found that men tended to have more free time than women, and employed women the least free time. This reinforced other research in the 80s which found that women’s employment had not reduced their level of committed time.3

Carol Samms is the Managing Director of MERIC, a strategic research consultancy and part of the McCann-Erickson Worldwide system.

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Between the mid 80s and the 90s the leisure trend went into reverse. In Europe, research by the Henley Centre suggest that between 1985 and 1993, the hours spent on essential activities increased for many groups within society and that as a consequence, remaining time for leisure decreased.4 Their time use survey found that the only group who can look forward to a phase in life with a relatively large amount of quality free time are the third agers between the ages of 50 and 75. As a result the family has come under pressure. In 1990, a qualitative survey among European families in five countries 5 found that the most fundamental need of families was ‘quality time’ to share with other family members. This was perceived to have become more difficult because of the trend to personalise and individualise lives even within a family context:

‘family relationships are important but incredibly difficult to manage.’(UK) ‘it (the family) is a point of continuity and communication of values, despite it being the major source of preoccupation and sacrifice.’(Italy)

The situation was best summed up by a UK respondent who said that ‘time is a precious diminishing asset to be used well’. In the 90s there is a sense that people everywhere are faced with increasing time pressures in all facets of their lives and are searching for mechanisms which give them greater control. People are looking for institutions, companies, services, brands and communications which enable them to take greater control of their lives and to allow them more space for themselves. For women this is a particularly pressing issue. In the US, the Yankelovich Monitor6 which has documented social change for twenty-five years, finds that women asked about ‘the importance of home management needs, rank ‘devoting enough time to the family’ (60 per cent) second only to ‘making sure that the family’s clothing is clean and ready to wear.’Concerns about money, work, planning for the future and personal life have all increased sharply and contributed to

108 Demos Time in the global village perceived stress. 70 per cent of women agree that life today has become much too complicated. Time pressure is exacerbated when ‘we are overchoiced’.A recent study undertaken by Faces among 260 women across 5 European countries7 at the end of 1994 found a parallel experience with many women experiencing severe time pressure with little enjoyment of either chore shopping or basic household management. It is a familiar story that women want more control over their own time and more time for themselves and their families, this desire to have greater control of one’s time is part of a broader trend. Research by Yankelovich Young Adult Europe8 (people aged between 16–34) shows that time for self, friends and family is an important issue. When prompted to name ‘things that are really important to you personally’, 95 per cent respond having good friends, 80 per cent having enough leisure time, 77 per cent being in good physical shape, 74 per cent spending time with my family, and 74 per cent having an active social life. Interestingly in countries where the family is under greatest pressure (Sweden and the UK),young people scored particularly highly on spending time with their family – more so in fact than countries like Italy and Spain where the family has not seen the same level of structural erosion. In Japan, quality of life issues are also coming to the fore. Infoplan9 has benchmarked these changes over the last two years following on from previous socio-cultural studies such as New Rich, New Silvers, New Young and Quest 21. They found that people are taking more interest in satisfying personal goals and devising pleasure plans which involve the whole family.Women, just as we have observed in the other countries, are looking to have greater control and autonomy over their own lives. 95 per cent agree that ‘it is important to me to feel in charge of each and every part of my life’. Even though they are still enjoying choice, 60 per cent strongly agree/agree that they are looking for ways to simplify their lives. The final market to look at is China, where a new study, China Scan10 conducted by Harris Asia reveals a somewhat different perspective. 57 per cent agree that ‘lately I find that I am under much less time pressure than I was a few years ago.’At the same time, as in the West, there is an awareness of the fleeting nature of time with 71 per cent

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agreeing that ‘lately I find myself so involved in day to day practical matters that I feel I do not really have the opportunity to do things that I really enjoy’.

Conclusion Despite differences across continents and between countries there is a common theme: individuals around the globe are searching for quality

110 Demos Time in the global village and experiential elements to their lives, and are acutely aware of the fleeting nature of time. When life is experienced as a series of frag- ments, each fragment counts. Clearly information and communications technologies have been crucial in altering the shape, perception and the pace of time. In the mid 1990s, time and attention span have become more fragmentary. Douglas Rushkoff in his book, Cyberia11 writes that ‘we are being asked to spend an increasing amount of our time on a very new sort of turn – the territory of digital information.While we are getting used to it by now,this region is very different from the reality we have grown to know and love. It is a boundless universe in which people can inter- act regardless of time and location.’Laurie Anderson writing in Wired argues that ‘technology today is the campfire around which we tell our stories.’12 The experience of time in a digital environment will undoubtedly affect the quality of relationships. Fons Trompenaars in Riding the Waves of Culture argues that we need to understand whether our perception of time is sequential or synchronic.‘sequential’ time is a series of passing events, whilst ‘synchronic’ time weaves past, present and future.13 Trompenaars clearly states that in his view’ any lasting relationship combines past, present and future with ties of affection and memory.’14 And that is why culture in the 90s has such an important role to play in determining how we experience time and how we form lasting relationships in a fast moving world.

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1. Leisure Lifestyles for an information 6. Yankelovich Monitor 1971–1995. Age, Naisbitt Group for McCann- 7. Naked Women by Faces 1994/5. Erikson. This report maps the three 8. Young Adult Europe by Yankelovich, typologies of time. 1994. 2. Robinson J, as reported in San Jose 9. Japan Insights by Infoplan, 1994. Mercury News, Jan 14, 1986 10. China Scan, conducted by Harris 3. Leisure Lifestyles for an Information Asia in conjunction with AMR: Age, Naisbitt Group for McCann- Quantum Harris and Infoplan. Erickson (1986). 11. Rushkoff, D, Cyberia: Life in the 4. The Henley Centre, The Director’s Trenches of Hyperspace, 1994. Report: Time, time, see what has 12. Laurie Anderson, Wired, March 1994. become of me. 13. Trompenaars F, Riding the waves of 5. European Family Dynamics, MERIC culture, 1993. (McCann-Erickson Research and 14. Trompenaars F, Riding the waves of Information Consultancy), 1990. culture, 1993.

112 Demos An intimate future of time Theodore Zeldin

A policy on the redistribution of time cannot limit itself to altering hours of employment. A new legal framework is only a first step. Old habits of thinking will undoubtedly prevent people making use of new opportunities.The attempt to abolish sexual discrimination has revealed how obsti- nate prejudiced mentalities can be. So I would like to propose a policy to deal with the prejudice and resistance which all new ideas encounter. It is futile to attempt to introduce flexibility into work while ignoring the more or less fixed ideas so many people have about how things came to be the way they are, and about what is possible or impossible. Memories limit our courage. To have a new attitude to the future, we need a new attitude to our past, just as we have needed a new women’s history as a precondition for a new attitude to sexual equality. Despite the supposed collapse of ideologies, there is still one which survives, as a substratum to all contemporary thinking. The world is thought of as being governed by forces – economic, political and social – which individuals cannot readily control. Private life is assumed to be determined by the traumas of family and infancy, the effects of which are not easy to escape. Of course there is some truth in this, but it is not the whole truth. Those who continue to look at themselves in this way will remain timid and hesitant in their choices.

Theodore Zeldin is the author of An Intimate History of Humanity (1994).

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We need to eliminate the discouragement contained in our history books, as a first step to diminishing the quantity of discouragement which our society pours on us. In my Intimate History of Humanity I have proposed an alternative way of looking at our past, not as a struggle by David against Goliath, but as a series of encounters, a never-ending search by individuals trying to meet other individuals – lovers, partners, friends, gurus to guide them, artists to inspire them, or a God to reassure them. It is these meetings which have been the source of the most important changes in history. So far, humans have met very few others outside their family,class or neighbourhood.However,advances in technology, the broadening of curiosity and toleration now make it possible to envisage more varied and numerous encounters. When life is seen as involving participation in a fight against oppres- sors which requires decades or generations to win, the idea that it can have a worthwhile purpose fades as patience runs out and disappoint- ments multiply. Trivial pleasures then become the only realistically attainable goal, and cynicism the substitute for a philosophy. By contrast, recognising every individual’s apparently limited encounters as part of a process of widening horizons can give a sense of direction, but without the mirage of a utopia as its goal. Life can be regarded as a series of experiments, with failure only being a stimulant to further experiments. The knowledge that many things will go wrong is not discouraging if it is coupled with the certainty that curiosity and com- passion have, historically, always sustained hope. Despair caused by the battle between individual and collective interests can be replaced by a recognition of the individual as having multiple and contradictory facets, borrowed from multiple contacts with different influences, both past and present, and so never as isolated as may appear: we need to modernise our idea of personal identity. The search for individual happiness can then become just one element in the wider ambition to understand others and be useful to others. ‘Policy’, in recent times, has concentrated on liberating individuals from oppression, or else on giving enthusiasm to a whole nation or a whole class. The next stage is for individuals to learn to listen to each other, so that they can help each other to profit from their freedom.

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It is impossible to do it alone. People who are not accustomed to using their time freely are quite likely to be tempted to replace the constraints they discard by new constraints. To use large amounts of free time innovatively means breaking habits, and habits have generally been broken as a result of contact with strangers. Innovation requires new encounters. How to achieve that I shall discuss after reviewing two other major obstacles which mentalities place in the way of change. The way careers are planned, in adolescence and throughout life, will need to be transformed. Traditionally,people have seen life as a process of ‘settling down’ and their minds have often fossilised with age. But we are now trying to set up arrangements in work which go counter to this very ancient tendency. For life to be envisaged as a series of adventures instead of as the acceptance of one’s limitations within a more or less comfortable routine, new institutions are needed. Just as the leisure society needed the weak-end to provide it with a basis, so the flexible society needs the sabbatical to give people the opportunity to make repeated fresh starts. However, the sabbatical as it exists at present does not go far enough. For example, in 1979 the John Lewis Partnership instituted a system of six months’ paid leave after 25 years of works, to employees (or ‘partners’ as they are called) aged at least 50, though since then the ages has been reduced to 45. The purpose is to enable them ‘to do things they would enjoy extremely and that otherwise would not be possible’.They have used this for hobbies, travel, charity work, but then they return to their secure routine. It is foretaste of retirement, a long holiday, rather than the beginning of something completely new. This kind of sabbatical is only the germ of what a flexible society needs. Sabbaticals every seven years, from a much earlier age, would be possible if we modernised our ideas about investment. For the past generation vast numbers of people have saved substantial parts of their income in order to buy a house. That obesession is coming to an end. Those savings could be channelled into sabbatical funds instead. We need to invent an alternative to the mortgage, offering people the chance to invest in themselves rather than in bricks and mortar.

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A life that revolves around a series of sabbaticals would also need a new dietetics of time. Dietetics comes from the Greek word meaning ‘way of life’.To restrict it to food is too narrow. To treat time as though there are only two kinds of it, what is spent in employment and what is spent in leisure or rest, is to perpetuate a view as primitive as that which held that foods were either hot or cold. We have discovered how foods containing proteins and carbohy- drates have different effects, but we are still very imprecise about the effects that different ways of spending time have, or what kinds of experiences we should ideally fill our lives with. One recent piece of research claims that university students of economics emerge after three years more selfish than they started. What do alternative forms of study, employment or leisure do to one? If people are to choose between a variety of occupations, they need to have a full menu of the possibilities, and of the side effects which indulgence causes, and to plan a whole life as a ten or twenty course meal, not just as one career heading for retirement and death. For example, they need to know whether their sleep, to which they devote over a third of their life, is being well spent, or whether sleep has been the opium of the masses, when quite a few artists and scientists have learned to use it as a period of thought and an instrument of creativity. Recent advances in sleep research reveal much confusion about the art of resting and much ignorance about the functions of dreaming. A policy to reorganise our waking hours must also include a policy to deal with old and new superstitions.Again the question must be raised: who will organise this? Most work available today was invented not to suit the person who works but to fit in with the needs of production and profit. The tradition of the industrial revolution, using humans as cogs in a machine, remains dominant.We therefore need to think more about how to create jobs which meet the spiritual and emotional aspirations of people, without taking it for granted that jobs of any kind, however stultifying, however much moral damage they do, are better than nothing. Increasingly, the demand is not just for employment but for occupations which stimulate and enhance the personality, and which do so by offering contact with a wide range of people. The consumer society is

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evolving away from the production of goods to the offer of services, which means more human contact. Jobs need to be audited to reveal the extent to which they have a human content, and of what sort. Everyone who works needs to be encouraged to participated in the quest for more interesting kinds of work. It is usually a sign of failure if one leaves one’s job as one found it.

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Over half of British diplomats are dissatisfied with their work, despite their prestige and high salaries, not because they have to work long hours, but because the interest of the job has diminished and its positive results are unclear. That is an example of a job waiting to be re-invented. At the other end of the pay scale, about four fifths of British nurses are dissatisfied because the institutional arrangements of hospitals prevent them from giving patients the quality of care they would like to give; they do not want to see less of their patients, but the very opposite, to have closer relationships with them.And yet hospitals are not being reorganised to suit those who work in them. All occupations invented a long time ago need to be re-invented to meet the criteria of the present generation. The idea of a life-time career based on specialised education in youth is becoming obsolescent now that humans have twenty more years of life expectancy. The policy of reducing hours of work implies a radical rethinking of our education as well as of our professions. Rigid mentalities will resist. Who is going to overcome their resistance? Every time there has been a new attitude to life’s possibilities, a new profession has arisen to minister to it – as in health, education or the social services. The leisure society has spawned, for example, the professionals of the tourist industry. But we can now see the limitations of what professions can achieve. A society dedicated to flexibility and part time activities, and therefore to the breaking down of barriers between professions, requires new kinds of intermediaries who can help people climb over barriers. It requires catalysts bringing together people whose talents remain unused because they have never met. The notion of exclusion needs to be widened: it is not just the poor and unemployed who are excluded, but all those who suffer from the innumerable segregations in society. Our new ideals for a more flexible society cannot be achieved without a new notion of what humans seeking the respect of their fellows should do for each other. It is not experts who will sort out the problems of deep-seated attitudes refusing to change, any more than laws will. Our ideals for sexual equality are being very slowly made a reality by individual men and women working out new kinds of relationships

118 Demos An intimate future of time by trial and error, by mutual influence, by listening to each other and trying to be honest with each other.Sex is nature’s catalyst, bringing unlikely people together, and challenging them to create mutual respect. In work and leisure, we have to be catalysts to each other,or we shall never be able to enjoy our freedom. The idea of mentors who help the underprivileged or the young to cross the barriers segregation places in their way is waiting to be gener- alised. The less individuals are dependent on their employment, the more they will demand the opportunity to enter new territories. The National Mentoring Consortium, recently established to give young people contacts with older ones who might help them to make the most of opportunities in education and work, is an interesting beginning. Eventually, every citizen must be ready to be a mentor, or friend, or godparent to someone form a diffrent group; every citizen needs help to climb the fences, to discover what life has to offer. In medieval times, most people had a lord. In modern times, most have an employer. We are now ready to invent new sorts of links, less exclusive ones.

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Time rights in the 1990s: an international survey Ivan Briscoe

Governments have always devised policies to regulate and structure people’s time, ranging from the numerous public holidays established under the Roman Empire, to the flurry of legislative activity on child labour and working hours which followed the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Rights to be free from the obligation of work have been traditionally connected with age (through compulsory education and pensions), pregnancy and holidays. Looking at OECD countries today we find a set of very diverse policies, some catering for the growth in the proportion of women in the labour market, others for the needs of ‘flexibility’,yet others for the changing demographics in nations’ populations. It is from this variegated mass of demands, rather than the traditional call for universal reduction in working time, that present policies appear to be born.

Rights dependent on age Although the hours of work of full-time employees in a number of industrialised countries have increased in recent years, total lifetime working hours have continued to fall. This tendency – which does not apply to women, whose entry into the labour force in large numbers is

Ivan Briscoe is a researcher at Demos.

Demos 121 Demos 5/1995 a recent phenomenon – has resulted from a substantial contraction of working life: employees can now expect to join the labour market much later than before, while also retiring earlier.

Rights of young people Every country holds some legal provisions on the minimum age for work or employment; indeed legislative measures to restrict the exploitation of young workers were amongst the first examples of industrial regulation in many European countries. Child labour is still prevalent in many developing countries in Asia and Africa, where enforcement is often difficult or costly, but the developed nations have succeeded in keeping such labour to a minimum, often combining regulations on minimum ages for work with compulsory requirements for education. The United States, for examples, prohibits employment for those under the age of 16, unless such work is determined not to be ‘oppressive’, and does not interfere with the minor’s schooling or health; France also holds 16 as a legal minimum, with similar exemptions to those in the US, while the British minimum age is 13, although children below the age of 16 may not work before the close of school, or for more than 2 hours on any school day or Sunday.1 Throughout the developed world, increasing numbers of young people are spending time in higher and further education, largely as a result of limited employment opportunities for school-leavers, and the perceived demand for more highly skilled employees. For example, the number of students per 100,000 inhabitants in the UK has increased from under 1,500 in 1980 to over 2,000 in 1989 (and is still increasing); similar rises are reported in all European countries.2 Consequently,the economic participation rate of persons aged 15 to 24 has declined in many countries (including France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Japan). But this decline is not a necessary consequence of expanding student numbers: rates of labour force participation in this age-group have actually increased in North America – of 925,000 15–24 year olds employed part-time in Canada in 1993, over 700,000 were attending school or university – showing how pressures on time can be exacerbated

122 Demos Time rights in the 1990s: an international survey by the choice to continue in education systems characterised by low levels of financial support for students.

Rights of old people Upon reaching a specified age, and in most cases having contributed for a number of years through an insurance system, people in all industrialised countries qualify for old-age benefits, which in principle allow for a financially secure life without work. The normal age of retirement (and thus eligibility for the full pension) varies from country to country: Singapore provides a lumpsum payment for people aged 55, with annuity payments thereafter, while most European countries set retirement ages around 65 (67 in Denmark, 65 in the Netherlands, and 60 in France). In addition, there are differences in the periods of contribution required before receiving the full pension, ranging from 40 years in Denmark, to 37.5 years in France, and 25 years in Japan; the Swedish pension has no contribution condition beyond residence test, but an additional earnings-related supplement is available.3 The age of retirement has been viewed as crucial, not merely as a tool to reduce working time, but also as an effective means of job creation. Following the recession of the 1970s, a number of countries saw fit to create employment opportunities for those entering the labour market by encouraging early retirement. In many West European countries, the option of early retirement was financed by the state – for example through solidarity contracts in France introduced in 1982, a similar German programme from 1984, and the small-scale ‘Job Release Programme’ initiated in the UK in 1977-but these proved both costly and comparatively ineffective. Germany abolished its plan in 1988, and both France and Belgium have tightened their eligibility criteria for early retirement. In recent years, there has been a move in the opposite direction: pension ages and contribution periods in many countries are now going up, in an attempt to counter the effects of an increasing proportion of elderly people, and the rise in public expenditure associated with this. Italy has raised the pension age for men and women by five

Demos 123 Demos 5/1995 years, the US by two years (to 67), Sweden by one year (to 66). As well as phasing out full pensions on early retirement, and abolishing such retirement for those younger than 62, Germany has increased contributions and reduced the value of its pensions.4 It is unlikely, however, that these increases will deter many people from taking early retirement. With increased numbers of people contributing to occupational pensions and/or private pensions, the options for ending full-time economic activity early have been greatly enhanced, as shown by the economic activity rate for men aged 60–64 in the UK, which fell from 82.9 per cent in 1971 to 54.6 per cent in 1989.5 The real danger lies not in the restitution of an elderly workforce, but greater inequality between those able to retire while still young, and others obliged to continue in low-paid work or survive on invalidity benefits. Phased-in retirement has been seen as one option to maintain (or enlarge) the number of economically active old people, while easing the burden of work. This type of scheme can also be tied to employment creation, through incentives to the employer to use unemployed people to fill the gaps created. One such scheme has been introduced in Spain, involving a ‘replacement employment contract’ between employer and employee, but the number of participants to date has been low (just over 1,500 such contracts were agreed in 1993.6) Proposals for a decade of ‘flexible retirement’,from the ages of 60 to 70, have also been made with these same goals in mind7,allowing for the combination of parttime work with a partial pension.

Rights dependent on status A number of rights which impinge in significant ways on the time available to people depend on status; in other words, these rights issue from the familial position of the person, or from their responsibilities to others.

Maternity Rights Maternity leave and benefits are available in most industrialised countries. Benefits are usually payable for a specified period, before and

124 Demos Time rights in the 1990s: an international survey after childbirth, requiring an end to work, and often the compulsory use of pre and post-natal medical services. In the UK, any woman working 16 hours or more a week, for 2 years or more, is entitled to return to her job at any time before the end of a period of 29 weeks, beginning with the week in which confinement falls; from 1994, all women were entitled to 14 weeks maternity leave with benefit, regardless of their former employment position. This reform – introduced in order to comply with an EC Directive – is reflected in the provisions of other European countries: all determine a specific entitlement to rest for the pregnant mother with benefits paid, and a statutory right to return to work. The US, however, provides no maternity benefits, except for those in 6 states (including California), although the 1993 Family Leave Act entitled certain employees to 12 weeks paid statutory leave for family purposes. Likewise, there are no state benefits in Singapore, although employers are obliged to provide full wages for a month to women in confinement who have worked for the firm for over 6 months. These various rights have proved vital in guaranteeing the position of women in the labour market by facilitating the combination of childbirth and a career. Accommodating the natural interruptions in many women’s working life has helped raise rates of economic activity for women, but serious stresses on time remain due to the difficulties of combining work for both mother and father – or often just the mother, in the case of single-parent family – with the care of a young child.

Paternity and Parental Leave The father’s rights to spend time with a newborn child are recognised in several European countries: Denmark, for instance, has established an entitlement for spouses to 2 weeks leave following confinement. In many countries, however, working fathers are unable to spend much time with their children8, while their wives or partners are often bur- dened with both paid work and domestic labour. Enabling fathers to allocate more time to the family has been seen as a good in itself, which will also help to even out the distribution of domestic labour

Demos 125 Demos 5/1995 between the genders (although this would require additional changes in cultural perceptions). A number of countries have introduced forms of parental leave to address these problems. The Swedish system of parental leave allows for 15 months of leave, half of which is for the mother and half for the father (although each parent’s allocation can be ‘given to the other), with benefits initially set at 90 per cent of the previous income level. Importantly, Swedish law also allows this leave to be taken part-time, with one parent entitled to work a 6-hour day without losing job security until the child is 8. Similar rights to leave exist in a number of other countries, such as Germany, where either parent is entitled to 12 months with a paid allowance, and Spain, which allows workers parental leave lasting up to 3 years for each child (although the former employee is given no automatic right to reinstatement in his/her job). There is no statutory right to paternity leave in Britain. Although open to both parents, the option of leave in Sweden is still most commonly taken by women.9 Over time, if the balance of domestic work becomes more equal between the sexes, this may well change; in any case, this form of leave – costly as it may be to employers, since funding depends largely on payroll contributions – has helped to weld the discontinuous working life of women in Sweden into a more integrated whole.

Caring leave The rising proportion of elderly people in the population have exacerbated stresses on people’s time. At present in the UK there are 6.8 million people engaged in caring (meaning assistance for a relative, friend or neighbour who is frail, or has a disability or long-term illness), 1.5 million of whom care for over 20 hours a week.A small proportion of these carers (0.25 million) receive benefits in the form of an invalid care allowance, but this is set at a very low level, and is only received by those who provide a minimum of 35 hours a week of assistance. Many people are forced to remain without work in order to provide full-time care; a great pressure on time is experienced by those who

126 Demos Time rights in the 1990s: an international survey combine a number of hours of care with work, often in addition to a young family. In the case of the former, a recent private member’s bill accepted in principle by the British government will help ease the burden: the Carers (Recognition and Services) Bill specifies that carers would have a right to special assessment of their needs by local authorities, so that services such as respite care (to allow for small breaks) are made available. For those not involved in full-time caring, measures to improve public facilities for care are clearly of value in easing the burden: the British government has persisted in transferring responsibility to informal networks of carers (i.e. families), but most North European countries boast comprehensive state provision, particularly designed to ease the pressure on women in the labour market. In the US, the Family and Medical Leave Act (1993) established the statutory right to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave specifically for those wanting time off for family reasons (including care of an elderly relative). Coverage of this bill, however, is limited to firms employing more than 50 people. In years to come, as the demographic distribution changes, demands for such new forms of statutory leave are likely to increase: the principle of paid time off for care has already been established in Norway and Sweden, in relation to the nursing of sick children. Firms in the US and Canada already appear aware of the new sets of needs: recent experiments have included day-care centres in plants and offices for the elderly relatives of employees.

Other forms of leave Many other forms of leave are open to employees, some with pay and some without. For example, employees in Britain are entitled to unpaid leave for a number of public duties, including membership of a tribu- nal, local authority, or governing body of an educational institution. Belgium, France and Luxembourg also provide a statutory right to time off to perform a political mandate. Rights to leave for special family events are also commonplace throughout the EU: French law allows

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4 days for the marriage of the employee, while Italy guarantees 15 con- secutive days. These entitlements are often extended through collective agreements. Two other important rights to leave are also worthy of mention. Time-off work for training and education has been emphasised in various countries in recent years.A Belgian Act of 1985 established the right to paid educational leave, under which an employee may be absent for a maximum of 160–240 hours a year to follow general or vocational training during normal working hours. A number of different leaves of absence are available in France (with one type lasting up to a whole paid year), while statutes of German states provide for educational leave, lasting from 5 to 12 days a year. Belgium and France have also been the first countries to introduce laws on unpaid sabbaticals, which can be taken for any purpose for between 6 to 12 months in Belgium, and 11 months in France.10 Sabbaticals have existed for some time in collective agreements (eg the 1963 agreement for American Steelworkers), but these are the first examples of their enshrinement in law.

Rights based on payment People can obviously take advantage of time off work if they have sufficient resources to spare, whether through private savings or inheri- tance. National Insurance schemes have acted as savings schemes, supported by the state, which effectively redistribute money from time in work to time without work (whether this is due to unemployment, sickness, pregnancy, or old age). A number of proposals have been recently aired which would enable insured employees to take time off outside these traditional insured categories, perhaps for the pursuit of a personal goal, such as travel, education, individual development, or simply to relieve stress. Time-banks would allow people to redistribute time and money to such ‘free’ periods before retirement. Entitlements to paid time off could be tied to a flexible period of retirement, so that a year spent out of work earlier on would entail a later date for leaving the workforce.

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No country has yet embraced such a scheme – although it was proposed by the 1987 Norwegian report on working hours’ reform – but the move towards entitlements to leave for training and sabbaticals in a number of European countries suggest that such reforms may not be too distant. If the demands for individual control over time continue to grow, then the likelihood is that National Insurance schemes will try to accommodate them.

Rights in the labour market Labour markets, and the working lives of people employed within them, are structured by standards and agreements, deriving from government, unions and employers. The regulation and control imposed on the labour market (and thus the control over the working times of employees) depends fundamentally on the significance of these different institutions in determining labour practice. Broadly speaking, there are two extremes: at one lies the US, with very little regulation on employment practice beyond stringent anti-discrimination and equal opportunities laws, with a marked tendency for the organisation of work to be decided upon at the level of the plant, enterprise or even individual, while France rests at the other extreme, with its heavily regulated work practices. A number of countries, including Denmark, share the lack of legislative control with the US, but compensate for this through widespread collective agreements between unions and employers associations, which cover the vast majority of workers, and set minimum standards on many issues including working time. These extremes of regulation and deregulation, centralisation and decentralisation, broke down to an extent in the 1980s. Competitive pressures persuaded many governments and employers of the benefits of ‘flexibility’; exemptions to many regulations were devised, and the force of industry-wide collective agreements weakened. These tenden- cies took very different forms from country to country – from the extremes of deregulation in Britain, to the opening up of ‘derogatory’ provisions in France – but all bore importantly on working time and new forms of labour being created.

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Full-time rights Many European countries have enacted legislation to reduce working time. These regulations often have numerous exemptions, and are frequently superseded by collective agreements. For example, limits of 10 daily working hours in France and 9 in Italy do not apply to managers, and the maximum 39-hour week in France is similarly inapplicable to most professionals and managers. A gamut of other regulations in the vast majority of EC countries (excluding Britain and Denmark) cover maximum weekly hours, rest periods, overtime and holidays. In recent years, however, these regulations have been modified to allow exemptions in the name of flexibility both of quantity (the number of staff employed), and duration (the patterns of hours worked). In Belgium, for instance, a 1985 Act allowed employees to exceed the maximum legal limits of daily or weekly working time within a collective agreement; an Act of 1982 in France established the possibility of derogatory provisions to be agreed by parties to a collective agreement, broaching legal maximums, while a 1993 Act allowed for working time to be spread irregularly over the year. Collective agreements based on annual working hours (permitting flexible employment within the year, to cater for fluctuations in demand) have also been encouraged by governments in Spain and Italy. Britain has witnessed the most drastic shift from a labour force engaged in a ‘standard’ 40-hour week, to a huge diversity of working times and practices. Deregulation has taken place through abolition of the responsibilities of ‘Wage Councils’ for setting minimum standards and regulating working time outside collective agreements, while the weakening of union power has increased the significance of plant-level bargaining (a tendency common throughout the developed world). For some employees, this has opened the way to individual contracts, allowing for greater flexibility (such as flexitime, annualised hours and the like). But employers have also seized the opportunity to minimise fixed costs: a substantial amount of overtime, both paid and unpaid, is consequently added to the basic hours of full time British employees in times of high demand, while in recession the ease of making dismissals, or depending solely on part-timers, temporary workers or short-term

130 Demos Time rights in the 1990s: an international survey contracts – thus reducing wage costs – have exacerbated both the polarization of work-time, and the working of anti-social hours. Renewed efforts to order and regulate the hours of full-time employees have recently been made. Japan has promulgated a working time law, in an attempt to create a system of more centralised regulation, whilst the EC Directive on working time – which will require eventual legislation from Britain – establishes a series of working time limits, such as a maximum 48-hour week (including overtime), and in effect a maximum 13 hour day. In the case of Japan, the legislation is unlikely to have a profound effect on working time reduction, given the enlarged scope for enterprises to adopt new flexible working patterns and time distributions. Likewise the European Directive allows so many exemptions in the name of flexibility and individual choice – permitting, for instance, collective agreements to extend the working day – that it would most likely not provide a platform for those wishing to shorten their working time.

‘Atypical’ employees In the case of part-time work the pressure of too many working hours is rarely a problem. Two sets of issues have proved of more pressing concern. Firstly, the absence of many basic rights, such as employment protection, or a guarantee of minimum standards, added to the lower entitlements to remuneration from unemployment benefit, maternity benefit and pensions, means that part-time work has been converted into a second-class form of work, restricted (notably in Britain) to certain low-wage sectors, such as retail, and basic services. Secondly, the lower status of such work often leads to difficulties in moving between full-time and part-time employment, in either direction, even though many employees (25 per cent in Britain, over 30 per cent in Italy11) would prefer such work, while some part-timers wish to move onto a better paid, more fruitful career path. Many European countries have improved the standards and status of part-time work: Germany enshrined the equal treatment of full and part-time employees in a law of 1985, and enacted minimum standards

Demos 131 Demos 5/1995 for other ‘atypical’ forms of work including work on call and jobsharing; likewise, France grants full employment rights to its part-timers, which (together with ample public childcare facilities, and the French state’s commitment to enabling women to combine work and child- rearing) has helped ensure a much broader spread of part-timers through all occupational sectors.12 The EC Directive on part-time work, now accepted by Britain, has in effect removed all hours-of- work thresholds from employment protection legislation, but the fear is now that this may stymie the growth in such jobs, which has been most marked in countries where legislation is minimal (US, Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark). Efforts to enable transitions between full and part-time work have formed important parts of recent early retirement legislation (in Germany and Spain, mentioned above), and parental leave (with entitlements to cut hours for parents instead of taking full leave in Sweden, Germany and Spain). Statutory requirements to consider part-time employees on a preferential basis for full-time positions also exist in Belgium, Germany and Italy (as part of collective agreements in this latter country). The positive consequences of this mobility have been demonstrated in Sweden, which has enjoyed a huge increase in the proportion of part- time jobs since the 1970s, largely for women. These were steady jobs, with flexible times, which facilitated movement onto full-time work if desired. In Norway, with similar entitlements to those of Sweden, the average hours worked by women rose from 1987, while those of men decreased, due to the relative increase of women in full-time jobs. Not only has this minimised the sexual inequality in the labour force, but allowed the personal needs and wishes of women and their families to more closely match their work schedules, without damaging future prospects, or incarcerating women in a low-paid sector with minimal rights.

Conclusion The heterogeneity of working times both within and between countries is now evident, and likely to continue. In principle, this diversity

132 Demos Time rights in the 1990s: an international survey could provide for a much closer match between personal preferences and worktimes, but the opposite appears to be the case: in Britain, for instance, full-time employment is eating up more and more hours of each week, while part-time employment remains a source of low-pay and ill-treatment. ‘Flexibility’ in fact takes many forms. The one embraced by the US and Britain is founded on a model of lowering costs, and intensifying the use of capital; this is correlated in turn with the working of long hours, the payment of low wages, and stagnant or low productivity growth (the case in the US).Another form of ‘flexibility’ depends on the creation of minimum labour standards, in tandem with building a multi-skilled workforce, generating growth through product innovation and technological advance (the case in Germany). It is on the basis of this and related economic choices made by firms and nations that working hours will be determined for the vast majority of people. Recent years, however, have also seen innovative policies to cater for new needs generated by a changing labour force. Policies for parental leave, the improvement of part-time conditions, diverse forms of leave, and the spread of new flexible working times (such as annualised hours and flexi-time) have shown the willingness of certain governments, unions and firms to adapt. Many of these policy areas remain experimental, but it is likely that as demand for greater individual control over working time grows, they will become more widespread and effective.

Demos 133 Notes

1. Conditions of work digest: Child fathers in Europe. Employment Labour – Law and Practice, 1991. Department, Employment Gazette, 2. UNESCO, Statistical Yearbook 1992, October 1994. Paris. 9. In 1993 Swedish fathers utilized 3. Department of Health and Human only 10 per cent of parental Services, Social Security Programs insurance benefits. Information Throughout the World – 1993, from the Swedish Labour Washington 1993. Department. 4. Containing the cost of social 10. French sabbatical law requires that security – the international context, the employee have been employed London: HMSO 1993. for a minimum of 36 months in the 5. Schuller T and Walker A, The Time particular enterprise, with at least of Our Life, IPPR 1990. 6 years professional experience in 6. Information from the Spanish total. Labour Office. 11. European Foundation, Part-time 7. See Schuller T and Walker A, The work in the European Community: Time of Our Life,op.cit.,and the Laws and Regulations, 1991. Report of the Advisory Group on 12. See Mouriki A, Flexible Working: Working Time and the Distribution Towards Further Degradation of of Work, Canada 1994. Work, or Escaping from Stereotypes, 8. This problem is particularly acute in Warwick Paper in Industrial Britain, where only 2 per cent of Relations 1994. An interesting fathers worked part-time in 1989, discussion of the differences and full-time employed fathers between French and British public worked on average 46.3 hours per and private attitudes to part-time week, the longest working week for work, and work for mothers.

134 Demos Lean time and global competition Oliver Sparrow

Productivity which proceeds faster than growth in output will release resources – people, capital, even ideas – which, in an ideal world, would be taken up by new activities funded by this surplus. The difficulty for the industrialised world is that much of the ‘uptake’side of this process is occurring in the newly emerging economies, and this is particularly true of the tasks previously performed by the less capable within Western societies. Increasingly, however, these forces have impacted upon middle management who have been affected by automation, and upon service suppliers who have been designed out of re-engineered systems. The scale of this has led to political and economic instability in the major economies. What options are open to manage the lengthy transition which must be made to the uncertain future of post-industrialism? Firstly, firms could be forced to employ more people than they otherwise might: either constructively (as apprentices, or as people gaining work experience); or in make-work activities, aimed (as in the Russian economy) at keeping people off the streets. Clearly, there will be a cost to the firm in doing either of these. More generally, however, such costs will be measured in terms of the morale of the workforce at large, the diversion of management from its central tasks and the cash costs of employing people who are not needed.

Oliver Sparrow is Senior Researcher Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

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Secondly, training is often seen as a general panacea. At issue is the means by which training needs are to be identified and delivered and the motivation of the potential recipients to learn. For the most part, firms seek a pool of labour possessing the basic skills which they can mould to fit their own needs. The OECD rankings of the ability of the industrialised world to deliver these skills show that major countries – such as Britain and America – lag behind the industrialising nations of Asia. Studies suggest that this is less to do with the relative levels of funding than the differing aspirations of people to learn and improve skill-levels. The shortage of specific skills has often been the basis for wage inflation in economies where skills have been poorly developed, with Britain standing as a prime example. There is limited evidence that training-intensive nations such as Germany are better able to deliver the precise skills which are needed, however, and they have significant under-employment in times of slow growth, with skilled people in make-work jobs. On balance, however, most agree that a training- intensive regime which has direct industry relevance built into it is a helpful national investment, but that there is little which Government can do directly that will compensate for a relative lack of parental and societal pressures to acquire skills. Also, jobs within firms could perhaps be shared on the basis that some people may choose to earn less and have more free time. Clearly, sharing has been a part of work throughout industrialisation. It has been made easy in cases where the task is repetitious or modular, such as shift work, and less easily where continuity and experience are required from an interactive team. One of the features of the changes in the way firms are managed is the increased focus of the firm upon the performance of its core business and increased their reliance on specialised subcontractors and affiliates. Most ‘core’ jobs do not easily divide into segments: by and large, most are general, integrative and require a spread of knowledge, information and judgement. Most carry with them a degree of personal power – as expressed both through intangible influence upon the decision process and through the management of the flow of ideas through the system and this influence is

136 Demos Lean time and global competition not transferable to or divisible amongst other individuals with unproven track records. Where jobs are ‘non-core’,they may nonetheless be central to a sub- contractor. Typically, people who would be busy for a third of the year in one firm find themselves servicing the needs of a dozen companies when they work for a specialised sub-contractor. If they carry out a commodity task – where one person is replaceable with another – then time sharing is possible. Where this is not the case, the individuals concerned may be in competition with each other for career paths and, as a result, the same demands on their time will be made as above. Finally, there are tasks which are carried out by individuals who offer differentiated services as subcontractors. This is a common pattern in the creative community – amongst performing artists, for example – and is increasingly the norm for professionals at or near the end of their career. The essence of success lies in access to networks. The most common cause of failure is the difficulty which isolated individuals feel in keeping their skills up to date. This is not, however, an area of the labour market which is open to improvement through training, primarily because the individuals concerned are often marketing their personal summary of a life time of learning; and there is consequently nobody except their commercial rivals who can compete with them. The chief advantage to a firm working with people as subcontractors is that they offer great supply flexibility; they take all of the risk and the firm takes none. In times of slow business, the contractors stand idle and the firm retains full capacity; but at times of fast growth, there are usually enough contractors around to keep the system running without excessive charges. There have, however, been some sharp shortages in recent years – in software analysis, for example – and old professions such as acting and the law show how excellence quickly establishes a huge differential over mediocrity. The issue of networks is an important one. People often need a service for perhaps an hour, in the same way as a solicitor is consulted. Unlike the law, however, those who have a problem may not recognise it as such, or may not know how to address it or who to approach. This is why networks of contacts are so central to the success of the self-employed

Demos 137 Demos 5/1995 part-time sub-contractor. Those who have used the Internet will have experienced the beginnings of another means by which issues can be dissected, and skilled help called down to work on aspects of them. The creation of networks of intermediation, in which suppliers, customers, analysts and other forms of intermediary can make contact, do business and learn from each other is, a central issue for a managed national response to the changes which are happening around us.

138 Demos Time Keynesianism Jonathan Gershuny

Reducing working hours is not just a matter of job-sharing. In what follows I argue instead that the redistribution of working hours is to be considered alongside income redistribution as part of a neo-Keynesian economic policy to stimulate demand, and hence create new jobs. In Britain we work considerably longer hours than others in Europe. For some this means that Britain may be more productive than our European competitors – but this view ignores the bad health, gender inequality and other negative consequences of long working hours. However, in what follows I concentrate on asomewhat different facet of extended paid work time: its consequences for consumption.

Social inequality inhibits economic activity Keynes is now rather unfashionable. His work is hardly mentioned, at least by people to the centre and right of the British political spectrum. But it must not be forgotten that under the previous circumstances of post-war recovery, Keynesian economic policy played an important part in longest and fastest period of economic growth ever experienced. Even though the policy prescription may not now be straight- forwardly applicable, the underlying ideas are still of great importance.

Jonathan Gershuny is Director of the ESRC Research Centre on Micro Social Change, Essex University.

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The standard Keynesian argument relates the level of economic activity to a particular aspect of social structure: the distribution of disposable income across the population. It explains low levels of economic activity as a symptom and consequence of economic inequality. There are two key ideas. First is the societal distribution of the marginal ‘propensity’ to consume (MPC). In Keynes model there is a large group in the community with low incomes, whose potential wants or needs for consumption of goods and services are thwarted by the lack of money to pay for them – and, balancing this group, another with high income and a propensity not to spend it, since their current material needs are met and they would rather save for the future. The key concept here is the proportion of take-home earnings that is spent rather than saved. The second key idea is the ‘multiplier’.Money spent by someone on a good or a service, ultimately provides money income for the workers who are employed in producing that good or service, and this new income is once more spent by the workers who receive it, providing new incomes for yet other workers. This circular flow is not endless because some money is saved in each cycle – so the ‘multiplier’is related to the MPC. If on average people spend nine-tenths of their income, while those on a low income spend all of their income, then £1 taken from someone with a low MPC and given to someone with a high MPC will produce £10 of new economic activity (assuming the recipient spends all the money, while later recipients spend their money according to the average rates). Various circumstances make the General Theory prescriptions less easy to apply in the 1990s than in the 1930s or 1950s. There are infla- tionary consequences and distortions in capital markets. Perhaps most important, the redistribution of disposable income through taxation and subsidies, which is at the heart of Keynes’ policy, is seen as bad electoral politics, at least from a short term perspective. Nevertheless, if we think about the real economy – the actual flows of goods and services between people – the essence of the Keynesian prescription is straightforward: redistribute spending power, from those with a low propensity, to those with a higher propensity to spend.

140 Demos Time Keynesianism

Increase economic activity by giving disposable income to those who will spend it.

The distribution of leisure time This account considers economic activity as if it consisted of no more than paid work and buying things. Missing from this account is time outside paid work. Time in this sense is rather puzzlingly absent from the Keynes General Theory.Although the growth of leisure time was a not infrequent theme of Keynes lectures in the late 1920s and early 1930s, he was concerned with the ‘leisure problem’ that would arise because economic growth (though the term hadn’t been invented yet, so he called it the operation of compound interest) would mean that in a couple of generations, all material needs could be met through only a few hours of work per week from each adult in the society. Keynes argued (in for example, his essay ‘On The Economic Prospects for Our Grandchildren’) that, as the overall level of income increased, the marginal utility – the real satisfaction derived from each extra unit of income – would decline. In this 1930s version of post materialism, the richer the society, the easier it would be to meet human needs, and thus the less concerned it would be to increase material consumption. Richer societies would work less. What was to be done with the free time that remains? The ‘leisure problem’that worried Keynes was that, having engineered economic growth through the policies eventually laid out in the General Theory, it then becomes necessary to educate the members of the resulting leisure society to enjoy their free time. But there is another view of time that emerged from 1960s micro- economics of the recent Nobel Prize-winner Gary Becker. The satisfaction of needs, in the ‘real economy’, takes place when people combine the goods and services they buy, with their own time, which is required to transform and consume them. Becker argued, in a famous article in the Economic Journal, that rational individuals at each wage rate will choose the number of hours of paid work (and hence total salary) that allows them an optimal combination of ‘free’ time (including both

Demos 141 Demos 5/1995 unpaid work and pure consumption time) with the goods and services which they can purchase through their paid work time. This has clear implications for the General Theory argument. Keynes’ prescription was that, since the level of economic activity reflects the relatively unequal distribution of disposable income, redistributing disposable income could raise the level of economic activity. The Becker theory raises a similar issue in relation to time: if consumption requires time as well as money, then the distribution of time may also have consequences for the level of economic activity. Is there a Keynesian argument for the redistribution of time? One reason that time doesn’t appear as an issue in the General Theory is that the distribution of time use patterns were rather different in the 1930s. I can just remember something called ‘bankers’ hours’, which referred, not to a 14 hour stretch in front of a screen pursuing bourses across the globe, but to a dignified workday from 10 am to 4 pm with a relaxed and probably bibulous lunch in the middle. This gentle pace of work was the general expectation of the middle classes – which in turn imitated the even more leisurely life of the landed aristocracy and the inheritor-rentier classes. For these groups (as Thorsten Veblen argued in The Theory of the Leisure Class) conspicucous idleness was an indicator of superior social status. Those with loads of money also had loads of leisure to spend it in. So Keynes could concentrate on redistributing spending power to the 1930s unemployed, who by definition had lots of time to spend but no money to go with it. But things have changed. The leisure positions of the social classes, in the UK and the US at least, have been reversed over recent decades. While male manual full time jobs had a very long-term regular reduction from say 1880 to 1980, the work time, and pace, of middle class jobs has certainly been increasing since the 1960s. Table 1 shows evidence from the British Household Panel Study. It is clear that, for both men and women, those with the highest monthly incomes have the longest hours of work. Of course this might just reflect people working longer hours for higher salaries (and this does indeed explain part of the effect for women). But even when we

142 Demos Time Keynesianism

Table 1 Weekly paid work hours by income (BHPS 1993/4)

Employed men and women Gross monthly income quintiles women men

lowest 20 38 second 20 42 third 32 44 fourth 37 46 highest 42 47 whole sample 30 40 n 2222 2100 control for the effect of wage rates, most of the effect remains. The best paid 20 per cent of men work around ten hours longer perweek than the worst paid. This means that since the 1930s there has been, in the economists’ jargon, a striking change in the ‘joint distribution of earnings and leisure time’. Those with the highest earnings now have the least time to spend them. The reasons for this change are clear. More of the top jobs in the economy require high levels of specific technical knowledge, which combined with increasing levels of education, intensifies competition for advantageous positions that were once less meritocratically allocated. The freeing of women from the imperatives of the reproductive cycle allows them to compete for these top jobs. And one of the main mechanisms in this competition for top jobs seems to be to work long hours. Add to this increased competitive pressure from government deregulation of industries, and underfunding of services leading to overwork of senior staff, and the punishingly long hours of the top jobs are quite unsurprising. The consequence of these pressures is a quite new form of social polarisation: between the money-rich/time- poor and the time-rich/money poor. This fundamental change has an implication for Keynes’ argument. Since the distribution of time and money are now skewed in opposite

Demos 143 Demos 5/1995 directions, and a shortage of either might constrian consumption, why not try to redistribute both disposable income to the poorer end of the income distribution, and disposable time at the higher? This sort of policy has two advantages. First, it may serve to stimulate consumption higher up in the income distrubution, specifically for those sorts of commodities, particularly services, that require time for consumption. This applies particularly to leisure services. Who, among the present readers of this article, does not at least once per week regret that they’ve again not found time for a favourite leisure activity? All the frustrated cinema or theatre-goers, involuntary non-sailors or football non- attendees, all of us with no time to go out to our favourite restaurants, are victims of this long workhours syndrome. More free time would stimulate consumption of all of these, and also jobs providing them. The second advantage is that this sort of redistribution, unlike Keynes’, is a two way road. There is already, in Britain, a substantial redistribution of income from the relatively rich to the relatively poor. In this scheme the better-off also get something redistributed to them. It doesn’t need to rely on pure altruistic ‘job-sharing’ in the sense of trying to portion out part of the misery more fairly. This is altogether much more positive: the rich swap a small part of what they have in plentiful supply, for a part of what poorer people have and richer people want. Not necessarily a vote-loser.

British preferences – and European policies I recognise that this idea sounds altogether off the wall in the context of current British politics. But there are several factors that may make it seem, on closer consideration, less fanciful. First is the fact that the better-off part of British society really does want shorter working hours. Table 2 shows that around half of men and women in the highest work hour quintiles, and substantially more than 40 per cent of those in the highest gross income quintiles, want to reduce their working hours. The distribution is reversed for those who want more work hours: 3 per cent among the highest income quintiles. 13 per cent in the lowest.

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Table 2 Proportion wanting to reduce working hours: (BHPS 1993/4)

Employed men and women

Work time Gross monthly quintiles pay quintiles

Women Men Women Men

lowest 5% 17% lowest 12% 17% second 10% 27% second 10% 28% third 29% 31% third 25% 33% fourth 40% 43% fourth 35% 38% highest 49% 53% highest 46% 41% whole sample 27% 34% whole sample 27% 34% n= 2109 1913 n= 2109 1913

This table sets us another puzzle: why are so many people dissatisfied with their hours of work? Can they not simply choose to work less? Institutional processes effectively fix long working hours. Employers set high work norms. And employees compete for top positions by working long hours, so everyone interested in promotion works long hours. But what is rational behaviour for each person leads to a collectively irrational process, causing inflation of work hours. And since it’s rational for each individual to engage in this collectively irrational process, it can only be avoided by collective public regulation. Secondly, while it sounds odd here, this sort of thing really is practical politics in the rest of Europe. Most notably, maximum working hours is a fundamental part of the Social Charter that Britain has been opted out of. Clearly these are difficult to enforce, particularly for executive jobs. But a maximum work-hours regulation does seem to be an effective rhetorical device even where it cannot be effectively enforced. Anyone who has worked in Germany over recent years will know that big firms often close in the middle of Friday afternoon in preparation for the weekend, and that a manager found at his desk after 6 pm is

Demos 145 Demos 5/1995 suspected of being too inefficient to finish his work during normal working hours. Of course, the Keynesian argument suggests much more than just regulating weekly work hours: parental leave entitlements, annual holiday rights, mid-career industrial sabbaticals are all part of the same argument.

146 Demos Signs of the Times

clocks digital clocks fixed flexible 40-hour weeks annualised hours leisure time pleasure time spending time managing time banking hours First Direct late-night shopping 24-hour society synchronous asynchronous retire at 60 retire at 75 savings banks time banks house mortgages time mortgages past and future extended present flexitime all the time free time time windows weekend no end clocking off face time utopia uchronia midlife crisis karoshi redundancy consultancy jobs for life serial commitment corporate commitment commitment to mission employers deployers simplicity multiplicity security autonomy rat race personal fulfillment Remains of the Day Speed 88 bpm 120 bpm

Demos 147 Demos 5/1995 just-in-time zero-carry-forward serving time electronic tagging teenage kicks parenting deficit latchkey kids sega addiction

148 Demos Whose flexibility? Policies for changing times Patricia Hewitt

I still remember a women’s movement conference, nearly twenty years ago, where a trade union official explained how the recruitment of women – urgently sought by unions to compensate for the decline in their industrial membership – had transformed the union’s bargaining agenda. ‘Women want us to bargain for time as well as money,’she told us. Of course, time has always been a matter of dispute between working men and their employers. Long before the development of modern trade unions and the campaign for 8 hours’ work, 8 hours’ sleep and 8 hours’ play, the London Weavers’ Guild in 1321 approved ‘ordinances’ to cut their hours of labour. But what was new in this union official’s rediscovery of the politics of time was the importance of gender. The women she represented had needs for time which were different from those of the men. Above all, they demanded a different balance between time devoted to paid work and that spent in unpaid work – and they were willing to trade money for time in order to achieve it. It is in the distribution and allocation of time, for men and women, that our most powerful concerns intersect: namely gender, family and production.

Patricia Hewitt is the author of About Time: The Revolution in Work and Family Life (IPPR/Rivers Oram, 1993), and was Deputy Chair for the Commission on Social Justice. She is currently Director of Research at Andersen Consulting.

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The old model of time was, above all, one of working time. It involved full-time, life-time employment for men; standard hours of work and standard working life-cycles. The rhythm varied by class, occupation and communituy: but within each, the pattern was much the same, symbolised by the ‘Wakes Weeks’ when an entire town, its industries, schools and shops, closed simultaneously for the summer holiday. For working-class men, school gave way to an apprenticeship, to employment and – if they were lucky – to a pension drawn at 65. For middle-class men, a later finish to education and later start to a profession were paralleled by longer retirement at the end of a linear course which summed up a general experience. This male model of working time depended upon – but rarely acknowledged – the gendered division of labour, in which men’s avail- ability for full-time, life-time employment depended upon the avail- ability of women for the care of home and family. Just as ‘Fordist’ production techniques have given way to new models of flexible, fast and, above all, individualised production – the ‘mass market of one’ – the old ‘Fordist’ model of working time is giving way to new variable patterns in which different people can expect to work different hours at different stages of their lives. As a result, no one life- cycle pattern will be able to capture most people’s experience. We can see the new model emerging in the growth of part-time work – anything from a few hours’ casual and almost certainly low-paid work a week through to 20 or 25 hours a week in pensionable employment; in short-term contracts and selfemployment; in term-time and annual hours jobs and other working patterns which bear little resemblance to the old, full-time open-ended employment contract. In this country, only one in three of the total workforce works a ‘normal’five-day week, Monday to Friday, starting between 8 and 10 in the morning and fin- ishing between 4 and 6 in the evening; another third regularly work weekends, often as part of a 6 or 7 day week; while the remaining third work shorter than full-time hours. We can see the new model at work in leading-edge employers: the Civil Service, which has pushed part-time work and job-sharing higher up the seniority ladder than most employers; the British supermarkets

150 Demos Whose flexibility? Policies for changing times and DIY stores which operate up to a hundred different working time contracts across increasingly extended opening hours; British Airways, which avoided redundancies by offering staff the option of shorter working hours, for the same rates of pay and with pension rights pre- served; the German department store where shop assistants choose their hours month by month to meet variable customer demand; the Norwegian hospital which offers tailor-made hours to all new staff. Astonishingly, some employers still manage increasingly complex ‘shift’ patterns with pencil and paper, but the software is developing (for instance, in a trial in a Norwegian hospital and an NHS trust) which enables managers’ and employees’ needs to be juggled within a framework of law and organisational rules. We can see new life-cycle patterns emerging too. For the first time in history, a 45-year-old woman whose children are starting their own adult lives – perhaps even a grandmother herself – can be working alongside a woman of the same age who is looking forward to maternity leave for her first child. But as women’s childbearing years expand, men’s earning years seem to be inexorably shrinking. Twenty years ago, more than three-quarters of men aged between 16 and 64 were in full-time employment: according to the same official survey, by 1993 only half of working-age men had a full-time job.1 Although a fortunate few in their 50s might anticipate creating a ‘portfolio’ existence combining early pension, freelance work, voluntary activity and travel, for most an involuntary redundancy means the premature end of their working life. The causes of change are easy to identify, although impossible to reverse. Just as the birth of industrial economies moved millions of people off the fields and into the cities – and, correspondingly, from a world without clocks to a world of ruthless time management – so the shift from industrial to knowledge economies is moving men and women into the flexible, insecure world of round-the-clock service sectors. For many human activities, the convergence of computing and communications is eliminating constraints of time and space, making it possible to work, learn and buy anywhere, anytime. Those who believe that the rhetoric of change is exaggerated point, for instance, to the fact

Demos 151 Demos 5/1995 that the majority of jobs in the UK are still full-time and permanent: but how many of those full-time,‘permanent’ workers believe that they have a job for life? Parallel with these changes in production – and inseparable from them – are the changes in women’s lives and within families. The single- earner family, dependent upon the male breadwinner’s family wage, is an endangered species – increasingly replaced by two-earner families, which are becoming the most common household form in most modern economies and, for a growing and excluded minority, by families with no job at all. But it is the clash between the old working time model and the new realities which is producing some of the earliest manifestations of the ‘new politics of time’.What happens to the old assumption that ‘every worker has a wife’ if the wife is now the worker? Two full- time jobs for a man and a woman fortunate enough to get them can be managed, but only as long as there are no children, and no elderly relatives to care for. At that point, the conflict over time becomes intolera- ble. In the USA, where most two-parent, two-earner couples both work full-time, the result is a ‘parenting deficit’2, the burden of which falls upon the children – and where more than half of under threes were found in a recent study to be in childcare arrangements which were actively damaging their development. In the UK, where mothers of young children are more likely to work part-time, and men work the longest average hours in the European Union, the result is a fathering deficit at home and an equal opportunities deficit in the workplace. Resolving these conflicts requires a revolution in both home and workplace. And despite evidence from cross-country surveys that men are generally spending more time in both housework and the care of children (with women spending significantly less time in housework), change is happening faster in the workplace than the home.At their best, employers who really understand that people are their chief competitive asset have begun to make the changes that will not only retain skilled and valued women employees after they have children, but will enable individual men and women to achieve the balance they increasingly seek in their lives. Feminist arguments in the 1970s that equal opportunities made good business sense cut no ice with emplpoyers: but labour

152 Demos Whose flexibility? Policies for changing times shortages in the 1980s spurred the development of maternity leave, career breaks, job-sharing and the rest. As competition for highly- educated, skilled, responsible and flexible people again becomes more intense, we will see more people becoming ‘consumers’ of their own employment, seeking not simply any job or even any reasonably well- paid job, but work which offers the right hours, the best opportunities for learning, the best chance of moving on to a fresh challenge. But the right hours for one person, at one stage of his or her life, will be wrong for someone else; the trick for employers is to match their own needs for different combinations of skills and people at different hours of the day or different months of the year, to the different requirements of the people they employ. The briefest glance at the fortunes of well-educated knowledge workers, however, is enough to emphasise how very different the picture is for those who are illeducated, unskilled, unlucky – or only willing to work family-friendly hours. Most part-time employment in this country is low-paid, lacking in pension rights or access to training and promotion. Many of the full-time, male employees working the longest hours are manual workers with little choice over how long they work, and often driven to excessive overtime to compensate for inadequate basic wages. For every success story of a job-sharing civil servant or a bank official on a career break, there are hundreds of shop assistants and home helps who, even if they prefer part-time to full-time hours, are paying a high price for their choice. If time is the arena of a new politics, what then is the agenda for politicians? Fundamentally, we need to decide whether this flexibilisa- tion of working time is a threat, or an opportunity: whether we want to turn the clock back, or to shape a different future. There are still many in the Labour Movement – MPs, trade union officials, women as well as men – who share John Major’s nostalgia for the 1950s, who would like nothing better than a return to full-time employment, jobs for life and the family wage and who – recognising that may not be on the agenda – believe that at least the priority for Labour should be the creation of full-time jobs (for men, is usually implicit, although not explicit, in this view).

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But there is a different possibility. We could decide to make it our goal to enable different people to work different hours at different stages in their lives – to balance earning a living with caring for family members, the need to learn new skills with the desire for leisure and community participation, and to change the balance, not once but many times, as their lives change. We could see flexibility as an opportunity for liberation, instead of just another word for exploitation. And if that is the goal we set ourselves, then there is no shortage of challenges to government. By definition, government cannot impose flexibility; the policy tools of the command and control economy have no place here. But what it can and must do is create a level playing field, so that everyone at work – whatever their hours or pattern of work – can expect the same protection of basic standards. Continental European economies respect the principle of equal treatment for part-time workers, and see no objection to decent paternity and maternity leave: similar steps are needed here, not only to balance employment and family, but to ensure that employers have available to them the best pool of talent. Government can and must outlaw the excessively long working hours which endanger individuals’ health and safety and (remember the Clapham Junction railway disaster, after an electrician had worked 7 days a week for 3 months) may endanger other people’s lives as well. Regulating for ‘fair flexibility’ is the basic requirement. Much more is needed, however, including a transformation of a social security system still designed (through national insurance) to protect full-time workers against the risks of industrial lifecycles – unemployment, disability, retirement – and still based (through means-tested benefits) on a household means-test which effectively forces women to give up their jobs when a husband loses his. Modern social insurance – as envisioned by the Commission on Social Justice – would offer individual entitlements in return for individual contributions, supporting people as they invested time in education, training and family responsibilities. In a new partnership with the private sector, government in Britain could follow the example of Ontario, where public service employees are allowed to ‘bank’part of their earnings for several months or several years, using the savings to finance paid time off when they

154 Demos Whose flexibility? Policies for changing times need it. Pension schemes, established to spread earnings from years of employment to years of retirement, should be encouraged to become ‘time banks’ available during parental leave or educational sabbaticals. Pension schemes, time banks and social security systems are all devices for distributing money across time. When men’s working lives occupied perhaps 50 years of a life-expectancy less than 70, that task could be managed by the state without confronting tax resistance or public spending barriers. With many of today’s workers likely to live into their 90s, the ratio of earning to living looks very different. How to distribute the incomes earned during what (for men) is a shrinking and (for women) an unequal working life across lives that last for the best part of a century is perhaps the most difficult challenge facing mature welfare states. But the challenges – and the opportunities – confronted by these extraordinary changes are amongst the most exciting facing anyone interested in a new politics.

Note 1. Employment Department, Employment Gazette, April 1994. 2. Etzioni, A., The Parenting Deficit, Demos 1993.

Demos 155

The 24-hour city Franco Bianchini

Despite the recent renaissance of nightlife and nighttime economies in Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and many other places, the way urban timetables are organized in Britain is still incredibly unimaginative, and inadequate to the needs and rhythms of contemporary lifestyles. Shops and offices – the two types of land-use which overwhelmingly dominate town and city centres – are usually syn- chronized on a 9–5.30 pm timetable. People working in city centres are forced to do their shopping in ten minutes in their lunch breaks, and for people from the catchment area who don’t have time during the day it is virtually impossible to benefit from these city centre facilities in the evening. It’s thus not surprising that at 6pm – when many his- toric, and often beautiful, city centre are empty,‘dead’,and perceived as dangerous – out of town shopping and leisure complexes are buzzing, despite their ‘placelessness’ and lack of character. Places of entertainment licensed to serve alcohol are severely restricted in their opening times by anachronistic regulations. Pubs and bars are normally licensed until 11 pm, and night clubs until 2 am. The Sunday Observance Act 1780 is still in force. It forbids dancing on Sundays at venues where customers have paid to enter. Night clubs open after 2 am on a Sunday morning and on Sunday evening can face prosecution, although normally the law is not enforced.

Franco Bianchini is the Director of the European Cultural Planning Unit at De Montfort University, Leicester.

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At the same time, mobile emergency and repair services, petrol stations, and more recently supermarkets, are increasingly available 24 hours a day. Business is beginning to respond to a variety of trends which point to the need for more flexible and creative urban timetables. These trends include: the ‘new consumerism’ of people in relatively highly paid jobs, who are often having to work longer hours and find it difficult to access the services they need during the day; the rise in student populations, generally located near city centres, who are an important audience for night-time jobs to help pay towards their education; the impact of immigrant cultures, with their night-time restaurants, shops and cultural activities; the recognition by a growing number of politicians and employers that the provision of childcare facilities must be extended, to encourage skilled women with children to re-enter the labour market. City governments are also beginning to respond. In 1993 the Manchester city council supported The 24-Hour City conference, organized by the Manchester Institute for Popular Culture.1 The Institute carried out on behalf of the council an evaluation of the impact of ‘More Hours in the Day’,a scheme which during September 1993 extended permitted hours for licensed premises to midnight for pubs and bars, and to 4am for clubs. Among the Institute’s findings were that more people used the city centre as a result, with a related increase in bar and door takings, and a substantial decrease in city centre arrests (Ϫ43 per cent) and alcohol-related incidents (Ϫ14 per cent), compared with the previous month. Taxi companies reported ‘increased trade and less aggravation’, and the police were ‘pleasantly surprised’ by the effects of the initiative on public order.2 In November 1994, Britain’s second conference on the night-time economy of cities was held in Leeds, as part of the local authority’s strategy to transform Leeds into a city that works and plays around the clock’.3 Jon Trickett, leader of Leeds City Council, argued:

‘the City Centre is a city’s impromptu theatre and should be open to all its actors 24 hours a day. To facilitate this all the

158 Demos The 24-hour city

elements must be in place: the lighting, the access, the attractive set design, the props, the sense of plot and even the toilets and refreshments facilities. The curtain cannot come down half way through the performance or everyone will leave disgruntled, conscious of something missing’.4

The strategy encompassed initiatives ranging from the relaxing of licensing restrictions, to encouraging the opening of new cafes and bars, developing new residential accommodation in the city centre, and promoting street entertainments like the St. Valentine’s Fair, the West Indian Carnival and open air concerts. City administrations in other European countries are also taking innovative initiatives on the restructuring of urban timetables. A reform of local government introduced in 1990 in Italy, for example, gave mayors the power to formulate ‘time use plans’, to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of the times of opening of shops and of the scheduling of urban services of all kinds. This reform was largely the result of the initiative of a group of feminist politicians, sociologists and planners, most of whom either belonged or were close to the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS). Women councillors and officers have taken the lead in preparing and implementing time use plans in Milan, Modena, Reggio Emilia, Bologna and other cities. There are even proposals to establish ‘time banks’ through which individual citizens and voluntary groups can barter ‘time vouchers’ linked to the provision of particular services, according to principles similar to those of the LETS schemes in Britain.5 The preparation of time use plans usually involves a research phase, consisting of detailed hour by hour analyses of what services are available to residents and visitors each day of the week, and in different seasons, and of studies of how and at what times different groups within the population use the city’s facilities. The day is thus broken up into segments of time – e.g. 1–3 pm, or 10–12 pm, or 5–7 am – and specific strategies, in some cases targeted at specific social groups and communities of interest, are adopted for each segment. In short, the Italian municipal experience suggests that

Demos 159 Demos 5/1995 neither wholesale deregulation nor rigid state control are the answer to the question of how to make the most creative, efficient and effective use of the time resource. The Ufficio Tempi – as the municipal agency in charge of the policies on time use is usually known – acts more as a catalyst and orchestrator, cajoling the private sector, voluntary organizations and state bureaucra- cies into action. For example, the Ufficio might launch a campaign to cut waiting time for all services concerning the issuing of documents such as passports, driving licences, identity cards and birth certificates; or it might fund and oversee consultation exercises involving retailers and local residents on the rescheduling of shop opening times in a particular neighbourhood; or, lastly, it might encourage more shops, restaurants and places of entertainment to keep open through the summer months, thus making the city more attractive both for residents and tourists.

160 Demos Notes

1. See Lovatt A et al. (eds), Manchester Institute for Popular The 24-Hour City: Selected Papers Culture, op. cit.). from the First National Conference 3. Leeds City Council,‘Twenty-Four on the Night-time Economy, Hour city Leeds’. Manchester 1994 (available from 4. Trickett J,‘The 24 hour city: retailing Manchester Institute for Popular as animation’,in Regenerating Cities, Culture, Manchester Metropolitan 6, 1994. University, Cavendish Building, 5. On the LETS schemes, see Mulgan Cavendish St., Manchester M15 G,‘Creating a twin economy’,in 6BX; tel. 0161. 2473443). The Demos Quarterly, 2, 1994. 2. Lovatt A, More Hours in the Day Manchester (available from the

Demos 161

Time facts

For the Romans, and many who came after them, the night always had 12 hours – which grew longer until the winter solstice. Not until clocks were invented in around 1330 (as a result of the time-consciousness of Christian monks) did the hour become the modern standard hour.1 In seventeenth-century Chile time was often measured in credos: an earthquake was described in 1647 as lasting for a period of 2 credos, while the cooking time of an egg could be judged by an Ave Maria said aloud. In Burma in recent times monks rose at daybreak when there was ‘light enough to see the veins in the hand’.2 According to anthropologists, the average hunter-gatherer spent only 15 hours a week working.3 From the fourteenth century onwards church clocks and public clocks were erected in the cities and large market towns; the majority of English parishes possessed church clocks by the end of the sixteenth century. By the 1790s, possession of clocks and watches was much more widespread: in some parts of the country, Clock and Watch Clubs were established as a means of collective hire- purchase.4 A number of experiments with different time systems have been tried. From 1793 to 1805, the French lived under a time regime of 10-hour days, 100-minute hours, and 100-second

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minutes. From 1929 to 1931, Stalin experimented with a 5, then a 6 day week.5 A male employee born in the mid-nineteenth century spent roughly 30% of his lifetime in paid work, whereas his counterpart born in the mid-twentieth century spent only about 10%.6 In the 19th century testimonies of 80-hour working weeks were common. Crowley Iron Works – one of the first large- scale manufacturing units in the world-obliged its employees to work a 13½ hour day, excluding (in the proprietor’s written manual) ‘being at taverns, ale-houses, coffee houses, breakfast, dinner, playing, sleeping, smoaking, singing, reding of news history, quarelling, contention, disputes or anything foreign to my business, anyway loytering’.7 Roman Law forbade work on nefarious days, which under Augustus amounted to 60 days, to which were added 65 days of fixed holidays and 48 days of public rejoicing.8

164 Demos Time facts

Working-time was one of the first conditions to be regulated following the Industrial Revolution: Legislation was introduced in Britain in 1802, in Prussia in 1839, and in France in 1841 (the latter to limit the daily hours of work of the young and forbid work at all at too early an age).9 France was the first country to introduce the 40-hour week under the Popular Front government of 1936.10 World standard time was introduced in 1884, following the Prime Meridian Conference held in Washington; Greenwich was declared to be the zero meridian, much to the chagrin of the French. 24 time-zones were also created, and an exact time fixed for the beginning of the universal day.11 As late as the 1870s, there were 80 different railway times in the USA; France had 4 different regional times prior to the 1884 conference.12 In the last 150 years annual working time has fallen by around 3,000 hours to 1,700–1, 800 hours in capitalists countries (Japan is the only exception at 2,200 hours), but these hours are much more productive. One hour in 1990 was 25 times more productive than one hour in 1830.13 Average total usual hours of full-time employees in Britain in 1991 were 43.6 per week and 53.3 for the full-time self- employed.14 5.9 million employees in Britain usually work paid overtime each week (with an average of 7.1 hours), while 4.5 million usually work unpaid overtime (an average of 7.3 hours).15 2.2 million employees (10.2%) usually worked fewer than 16 hours per week, and 3.4 million (15.5%) usually worked more than 48 hours per week.16 Full-time British employees work a longer week than any other country in the EU, with one in three British men working a 6–7 day week.17 The greatest amounts of overtime in the UK are worked by ambulance staff and workers on the railways, or in the bus and coach industry, bakery and confectionery process, road construction and maintenance. Nurses, doctors and police also work substantial amounts of overtime.18

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Most German full-time employees get six weeks paid holiday, British from 4 to 5 weeks, the Japanese 3 weeks, and the Americans 2. An average American full-time employee works for more hours a year than his/her Japanese equivalent, and for up to 15% longer than a typical German.19 In Spring 1993, some 9.7 million people (38% of all UK workers) were part-time, temporary, self-employed, on a Government training scheme or unpaid family workers – an increase of 1.25 million since 1986.20 Part time working has been growing in the UK for the past 40 years with about 12% of employees working part time in 1954 compared to nearly 25% in 1994.As many as one third of all employees are predicted to be part time by the Year 2001.21 In 1993 in the UK, 12% of employees worked flexitime, 9% worked a system of annualised hours, 5% worked term-time only, while 4% of part-time employees worked on a job-share basis.22 From 1981 to 1989, employment rates rose more rapidly for women with children than for other women (from 46 to 57%) – but most employed mothers (62%) were still working

166 Demos Time facts

part-time in 1989.23 In 1979 only 1 out of 4 women returned to work within 9 months of giving birth; by 1988, this proportion had risen to 1 out of 2.24 50% of British mothers working part-time are in the 3 lowest occupational categories, and only 10% are in the top 3; in France, 22.5% of mothers working part-time are in the top 3 categories and only 30% concentrated in the lowest 3.25 The ILO estimates that stress at work costs some 10% of British GNP.26 A MORI poll of the top UK 500 companies showed that 65% believed stress was the major factor in ill health for organisations. Time off work with such illnesses have increased by 500% since the 1950s.27 The Health and Safety Executive has calculated that just under 80 million working days were lost from 1989 to 1990 as a result of the mental disorders caused by stress – an increase of over 20 million from the mid-1980s.28 The workload of managers has increased dramatically in recent years: 41% work more than 50 hours a week, 13% more than 60 hours. 54% take work home once or twice during the week, while 53% work at weekends once or twice a month. Although levels of job satisfaction are still high in this sector, 71% admitted work was a source of stress, with the main cases of anxiety being the conflicts between time at work and time with partners, families, or time to relax. 68% of respondents reported disturbed sleep patterns as one symptom of their stress, while 40% recorded stomach pains and indigestion.29 In the 1980s, executive working hours went up by 20% in OECD countries.30 It is estimated that 10,000 people in Japan die each year from karoshi-meaning death through overwork. According to one recent survey, 124,000 out of Toyota’s workforce of 200,000 suffer from chronic fatigue.31 Time-use studies have shown that the average man spent a half-hour less sleeping and eating in the 1980s compared with the 1960s.32

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A poll of British workers conducted by NOP in 1995 showed that over 70% wanted to work 40 hours or less, although only 31% actually did; only 7% of full-timers said they would ideally like to work more than 50 hours a week, compared with 24% who actually did. 31% of full-time workers were dissatisfied by the impact of their working hours on family and leisure, whereas only 9% of part-timers were.33 A fairly constant proportion of people in the UK (approaching 3 out of 4) have said since 1985 that they would still prefer a paid job, even if they had a reasonable income without one.34 Women’s commitment to work has risen sharply, while that of men has fallen: 76% of women in 1993 would still work even if there was no financial need, as opposed to 63% in 1984. Only 71% of men said they would work in such conditions, compared with 73% in 1984.35 A much higher proportion of young employees are committed to work than their older counterparts: 78% of 25–34 year old employee would continue to work even if there was no financial need, compared to 66% of 45–54 years old. In contrast, only 42% of 25–34 year olds would allow work to interfere with the rest of their lives; this compares to 63% of less committed 45–54 year old, who claim to always do the best they can, even if this does interfere.36 44% of British employees report that they are likely to come home exhausted – a considerably higher level of fatigue than that recorded in the US, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands,West Germany or Norway.37 Part-time women workers expressed higher job satisfaction than both male and female full-time workers in virtually all countries surveyed in 1989; in no countries were they less satisfied than full-time male workers. In Britain, 46% of part-time women workers expressed complete job satisfaction, compared with 39% of full-time men and 35% of full-time women.38

168 Demos Time facts

Research carries out by Institute of Manpower Studies in 1992 found that staff working non standard hours were considered to be more efficient, enthusiastic and committed than other employees.39 In numerous experiments to test the human biological clock, volunteers are deprived of any temporal information (such as day-light or newspapers) for weeks or months.Without knowledge of day or night, people’s daily rhythms lengthen, usually to 25 hours (as defined by changes in body temperature). The sleep-wake cycle, however, was much more elastic, slipping occasionally into 30-hour, 40-hour and even 50-hour days, with stretches of sleep lasting up to 20 or more hours.40 Estimates of the total costs of accidents caused by human fatigue each year total $16 billion for the US alone, and $80

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billion for the entire world cost. Among the catastrophes in which human fatigue played a critical role were the Exxon Valdez oil spillage, the Challenger crash, the Bhopal disaster, and the Clapham Junction railway crash (along with innumerable air crashes).41 Studies of wartime production plants in which people were put on rotating shifts showed a rate of stomach ulcer among such shift-workers 8 times higher than their day-shift working counterparts. In peacetime shift work, the rate of stomach ulcers has been shown to be twice as great as that in the non-shift-working population.42 The divorce rate in the US in shift-working families is 60% higher than for day-workers in regular jobs.43 Analysing a complex geometrical problem – namely the 3-dimensional supersonic airflows past a wing – would have taken many years to solve with the most powerful computer available in the 1940s. By 1969, it would have needed only 2 days in 1969, 4 hours in 1976, 1 hour in 1985, and an estimated 20 minutes with the latest equipment.44 Since the early 1960s, the time spent shopping and related travelling each day has increased dramatically – from around 40 to 70 minutes each day, or an average increase of 3 hours a week.45 The average man with a full-time job now spends nearly half an hour a day shopping – close to the 37 minutes spent shopping daily by women with full-time jobs.46 By 1990, 900 million hours were spent each year in accompanying children to school – reflected in the proportion of seven year olds going to school unaccompanied, which fell from 71% in 1971 to 7% in 1991.With the extra congestion caused as a result, it is estimated that the cost of seeing children to school and back was 1,356 million hours in 1990, or in money terms, over £10,000 million.47 Between 1979 and 1989 consumer spending on leisure grew 150% in value and 50% in volume (ignoring expenditure on

170 Demos Time facts

alcohol, which has not increased so sharply). Over the same period, the amount of leisure time rose by only 2%.48 In 1965, outside the workplace the average American spent nearly 6 ½ hours a day consuming information from the mass media. By 1977, the information load was 8 hours. There have been more books published since World War II than all previous centuries put together.49 People in the UK watched on average 27 hours of television each week in 1992,50 but in the 1980s only 38% took part in some form of outdoor sport per year, and 26% in an indoor sport.51 Women are reported to spend on average 34 hours per week shopping, cooking and cleaning, whilst men put in only 13 hours.52 Men in full-time employment enjoyed on average nearly 46 hours of free time per week in 1992–3, 14 more than female full-time employees, and 5 more than part-time female employees.53 Over 3/4 of people feel that sharing of household chores is important for a successful marriage. In practice women still do the majority of work. Couples in households where both

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partners work are more likely to share responsibility for domestic work but even then two out of three of these women do the lion’s share of the work.54 1.4 million adults are caring for 20 hours or more a week.55 A study by the US Department of Labour showed that child care related absences of employees cost industry an estimated US $3 billion annually; another survey in the USA found that companies have tended to increase their family oriented benefits despite overall cost cutting.56 Contrary to popular belief, fathers were the primary care givers for one out of five pre-school children in the US in 1991. The same survey found that 30% of pre-school children whose fathers worked nights were looked after by them during the day.57 A study by the Wiesbaden Institute calculated that for the period of 1990–91 the value added of unpaid housework in Western Germany amounted to 38% of the gross national product.58 A survey on retirement in 1992 found that women’s elder care responsibilities caused 18% to leave their jobs, 15% to become unemployed and 11% to take time off work and lose pay.59 BT estimates over 2 million people work at home or use the home as a base more than half a million are teleworkers and they estimate that as many as 15% of working hours will be spent at home by 1995.60 A survey by the Department of Employment showed an increase of productivity of 16% amongst those who telework.61 A recent survey found that the lunch hour is a thing of the past – the average time now being half an hour.62 Last year the Japanese Parliament passed a bill to reduce the working week to 40 hours as part of its 5 year plan to become a lifestyle superpower and recent articles in Japanese weekly magazines bemoan the Japanese Gen X who are now refusing to put in hours at work that are not mandatory.63

172 Demos Time facts

One study found that the average consumer has a 10% chance of finding a service open at the times when he or she is free between 7 am and 7 pm on a week day. Full time employees carry out about half of their transactions between 8 am and 5 pm on weekdays,While it is estimated that 40% of the free time of full time employees is concentrated at the weekends whilst the proportion for the inactive population is 30%.64 The surface of a black hole is the only place where time stands still.65

Compiled by Ivan Briscoe & Helen Wilkinson

Demos 173 Notes

1. Young M. The Metronomic Society, for Working, A Time for Living Thames and Hudson 1988, p. 199. Working. Papers prepared by ETUI, 2. Thompson E. P.,‘Time,Work- 78.12.94. Discipline and Industrial Capitalism’, 14. Employment Department, Past and Present 38 (1967) Employment Gazette,November 3. Independent on Sunday 29.1.95. 1992. Evidence from the Labour 4. Thompson E P,‘Time, Work- Force Survey of 1991. Discipline and Industrial 15. Employment Gazette,November Capitalism’,p. 63. 1992. 5. Young M, op. cit., p. 205. 16. Employment Gazette,November 6. Hinrich K et al (eds), Working Time 1992. in Transition, Philadephia: Temple 17. Labour Force Survey, 1990/91. Uni Press 1991, p. 235. 18. FT 25.1.95. 7. Thompson E.P.,‘Time, work- 19. The Economist 22.10.94. Discipline and Industrial 20. Employment Gazette, July 1994. Capitalism’.p. 81. 21. Part time Work in Britain: Analysis 8. European Foundation, Legal and of Trends in part time work and the Contractual Limitations to Working- characteristics of part time workers Time in the European Union Member in 1994, TUC Economic and Social States, 1994, p. 2. Affairs Department. 9. Op.cit., p. 3. 22. Employment Gazette, July 1994. 10. Times are Changing: Working Time 23. Employment Gazette, October 1994. in 14 Industrialised Countries,ILO 24. Hewitt P, About Time, IPPR 1993. 1994, Ch. 1. 25. Mouriki A, Flexible Working: Towards 11. Howse D, Greenwich time and the Further Degradation of Work, or discovery of longitude, OUP 1980. Escaping from Stereotypes,Industrial 12. Kern S, The Culture of time and Relations Research Unit 1994. space 1880–1918,Winfeld 1983. 26. ILO,World Labour Report, 1993. 13. Danis J-J,‘Working Time: Historical, 27. Change at the Top: Working Flexibly Cultural and social aspects’, A Time at Senior and Managerial levels in

174 Demos Time facts

organisations,New Ways to Work, 48. Centre for the Study of 1993. Environmental Change,‘Trends and 28. The Health and Safety Executive, Participation in Leisure Activities’, Stress Research and Stress Leisure Landscapes, 1994. Management, 1993. 49. Young M, op. cit, p. 212. 29. The Institute of Management, 50. CSO, Social Trends 1994, p. 130. Managers Under Stress: A survey of 51. Leisure Landscapes,p.11. management morale in the nineties, 52. Balancing Work and Home: December 1993. Factsheet 8, One Plus One, 1994. 30. Douthwaite R, The Growth Illusion, 53. CSO, Social Trends 1994, p. 130. Green 1992, p. 165. 54. Balancing Work and Home: 31. ‘Japan: the reduction in working Factsheet 8, One Plus One, 1994. time’, Futures, June 1993. 55. IYF Factsheet No 4, Families & 32. Ibid. Caring, 1994. 33. NOP poll for the TUC, March 1995 56. ILO,‘Promoting Harmony Between 34. British Social Attitudes Survey 1994, Work and the Family: the role of p. 41. support services and flexible 35. BSA 1994, p. 44. working arrangements’, World 36. BSA 1994, p. 44. Labour Report 1994. 37. ISA 1994, p. 105. 57. Ibid. 38. ISA 1994, p. 108. 58. Fajertag G,‘Working Less to enable 39. Family Friendly Working,Institute of everyone to Work?’,ETUI 7–8.12.94. Manpower Studies, 1992. 59. CBI, Select Committee Enquiry into 40. Moore-Ede M, The 24 Hour Society, Mothers In Employment, 1994. Piatkus 1993, p. 34–37. 60. New Ways to Work newsletter. 41. Op. cit.p. 68. 61. The Survey is cited in Pepp Talk, The 42. Op. cit. p. 75–76 Industrial Society, June/July 1994. 43. Op. cit. p. 78. 62. The Independent on Sunday 29.1.95. 44. PSI, Britain in 2010, 1991, p. 213. 63. FT 18.1.95. 45. Hewitt P, About Time, IPPR 1993, 64. Towards A General Policy on Time, p. 59. European Foundation, 1989. 46. Ibid. 65. The Guardian 20.4.95. 47. Policy Studies Institute, One False Move, 1991.

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Books on time

Time: an Essay Norbert Elias A profound exploration of the construction of social time in the standard, clocked form we experience today. Elias argues that we take these relatively arbitrary forms of measuring time to be time itself – and are deceived into taking a social convention to be a fundamental part of the natural order of things. (Blackwells, £12.99)

The Future of Technics and Civilization Lewis Mumford A classic analysis of the exploitation of humans by their own machines and technology. Mumford dissects the failure of Western societies to marry the enhanced power and productivity at their disposal to more fruitful, enjoyable and expressive lifestyles. In its place, he claims, we have been left with war, alienation and a new form of technological slavery. (The Freedom Press, £3.50)

The Metronomic Society Michael Young Cyclical and linear conceptions of time both underlie modern society, according to Young. The linear model, constructed largely in the

Demos 177 Demos 5/1995 industrial age, involves a constant progress of events, with change and flux the essential marks of all things.Young argues that we are neglect- ing the cyclical – the importance of habit, memory, genes – in our search for ceaseless novelty, but that we could achieve greater social stability, and a deeper appreciation of the value of life, through more balanced respect for the two times. (Thames and Hudson, £16.95)

The 24-Hour Society Martin Moore-Ede The failure to take account of the human body clock, according to Moore-Ede, lies behind many major accidents, while the costs in terms human fatigue, stress and social breakdown in adapting to the pace of a global, non-stop economy are often neglected. From a medical view- point, he offers a number of solutions through improved work organisation geared to biological rhythms. (Piatkus, £25)

Time: the Modern and Postmodern Experience Helga Nowotny The sociologist Nowotny assesses the changing concepts of time and the impact of new technologies on popular perceptions. She suggests that demands for ‘proper time’ – a time free from the external constraints imposed everywhere by institutions working within an expanding global network – will gradually subvert traditional economic and political powers, whose authority is fundamentally allied to their own strategic use of time. (Polity, £35)

Time and Social Theory Barbara Adam The best recent account of the role of time in modern social theory. Adam explains the deficiencies of past theories – Newtonian time, for

178 Demos Books on time example – and goes onto offer a very subtle and sophisticated account of biology and lived time, the role of time in the industrial era and how this is being transformed by post-industrial society. She argues that a proper understanding of time is not only important for theory: it is also essential for people to take control over their own lives. (Polity £11.95)

Flow: the psychology of optimal experience Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The best accounts of how to use time well. Genuinely satisfying experiences involve what the author calls flow:namely, intense absorption in an activity. He shows how badly designed most work and leisure activities are, and how little they contribute to human fulfillment. He goes onto argue that people can learn how to control their capacity to achieve flow. This book is not only a compelling analysis: it also offers readers ideas about how to change their lives. (Harper Collins, published in US at $13)

Why Work? Arguments for the Leisure Society Various A collection of the most significant writings questioning the value of work and arguing for improvement and enlargement of people’s leisure time. The tone is clearly set by Bertrand Russell’s unrivalled definition of work:‘Work is of two kinds: first altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so’. (Freedom Press, £4.50)

The Harried Leisure Class Staffan Linder Why did workers in postwar.America start to work longer hours, even though they were earning more than ever before? Why the ubiquitous

Demos 179 Demos 5/1995 pressure on time? Linder provides an economist’s answer, accounting for increased working hours through the diminishing marginal utility of extra income, and the increased opportunity cost of not working. Attempts to increase the productivity of leisure time through extra consumption are also, according to Linder, fundamental to the lack of genuinely free time. (New York: Columbia University Press 1970)

On Work edited by Ray Pahl The best collection of essays on the history of work. The contents are extraordinarily rich, ranging from informal work in southern Italy to the automation of the insurance industry. It includes sophisticated the- oretical analysis of work and power, gender, and the need to work. It shows how hard it is to define the boundaries of work and leisure and could be seen as a sustained attack on the naivety and superficiality of some of the popular polemics. (Blackwell, £14.99)

180 Demos Project Working Papers

The future of charities and voluntary organisations in the UK This study, conducted in collaboration with Comedia has now produced 8 working papers and an interim report. All are available from Demos post-free, priced at £5 each:

The Interim Report, Beyond Charity: A new settlement to harness the potential of voluntary action, by Charles Landry, Director of Comedia, and Geoff Mulgan, Director of Demos. ISBN 1 898309 95 7.

Working papers: 1. Themes and Issues, by Charles Landry and Geoff Mulgan. ISBN 1 898309 65 5. 2. Rethinking Charity Finance, by Geoff Mulgan and Charles Landry. ISBN 1 898309 50 7. 3. The Question of Independence: the case for pragmatism in public policies towards the non-profit sector, by Perri 6, Research Director, Demos. ISBN 1 898309 60 4. 4. The Future of Civic Forms of Organisation, by Paul Hoggett, School for Advanced Urban Studies, Bristol University. ISBN 1 898309 55 8. 5. The Acceptable Face of Capitalism: Corporate involvement in the charitable and voluntary sectors, by John Griffiths, freelance consultant and writer. ISBN 1 898309 85 X.

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6. Restricting the Freedom of Speech of Charities: do the rationales stand up?, by Perri 6, Research Director, Demos. ISBN 1 898309 90 6. 7. The Global Associational Revolution: the rise of the third sector on the world scene, by Lester Salamon, Professor, Johns Hopkins University. ISBN 1 898309 36 1. 8. The Money Game: money, charities and the city, by Russell Sparkes, Director of UK Social Investment Forum. ISBN 1 898309 51 5.

The study is financed jointly by the Charities Aid Foundation and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The final report will be published in the summer of 1995. Further information is available from Joanna Wade at Demos.

The Seven Million project Following the publication of No Turning Back, four working papers have recently been published and several are forth coming, all of which can be bought from Demos for £5:

1. Generation X and the new workthic,by David Cannon, Director of Research at PRL Consulting and academic at the London Business School. ISBN 1 898 309 01 9. 2. Gender, feminism and the future, by Helen Wilkinson and Gerda Siann, Reader in Psychology at Glasgow Caledonian University. ISBN 1 898 309 06 X. 3. Beyond family friendly organisations, by Professor Cary Cooper, Professor of Organisational Psychology at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, and Dr. Suzan Lewis, senior lecturer in Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University. ISBN 1 898 309 21 3. 4. Paying the price of care: comparative studies of women’s employement and the value of caring, by Rosemary Crompton, Reader in Socialogy at the University of Kent at Canterbury. ISBN 1 898 309 31 0.

182 Demos Project working papers

Forthcoming: 5. The future of equal opportunities, by Angela Coyle, Organisation Development Centre, City University. 6. The future of fathering, by Dr Sebastian Kraemer, The Tavistock Clinic. The project is funded by: Northern Foods, National Westminster Bank, BT, IBM (UK), Coopers & Lybrand, BBC and Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For further information contact Helen Wilkinson at Demos.

The future of public parks in the UK This project, undertaken jointly with Comedia, has now produced 12 working papers.All cost £5, and are available post-free from Comedia, The Round, Bournes Green, Nr Stroud, Glos GL6 7NL.

1. The study brief and objectives. ISBN 1 873 667 55 8. 2. Law Money and Management, by Alan Barber. ISBN 1 873 667 55 8. 3. Lost Childhoods: Taking Children’s Play Seriously, by Bob Hughes, editor International Play Journal, with an introduction by Colin Ward. ISBN 1 873 667 70 1. 4. Calling in the Country:Ecology, Parks and Urban Life, by David Nicholson Lord, Environmental Editor, The Independent. ISBN 1 873 667 75 2. 5. Parks, Open Space and the Future of Urban Planning, by Professor Janice Morphet, Secretary of SERPLAN. ISBN 1 873 667 26 4. 6. Lost Connections and New Directions: the private garden and the public park, by Martin Hoyles, ISBN 1 873 667 31 0. 7. Reclaiming the Night: Night-time use, Lighting and Safety in Britain’s parks, by Carl Gardner (with Jonathan Speirs). ISBN 1 873 667 36 1. 8. The Politics of Trust: reducing fear of crime and urban parks, by Jacquie Burgess, Reader in Geography, University of London. ISBN 1 873 667 41 8.

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9. The Popular Culture of City Parks, by David Crouch, Lecturer at Anglia University. ISBN 1 873 667 81 7. 10. Age and Order:the public park as a metaphor for a civilised society, by Hilary A. Taylor. ISBN 1 873 667 46 9. 11. The Sporting Life:sport, health and active recreation, by Michael F.Collins, the Institute of Sport & Recreation Planning & Management, Loughborough University. ISBN 1 873 667 51 5. 12. Urban Parks in Germany: Current Issues,by RalfEbert, member of Stadtart, a Dortmund based cultural planning agency. ISBN 1 873 667 61 2.

This project is being funded by a consortium of UK local authorities, together with the Corporation of London. The Baring Foundation, the GMB, and the ESRC. For further information on the project contact the project directors Liz Greenhalgh or Ken Worpole Via Demos.

184 Demos Media Watch

Liberation Technology Demos Quarterly Published December 1994 A special issue on the development of communications technology and policy, featuring articles by Jonathon Solomon and Suzanne Warner of Cable & Wireless, Martin Cave, adviser to Oftel, and Sir Douglas Hague of Templeton College. The issues covered include the impact of new technologies on employment, the implications for service providers of a UK National Information Infrastructure and models for regulation. It was excerpted in The Guardian and featured in articles for The Financial Times and numerous trade and IT magazines.

The Creative City by Charles Landry and Franco Bianchini Published January 1995 This pamphlet argued that cities will no longer be able to depend on manufacturing and old industries, and set out a vision for cities in the next century. It explains why cities need to develop creative and innovative industries and services like software, design and culture in order to thrive. The book draws on dozens of examples from around the world to set out a radical vision of the creative city. Peter Hall com- mented that ‘The Creative City … will surely prove to be one of the

Demos 185 Demos 5/1995 seminal studies on the 1990’s. It was excerpted in The Guardian and featured in articles for The scotsman, Observer, The independent and The Guardian. A long feature discussed the ideas in the RIBA Journal.

The Battle over Britain by Philip Dodd Published March 1995 In this book Philip Dodd, editor of Sight and Sound, the British Film Institute’s cinema magazine, looks at what it is to be British. He argues that Britain has repeatedly remoulded its identity to suit the times and has tended to be a mongrel nation. This book is firmly placed at the centre of the debate currently raging over the state of the British Union. By drawing extensively on politics, history and culture, he describes a useable and inclusive British identity for the 21st century. Dodd appeared on Radio 4’s Start the Week programme and BBC Breakfast News to discuss the book and wrote for the New Statesman and The Independent on the core arguments. It was also the focus of radio news items in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The pamphlet was discussed in columns by Hamish MacRae, Neal Ascherson and Andrew Marr. More recently Philip Dodd appeared on a BBC2 programme called The Big Picture to discuss issues of regional identity.

Big is Beautiful by Perri 6 Published March 1995 This recently published piece by Demos’ research director gives the core arguments for and against the enlargement of the European Union. Coming out broadly in favour of eastward enlargement it represents an academic examination of the case for greater political union with former eastern bloc countries. Covered in The Financial Times.

186 Demos Media watch

Generation X and the New Work Ethic by David Cannon Published November 1994 The first working paper arising from the Seven Million Project is an account of extensive qualitative research amongst higher educated 18–30 years olds in North America and Europe. It argues that many young people are defining a new work ethic based on balance and fulfilment which is posing new challenges to companies concerned with managing a diverse workforce. It proposes a variety of ways in which companies can best use the talents of higher educated employees. The paper was excerpted in The Guardian and The Sydney Morning Herald, The Idler, The Utne Reader and featured in articles for The Daily Mail, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, the Employee Develop- ment Bulletin and a French magazine Today in English.

Beyond Family Friendly Organisations by Cary Cooper and Suzan Lewis Published January 1995 The second working paper arising from the Seven Million Project arguing for a reappraisal of the effectiveness of Family Friendly policies. Cooper and Lewis call for a broadening of the scope of rights accorded to young parents in the workplace to workers in general. They argue that current policies put too much emphasis on women taking responsibility for childcare. The paper was featured in articles for The Scotsman, Mail on Sunday, Opportunity 2000 newsletter. People Management magazine and the IRS Employment Review. The paper was also reproduced in its entirety in the journal Employee Counselling Today.

Gender, Feminism and the Future by Helen Wilkinson and Gerda Sianne, Published February 1995 This third paper arising from the Seven Million Project was the focus of a cover feature article in the G2 section of The Guardian for

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International Women’s Day. It features an assessment of the causes of young women’s lack of identification with the label ‘Feminism’. It also documents how most young women share the aims of the original women’s movement but want to achieve change in a consensual prag- matic way.

Creativity and Leadership Public lecture by Howard Gardner January 1995 The first in a series of public lectures organised by Demos in conjunction with The Times, Howard Gardner spoke on the link between creative use of narrative and success in public life. He also put forward a new theory of leadership based around two different styles, one direct the other indirect, which explains the influence of various historical public figures ranging from Gandhi to Einstein. The lecture was the focus of articles by Gardner in both The Times and The Independent. It was reported in both The Times and The Times Higher Educational Supplement.

Communitarianism Public lecture by Amitai Etzioni March 1995 Amitai Etzioni gave Demos’ second Times Millennium lecture on the practicalities of what the communitarian agenda has to offer for the UK and Europe. The weeks leading up to the lecture culminated in extensive news coverage during the week of the lecture, followed by weeks of speculation about who was or wasn’t a communitarian. It was covered on television by Newsnight and The Battle for Ideas and extensively in all of the broadsheetss, including interviews with Etzioni in the Sunday Times, Independent, Guardian and THES. The Economist ran two opposing opinion pieces in the same issue.

188 Demos Publications to date

Reconnecting Taxation by Geoff Mulgan and Robin Murray Geoff Mulgan is Director of Demos. Robin Murray works for the government of Ontario. ISBN 1 898309 00 0

An End to Illusions by Alan Duncan Alan Duncan is Conservative MP for Rutland and Melton. ISBN 1 898309 05 1

Transforming the Dinosaurs by Douglas Hague Sir Douglas Hague is an Associate Fellow of Templeton College, Oxford, non-executive director of CRT Group plc and President of Corporate Positioning Services. ISBN 1 898309 10 8

The Parenting Deficit by Amitai Etzioni Amitai Etzioni is Professor of Sociology at George Washington University. He has previously worked at Harvard Business School, the Brookings Institute and the White House. ISBN 1 898309 20 5

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Sharper Vision by Ian Hargreaves Ian Hargreaves is Editor of the Independent. ISBN 1 898309 25 6

The World’s New Fissures by Vincent Cable Vincent Cable is Director of the International Economics Programme at the Royal Institute for International Affairs. ISBN 1 898309 35 3

The Audit Explosion by Michael Power Michael Power is lecturer in Accounting and Finance and Coopers and Lybrand at the London School of Economics and Political Science. ISBN 1 898309 30 2

The Mosaic of Learning by David Hargreaves David Hargreaves is Professor of Education at Cambridge University. ISBN 1 898309 45 0

Alone Again by Zygmunt Bauman Zygmunt Bauman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Leeds University. ISBN 1 898309 40 X

No Turning Back: generations and the genderquake by Helen Wilkinson Helen Wilkinson is a Project Director at Demos. ISBN 1 898309 75 2

190 Demos Publications to date

The Common Sense of Community by Dick Atkinson Dick Atkinson developed the St. Paul’s community education and development agency in Balsall Heath before founding the Phoenix Centre in Birmingham. ISBN 1 898309 80 9

The Creative City by Charles Landry and Franco Bianchini Charles Landry is Director of the research consultancy Comedia and Franco Bianchini is Director of the European Cultural Planning Unit at De Montfort University, Leicester. ISBN 1 898309 16 7

The Battle over Britain by Philip Dodd Philip Dodd is Editor of Sight and Sound, the British Film Institute’s cinema magazine. ISBN 1 898309 26 4

All books may be bought direct from Demos, or ordered through bookshops. The bookshop distributor is Central Books. Additional copies are available direct from Demos priced at £5.95 (£3.95 to Demos subscribers).

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