Jobs are still greedy for our time
Interview with Barbara PocockProfessor Barbara Pocock is Director of the Centre for Work + Life at the University of South Australia. She has been researching work, employment and industrial relations since 1981. Her most recent book in her field was The Labour Market Ate My Babies: Work, Children and a Sustainable Future. Frank Barbaro questioned her on the vexed issue of time and work.
Workers today appear to be more stressed for time. Is that the case and why is that?
I think there are 3 main reasons for the perception that people are stressed for time. Firstly, more and more of us are in paid work, and for longer, especially women. Second, average hours of work for full-timers are longer than 30 years ago, and especially for professional and managerial workers. Thirdly, work is more intensive: people are working harder when they are at work in many occupations and so we go home more tired because more is expected of us.
Women workers are still expected to fulfil their traditional domestic duties. How much is this a source of extra stress than that faced by their male counterparts and is it the only distinctive gender difference?
There are many differences between women and men at work, still. There has been little narrowing of the gender pay gap in the last 30 years despite women's increasing level of qualifications. Women are increasing participation in paid work, but their over participation in unpaid work (double men's, on average) has hardly changed in the past 20 years. This really matters to women. There are few signs that things are better even among young men. What are we going to do about something that results in overload for women, contributes to divorce and doesn't help relationship quality? We still have a long way to travel on this one.
Technological advances have delivered enormous productivity gains over the past 25 years, why haven't they translated into extra free time for workers?
There are several reasons. Many of us want more stuff: we live and work on a treadmill of work and spend. It doesn't make us very happy, but we seem very incapable of thinking it through and getting off the work/spend cycle. Many young people are even worse than their parents. Secondly, the profit share has increased at the expense of the wages share of GNP, especially in the Howard years. This means that the wages share hasn't kept pace with productivity, especially in some sectors where women and young people work. In many sectors that are expanding, the jobs are greedy for our time, workplaces are under-staffed and so there is less time off.
What is the extent of the divide between the time rich and cash poor and the time poor and cash rich?
There is a real divide around time and money now. The working poor, however, cop a double whammy, being both time and money poor.
To what extent does the business saying 'time is Money' represents how society organises to have work done and does society need other criteria to base its work ethos?
Time is a critical element of well-being: time to recover from work, time for a holiday, time for friends and family, time to reproduce oneself. Neoclassical economics only counts production at the cost of reproduction, so increasingly the terms of care are becoming worse, especially for working carers. A good society depends on good terms of employment that allow work alongside a life, over the life cycle. This includes a liveable income in retirement.
Is the segment of the workforce that enjoys secure employment and adequate wages shrinking at the expense of the precariously employed?
Australia now has a quarter of its workforce employed on casual terms. Not all casual are actually insecure, just as not all 'permanents' are actually secure. But a lot of people - who are not young - are in insecure employment and this is associated with worse work life balance and poorer health outcomes. Only Spain comes close to us in the developed world.
What kind of workforce policies are needed for the community to be able to properly pay to have its old, young and sick adequately cared for?
We need working conditions that permit workers to be carers for periods in their lives: through paid leave, flexible working conditions, secure jobs, and decent pay. Retirement incomes are very inequitable especially by gender. And we need good conditions for holidays and rest. Instead we are moving to longer hours for many and insecure employment. We are going to need more contributions from women in future, in particular, and countries that manage this offer a lot of support to working carers. We are a very rich country. We can do much better, and we can do so much more equitably.
Source: Australian Options, Issue 52, Autumn 2008, pp. 14-15.