A Changing Working Life—Both Up-Skilling and Down-Skilling, More Pressure and Control

Börnfelt P-O ()

Chapter Chapter 9 in Work Organisation in Practice, 2023, pp 141-161 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract There is support to the idea that the western world is a knowledge society. The number of white-collar workers has increased at the expense of blue-collar workers. More people also have higher education. However, since the 1990s there is a trend of polarisation in several countries, where both low-skilled and high-skilled work are increasing. Contemporary work organisation trends have resulted in higher demands and pressure on workers which has led to intensification of work for many. Probably, because of these new trends, there are higher levels of stress-related ill-health like burnout, and pain in different parts of the body. The organisation models that have had a major impact on working life, since the 1990s, are mainly lean production and new public management (NPM), but also rising rapidly, platform organisations. In lean production the focus is to create fast and efficient processes with less resources. This tends to intensify work for the remaining work force. Exposition to competition in the public sector, based on NPM, put pressure on organisations to decrease costs. This competition often results in less staff and intensified work. A coordination and control mechanism in lean production and NPM is internal markets or pseudo markets, where workers are defined as suppliers and customers. Internal customers are supposed to control that the internal suppliers deliver products or service in time and with the specified quality. Other control mechanisms are management by objectives and organisation culture. Many organisations today are more organic and boundary-less. Workers have to structure work themselves and also have the technical possibilities, such as mobile phones and laptops, to take work home. Also, employers are increasingly using digital surveillance to control workers, for instance using webcams to take pictures of workers, taking screen pictures, tracking movements, and monitoring keystrokes. Precarious gig work in platform organisations is increasing. All the risk is transferred to the gig workers, as they are self-employed. The gig worker is controlled by algorithm management where for instance low customer rating automatically channel away work. Gig workers are typically low paid and often need to work long hours and/or to tight deadlines, leading to work intensification. Therefore, they often report exhaustion and body pain.

Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-21667-1_9

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