Any job isn’t necessarily a good job for people out of work

By Stephen Bevan, Lancaster University

There can be no doubt that the job market has been more resilient since the financial crisis than many imagined. Unemployment did not rise as far as was feared and the recovery in employment to pre-recession levels has been quicker than forecast by even the most optimistic labour economists. So, time for some self-congratulatory back-slapping among policy makers then? On the surface of things, at least, it looks like a jobs miracle, despite the belt-tightening of austerity.

Unfortunately, having studied the quality of jobs which many people in the UK are now doing, this is not entirely the case. The UK labour market is, indeed, performing well but we have a growing and potentially corrosive problem of poor quality, precarious and temporary work which threatens our productivity and competitiveness, levels of social inclusion and, ultimately, the health of the workforce.

Many will argue that this contingent work is essential if we are to have a flexible labour market and this, of course, has always been the case. But how about the effects of this kind of work on the people doing it?

My research has focused on the relationship between the kinds of contingent work that has poor psychosocial quality and the mental health of the workers doing it. And findings force us to ask, perhaps heretically, whether we are actually always better off in work.

Work and well-being

Psychosocial job quality involves the degree to which jobs promote control, autonomy, challenge, variety and task discretion. It effects the extent to which work enhances or diminishes our psychological well-being.

There’s a clear link between being engaged in “good work” and mental health. An important contribution to our understanding of this link has come from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey in Australia. It brings together a robust set of data that can be easily compared with other situations such as unemployment. The results, published by Peter Butterworth and colleagues at the Australian National University have global resonance for countries that are serious about developing an understanding of what being “better off” in work really means, beyond narrow economic definitions.

Plus? That depends on the job.
Gareth Fuller/PA Wire

The received wisdom is that being out of work is a bad thing. It certainly is bad, as we know, for income. It is also bad for self-esteem, dignity, social inclusion, relationships and health. So, all other things being equal, a policy position that promotes getting people back into work is both rational and evidence-based.

But, building on this position, and especially during a period of high unemployment, the received wisdom also tells us that any job is a good job. This axiom informs current UK policy towards compulsory work experience and the “workfare” or “work-for-benefits” thinking which many politicians now favour.

Worse than unemployment

Being in poor-quality work which, perhaps, is boring, routine or represents underemployment or a poor match for the employee’s skills is widely regarded as a good way for the unemployed to remain connected to the labour market – and to keep the work habit. But Butterworth’s data contradicts this. The HILDA data shows unambiguously that the psychosocial quality of bad jobs is worse than unemployment. Butterworth looked at those moving from unemployment into employment and found that:

Those who moved into optimal jobs showed significant improvement in mental health compared to those who remained unemployed. Those respondents who moved into poor-quality jobs showed a significant worsening in their mental health compared to those who remained unemployed.

So now we have a slightly different answer to the question about the unemployed being better off in work. Yes they are, as long as they are in good-quality jobs. If they are in bad jobs, there is a perversely strong chance that they will be worse off – especially in terms of their mental health.

Again, for those who think that there should be punitive undertones to policies to get unemployed people back to work would do well to question whether the “any job is a good job” maxim is as accurate as they like to think. Moreover, we should probably question whether the revolving-door characteristics of some policies in which many people fall back out of work soon after being found a job might – in part – owe their poor performance to the damaging psychosocial quality of the work itself.

This shouldn’t stop us from straining every sinew to help people find work. But it should make us think a lot more about how the quality of jobs can affect our health and productivity. Even in a recession, the uncomfortable truth may be that “any job” may not be a good job at all.

Stephen Bevan, Director of the Centre for Workforce Effectiveness, The Work Foundation and Honorary Professor, Lancaster University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Too late. It’s now impossible to unsee the once unthinkable.

The Daily Mail (admittedly not the world’s most reliable, factual newspaper,) has given David Cameron a taste of his own medicine by publishing an exclusive sneak preview of a soon to be published,  intimately detailed and strictly unauthorised biography of the Prime Minister.

It was co-written by a senior Conservative Party figure, Lord Ashcroft, and Isobel Oakeshott, former Sunday Times political editor, and Call Me Dave promises to reveal some extremely uncomfortable and embarrassing details about Cameron’s infamously uber-privileged younger years.

The biography contains some fairly prosaic stories of the kid Cameron smoking weed and listening to Supertramp with the likes of James Delingpole and generally being a very obnoxious, wealthy Tory numpty. However an unnamed source in the book alleges that Hameron was a member of a glorified and debauched fraternity boy’s club at Oxford University called the Piers Gaveston. The source claims that the then future Prime Minister of Great Britain “inserted a private part of his anatomy” into a dead pig’s mouth that was resting on the lap of another club member, at an initiation ceremony for the club. What a very ghastly silly sausage.

I hadn’t realised that Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror was actually a documentary series.

The internet has exploded with glee at the story, with some jolly japes and lots of mirthful revenge aimed at the swine minister – check out #piggate on Twitter.

The revelations have added new layers of meaning to phrases such as “ham shanks”, “ham fisted”, “telling porkies” , “bringing home the bacon” , “making a pig’s ear of it” and  “pig-headed.” 

I never thought that the Daily Mail would make me laugh out loud with such a suprisingly welcomed sense of poetic justice, though I did flinch a little. I’m a vegetarian for moral reasons.

Undoubtedly, amidst all of the oinky tonk glee and frivolity generated by Lord Ashcroft’s revelations, David Cameron is certain to face some hamstringing questions from Labour over the allegations made by the former Conservative deputy chairman that the prime minister conspired to mislead the public before the 2010 election about his knowledge of Ashcroft’s non-dom tax status.

There’s a darker side to contemplate in all of this. My first thought is that perhaps the dead pig story is really a dead cat. What are we being diverted from?

Secondly, the unacceptably ugly is deeply rooted in the public school class and its culture. If someone ever told me to abuse a dead animal in order to gain acceptance of a ghastly ingroup, I would have told them no without hesitation. Even as a child. Cameron clearly doesn’t have such well-defined moral boundaries. How a person treats and regards animals (dead or alive) reflects something of how they are likely to treat and regard other people, too.

Boarding school: the trauma of the ‘privileged’ child by Joy Schaverien explores the emotional deprivation and abuse that many experience as a result of public school culture. Psychotherapist Nick Duffell (2000) wrote a book based on workshops he has conducted over ten years with adults who attended boarding schools as children. He has identified many lasting pathological psychological patterns common in those he calls Boarding school survivors.

In his recent work: Wounded Leaders: the Psychohistory of British Elitism and the Entitlement Illusion, Nick says:

“A cherished national character ideal, eschewing vulnerability and practising a normalised covert hostility based on bullying in the dorm adversely affects even those who did not have the privilege of such an education. It leaves Britain in the social and emotional dark ages, led by “the boys in the men that run things.”

This specific culture of elitism, protected by financial interests and the “It never did me any harm” syndrome, means that Britain is unlikely to foster the kind of leadership necessary in our world of increasing complexity, which needs a communal mindset and cooperative global solutions. But worse, new scientific evidence shows that this hyper-rational training leaves its devotees trapped within the confines of an inflexible mind, beset with functional defects, presented here as the Entitled Brain.”

It’s a sobering thought that so many boarding school survivors, psychologically and emotionally damaged individuals, are involved in running the country and determining the terms and conditions of our lives.

However you see Piggate, it’s worth considering that when even the bastion of working-class Conservatism, the Daily Mail, finds it necessary to exercise a critical voice (whatever next?), you know it’s time to worry.

Here is an excellent article by Frances Ryan, originally posted in the New Statesman yesterday.

Iain Duncan Smith’s “overhaul” of the benefit system is surrounded by harmful distortions.

In a major speech, Iain Duncan Smith has called for an “overhaul” of the disability and sickness benefit system.

As a man with a history of not knowing the difference between fact and “some stuff I made up because it seemed to help at the time”, it worried me to see that the work and pensions secretary seemed to find himself here again.

In the old-fashioned belief public policy should be based on reality, here’s five myths around sickness and disability benefits:

1. Disability and sickness benefits are a sign of welfare dependency

Creating the impression that you’re going to announce a humane, competent understanding of disability and sickness doesn’t get off to a great start when the entire first section of your speech is dedicated to the idea there is a “sickness benefit culture in this country”.

In fact, if like me you prefer to watch any Iain Duncan Smith appearance whilst playing a round of “demonisation of benefit claimants” drink bingo, you would have been catatonic after around three minutes. The Conservatives inherited “a welfare system where a life on benefits paid more than having a job”. (DRINK.) “A life without work, for many, had become ‘the norm’.” (DRINK.) Benefits are “handouts”. (DRINK.) There is such a thing as “worklessness”. (DRINK.)

These terms are ridiculous enough when discussing Job Seekers’ Allowance (JSA) but take on a special level of ridiculous when discussing Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). It doesn’t take an expert to grasp that a person being unable to earn an income because of Parkinson’s or Multiple Sclerosis is not a sign of a “sickness benefit culture” but a sign that someone is sick. Something is not a “culture” because I want it to be. You may as well say Britain has a culture of badgers. Sure, it’s true there are badgers in the country. But knowing that doesn’t make me want to paint myself black and white.

2. Cutting benefits is what helps disabled or ill people get back to work

If you can stand to make your way through the opening paragraphs on how lazy out of work people are, what’s striking about the latest nod to “disability benefit reform” is that Duncan Smith said a couple of things that made sense. For example, employers are sometimes reluctant to employ people with disabilities or that “the poor quality of support” many sick and disabled people receive is a key factor in them not returning to work.

I mean, Duncan Smith should know. Considering he’s been the one overseeing the removal of disabled people’s support for the past five years.

The problem with successfully pointing out some problems is that it means nothing if you adopt counterproductive solutions. Duncan Smith’s latest words may point blame towards the structures (cultural prejudice, difficulties of the labour market, lack of in-work support) but his policies put it firmly back on the individual (people need incentivising to get off sickness benefits).

If Duncan Smith cared about “supporting” people struggling to work due to illness or disability, he wouldn’t sanction, time limit, or directly cut their benefits. Similarly, he wouldn’t annihilate in-work support such as Access to Work.

As it is, the government telling bosses to be more reasonable and understanding to the disabled and chronically ill is like a great white shark advocating vegetarianism. It means more if you don’t currently have blood in your teeth.

3. An “unfit for work” assessment should be based on what an ill or disabled person can do

Considering the assessment the government is currently using is one that finds coma patients fit for work, I think most of us would be fully supportive of changes to the Work Capability Assessment – the test that decides if someone is eligible for ESA. But Duncan Smith’s idea “we need a system focused on what a claimant can do” has the whiff of a motivational trainer about it. As he put it, “someone may be able to do some work for some hours, days or weeks, but not what they were doing previously”.

I might be able to design handcrafted One Direction figures out of toilet rolls and cotton wool. It doesn’t mean there’s a job out there that meets that specification or there is an employer who will hire me for it. Similarly, to say that someone with chronic fatigue can get to work at 11am and do “some work for some hours” is not the same as saying stable, suitable employment exists for them. Zero hour contracts do not count.

The way health conditions interact with the labour market – that is, the lack of flexibility around helping disabled or chronically ill people at work – is a key problem. But without concrete strategies in place, a test that “focuses on what a claimant can do” is a recipe for removing their benefits. Being found “fit for work” does not count if said work does not exist.

4. ESA is meant to be a short-term benefit

Embarrassingly, the Department for Work and Pensions has for a while seemed confused about what ESA actually is. We saw this with the recent move to cut ESA down to the rate of JSA – essentially treating some ESA claimants found “unfit for work” as if they were the opposite.

Duncan Smith did it again yesterday when he stated ESA started to fail when it was no longer a “short term benefit”. Well, not really. By its definition, the support group of ESA – that is, the group for those who has been found as having no possibility of working – is a long-term benefit. Even the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) – the group for people found unfit for work but capable of “preparing for work” – never planned to treat the long-term ill as if they had a bad dose of flu. As Declan Gaffney, analyst of the labour market and social security, points out, the person who introduced WRAG – Paul Gregg – said the typical duration was always estimated to be two years.

If Duncan Smith is wondering why many have been left to languish in the WRAG, he may want to start looking a little closer to home (see number 3, above).

5. Britain spends more on “sickness benefits” than other countries

Still, pointing as far away from the problem is also a method. Anyone who’s been following the Conservative’s dismantling of the welfare state will know they have a particular favourite of this: claiming Britain is more generous towards disabled people than other nations. Yesterday, Iain Duncan Smith pulled it out again:

Some ‘scaremonger’ but ‘it is worth reflecting on the fact that we in this country spend more on sick and disabled people than the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) average’.

This is the “I know we let the bedroom tax take your house but in some countries, they’d drown you at birth” strategy of political reasoning. But knowing things may be worse for someone else does little to make things better for you. And a government justifying its failings by the fact other countries are worse is not taking responsibility for what they have done.

More to the point, it isn’t actually true. As disability campaigners were pointing out as far back as 2013 the figures the Conservatives often like to quote are ones that only refer to ‘disability spending’ – and ignore those for “sickness” (which, funnily enough, includes spending on employment and support allowance). That and the OECD average includes spending by countries such as Mexico, Chile, Greece, South Korea and Turkey.

The Department for Work and Pensions wouldn’t distort the truth to garner support for a failing policy, would they?

Stop it. You must be feeling unwell.

Images courtesy of Robert Livingstone