Flexible employment – evil or opportunity?

Abstract

Many of us grew up in the era of the employee working an eight‐hour day, forty‐hour week and forty‐eight‐week‐year. That is how the world of work was organized and real battles were fought to make even minor changes to that pattern of working. There was talk of some far‐off Utopia when everyone would be working fewer hours with more time and money to spend on a host of leisure and cultural activities. We know now that that pattern has gone for a lot of people. There are more and more people employed on short‐term contracts, for part‐time working, as self‐employed subcontractors and so on. However, we are some way off from the original Utopian dream. The pattern in much of the Western world seems to be that there are the lucky ones in permanent employment who are working far harder than they ever did; there are the (not quite so) lucky ones who can manage to get some work, although with little security; and there are large numbers unable to find work at all. They have the leisure but not the money to fill it as they would wish.

Citation

Baines, A. (1995), "Flexible employment – evil or opportunity?", Work Study, Vol. 44 No. 1, pp. 14-15. https://doi.org/10.1108/00438029510077671