The publication today of the much awaited Taylor
Review into ‘Employment Practices in the Modern Economy’ strongly illustrates
this point, with a flurry of commentary published shortly after (or even
before) the report has become available. These comments (including obviously
this one) inevitably have a preliminary character; they ought to be confirmed,
adjusted or refuted once the dust has settled and a clearer picture of the
review and especially its material impact on working conditions in Britain
emerges. And yet a few points already are visible, like the
contours of a skyline on the horizon. It seems the Taylor Review is marked by multiple ambivalences that speak
against a simplistic response of either praising or dismissing it swiftly:
First, the review
is, from a political perspective, both current
and dated. It is current because it rightly acknowledges and puts at the
centre of public debate (at least for a moment) the crucial question of
employment conditions - even if the rhetoric of the report itself attempts to mitigate
against the impression of a profound change, for example by arguing that levels
of full-time standard employment remain on a high level of 60% (p.24), or by
stressing that the apparent rise in ‘zero hours contracts’ may be primarily due
to an “improved recognition” of this employment type (p.25).
Notwithstanding, the continuous
degradation of employment conditions has been one of the key pillars of
neoliberal global capitalism, with its intrinsic tendency to transfer risks and
exposure to the volatility of markets to individual workers and employees, in
order to boost the profitability of businesses and the competitiveness of
corporations as well as national economies. And while this economic model
staggers on despite its apparent instability, its legitimacy has arguably been
eroded substantially at latest since the ‘crisis’ of 2007 – to the point that
addressing the question of employment conditions no longer is ‘only’ a matter
of social justice and economic sustainability, but also of maintaining a democratic
political order.
At the same time, the report is already somehow dated, as it was commissioned
with political conditions in mind
that failed to materialise. When Theresa May launched the review in October
2016, the aim was to underpin the Prime
Minister’s first speech in office, in which tackling social divisions and
injustices to help those who “just about manage” were elevated to major policy priorities.
This attempt to redefine the orientation of the Conservative Party was partly built
on the assumption that, due to the weakness of the Labour Party (and social
democracy in general), a realignment of British politics in favour of the
political right was possible. With the outcome of the latest general election,
May’s ensuing weakness as Tory leader and Prime Minister, and the increased
strength of Labour, the political context of the Taylor Review is largely
different. It hence remains to be seen to what extent its recommendations can
be implemented against the more extreme ‘small government’ faction within the
Conservative Party and an emboldened Labour Party that is likely to oppose the
review’s findings as ‘too little, too late’.
Secondly, the recommendations are both substantial and inconsequential. They are substantial in light
of the acknowledgement that the regulatory framework for the labour market requires
adjustments to restrict the ability of employers who exploit
non-standard forms of employment such as ‘zero hours contracts’, agency work or
bogus self-employment to act as they please - by imposing, for example, a more
stringent test to determine the employment status of a person (p.35), and by
strengthening the enforcement of existing rules by facilitating access to
employment tribunals to assess a person’s employment status (p.62). All which is
going against the trend of ever
increasing ‘flexibility’ of employment. The report
furthermore endorses a comprehensive understanding of ‘quality work’ (p.12-15),
and underlines that ‘flexibility’ can be imposed by employers without granting reciprocal
benefits (p.43).
While it can indeed be argued, like
trade unions have done, that the creation of the new status of ‘dependent contractors’ to replace the
current category of ‘workers’ (p. 35) simply replaces one type of employment
status with restricted employment rights by another, the rights that would come
with this status would nevertheless represent a small, incremental improvement in
social protection of people who are currently regarded incorrectly as
self-employed, for example by providing holiday and sickness pay.
This is unsurprisingly far from enough from a progressive
point of view, but it seems fair to say that anyone who hoped for more radical
conclusions from this review must have misunderstood its political function and
remit. The report clearly embraces the current
doxa, according to which low levels of labour market regulation are intrinsically
positive and are seen as a sign for a dynamic economy (p.17).
However, even from a more benevolent perspective, the review’s
findings are also quite inconsequential on the larger scale, as the review operates within an intellectual framework that is partially
outdated and that therefore struggles to draw conclusions that can
appropriately tackle the question of vulnerable employment. Its
overall premise is a combination of light-touch
regulation with an increased reliance on negotiations between employers and
employees within companies, with a focus on giving employees a stronger ‘voice’
and improving workplace transparency (pp. 52-54). This is encapsulated neatly
in Taylor’s fourth
principle for fair and decent work, which stresses that “better work
is not national regulation but responsible corporate governance, good
management and strong employment relations within the organisation” (p.9).
This approach suffers from a fundamental flaw: Although the report recognises power imbalances
as a root cause of insecure work (p.26), it ultimately assumes a generally
benign balance of power between employers and employees; an equilibrium that simply does not
exist for all employees, self-employed and workers, due to the structural
constraints of the contemporary British labour market in which especially
low-paid workers and employees of the service industry are intrinsically
disadvantaged and are unable to exercise the kind of pressure on employers that
would be needed to engage in meaningful and fair negotiations.
It is of course undeniable that a substantive
share of the self-employed and of ‘gig economy’ workers are able to defend
their interests effectively but the role
of the law as expression of the general will is to establish shared
standards and rules that cannot be undercut and that hence protect the weakest members
of society from abuse and hardship, as expressed in the often cited saying by
Lacordaire “Between the strong and the weak, between the rich and the poor,
between the lord and the slave, it is freedom which oppresses and the law which
sets free.” By stressing that the existing employment “works well and is
flexible enough to deal with new ways of working”, and that it is merely its varied
interpretation that causes problems (p.33), the review attempts to foreclose
any more far-reaching and radical discussion of labour market flexibility and its social
impact.
This problem is illustrated in almost farcical form by the following
quote regarding agency workers, on
p. 48 of the report (but other similar quotes can be found easily): “The
Government should introduce a right to request a direct contract of employment
for agency workers who have been placed with the same hirer for 12 months, and
an obligation on the hirer to consider the request in a reasonable manner.” All
employers using agency workers to cut their wage bill and transfer the
volatility of demand onto workers will already shake in their boots.
Having said this, even in the current political context, the
report has the potential to stimulate
public debates and introduces a number of interesting proposals, notably
regarding self-employment (including changes to taxation and national insurance
contributions), which merit further more careful study. Despite its overall conservative
and incremental orientation, it re-politicises the topic of employment
conditions and thus ideally will open up a debate about wage-labour-related problems
that for too long have been side-lined.
Enrico Reuter – follow me on Twitter
