wojtek
>To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site,
go to http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk
>
>UK's work burden grows fastest in Europe
>John Ezard
>Tuesday June 20 2000
>The Guardian
>
>
>Confirmation that many people in Britain work harder, faster and under
more pressure than they did 10 or 20 years ago will come in a research
paper later this week.
>
>The rise in the intensity of our work has been steeper than in any other
country in Europe and much higher than in Germany, which saw the smallest
rise out of 13 European states.
>
>The average British household with two adults was working seven hours a
week more at the end of the 1990s than in the early 1980s, according to
Francis Green, professor of economics at Kent University.
>
>Some 42% of workers felt strongly in 1997 that "my job requires I work
very hard", compared with 40% in 1992. Work rates have intensified more for
women than for men.
>
>But, despite a widespread belief, this is not due to job insecurity. The
cause is partly a decline in trades union power in Britain. But it owes
more to new technology, to organisational changes by management which speed
up work tempo and to a "call centre" culture, which now employs 400,000
people.
>
>"The call centre is the assembly-line of the modern era," says Prof Green,
who also teaches at the centre for economic performance at the London
School of Economics. He compares these centres to the high pressure, 24
hour car production lines at the start of the 20th century.
>
>Prof Green will give his findings in a lecture headed It's Been A Hard
Day's Night - But Why? at Canterbury on Friday. They are based partly on
his own research and partly on depth analysis of statistics in six other
official workplace surveys over the last 20 years.
>
>He dismisses media commentaries which claim people are working harder out
of fear for their jobs.
>
>"Here is where rumour fares badly in its encounter with statistical
reality", says Prof Green, "There has been a remarkable overall stability
in the pattern of job tenure over the last three decades.
>
>"The average man's job lasted about 10 years in the 1970s and about nine
and a half years nowadays. Women's jobs last as long as they used to.
>
>"The actual facts make common pronouncements about 'an end to jobs for
life' seem like either misguided, or wishful, thinking."
>
>Moreover, unemployment is now lower and no evidence exists of increasing
job loss fears. Both in 1986 and in 1997, some 84% of workers told surveys
they saw little likelihood of unemployment.
>
>The explanation for media hype about insecurity is "almost certainly" that
it is now more strongly felt by professional workers, who are close to the
media and other sources.
>
>In 1997 just over two-thirds of professionals feared for their jobs,
compared with only one-third in 1986. By contrast, among sales staff this
worry dropped from nearly half to less than a third in the same period.
"Only when it hits the chattering classes does insecurity seem to become an
issue for public discussion," notes the professor.
>
>On average, figures in all Prof Green's surveys show that the British
working week has remained stable at around 37 hours for the last two
decades.
>
>But "the widespread sense of rising work pressure" is linked to the fact
that within this average more people of both sexes are working longer as
well as shorter hours.
>
>In 1981, one person in six worked over 48 hours a week. By the end of the
1990s, this number rose to one in five. The cause of the seven-hour
increase in two-adult households is partly because more wives now go out to
work part time.
>
>Prof Green's graph of Europe shows a stronger, faster rise in work
intensity in Britain than anywhere else in the 1990s. In Germany, one of
our key competitors, there was virtually no rise.
>
>What lies behind this harder, faster work rate, he concludes, is the
spread of management concepts, aiming to maximise the flow of work to
workers.
>
>The extreme example of this is the call centre, where time spent on
refreshment breaks is often deducted from pay.
>
>But many other companies, partly through making workers responsible for
their own quality checks, have reduced "interruptions where people could
slack off a bit, reduce concentration and even have a break".
>
>Emails and mobile phones have intensified use of working time and extended
work out of hours.
>
>Suggestion schemes and consultation meetings encourage employees to find
ways of working harder voluntarily.
>
>
>Copyright Guardian Media Group plc.
>
>