Demanding Work: The Paradox of Job Quality in the Affluent Society
Francis Green
Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006
ISBN: 0-691-11712-8

If you liked David Foot’s Boom Bust and Echo, you will enjoy Demanding Work by Francis Green although you may find Foot’s style of writing somewhat breezier. The book depicts the political, economic and sociological environment in which our clients do their job seeking as opposed to being directly applicable to helping individuals find work.

Green writes from a UK perspective, so he compares Britain with other EU countries (usually Germany and Belgium), then broadens the data by looking at the US and sometimes Australia. One notable insight from this comparative perspective: wages and vacation time have increased in all the industrialized nations over the past thirty years, with the exception of the United States. Despite a shortage in Canadian content, Green’s statistics agrees with what we have seen in our practices. The knowledge economy which promised increased leisure and easy work loads, has not delivered. Previously unskilled jobs now require increased levels of prior training or education. And quality of worker satisfaction has suffered in the process.

One factor for this is the introduction of new technologies. Workplace technology tends to be more about increasing productivity than improving worker well-being. It raises quality standards, increases monitoring of staff, leading to what Green calls work intensification: increased engagement with the task. It also decreases worker discretionary powers as defined procedures take the place of worker judgment. Many technologies also demand work outside of work hours (making use of cell phones, blackberries, etc.).

So what do we do with all this? We encourage our clients to continue to upgrade their technical skills in order to compete. We also continue to encourage them to look beyond the paycheque to the qualitative rewards in the jobs they seek.

Most of all, because these trends are socio-economic, the real implications of this book are for policy-making. Employment services will need to shift even more toward meaningful employment and not simply finding jobs. That in turn will require shifts in government funding. Which in turn raises the question, are we truly meeting the needs of our client populations if we are not involved in advocacy on a policy level?

Review written by David William McKay. David is a reflective practitioner with a living interest in constructivist approaches to counselling and training gained through earlier encounters with this method in his previous career as a credit counsellor. He now works as an employment counsellor with an unemployed help centre and takes courses part-time to deepen his understanding and skills in career development practice. David can be reached for comment at dwmckay@sympatico.ca.