The new capitalism blights life

Change in the workplace and the world of work (the 'new work order' as James Gee called it) has occupied considerable attention in the sociology, industrial relations, management, business and adult education literatures.

What has characterised much of the debate has been a basic conflict of two views of the introduction of new technology and new work arrangements.

The 'optimists' portray the modern workplace as one which is being released from the constraints of traditional work practices and rigid organisational structures. These accounts of post-industrial society suggest that we are becoming the flexible multi-skilled workers of more democratic, technologically informed post-industrial workplaces. And typical of this writing is that the general points are illustrated by snap-shot anecdotal case studies of organisations or individuals to back up their point.

Sennet's book is somewhat different. He looks at the downside of flexibility, re-engineering, teamwork and many of the clichˇs (loyalty, co-operation, win-win common interests) associated with these changes through the use of interviews with sacked IBM workers in New York, bakers in a Boston bakery, a barmaid turned advertising executive, and Rico, the son of Enrico, a hard-working janitor who was a central character in Sennet's 1972 book The Hidden Injuries of Class.

The contrast between the working and family lives of Enrico and Rico provide the opening case study that sets the context for the book. It contrasts the personal and organisational values, the working patterns and attempts to control time (something that Sennet recognises as a gain by organised labour) that have changed in 25 years.

Whereas the optimists proclaim the opening up of individual (consumer's) choice, the liberation of employees' (not workers') potential and the freeing up of time restraints, Sennet sees increased alienation from work and family, much less job security and a new set of dominant values which elevate the individual and destroy the ties of co-operation, not to mention solidarity. For him the destruction of loyalty erodes character.

He accepts that there are employers who genuinely believe in the new managerial ethos of loyalty, teamwork and reduced hierarchy. But those employers, mostly found in the growing small and medium enterprise sector, are often confronted by a contradiction between their theoretical commitment to loyalty while remaining subject to the essential, and overriding, driving forces of competition and the market.

Sennet's attempt to focus on the particular examples of the impact of the new work order is important. We are able, through smaller scale case studies, to identify with the subjects' plights and the stories are expressed in a more personal way than dry, macro labour market statistics and figures convey. This is valuable work.

Yet there is also something missing here. The attempt to 'go deeper' is most satisfying when it can also be located within a larger economic or political framework. And Sennet's framework is that what has been lost in the headlong rush into restructuring, downsizing and flexibility is a world of work where loyalty was valued and rewarded by the employer and where the idea of honest labour was passed on through the family.

He admits that the old work ethic 'can hardly claim our affections'. The old patterns would be a disaster today and for many people the changes have led to working arrangements that are better than the old.

To reassert those lost values, it seems, will require a step back from neo-liberalism and the discovery of a more consensual work environment where there is genuine teamwork and respect. It sounds a lot like a post-industrial third way.

If respect, loyalty, careers, employee-determined flexibility, job security and decent pay without givebacks were generally possible, and not just for the winners in the polarised labour market at the beginning of the 21st century, it might be desirable. But the question remains, if it isn't possible - and there is little evidence to show that it is - then what alternatives are left for both the workers remaining in the squirrel cages and those who have been put out of work?

Sennet concludes by saying he isn't sure of the political programs necessary to meet his subjects' inner needs. What he is sure of though is that 'a regime which provides human beings no deep reasons to care about one another cannot long preserve its legitimacy'.

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The Corrosion of Character, by Richard Senett