Work Pressure in Europe 1996–2001: Trends and Determinants
| Author | Duncan Gallie |
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2005.00360.x |
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
British Journal of Industrial Relations
43:3 September 2005 0007– 1080 pp. 351– 375
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.Oxford, UKBJIRBritish Journal of Industrial Relations0007-1080Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2004September 2005433351375Articles
Work Pressure in Europe 1996–2001British Journal of Industrial Relations
Duncan Gallie is at Nuffield College, Oxford
Work Pressure in Europe 1996–2001:
Trends and Determinants
Duncan Gallie
Abstract
Diverse theories have predicted a trend towards growing work pressure in
advanced capitalist societies, while pointing to quite distinct causal factors. This
paper seeks to assess these arguments using data from two surveys of employees
in European Union member-states carried out in 1996 and in 2001. It finds there
is no evidence of a trend towards higher work pressure over this period. There
is, however, support for some of the main arguments about the types of factors
that affect work pressure: for instance, skill, job control, new technology and
current job security are clearly important. But the trends in job control and job
security have not been those predicted, while changes in another major deter-
minant — the length of working hours — have tended to reduce work pressure.
There are substantial and relatively stable differences in work pressure between
countries, but to a considerable extent, these reflect compositional differences
with respect to the main determinants of work pressure.
1. Introduction
The issue of trends in work pressure has been central to debates in industrial
sociology for the greater part of its history. While theories of the dynamics
of work organization went through a number of substantial modifications,
the view that there has been a long-term trend towards more intense and more
stressful patterns of work has remained a remarkably consistent theme across
different analyses. Until the end of the 1980s, evidence was largely restricted
to an array of case studies of unknown representativeness. In the 1990s,
however, there has been a gradual increase in the availability of data sets that
provide a more comprehensive picture of patterns both within and between
countries and some degree of comparison across time. The present paper
examines the evidence about trends and a range of potential determinants
of work pressure with respect to the period 1996 to 2001. It draws upon
two surveys, commissioned for DG V (DG Employment), that permit a
352
British Journal of Industrial Relations
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2005.
comparison of employees’ experiences of work across the member-states of
the European Union (EU).
2. Theories of work pressure
There have been a number of arguments in the social science literature that
suggest that there is an inherent tendency in advanced capitalist or industrial
societies towards the intensification of work. This was one of the principal
themes of neo-Marxist critiques of Scientific Management and ‘Fordism’
(Braverman 1974; Friedmann 1946). The reduction of the skill content of
work tasks and an ever-finer division of labour, it was argued, were designed
to allow an intensification of work through the weakening of the workforce’s
capacity of resistance, more precise measurement of task activities and a
tighter linking of financial incentives to output. This was reinforced by the
introduction of assembly line technologies that made possible the machine
pacing of work and mechanical control of work rhythms (Beynon 1973;
Durand 1978; Friedmann 1946; Linhart 1978).
Developments in the social–psychological literature on work confirmed
that such work developments were likely to be highly detrimental to mental
(and even health physical). The work of the Swedish psychosocial school, in
particular stimulated by the research of Gardell (Gardell 1991; Johnson and
Johansson 1991) and receiving its most developed formulation in that of
Karesek and Theorell (1990), pointed to the particularly severe consequences
of forms of work that combined high levels of work pressure with low levels
of control over the work task. Clearly the trend towards Taylorist forms of
work organization was likely to increase the proportion of the workforce that
experienced this combination of conditions and thereby to lead to rising levels
of work strain.
However, especially from the mid-1980s, there was growing criticism of the
view that there was some inexorable ‘law of the capitalist division of labour’
marked by ever-increasing pressures for the de-skilling and simplification of
work. Instead the focus of attention shifted to the possibility that new pro-
duction technologies (in particular related to the rapid spread of computer-
ization) and the increased emphasis on quality in both production and service
delivery placed a higher premium on skill, devolved decision making and
teamwork, thereby reversing the historic process of an ever-greater division
of labour.
1
Yet while rejecting the de-skilling thesis, proponents of the upskill-
ing scenario continued to endorse the view that the changing nature of work
implied increased work pressure. The need to learn new tasks increased
pressure in the job. At the same time, the increased responsibilities of employ-
ees, as a result of upskilling and the delegation of decision making, were seen
to be an important factor leading to higher levels of work pressure and work
strain (Capelli
et al.
1997; Gallie
et al.
1998).
In addition to this, a number of studies in the late 1990s pointed to the
increased pace of technological change as an important factor underlying
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