Working Lives: Work in Britain Since 1945, by Arthur McIvor. Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2013, 360 pp., ISBN: 978 1 40 398766 2, £60.00, hardback.
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12080 |
| Author | Ian Greenwood |
| Published date | 01 September 2014 |
| Date | 01 September 2014 |
and alarming insight into one of the driving forces behind the erosion of the European
Social Model. Contrary to the claim that Eastern Europe employers lack the resources
and capacity to engage in sectoral collective bargaining, Meardi argues persuasively
that this is not the case. The near absence of collective bargaining, trade unions and
works councils from Eastern Europe and particularly the Baltic States, reflects
employer strategic choice — not organizational weakness. Moreover, the evidence in
this volume suggests that rather than Eastern Europe employment relations being
shaped by the patterns dominant in the west, the flow of ideas and practices seems to
be going the other way.
In the domain of policy, there has been much discussion of employability and
associated supply-side measures to encourage (or in some cases, coerce) increased
labour market participation. Yet as Haworth and Winterton point out such measures
only make sense in a context of buoyant labour demand and that is a theme to which
the European Union and its leaders have devoted far less attention.
Overall this is an excellent collection with many stand out chapters that should be
required reading for anyone wanting insights into the disintegration of the European
Social Model.
JOHN KELLY
Birkbeck, University of London
Working Lives: Work in Britain Since 1945, by Arthur McIvor. Palgrave, Basingstoke,
2013, 360 pp., ISBN: 978 1 40 398766 2, £60.00, hardback.
Arthur McIvor’s book explores and assesses the nature of, and changes within, the
world of work in Britain since 1945. McIvor explains that his ambition for the book
is to provide a history of work that ‘pivots on the personal narratives of workers
themselves’ and is based around the personal and individual. This approach, he
contends, helps engender understanding of ‘what it felt like to be a worker’ and allows
the ‘emotional history of work to take centre stage’. The core focus and unifying
conceptual framework of the book are ‘continuity and change in employment’ and
‘the mutating nature and meaning of work in Britain’ as understood through the lives
and emotions of workers themselves.
The book is structured around a number of themes. The first two chapters of the
book provide the empirical and conceptual starting point for subsequent analysis. In
these first chapters, patterns of employment, the structure of jobs, the changing
occupational profile of Britain and the meaning of work in people’s lives are explored
and evaluated. McIvor postulates that work is a ‘deeply emotional’ experience. This
connects beyond the impact of material circumstances to the psychological power of
occupational identity and sense of loss when work ends. The author emphasizes that
non-standard jobs have always been a feature of the British economy, and furthermore
that standard jobs still predominate in contemporary Britain. Proponents of the end of
work thesis ‘oversimplify the past’ and utilize ahistorical benchmarks against which the
present (and future) are calibrated. This attention to balanced rounded analysis is
important in itself but particularly as a corrective to mono-causal, atheoretical
approaches to the evolution of and possible future trajectory of work. In this sense,
although it is clearly impossible to reference all sources, it is somewhat surprising that
the findings of, for example, the UK ‘Future of Work Project’ and writing in this area
of commentators such as Budd, Nolan and Standing have not been noted.
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616 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics.
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