Wherever we are in the world, we are being forced to live a myth; a lie that for some can destroy us physically, profoundly harm our mental health, corrupt us socially, or leave us emotionally desolate. I am, of course, talking about work, the social and economic need to ‘earn a living’ and pay our way in the world. This isn’t to suggest some don’t thrive in the work environment, clearly there are examples of retirees who shrivel away without a job to go to each day; or those dedicated few who genuinely believe they get their identity from the job they do and savour the experience every day. But I would argue most people work for the salary they are paid each month.
By now many
readers will be thinking, ‘Oh here goes, another lefty wanting to ‘smash the
system’, but that is very far from my intention. I have nothing against earning
a living, but what I hope to show is how our hard-earned taxes are being
misspent to perpetuate a grossly unhealthy myth about the idea of work and it’s
not even working.
But let me
first talk about how having a job may be harmful.
How work messes with your mind
For years,
psychology has been used to tell us work is good. In 2006, Waddell and Burton did
some research commissioned by the UK Department of Work and Pensions and it unsurprisingly
argued:
·
Work
meets important psychosocial needs in societies where employment is the norm;
·
Work
is central to individual identity, social roles and social status;
·
Employment and socio-economic status are the
main drivers of social gradients in physical and mental health and mortality;
It sounds plausible,
but there is also strong psychological evidence showing how our working
conditions and a lousy workplace environment can affect our mental health, so
it isn’t black and white. I mean, we know high job demands, low job control,
high effort–reward imbalances, injustice in the workplace, role stress,
bullying and a lack of support can create mental health problems – in other
words, the kind of difficulties most of us face nearly every day.
Social effects of work may not be as good as we
think
The negative
social impact of work may seem obvious but let me spell it out. At its most
basic level, research has shown work can degrade interpersonal relationships
and create spillover impacts on families. Even worse, workplace dynamics such
as exclusion or not being allowed into social or work groups can affect us
badly, as can being deliberately ignored by our work colleagues
A more recent
social effect has been the post-Covid trend towards remote, or lone working - while
offering a lot of flexibility, it brings with it distinct isolation risks,
which can significantly damage natural social functioning.
Negative spiritual effects of work
We often tend
to ignore the spiritual effects, but they can have a profound effect on our
well-being. Take for example times when we work in a toxic environment that
lead us to feel a lack of purpose or identity. We see this when people are
employed in, what they feel are pointless or unfulfilling jobs and this can
undermine your sense of autonomy that can lead us to feeling hopeless, depressed,
or maybe simply as though our careers have stagnated. Add a toxic management,
or disrespectful colleagues and all this can disrupt your inner peace, making
it difficult to maintain a contented or relaxed mindset.
So why do we work?
Well, here we
come to the crux of the matter, because governments and employers want us to
believe work is wholesome, character-building and gives us a sense of identity
(and, of course, for some this is true), but the reality is far simpler – we
work because we have to. It’s as simple as that. We work because if we don’t,
we can’t pay our rent or mortgage, we can’t eat, drink, or stay warm, and all
this ignores the wonderful toys our consumer society churns out every day that we
convince ourselves we ‘need’ – after all, where would life be if we couldn’t
buy the latest smart watch, a new electric car, the latest Apple phone, or a
crazy foreign holidays,
So, we work
primarily to survive and secure financial independence, it fulfils core human
needs by providing routine, community and, for some, it gives a sense of
purpose. For those lucky enough it can challenge us to grow, foster personal
development, and give us a feeling we are contributing our unique skills to
society – but here I would urge caution as this is unlikely to be the common
view of work.
A few years
ago, an ex-colleague of mine told me he had been working so hard on a project that
he’d literally made himself unwell. He didn’t offer this as a health update, or
to warn me about overexertion. It was, oddly enough, a boast. But why is work
treated, strangely enough, as if it were next to godliness
In 1905, Max
Weber gave us some answers when he suggested work is driven by a
"Protestant work ethic," where labour is viewed as a divine
"calling" and wealth accumulation a sign of spiritual salvation. What
Weber could never anticipate was how society would move away from this “Protestant
Ethic” and turn to abstract deities that would command our deep devotion;
deities like the “free market” - the ultimate, supreme deity in a consumerist world,
demanding constant economic growth and competition; or the” Brand” where
entities like MacDonalds, Starbucks or Walmart/ Asda act like patron saints,
offering worshippers a sense of belonging, status, and identity in exchange for
their loyalty. Then there is the role of “the media”, the priesthood and
messengers of the modern era. Where social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook
broadcast what society should desire, setting the trends and making us feel our
lives are inadequate without the latest products.
But what about the unemployed
For a society
to work there must be conformity to maintain order, co-operation and social
cohesion so, it follows, if the norm is for people to work and participate in a
consumerist society, then those unable to do so must be encouraged or forced to
do so. To achieve this many governments internationally run “Workfare”, or to
use a more British term, “Welfare-to-Work programmes to help, or one could
argue force unemployed people back into work. There is nothing new about this
approach, policies compelling unemployed people back into work trace back to
inter-war Britain, or even as far back as the 1880 Famine Codes in British
India.
More modern “Workfare” programmes are government-administered
social policies requiring able-bodied welfare recipients to engage in community
work, public-service jobs, or job training in exchange for receiving state
income benefits. Its declared aim being to reduce poverty, prevent long-term
dependency on government aid and help individuals build recent work experience.
The covert goal is to reintegrate the unemployed back into a thriving
consumerist society.
Unfortunately,
the World Bank, amongst others argue workfare programmes have no lasting
effects on total national employment or the full-time long-term employment of
those who have been out of work for over 12-months. It simply doesn’t work.
Despite this,
these programmes remain popular and involve billions of pounds/ dollars of government
investment.
I was thinking
recently about Viktor Frankl who developed an argument suggesting the purpose
of life is to secure well-being. The corollary is, of course the creation of
meaningless work is contrary to the creation of well-being, and forcing people into
such work may even be harmful.
We know
workfare or public works programmes (PWPs) work effectively as social safety
nets to provide temporary income and food security, but as long-term tools for returning
people to employment their success is mixed; research shows they often fail to
create lasting infrastructure benefits and, more importantly their
effectiveness depends heavily on their context (whether they are targeting long-term
unemployed, young people, elderly etc ) as they are not a one-size-fits-all
solution to poverty or unemployment.
The effectiveness of UK workfare/
welfare-to-work programmes – the Restart Scheme
The Restart Scheme
was established to help long-term unemployed people return to work, offering
training in employability skills, skills development and job placements. Since
2021, 1.2 million unemployed were referred to the scheme and the government set
a target of achieving 310,000 successful outcomes during a five-year period (an
outcome assumes an individual secures 16-hours of work per week for a period of
6-months), costing the taxpayer an estimated £2,429 per person. The scheme achieved only 280,000
successful outcomes (88|%). In their analysis of Restart, the Institute of
Fiscal argued had absolutely nothing been done to help these people, 246,400
would have naturally returned to employment without any form of assistance.
One of the reasons
UK workfare programmes are destined to fail is because they are contracted out
to independent employability companies eager to maximise profitability and secure
the full funding for each referral (they only receive 30% of funding when the
person is referred and the remainder when they secure employment). As a result,
most providers ‘cream’ (only accept referrals from those who can be found work
quickly) or ‘park’ (spend as little time as possible on those with complex
needs and difficult to find work) to distort statistics and suggest high
success rates.
The effectiveness of US workfare/
welfare-to-work programmes
The main workfare/
employability programme running in the US is known as TANF (Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families), a federally funded, state-administered programme
providing short-term cash assistance and support services to low-income
families with children. Often referred to as "welfare”, it aims to help
parents achieve self-sufficiency through work-focused programmes helping them
back into work. In order to achieve this, the government funds states a total
of $16.6 billion each year (the overall federal budget for means-tested budget
for welfare programmes is about $1.1 trillion), but unlike workfare programmes
in the UK, recipients are usually required to find employment or participate in
job-training programmes within two-years of receiving assistance.
What we do know
when we look at workfare programmes critically, is that since 1997 the UK, much
of Europe and parts of Asia have been eager to adopt welfare-to-work approaches
based on extremely limited evidence of their ability to boost welfare
recipients' earnings on a long-term basis
So too has the
belief programmes prioritising moving people into work quickly are more
effective than ones seeking to enhance human capital (skills training,
assistance overcoming complex needs etc). Additionally, what is particularly
disturbing is how both the US and UK governments have ignored the lack of evidence
on how long the beneficial effects of programmes last after people leave them
and their almost inevitable future return to unemployment and poverty within five
or six years.
Political comment
Transparently,
we need to rethink the whole concept of work, ranging the current work leisure
balance where one-third of our day is spent in work, one-third asleep and up to
one-sixth travelling to or preparing for work, leaving only four hours a day
for leisure or personal study. But we also need to re-examine our entire ‘back-to-work’
approach because it quite simply isn’t working. In the UK we have 10 million
people who are economically inactive and close to 6 million on out of work
benefits and 49% of sick and disabled people without a job, In its response, the
government is intending to invest £3.8 billion during this parliament alone on
programmes supposedly geared to get them back into work; programmes that
consistently fail to deliver.
Additionally,
we know in the UK, 2.7m people are in work and claiming benefit largely because
they have forced into part-time work and have not been able to obtain full-time
employment.
Action must be
taken if this is to change. In particular, we need to
·
Reappraise
the nature of work and re-examine our work-leisure ratio
·
Help
young people into training or education programmes by offering them proper
skills
·
If
unemployment levels vary regionally, offer financial incentives to move to ne
areas
·
Offer
employers significant incentives to take long-term unemployed
·
Provide
greater support to families eg. provide greater financial support for childcare
·
Dramatically
increase public works spending eg attack the homelessness crisis by funding a
substantial programme to build far more social housing so workers can move to
where jobs are at any given time
·
Substantially
improve training programmes to respond to cyclical unemployment especially in
high-growth industries
·
Lowering
interest rates and use tax incentives to allow new and young businesses to
expand rapidly.
There’s nothing
new here – it’s what we’ve always known, but what we’ve always lacked is the
real desire to bring about real and effective change. Handing out hundreds of
billions of pounds or dollars to employability providers so they can mage huge
profits from governmental ambivalence is not the answer. It is time to develop
a cohesive and strategic plan – but the key question is whether we have the
willingness.
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