Editorial: new social inequalities and the future of work

Abstract

This special issue, New Social Inequalities and the Future of Work, brings together a collection of papers that illustrate in differing ways the resilience and recreation of social inequalities in the context of contemporary trends in the world of work. Its draws on research presented at a symposium of the same name, held in June 2018 over two days at the Queensland Office of Industrial Relations and the University of Queensland. The symposium focused in particular on inequalities associated with age and gender, and their possible expansion in future labour markets. Themes explored ranged from training and work experience for young workers, the risks and possibilities for gender equality with changing employment and economic circumstances, the views and aspirations of young workers and the role of social supports for redressing inequalities located at the intersection of social reproduction and paid employment. A public lecture from leading American sociologist, Ruth Milkman, set the context for the symposium with a critical appraisal of ‘future of work’ scenarios. Milkman (2018) argued that predictions of widespread job losses in the face of technological change have obscured more pressing risks of work degradation associated with the widening power imbalance between employers and employees. Identifying de-industrialisation, deunionisation and deregulation as underlying forces, Milkman drew attention to processes of risk-shifting from firms to sub-contractors and franchisees, and from employers directly to workers by employing them as ‘independent contractors’, as contributors to rising inequality and precarity in labour markets in the United States. Reflecting on the likely winners and losers in a transformed workforce, Milkman underlined the persistence of complex patterns of inequalities by gender, race/ethnicity, immigration status and age. These themes of the degradation of work, employer power and increasing insecurity recur in the analyses presented in this special issue, underpinning concerns for the exacerbation of social inequalities and informing suggestions for regulatory reforms with potential to secure a more egalitarian future. The first four papers focus on gender equality, turning different lenses on strategies for, and barriers to, its advancement in the context of changing labour markets and economic conditions. Howcroft and Rubery’s phrase ‘bias in, bias out’ encapsulates their concern that the gender inequalities currently embedded in employment structures are likely to be reproduced or amplified with technological change unless action is taken ‘to set both the productive economy and social reproduction on a new path’. The pathway they advocate leads towards Nancy Fraser’s vision of a society that transcends male breadwinner/female caregiver norms