Alex De Ruyter

Agency working and the degradation of public service employment: the case of nurses and social workers

In the UK and elsewhere government efforts to reform or ‘modernize’ public services are currently having marked consequences for job quality, due to rising levels of work intensification, stress and declining morale. Such change has been linked to absenteeism, recruitment and retention problems. It is also suggested that deteriorating job quality has much to do with the current trend towards agency working among core public service professionals. In this article our aim is to explore this matter focusing on the experiences of National Health Service (NHS) nurses and local authority social workers. Our analysis suggests that benefits such as higher pay and improved flexibility have generated a strong ‘pull’ into agency contracts. However, the analysis also points to the deterioration of job quality as a key factor influencing decisions to opt out of permanent employment. The article concludes by suggesting that, in the longer term, public sector managers will only be able to stem the tide of nurses and social workers opting to work through agencies if they are also able to address wider problems associated with declining job quality.

New Contractual Relationships in the Agency Worker Market: The Case of the UK's National Health Service

In recent years, there has been a trend towards the negotiation of closer contractual relationships between employers and employment agencies. However, little is known about this change or its likely consequences. In theory, such relationships can benefit employers by lowering fees and also reducing many of the hidden costs associated with the use of agency staff by improving the effectiveness of placement matching. Against this is the suggestion that formal partnerships are unlikely to have a positive impact given the uncertainty of demand for temporary labour and broader tendencies for risk displacement in buyer–supplier networks. In this article, our aim is to explore this matter focusing on recent developments in the UKs National Health Service. We find that new contractual relationships such as framework agreements and master vendor contracts are having mixed effects. While they serve to reduce direct costs for employers in the short term, this has been at the expense of relationship building and improvements in placement matching. These developments are also found to have some potentially negative consequences for the agency workforce itself.

Employment Outcomes and Plant Closure in a Post-industrial City: An Analysis of the Labour Market Status of MG Rover Workers Three Years On

This paper examines how the loss of 6300 jobs from the closure of MG Rover (MGR) in the city of Birmingham (UK) in April 2005 affected the employment trajectories of ex-workers, in the context of wider structural change and efforts at urban renewal. The paper presents an analysis of a longitudinal survey of 300 ex-MGR workers, and examines to what extent the state of local labour markets and workers’ geographical mobility—as well as the effectiveness of the immediate policy response and longer-term local economic strategies—may have helped to balance the impacts of personal attributes associated with workers’ employability and their reabsorption into the labour markets. It is found that the relative buoyancy of the local economy, the success of longer-run efforts at diversification and a strong policy response and retraining initiative helped many disadvantaged workers to find new jobs in the medium term. However, the paper also highlights the unequal employment outcomes and trajectories that many lesser-skilled workers faced. It explores the policy issues arising from such closures and their aftermath, such as the need to co-ordinate responses, to retain institutional capacity, to offer high-quality training and education resources to workers and, where possible, to slow down such closure processes to enable skills to be retained and reused within the local economy.

Globalisation, economic freedom and strategic decision-making: a role for industrial policy?

This article links the radical institutionalist approaches of Tool and Dugger with the strategic choice perspective to better understand the linkages between freedom, knowledge and participation in the context of a global economy dominated by transnational firms. A concern by economists with ‘negative’ freedom has been challenged by a renewed interest in the ‘positive’ dimension, drawing on Sens pioneering work on capabilities. The authors argue that overemphasis on either type of freedom could lead to strategic failure. Economic freedom thus constitutes consideration of what type(s) of freedom are emphasised, where freedom resides within the system, and how freedoms are realised. Public policy responses are then seen as appropriate in a globalising economy dominated by negatively free strategic decision-makers within transnational firms, tackling both the nature of the firm itself as well as the environment within which such decisions are made. This would constrain negative freedom for some so as to expand freedoms for others, enabling a more democratic form of globalisation to better serve the interests of a wider set of actors.

Auto plant closures, policy responses and labour market outcomes: a comparison of MG Rover in the UK and Mitsubishi in Australia

This paper provides a preliminary comparative longitudinal analysis of the impact on workers made redundant due to the closure of the Mitsubishi plant in Adelaide and the MG Rover plant in Birmingham. Longitudinal surveys of ex-workers from both firms were undertaken over a 12-month period in order to assess the process of labour market adjustment. In the Mitsubishi case, given the skills shortage the state of Adelaide was facing, together with the considerable growth in mining and defence industries, it would have been more appropriate if policy intervention had been redirected to further training or re-skilling opportunities for redundant workers. This opportunity was effectively missed and as a result more workers left the workforce, most notably for retirement, than could have otherwise been the case. The MG Rover case was seen as a more successful example of policy intervention, with greater funding assistance available and targeted support available, and with more emphasis on re-training needs to assist adjustment. However, despite the assistance offered and the rhetoric of successful adjustment in both cases, the majority of workers have nevertheless experienced deterioration in their circumstances – particularly in the Australian case where casual and part-time work were often the only work that could be obtained. Even in the UK case, where more funding assistance was offered, a majority of workers reported a decline in earnings and a rise in job insecurity. This suggests that a reliance on the flexible labour market is insufficient to promote adjustment, and that more active policy intervention is needed especially in regard to further up-skilling.

Should I stay or should I go? Agency nursing work in the UK

There are competing perspectives as to whether agency represents the desire to be a ‘free agent’ in terms of greater flexibility and control, or whether it represents a reluctant retreat from permanent employment. This paper explores the reasons why nurses in the UK work on an agency basis through surveys of two nursing agencies and asks: to what extent do supply-side preferences contribute to the decision for nurses to work on an agency basis? How does working on an agency basis affect the work-life balance and career aspirations of nurses? Two surveys were conducted; one with a ‘generalist’ nurse agency; and one with a ‘specialized’ agency, in order to examine the impact of rare/specialized skills on pecuniary motives. It is found that while nurses who also have a permanent job are more likely to report pecuniary factors as influencing the decision to work through agencies, nurses who solely work agency are more likely to emphasize work-life balance issues and escaping ‘office politics’ as key factors. Importantly, the findings point to the continued appeal of agency work as a means to exit the nursing workplace, suggesting that government reforms to increase the appeal of nursing as a profession have only partially addressed the concerns of nurses.

Lisbon, Sapir and Industrial Policy: Evaluating the ‘Irish Success Story’

Abstract This paper provides a critical macro‐level evaluation of the Lisbon process and Sapir report, through the lens of examining the Irish experience. Our assessment of the performance of the Irish economy depicts a picture of catch‐up and convergence with average EU productivity and GNP levels, rather than a ‘miracle’. In so doing, we attempt to provide a more balanced appraisal of how Ireland managed to get things ‘right’ in some sense in recent years while also recognising on‐going challenges for the economy and the vulnerability caused by FDI‐dependent growth. The Sapir report and follow‐up papers were right to identify administrative capacity and a favourable investment environment (including education systems) as a precondition for strong economic performance. However, we argue that corporatist social pacts, an opportunistic exchange rate policy and a high rate of in‐migration (and the more general expansion of the labour supply) have also contributed to Irish success, along with substantial EU structural assistance. Moreover, Sapir’s analysis is superficial, we would suggest, in that a key ‘lesson’ for new EU member states from Ireland’s recent economic history is that simply attracting FDI is not enough to generate spillovers. Irish policymakers have recognised this and have attempted to shift policy away from a focus purely on attracting FDI towards a more sophisticated industrial policy.

Labor Standards, Gender, and Decent Work in Newly Industrialized Countries: Promoting the Good Society

As the shortcomings of the dominant “Washington Consensus” approach to economic development and well-being become ever more apparent, there has been increasing concern expressed at the pitfalls of globalization and the activities of multinational corporations (Sen 1999; Rodrik 2001; Stiglitz 2002; Bailey and De Ruyter 2007). In particular, concerns have been expressed over the growth of vulnerable employment (largely in the informal sector) that has occurred directly as a result of neoliberal policies espoused under the Washington Consensus; the “Washington Consensus” approach has ignored gender, labor, and environment issues and further entrenched existing inequalities (De Ruyter and Warnecke 2008).