Rosemary Lucas

A coincidence of needs? Employers and full-time students

Employers’ demands for cheap and flexible labour which can multi‐task, make decisions and act responsibly are being met by an increasing supply of students to the part‐time labour market who are having to work due to financial necessity during term‐time. This article details the results of a survey and focus group study conducted at Manchester Metropolitan University in February 1999 addressing the nature of this employment relationship. Students’ employment provides them with advantages other than money – valuable work experience, the opportunity to meet people and to take on responsibility. Employers benefit from an easily recruited workforce of intelligent, articulate young people who are numerically and functionally flexible, conscientious, accepting relatively low pay, and who are easy to control. Potential conflict is indicated as students do articulate dislikes about their work and employment conditions, yet they feel unable to challenge their employers about them.

Combining Work and Study: an empirical study of full‐time students in school, college and university∗

Abstract Increasing proportions of students in full‐time education are routinely combining work with study which muddies the waters of the school‐to‐work transition. It is no longer appropriate to divide education and work and it is more useful to conceptualise the school‐to‐work transition as part of a life‐time learning process of transferable skills accrual. In a work experience undertaken for economic and social reasons students learn to reconcile the conflicting demands of work and study. Given the funding crisis in higher education and the likely exemption of young people from the National Minimum Wage, students can be expected to become even more entrenched as cheap and flexible labour. ∗A revised version of the paper presented at the ILM Conference 1997 ‘Understanding the school‐to‐work transition’ 16‐17 June, Aberdeen.

Youth, gender and part‐time employment

Increasing numbers of full‐time students at school, college and university are combining study with work in marginal, flexible, low‐ paid, part‐time service jobs. The employment relationship is highly informal and the contract may simply be the product of coincidence, because the idea that employers follow a particular strategy with regard to the employment of labour, simplifies the complexities and vagaries of the labour market. Although this phenomenon is bringing more young males into the part‐time labour force, young females remain disadvantaged in regard to the substantive terms of the effort/reward exchange. These factors necessitate a rethink and revision of the main theories of labour force analysis.

Fragments of HRM in hospitality? Evidence from the 1998 workplace employee relations survey

Using management and employee data from the 1998 workplace employee relations survey, this article attempts to trace “fragments of HRM” within the hospitality industry (HI) on a comparative basis with all industries and services (AIS) in Great Britain. Four themes are explored: how the management of HRM is organised and practised, “individualism” and “collectivism”, participation and involvement, and other “sophisticated” HR practices. The impact of HRM on employees is assessed. HRM in the HI is found to be very different, thus providing an extreme example of the “retaining control/cost control” approach to management, and a graphic illustration of very “hard” HRM in practice. While HI employees are much more content with their lot than their counterparts in AIS who are subject to rather more “favourable” HRM policies and practices, other indicators imply that there is also dissatisfaction. Qualitative research is necessary to understand whether employees really do enjoy being “kicked hard”. Management might reap greater benefits by adopting more developmental, “soft” HRM practices.

Employee relations in the non‐union hotel industry: a case of “determined opportunism”?

This paper examines employee relations management in a non‐union sector, showing how employers in the hotel industry remain relatively free to manage in an arbitrary and determined fashion, in spite of an increasingly wide net of statutory employee rights. These management practices are effected in the way the workforce is structured, and in the differential treatment of workers in the same organisation. Notably “peripheral” unskilled workers, which are in the majority, are subjected to a more “hard” form of human resource management and are made more vulnerable from lack of eligibility to employment protection rights. Employers are not constrained from dismissing workers and fail to comply with many minimum legal requirements or observe the law in spirit. “Determined opportunism” represents an extreme instance of a “retaining control/cost‐control” style of management.

Part-time student labour: strategic choice or pragmatic response?

Increasing proportions of students are working part‐time in industries such as hospitality. To understand more about this phenomenon, 11 case studies of hospitality establishments employing a significant proportion of students were compiled by matching data provided by managers and students working in these establishments. Concludes that employers’ employment of student labour could be a combination of strategic choice and pragmatic response ‐ a kind of pragmatic strategy that may be tantamount to a “coincidence of varying interests”.

Ageism and the UK Hospitality Industry

In the context of a gradually ageing labour force and skills shortages, discrimination against older workers has recently become an issue of public policy concern. Ageism is arguably more pervasive in the hospitality industry than elsewhere; a recent follow‐up study confirms that hospitality organizations continue to rely heavily on younger workers and show little disposition to capitalize on the acknowledged benefits which older workers can offer. Consequently, these organizations do not appear to be well placed to manage future developments in the labour market, particularly in relation to obtaining managers.

The ‘demographic timebomb’ and how some hospitality employers are responding to the challenge

Abstract The phrase ‘demographic timebomb’ has taken on the aura of a shibbholeth and that everyone knows they ought to be fearful about. But is it really understood and what needs to be done? This article seeks to answer these questions and to shed some light on the employment strategies being developed by some British hospitality employers to counteract the demographic changes of the 1990s. As a result, some of the myth that the hospitality industry is lagging behind other industries can be dispelled but other findings support popular testimony that the industry faces special problems.

Young workers and the National Minimum Wage

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the basis of the Low Pay Commissions (LPC) presumption of the “distinctiveness” of young workers aged 16 and 17 in the absence of any systematic and objective basis for determining “fair pay”. In the context of labour market theories and the issues they raise in relation to skill, training and pay, the paper questions the presumption that young workers are distinctive with reference to contemporary notions of skill and training requirements.Design/methodology/approach – Using a sub‐sample of hospitality businesses in North Wales, the paper presents selected evidence from semi‐structured interviews about firms’ pay and employment practices that included a systematic method to enable managers to provide some objectively justifiable measures of job content and perceptions of personal attributes in relation to the pay of 16‐ and 17‐year‐old workers compared with their older counterparts.Findings – Employers’ informal and pragmatic employment and pay practices...

Youth Pay in Catering and Retailing

Reports a pilot study of part‐time youth employment among sixth‐formers in Greater Manchester and Cheshire which found that the vast majority of students worked in catering and retailing. Even though youth wages are no longer regulated by wages councils, and the recession could be expected to exert a downward pressure on pay, the pay levels found were significantly higher than the junior wages council minima that could have been expected to be in force in 1993. An overwhelming majority of the students were satisfied with their pay. For employers, the young constitute a relatively cheap and flexible labour source. Increasing numbers of students in sixth forms and higher education throughout the decade will apparently need to work, thus providing an interesting scenario for further research into youth pay and employment in the 1990s.