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A new report from the UK
Trades Union Congress (TUC) says telework isn't all it's cracked up to be.
But it's likely to grow, and could be a good thing as long as it's
properly regulated and packaged with red tape.
The UK TUC is developing a
slightly schizophrenic approach to new ways of working. Traditionally it
has been hostile: associating telework with exploitative home-working
scams and piece-work sweatshops, and defining "flexibility" as
"insecurity".
However, in recent years the
TUC and its members have become movers and shakers in the world of
Work-Life Balance. In this world, flexibility and new ways of working are
considered key to achieving personal benefits, and achieving equilibrium
between home and work.
This new report, then, Telework
- the new industrial revolution? (August 2001) takes not so much a
middle path, as a mixed path. One minute it retains the former jeering and
adversarial tone -"Most telework is old wine in new bottles" -
and minimises the uptake through statistical sleight of hand. The next it
follows the party line on Work-Life Balance.
Most interesting perhaps is a perhaps romantic assumption
of the benefits of the centralised workplace: "As well as ensuring
home-workers are better protected, policy must be equally concerned with
ensuring that workers can move from home to office or factory as well as
vice versa." But underlying this kind of approach are certain
monolithic assumptions about the nature of work. The report persistently
focuses on the minority of people who work full-time from home, rather
than on the new reality that much work can, in principle, be anywhere.
Conclusions
Amongst the reports conclusions are that:
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Teleworking can make a contribution to any employment
strategy concerned with promoting greater choice and flexibility for
individuals in the labour market and improving the work-life balance.
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But there is also a potential downside - teleworking could
instead become simply an extension of white-collar work intensification,
with some teleworkers placed at a disadvantage compared with their
workplace-based colleagues.
Interestingly, the report associates a strong regulatory environment
with the growth of teleworking:
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"Teleworking is most highly developed in those
European economies with comprehensive labour market protections and
widespread collective agreements;
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The best way of ensuring telework in the UK develops as a
progressive option for employees is within the best practice guidelines
developed by trade unions - Codes of Practice are currently being
developed jointly at both European and UK level by employers and trade
unions (see box below);
But teleworking, says the report (- you can almost hear
the word "thankfully!" from the author), is not making much
of an impact on the traditional structures of work:
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".. telework is not driving a fundamental shift in
work organisation or the balance between working at home and working in an
office;
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Most telework is old wine in new bottles: the
self-employed running businesses or working freelance from home and
managers and professionals taking work home;
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Employee teleworkers who usually work at home rather than
in the office account for less than one in ten of all teleworkers and only
0.5 per cent of all employees;
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Over the past decade the share of people working mainly at
home fell in the UK, across Europe, and in the US"
Our conclusion? At Flexibility we have no problem
with reports that are critical of the emerging world of work. But we do
feel the TUC has some way to go before it begins to understand what is
happening, and to take on board the implications for the workforce, for
unions and for the services that unions can offer.
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