BBC Radio 4 program on 'Long Hours' work culture; Empty labour

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Harrison
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Jun 9 2013 23:48
BBC Radio 4 program on 'Long Hours' work culture; Empty labour

I just caught this on Radio 4, it was really quite interesting, especially the mention of how capital being invested in further developing management structures and extending employees hours isn't producing the kind of productivity expected.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b02143yw

Quote:
Empty labour - international statistics suggest that the average time an employee spends engaged in private activities is 1 and a half to 2 hours a day. Laurie Taylor talks to Roland Paulsen, a Swedish sociologist, who interviewed 43 workers who spent around half their working hours on 'empty labour'. Are such employees merely 'slacking' or are such little' subversions' acts of resistance to the way work appropriates so much of our time? They're joined by the writer, Michael Bywater. By contrast, Jane Sturges, discusses her research into professionals caught up, both reluctantly as well as willingly, in a 'long hours' work culture.
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altemark
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Jun 11 2013 05:39

I've had the opportunity of hearing Roland Paulsen speak several times, and I must say that if the "public faces" of the libertarian left were half as sensible and soft-spoken as Roland Paulsen, I think the average Joe and Jane would be more keen on listening to what we have to say.

From the introduction to his thesis:

Quote:
Four types of empty labor could be discerned depending on the employee's sense of work obligation and how much work the job actually entailed: soldiering is the active withdrawal of the employee despite high potential output; slacking is a combination of little to do and weak sense of work obligation in the employee; coping is when the employee wants to perform and there is much to do, but when empty labor is used as stress relief; enduring is when the employee is motivated to work, but work tasks are lacking. Although simulating work is essential to all types of empty labor, only soldiering represents resistance in the sense that subjective motives challenge the organization of labor. Among those with a weak sense of work obligation, the motives for time appropriation varied from personal to more political reasons. However, if empty labor can be incorporated into the organization of work, and the maximal efficiency that sometimes is ascribed to the capitalist production system is unwarranted, one might ask whether any type of empty labor signifies resistance. I conclude by pointing out how the phenomenon of empty labor challenges the very concept of work and its relation to production.