EMPLOYABILITY AND SECURITY IN A FLEXIBLE GLOBAL LABOUR MARKET People and work A sound, consistent and stable economic policy coupled with an active labour market strategy, tax benefits and overall market reforms have combined to help Britain achieve falling unemployment levels, according to Matthew Taylor, director of the Institute for Public Policy Research. He believes that economic stability is the most important element but also credits the government’s active market strategies – known as the‘new deal’ – with having helped Britain to become one of the few countries in Europe with declining unemployment. The new deal consists of a package of measures designed to promote employment, and is targeted at five main groups: the young; older workers; the long-term unemployed; women; and disadvantaged people(such as minority ethnic groups, one-parent families and people with disabilities). ‘The new deal has been successful in ways no one predicted. Projects for subsidising employment have been most effective. For example, one scheme(known as the gateway process) supports people looking for employment by spending money on removing obstacles to their getting work, such as removing a tattoo or buying a car. Active intervention, despite the government’s reservations, seems to work and has encouraged more pilot programmes. Investment in training and education has been relatively less successful. There is a need for more programmes that help to improve basic skills, but the government tends to have a‘wait and see’ attitude on this. One interesting, if somewhat paradoxical, outcome of government action is that increased regulation has not had a negative impact on employment levels. Five years ago many argued that increased market regulation would hit jobs, but this has not happened. A trend over recent years is the increasing length of the working week. The long working hours that UK workers put in – significantly higher than their counterparts in the rest of the EU – may, however, be somewhat misleading. If part-time employees are put into the equation, the number falls. Nevertheless, the average number of hours worked each week in the UK has risen over the past two decades; a forty-eight-hour week is now the norm rather than the exception. However there is mounting pressure for more family­(and life-) friendly work solutions. Stress is a real and serious problem Mr Taylor argued that the health and safety issue of the twenty-first century could well be stress. But is it possible for people to choose not to work? In Britain, stuck in a long­hours work culture, people believe that they will not be secure in their old age unless they are able to maximise their income now.‘They choose to work these long hours, believing they must. Human resource management practices which are not just work-friendly, but life-friendly as well, will be needed.’ 7 © Anglo-German Foundation for the Study of Industrial Society