EWERC Seminar
Wednesday 28 March, 4pm (tea/coffee from 3.45pm)
MBS East Room D21
Beggars can’t be Choosers:
Low-Skill Unemployed Men & ‘Work-first’ Welfare-to-Work Policy in the Service Economy
Dr Darren Nixon
Senior Lecturer Sociology
Leeds Metropolitan University
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Work stands at the heart of New Labour’s welfare reforms. It is trumpeted as the ‘best form of welfare’ and the key route out of poverty, unemployment and social exclusion. However, in the radically re-structured contemporary economy, obtaining work has become increasingly difficult for some groups of men. Currently there are around 2.8 million economically inactive men in Britain – twice the 1979 figure (Alcock et al 2003) Older men, those with low-level skills and education, and men with previous employment in the declining industries are heavily over-represented amongst this group. These are men who have struggled to adapt to the changing demands and skill requirements of the post-industrial ‘service economy’. Government and policy makers in Britain have built current welfare-to-work policy around improving and sustaining ‘employability’. The theory underpinning this policy is what Herd and Patterson (2001) term the ‘withering flower effect’ - the idea that the essential skills required for employability are best learnt through employment and in-work training. This has led to the development and prioritisation of the ‘work-first approach’, where returning the unemployed to employment as quickly as possible is prioritised at the expense of longer-term educational and training needs.
Based on 35 in-depth interviews with low-skill, poorly educated, long-term unemployed men in Manchester, this paper argues that rather than alleviating male unemployment and social exclusion, the ‘work-first approach’ may actually exacerbate it. This reflects the priority that Jobseekers Allowance and New Deal regulations place on Job search, meaning the unemployed are often compelled to apply for jobs that they don’t want or can’t get, leading them to become discouraged by constant rejection and see the whole process as pointless. This can lead to withdrawal from the job search process altogether, a retreat into economic inactivity and a hardening of socio-economic exclusion.
The paper also suggests that the strength of the men’s identification with particular kinds of male-dominated ‘masculine’ manual labour makes entry into growing areas of low-skill service work highly problematic and indeed, unlikely. However, whilst the policy agenda constructs this as an issue of ‘work-ethic’, in practice reluctance to enter growth areas of low-skill service work reflects the complex relationship between skills, gender identity and occupational segregation, particularly the fact that many growth areas of low-skill service work are heavily female-dominated and demand precisely the kinds of skills and attributes that low-skill unemployed men lack.
In concluding, the paper casts severe doubt on the ability of current welfare-to-work policies to solve the increasing problem of male economic inactivity and disguised male unemployment in Britain. It is argued that much more attention should be placed on the nature and quality of the jobs being generated in the economy and that an individual’s long-term skill, educational and training needs must be more fully assessed, acknowledged and addressed. Finally, more focus should be placed on matching job search and training with the kinds of jobs the unemployed actually want, if a genuine and successful attempt to sustain long-term employability and reduce male economic inactivity in Britain is to be made.