Description
More than three billion people are at work across the globe, and it takes up a huge chunk of the time humans spend on this planet. Policymakers say they want to see "more and better jobs" or "decent work for all" but are good jobs expanding, and if so for whom? Or are bad jobs taking over? In Hard at Work, Francis Green presents a new, up-to-date account of job quality to understand the immense variety and range of jobs, as well as the evolution of these jobs in the twenty-first century. Drawing on economics, industrial relations, sociology, psychology, and ergonomics, as well as new data sources from countries around the world, Green constructs a unified and interdisciplinary conceptual framework that illustrates the impacts of job quality on our health and wellbeing. He finds that while some work environments can be meaningful, well-paced, safe, well-paid, and supportive, others can be tightly controlled, low-paid, dangerous, insecure, and fast-paced. With this broad picture of job quality, Green turns to various issues that impact workers--the failure to improve job quality and workers' wellbeing at work despite long-term economic growth, the declining share of labor income, the general increase in work demands, and the prospects for job quality in the new automated world of work. Original and authoritative, Hard at Work provides a global and comprehensive understanding of job quality that raises important questions for this emerging field. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.
Table of Contents
Preface Acknowledgements Acronyms Part A. Framing Job Quality 1. The Significance and Terrain of Job Quality Science2. Job Quality, Capability, and Wellbeing from Work3. Better Jobs or Worse? The Forces Shaping Job QualityPart B. Job Quality Narratives4. Earnings Quality5. Prospects and Precariousness6. Working Time Quality7. Autonomy and Skill8. Social Support and Workplace Abuse9. More Demanding Work10. Hazards and Harms of the Second PlacePart C. Bad Jobs, Job Quality Policy, and the Future of Work11. The Conjuncture of Job Quality in the Early Twenty-First Century12. Making Jobs BetterAppendixNotesBibliographyIndex
