Richard Seymour wrote such a brilliant ‘Comment is Free’ column for the Guardian that it actually got me thinking about what he was saying. The whole article bears reading as it highlights a very worrying trend, but the last paragraph particularly summed it up…
“…The rise in officially counted self-employment, far from representing a surge in individual initiative, is to a large degree the outcome of a disciplinary process. To this extent, enterprise is not being freed so much as it is being forced.”
I had felt this myself, as I am placed in a similar position myself of trying to look for work in order to make a wage that I can actually live on, and enable me to rent my own place, but I find that so many jobs these days are less than 16 hours.
16 hours, by the way, is actually an important figure. That’s the minimum contract amount you need to actually enable yourself to stop claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance in the UK. If you are working less than 16 hours per week, you are required to still sign on at the Jobcentre.
Even then, part time work, from 16-29 hours, may not be enough to actually enable people to actually live the lives they want to live. Contrary to what you might have seen on the Jetsons, 3 hour work-days do not enable you to have all the mod-cons of today’s hi-tech world, especially when you are on minimum wage for doing an unskilled task, such as pressing buttons all day. The Jetsons might have been a 1960s vision of the future, but in socio-economic terms, it’s prediction of part time working was correct, but not what you could do around that ‘part-time working’ culture, or indeed what you can buy through part-time working.
This ‘part-time working’ culture has led to situations where people have to work 2 or more part-time jobs to make a living wage, or go down the route of self-employment if you want to make some money, which is exactly what Richard Seymour talks about.
And yes, it does feel like you are being forced down that route, rather than being inspired to go down that route. As Dr John Demartini might put it, self-employment has become just another means of rescuing desperation, rather than rewarding inspiration.
Self employment in and of itself, is not a bad thing. I would heartily recommend that every worker tries self-employment at least once in their career. The time spent doing that will open your eyes and your mind in ways you never thought possible.
But if self-employment is becoming merely another way to rescue ourselves from the damage caused by the ‘part time working’ culture that is so beloved by the Conservatives and by business, then that is not a good thing, and it cannot help to undo the damage that is being caused by businesses worldwide that favour part time working, over full time working, and having a team that views what they do at work, as being more than just a means to earn the money to do the things they truly want to do.
If the Government truly wants to cut the benefits bill, they need to encourage businesses to have more full-time workers, on a living wage, therefore eliminating the need for part time workers under 16 hours to have to continue to sign on and claim benefits, and by having business pay living wages, it would also cut the number of people who are claiming housing benefit on low pay, because they need it to pay the rent on their accommodation. Criminalising the unemployed is not the way to go. Turning the part-time culture back towards a full-time culture, most definitely is.
No comments:
Post a Comment