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Before the gig economy : UK employment policy and the casual labour question
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Whiteside, Noel (2021) Before the gig economy : UK employment policy and the casual labour question. Industrial Law Journal, 50 (4). pp. 610-635. doi:10.1093/indlaw/dwab029 ISSN 0305-9332.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwab029
Abstract
Focussing on the UK, this paper considers how employment has been understood and identifies the policies pursued to promote specific models of working life over the course of the twentieth century. In recent decades, jobs on offer in Britain have become increasingly precarious, a trend actively promoted by governments of all political complexions. Labour markets have been deregulated, flexibility of employment promoted. As work is consistently identified as the sole route out of poverty, a category of ‘working poor’ has emerged. Such government strategies present as a volte face to the politics of the early twentieth century, when social investigation exposed irregular work as a cause of poverty, not its cure, and as the main factor causing a rising incidence of social dependency. The UK’s earliest labour market policies sought to eradicate casual work and to encourage permanent employment—policies promoted assiduously for most of the twentieth century. Using convention theory, this paper examines these historical dimensions, to explain why and how governments sought to structure labour market operations—and the legacies bequeathed to us as a result. The principal object of the paper is the analysis of public policy—its rationale and its shortcomings—on which current employment law is founded. The paper exposes how our current understanding of ‘traditional’ or ‘regular’ job contracts came to be constructed and why ‘work on demand’ is understood as ‘irregular’, that is, as a deviant form of established employment norms.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor | ||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Institute for Employment Research | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Labor policy -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century, Labor policy -- Great Britain -- History -- 21st century, Casual labor -- Great Britain, Gig economy -- Great Britain | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Industrial Law Journal | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0305-9332 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | December 2021 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 50 | ||||||||
| Number: | 4 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 610-635 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1093/indlaw/dwab029 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Industrial Law Journal following peer review. The version of record Noel Whiteside, Before the Gig Economy: UK Employment Policy and the Casual Labour Question, Industrial Law Journal, Volume 50, Issue 4, December 2021, Pages 610–635, is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwab029 | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 27 January 2022 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 10 November 2023 |
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