Austerity and the Irish Non-Profit Voluntary and Community Sector

This chapter evaluates whether austerity can be interpreted as a continuation of an established neoliberal ideology or as a not-to-be-wasted opportunity that is unique to a particular era in time. Using the case of the Irish Non-Profit Voluntary and Community Sector (NPVCS), it draws on a qualitative-based empirical study within the sub-sector of Physical and Sensory Disabilities, built around two principal service providers. The chapter argues that government funding and service-level agreements created the conduit for New Public Management (NPM)-orientated thinking and practices to enter the sector and exert downward pressures on how it manages people and work. Coincidentally, this conveniently aligned with austerity ideology and gave new impetus to NPM. The findings show strong evidence of NPM-orientated changes in work and human resources management, propelled by strong isomorphic pressures that had accelerated and intensified during the era of austerity. The study uses the explanatory lens of institutional theory and labour-process theory to explicate how the state–NPVCS relationship became institutionalized through the isomorphism of NPM and how austerity reinforced and expedited this process.

The Rise of Managerialism in the US: Whither Worker Control?

This chapter investigates the impact of managerialism on the work of non-profit human-service workers in New York City, drawing on survey data to paint a portrait of a sector that has been deeply restructured to emulate private-market relations and processes. It uses the Social Structure of Accumulation (SSA) theory to explain the rise of neoliberal austerity and identify five neoliberal strategies designed to dismantle the US welfare state. The chapter also focuses on the impact of privatization, a key neoliberal strategy; shows how privatization has transformed the organization of work in public and non-profit human-service agencies; and details the experience of nearly 3,000 front-line, mostly female, human-service workers in New York City. It argues that austerity and managerialism generate the perfect storm in which austerity cuts resources and managerialism promotes 'doing more with less' through performance and outcome metrics and close management control of the labour-process. Closely analysing practices for resistance, the chapter concludes that in lower-managerial workplaces, workers had fewer problems with autonomy, a greater say in decision making, less work stress, and more sustainable employment, suggesting that democratic control of the workplace is an alternative route to quality, worker engagement, and successful outcomes.

The Age of Increased Precarious Employment: Origins and Implications

This chapter explores why employment rules and norms took the form they did, the prevalence of precarious employment in the labour market today, and the social implications of the era of Increased Precarious Employment. The employment norms associated with the era of Increased Precarious Employment represent one component of a broader shift to a neoliberal form of social organization. The chapter begins by reviewing the factors that led to the transition from the Standard Employment Relationship and the forces that shaped the employment relationship in the era of Increased Precarious Employment. It then examines debates over how to measure the prevalence of the precarious workforce, before considering the impact of precarious employment on households, families, and communities. The chapter looks at the findings of the Poverty and Employment Precarity in Southern Ontario research group.

Privatization, Hybridization and Resistance in Contemporary Care Work

This chapter identifies seven forms of overlapping and interwoven privatization. In the current era of austerity, privatization has been able to extend its reach through these integrated processes and, in some cases, operate almost by stealth as an overarching ideological force that legitimizes private-market relations in places where it once would have been thought to be contrary to a public sector ethic of entitlement and equity. This is a growing dynamic across many public and non-profit/voluntary services and organizations. The chapter discusses the seven forms of privatization in the provision of long-term residential or nursing home care for older people in Ontario, Canada and in the UK. Private ownership is commonly thought to be the only or main form of privatization, but austerity analyses can be more incisive and specific, with a greater awareness of the complexity and multiplexity of the forms of privatization operating within formerly public and non-profit spaces. The chapter then looks at resistance in the sphere of care for older people, some of which has been successful.

‘The most striking progressive achievement in labor and employment policy’? The Scottish Living Wage in Social Care during Austerity

This chapter details the Scottish Government's implementation in 2016 of the Scottish Living Wage (SLW) for front-line workers in adult social care in an effort to address cost and quality tensions in the market as well as recruitment and retention difficulties. After briefly outlining the literature on minimum and living wages and on austerity in social care, the chapter presents findings on local authorities' and providers' experiences with SLW implementation. Drawing on interviews with voluntary and private social care providers across Scotland, representatives of lead employer bodies, union officials, commissioning authorities, and civil servants, the findings suggest that the re-regulation of pay has, paradoxically, prompted greater insecurity in market relations in social care. Local authorities' experiences highlight several unintended consequences of the policy, including an uneven distribution of funding to poorer payers that disadvantages fair employers, bringing services in-house and making cuts to other services. The chapter then discusses the experiences and impact of SLW implementation on social care organizations, such as providers making efficiencies and withdrawing from or declining to enter unviable contracts. It concludes with implications for the sustainability of the SLW and service provision in adult social care.

Stepping Stone or Dead End? The Ambiguities of Platform-Mediated Domestic Work under Conditions of Austerity. Comparative Landscapes of Austerity and the Gig Economy: New York and Berlin

This chapter examines some of the ways that nationally and locally distinct conditions of neoliberal austerity shape how people come to take up work in the platform-mediated gig economies of New York City and Berlin. Focusing on gig workers' experiences with platforms providing domestic cleaning service, the chapter analyses the experience of four young platform workers and concludes that global institutional phenomena such as 'the gig economy' and 'austerity' have local platform-specific iterations as well as larger global patterns. While it is true that the gig economy's business model is predicated on austerity logics, to the extent that its two central tenets are risk offloading and continuous accounting, platform companies are also notorious for burning through massive amounts of venture capital in their quest to achieve scale. The immediate impact of this pursuit on many gig workers has been one of relative — and short-lived — splendour, as they eagerly collect sign-up bonuses and enjoy initial payouts higher than any previously received wage. Platform labour's link to austerity is thus not a straightforward matter, as it is rife with ambivalence and contradictions.

Trends in Collective Bargaining, Wage Stagnation and Income Inequality under Austerity

This chapter discusses the impact of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and austerity on collective bargaining and wage outcomes internationally. It adopts a perspective that sees the GFC and austerity as providing a convenient point from which to further consolidate neoliberalism's hold on society and simultaneously undermine one of the chief forms of resistance — trade unions and collective bargaining. The chapter begins by exploring trends in collective bargaining in the EU and North America (US and Canada) in the post-GFC period. In doing so, it identifies a common trajectory in nation-state policies that encompasses a shift towards identifying the GFC as a public debt crisis; the blaming of trade unions and their members (in particular public sector workers) for the crisis; and the introduction of reforms to collective bargaining and union security designed to reinforce deflationary austerity policies. The chapter then examines trends in wage growth and equality since 2008 and considers the factors influencing them and the extent to which they can be viewed as a product of the neoliberal-informed economic policies and reforms adopted in response to the crisis.