Dissatisfaction with one’s work is older than capitalism, but economic and social shifts over recent decades served to intensify the worries of workers. De-industrialisation, globalisation, the rise of automation and the gig economy, combined with high rates of job insecurity and unemployment among the young, in particular, all seemed to solidify the impression that, when it came to work, the present was worse than the past – and that the future was set to be even worse.
The Covid-19 pandemic crystallised those fears. Millions of people lost their jobs overnight, many of them in low-paid service industries. While most people stayed at home to protect themselves against the virus, essential workers – many of them, again, in low-paid jobs – risked serious illness and even death to keep hospitals, shops and key services going. The pandemic caused inequality to worsen, ate up public spending budgets and, because governments’ attention was focused entirely on fighting the health crisis, slowed social reform programmes.
The long-term legacy of damage caused by the pandemic, in the world of work as in other areas such as health and education, is still being assessed and will take many more years to address. At the same time, however, it is clear that the pandemic has the potential to change our experience of work in positive and lasting ways. The sudden move to remote working has transformed many workers' lives for the better, an effect highlighted in new figures from the Central Statistics Office showing remarkably high levels of job and life satisfaction among workers, with those in hybrid work arrangements most satisfied of all. Researchers differ on whether the home or the office is more productive. Workers have mixed views. But, for many, dispensing with the tiring, and time-consuming routine of the daily commute has allowed for a more balanced life.
These are luxuries not afforded to all workers, of course, and it will take time to see how lasting some of these changes will be. But the shifts require wholesale conceptual changes on the part of employers and employees, and serious thinking is needed on ways to mitigate the drawbacks of remote working while retaining its benefits. For governments and planners, the implications are every bit as significant. Updating employment law is only the beginning. Large-scale changes in work patterns could alter the nature of cities and their suburbs, create demand for new types of housing and open new possibilities in the long struggle to revive and connect rural areas.
Decades of top-down policy could not have achieved the structural changes that have occurred in the workplace over the past two years. The challenge for policy-makers now is to recognise the scale of those shifts and to move to seize the opportunities they present.