Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- List of contributors
- one New Labour, ‘modernisation’ and welfare worker resistance
- two Strenuous welfarism: restructuring the welfare labour process
- three A ‘Third Way’? Industrial relations under New Labour
- four Acts of distrust? Support workers’ experiences in PFI hospital schemes
- five Control and resistance at the ward-face: contesting the nursing labour process
- six ‘I didn’t come into teaching for this!’: the impact of the market on teacher professionalism
- seven Ambiguities and resistance: academic labour and the commodification of higher education
- eight The paradox of ‘professionalisation’ and ‘degradation’ in welfare work: the case of nursery nurses
- nine Social work today: a profession worth fighting for?
- ten Working ‘for’ welfare in the grip of the ‘iron’ Chancellor: modernisation and resistance in the Department for Work and Pensions
- eleven Working in the non-profit welfare sector: contract culture, partnership, Compacts and the ‘shadow state’
- twelve Beyond New Labour: work and resistance in the ‘new’ welfare state
- Index
twelve - Beyond New Labour: work and resistance in the ‘new’ welfare state
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- List of contributors
- one New Labour, ‘modernisation’ and welfare worker resistance
- two Strenuous welfarism: restructuring the welfare labour process
- three A ‘Third Way’? Industrial relations under New Labour
- four Acts of distrust? Support workers’ experiences in PFI hospital schemes
- five Control and resistance at the ward-face: contesting the nursing labour process
- six ‘I didn’t come into teaching for this!’: the impact of the market on teacher professionalism
- seven Ambiguities and resistance: academic labour and the commodification of higher education
- eight The paradox of ‘professionalisation’ and ‘degradation’ in welfare work: the case of nursery nurses
- nine Social work today: a profession worth fighting for?
- ten Working ‘for’ welfare in the grip of the ‘iron’ Chancellor: modernisation and resistance in the Department for Work and Pensions
- eleven Working in the non-profit welfare sector: contract culture, partnership, Compacts and the ‘shadow state’
- twelve Beyond New Labour: work and resistance in the ‘new’ welfare state
- Index
Summary
Modernising leftists can, or should, have a clear idea of the kind of society they are seeking to create. It is one whose economy is competitive in the global marketplace, but which remains cohesive, inclusive and egalitarian. Bringing into being such a society means running with the tide of the great social changes of our era – not just the emergence of the knowledge economy, but the impact of globalisation and of rising individualism. (Giddens, 2003, p 38)
Many would argue that the hegemony of neoliberalism is demonstrated precisely by the fact that its policies survived the electoral defeat of the parties that inaugurated it. (Callinicos, 2001, p 7)
Other chapters in this volume have examined specific dimensions of restructured welfare work. Here we return to reflect on larger questions around the managerialist regimes of ‘strenuous welfarism’. Our conception of strenuous welfarism attempts to capture the new ascetic work regime that often operates through ‘control at a distance’ to intensify individual effort and raise ‘productivity’ overall (see Chapter Two). In this chapter, we reconsider the intellectual underpinnings and genesis of strenuous welfarism in Third Way thinking and New Labour ‘modernisation’ (see Chapters One and Two). We then use this opportunity to reflect on the internal modulation of strenuous welfarism as it emerged in the workplace case studies in this book. In response to more flexibly intensive work regimes, workers ‘exit’, leaving their employer or even the sector altogether; or they stay ‘loyal’ to the organisation and the profession through the internalisation of the service ethos and managerial norms; or, finally, they engage in overt and covert forms of resistance, in the process confronting the tensions symptomatic of social neoliberalism. We then speculate about new tendencies and dynamics emerging from worker discontent with strenuous welfarism. A space is opening up for the sectional struggles of workers to reach out to other constituencies such as user groups, grassroots campaigns, new social movements and other political allies that wish to support and expand public services. These new social solidarities are also indicators of the way that class is being re-composed, not as a passive process but through dynamic altercations with New Labour's project for strenuous welfarism and the decomposition of collectivities.
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- Information
- New Labour/Hard Labour?Restructuring and Resistance inside the Welfare Industry, pp. 263 - 286Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2007