Recent literature has begun to disaggregate groups of the ‘self-employed without employees’ to examine in greater detail what determines their working conditions. This article continues this trend by presenting the findings of a survey of professional translators and discussing their status as ‘homeworkers’, ‘teleworkers’, and ‘portfolio workers’. It reveals that freelance translators enjoy higher levels of autonomy and control over their working conditions than other comparable self-employed groups. This is largely because the nature of their expertise and their relationship with clients create inelasticities in the supply of their skills. The more successful are then able to use their market position to exert substantial control over areas like pay and deadlines. In addition, the lack of a traditional career structure means that many translators have actively chosen freelance work and that even those who were originally forced into it would not now take an in-house job. The article concludes that labour market characteristics are a key factor in determining differences in working conditions between various groups of ‘portfolio workers‘.

There is concern that the UK general practitioner (GP) workforce has declined relative to the expanding needs of a primary care-led NHS. Much of the debate about possible solutions within the profession and amongst medical workforce planners has focused on the need to raise medical school intakes and recruit more new GPs. However, other evidence shows that, as with medicine in general, a differential relationship exists in the GP labour market based upon socially ascribed characteristics. It follows that many already qualified GPs (e.g. women, ethnic minority and older doctors) are under-used in the context of generally accepted career structures. Hence, we would argue, part of the solution to workforce shortages lies in better retention and management of existing human resources. This paper first suggests a simple re-conceptualisation, which will help to frame a more sophisticated analysis than so far used for workforce planning of the nature of GP demand and supply. The framework is then used to explore the findings of the first ever national survey (n = 621) and follow-up interviews (n = 32) with a cohort of GP principal leavers. These showed that a variety of more flexible employment arrangements are needed in order to improve both GP recruitment and retention. In taking this approach, the paper also explores the potential implications of changing social trends for the structure of the GP profession.

Positive accounts of teamwork emphasise its potential not just to improve organisational performance, but to transform employees' experience of work in overwhelmingly positive ways. The key outcome is said to be enhanced employee discretion, which in turn contributes to satisfaction, commitment and positive views of management. Critical accounts of teamwork, which locate the phenomenon in the context of the labour process argue that enhanced organisational performance from teams results from an undermining of employee discretion, which contributes to work intensification and increased stress for employees. Differences between the two accounts have not been resolved, in part because of the fact that neither model has been subjected to rigorous empirical scrutiny using reliable large-scale statistical data which allow generalisations to be made about the impact of team membership on employees. Utilising the data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS98) it is possible to identify team members and non-members and to compare them in terms of discretion, commitment, satisfaction, relations with management, and stress. The analysis shows no statistically significant association between team membership and any of the outcome variables and on this basis, both positive and critical accounts are called into question.

This paper explains varying degrees of employee commitment to organisational change across four organisations. Of the many workplace innovations in recent years, Quality Management (QM) is one of the most common and also, potentially, the most far-reaching. QM is the backdrop for a focus on variations in worker acceptance of change and the factors which explain this. These factors are split into two dimensions. First, the discursive aspects of quality are analysed, that is, the management ideology or ‘culture of quality’ and the way this is communicated to employees. Second, the more material bases of work and employment are examined. Neither discourse or materiality are privileged in the analysis; rather, it is argued that only by grasping the interrelationship between the two can a thorough explanation of employee responses be derived.

In recent years increasing attention has been paid to the problems faced by older workers in the UK labour market. In this paper we examine the issue of older workers: participation in vocational training and education, drawing upon data from the Labour Force Survey. Our initial analysis identifies how rates of participation in work-related education and training differ between age groups. Further exploratory analysis attempts to identify possible reasons for this, analysing the type of training undertaken by various age groups as well as the incidence of self-financed training. We then estimate an ordered-probit model for males and females separately, in an attempt to isolate the extent to which this lower incidence among older workers is due to employer or employee decision making. We find that, when compared to a reference group of prime aged individuals, those aged between 40 and 49 and 50 and 59/64 are less likely to undergo training and, also, less likely to be offered training. We conclude that the lower incidence of training among older workers can be mainly attributed to employer decision making. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for public policy.

This study investigates the impact of economic restructuring on the labour force participation of subordinate minority men. Taking Israel as a case study, we review the trends of labour force participation of Arab men over the last two decades and compare their levels of participation with those of Jewish men. We also examine the main variables, which cause their withdrawal from the labour market. The data for the study was drawn from the labour force surveys that the Central Bureau of Statistics carries out on regular basis. The unique panel structure of these surveys enabled us to analyse the dynamics and shifts in the process of withdrawal. Results of the analysis indicate that age, education, class and unemployment at any given point in time are the variables that increase the likelihood of Arab men's dropout from the labour market. These variables effect the withdrawal of Jewish men from the labour market differently. The differences in the determinants of labour force withdrawal by Arab and Jewish men reflect the segmented nature of the Israeli labour market. These results are employed to evaluate the impact of restructuring on labour market's segmentation.

Many studies have examined the household division of labour from a gender perspective, but comparatively few have considered age and the intergenerational distribution of household work. Using empirical evidence from my ethnographic study of rural households in Bolivia, I argue that whilst adult household labour is highly determined by gender roles, children's unpaid household work often cuts across gender stereotypes and does not merely mirror the adult division of labour. Furthermore, this paper argues that it is not sufficient to include only an intergenerational and gender analysis of household divisions of labour but that other intragenerational issues also need to be considered. Drawing on both children's and adults' perspectives, this paper discusses the nature of generation-specific tasks not only by gender but also by age, birth order and sibling composition. Whilst the paper is based on a case study of a rural community in a low-income country, it highlights the importance of the sibling order which has frequently been overlooked or ignored in household divisions of labour throughout the world. The findings show that the allocation of household labour in rural Bolivia is worked out according to generation, age, gender, birth order and sibling composition.

The paper describes the current employment patterns of men and women in local government in Scotland, Wales and England, and examines the gender relations of work during a period of restructuring which is challenging the professionalised welfare bureaucracy and replacing it with a managerialised state informed by market principles. Men are declining as a percentage of employees, alongside decreasing numbers of full-time jobs and increasing part-time and temporary contracts, suggesting some decrease in the relative desirability of public service employment. Nevertheless the challenges to traditional conceptions of paternalistic, bureaucratic welfare have facilitated women's increasing access to professional and managerial grades, but men have continued to dominate most positions of power and authority. The continuing gender divisions of labour, and women's perceptions of a sharper axis of gender conflict surrounding the period of reorganisation into single tier authorities in Scotland and Wales, suggest that it is not simply a matter of time until a rational, functional state eradicates remaining inequalities between the sexes. Neither however can a radical feminist perspective, which treats the state as bound to reproduce women's subordination, account for the degree of progressive change. Instead it is argued that there is genuine indeterminacy in the restructuring process, which, given women's representation and participation, seems likely to disrupt further the legacy of patriarchal relations informing the trajectory of state bureaucracies.

This paper addresses two related issues: the effect of the ‘regulatory shock’ of the National Minimum Wage on small firms and the consequent effects on the commonly observed practice of ‘informality’. It draws on a survey of such firms but primarily uses case study evidence from five firms to examine the processes at work. Detailed case studies of such firms remain rare, and they tend to analyse a largely unchanging world. We show how patterns of informality change over time. The regulatory shock had varying effects, as some firms moved up-market and others were pressed to the edges of the legitimate market and in some cases out of business altogether. In the firms moving up-market, informality was redefined into a more disciplined and formalised approach, while those going down-market relied even more heavily on family and other ties to survive. The NMW led to some improved wages, though there was also evasion, and it has sharpened the divide between the legitimate and illicit areas of business.

The UK government presented the introduction of the National Minimum Wage in April 1999 as an attempt to limit the extent and degree of exploitation in the labour market. In its evidence for the Low Pay Commission's second report, the government expressed the hope that the new regulations would prevent employers from competing on the basis of ‘poverty wages’ while signalling to employees that ‘work pays’ (Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) 1999: 6). Homeworking is frequently associated with low pay and homeworkers were explicitly identified as being among those who stood to gain most from a minimum wage (Low Pay Commission 1998). The Low Pay Commission estimated that a third of all homeworkers would experience financial benefits as a result of the new legislation.

Many people in Australia are concerned with the apparent trend towards the increased casualisation of the Australian workforce. In a recent paper published in this journal, for example, Campbell and Burgess (2001) reported on survey-based figures on the extent of casualisation collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australia's central data collection agency. These data indicate that persons employed on a casual basis represented 26.9 per cent of the workforce in 1998, double the level sixteen years earlier.

In a recent article in Work, Employment & Society (Campbell and Burgess 2001), we examine the position of Australia in cross-national comparisons of temporary employment. Conventional analyses join together data on ‘temporary’ employment from varied OECD countries with Australian data on ‘casual’ employment. Australia appears in such analyses as a dramatic example of a high level and a rapid trend of growth in temporary employment, perched at the top of a ranking of these countries, just below the more familiar case of Spain. In assessing the value of such comparisons, we review both the distinctive category of casual and the distinctive practice of casual employment. We warn that the category of casual in Australia is not a direct equivalent to the categories used for temporary employment in other countries. Nevertheless, we conclude that a cross-national comparison incorporating casual employment is possible and indeed useful, e.g. in uncovering different dynamics behind national patterns of growth in non-permanent waged work.

The UK, like most developed economies has an ageing population. In 1901 nearly one in seven were aged 50 and over but by 1997 this had doubled to one in three (ONS 1999) a trend that will continue over the next twenty years (Scase 1999:13). Accompanying this shift has been a burgeoning debate on the roles and involvement of older people in society and the economy (Laslett 1996; Phillipson 1998). Many of the themes in this debate, however, are contradictory. For example, self-definitions and cultural constructs associated with older people often emphasise growing old as liberating.