‘Fits and fancies’: the Taylor Review, the construction of preference and labour market segmentation

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12229
• Author: Bethania Antunes,Kirsty Newsome,Sian Moore,Stephanie Tailby
• Date: 01 November 2018
• Published date: 01 November 2018

‘Fits and fancies’: the Taylor Review, the

construction of preference and labour

market segmentation

Sian Moore, Stephanie Tailby,

Bethania Antunes and Kirsty Newsome

ABSTRACT

The Taylor Review asserts that ‘certain groups are also more likely to place a greater

importance on flexibility such as carers, women, those with disabilities and older

workers’. This article draws upon the experiences of workers on non-standard

contracts to explore the notion of worker preference and to expose how the discourse

of work–life balance is usurped to provide justification for flexibility in the interest of

employers rather than workers, reconstructing labour market segregation.

1 INTRODUCTION

Good Work: The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices opens with a statement

of the Review Panel’s‘single overriding ambition’that ‘[A]ll work in the UK econ-

omy should be fair and decent with realistic scope for development and fulfilment’

(Taylor, 2017: 7). Bales (2018: 56) notes the borrowing of terminology from, without

effort to align with, the notion of ‘decent work’advocated by the International La-

bour Organisation. Its Decent Work Agenda is based upon job creation, the promo-

tion of rights at work, social protection and social dialogue with gender equality as

a crosscutting objective (ILO, 2008). With the exception of job creation, these princi-

ples have little interest for the Taylor Review. This evasion is most obviously because

the Taylor Review finds virtue in ‘the British way’of minimum statutory labour stan-

dards and associated minimal regulation of work relations and employment. Labour

market challenges are acknowledged: a relatively high rate of low pay, incidence of in-

work poverty, stagnant real wage growth and poor productivity performance. Yet

(and now invoking international comparison) emphasis is given to the success of

the UK’s‘flexible’labour market in ‘creating jobs, including flexible jobs, which open

up work to people with different needs and priorities and at different stages of life’

(Taylor, 2017: 7). Indeed, the ‘shift towards more flexible forms of working’—or

‘atypical employment’—in recent decades (Taylor, 2017: 23) is cast as supply-side

led. As the labour force has become more diverse, people are looking for work ‘that

suits their individual lifestyle and preferences’(Taylor, 2017: 26). They choose to

❒Sian Moore and Bethania Antunes, Business School, University of Greenwich, London, UK, Stephanie

Tailby, Faculty of Business and Law, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK and Kirsty Newsome,

Sheffield University Management School, Sheffield, UK. Correspondence should be addressed to Professor

Sian Moore, Business School, University of Greenwich, Park Row, London SE10 9LS, UK; email:

s.moore@greenwich.ac.uk

Industrial Relations Journal 49:5-6, 403–419

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

make ‘trade-offs’in the ‘rewards of work’—as between pay and hours, job security

and flexibility—in pursuit of their lifestyle preferences. On the principle that ‘society

benefits from allowing individuals to participate in the labour market in a way that

suits them’(Taylor, 2017: 26), the recommendation is for the law to remain permis-

sive, enabling workers to strike individual bargains with employers rather than being

constrained by prescriptive statutory standards.

This article focuses on the Taylor Review’s claim that

Certain groups are also more likely to place greater importance on flexibility such as carers, women,

those with disabilities and older workers …Flexibility can allow these groups to participate more fully

in the labour market by enabling them to balance work around other priorities. (Taylor, 2017: 15)

The next section, following this introduction, begins to unpack the claim, first by ex-

amining the way preference is constructed. Taylor’s methodology imputes preference

of lifestyle to individuals on the basis of extant patterning—by gender, age and

dis/ability—of employment at the macro level. It assumes choice without attending

to constraints. It usurps, we argue, the discourse of work–life balance (WLB) to pro-

vide justification for employer freedom to use ‘atypical’contracts to shift the risks and

costs of employment to workers. Following a discussion of methods, the critique of

the Taylor Review’s analysis and recommendations is supported by qualitative data

in the form of worker case studies, gathered over 2016/17 in research for the Low

Pay Commission (LPC) concerning the impact of non-standard contracts (‘atypical’

employment in Taylor Review terms) on the National Living Wage (NLW). The find-

ings explore the construction of preference first through the lens of labour market in-

clusion and second through the lens of WLB, distinguishing between employer-

oriented and worker-oriented temporal flexibilities.

2 LABOUR MARKET INEQUALITY AS LIFESTYLE CHOICE

Taylor encourages a view of quality work less in terms of objective measures than

through the perspective and preferences of the job seeker or job holder. This is on

the principle that individuals’motivations (or what economists would call ‘tastes

for work’) differ and their ranking of job quality dimensions will be personal or idio-

syncratic (Taylor, 2017: 12). For Taylor (2017: 28) ‘people look for work that suits

their individual lifestyles and preferences’.

Work preference is a focus of academic debate that has been characterised by con-

troversy. In addressing ‘preference type’theories of women’s disproportionate repre-

sentation in part-time employment (Hakim, 2002) and explanations in terms of

structural constraint (Ginn et al., 1996; McRae, 2003), Gash (2008) sets out the chal-

lenges of working preference measurement. These include the inability of current data

to distinguish between ‘real’and ‘accommodated’preferences, the last denoting

choice in the absence of alternatives (e.g. access to affordable childcare). Gash

(2008: 658) observes that without accurate measures of preferences before outcome

and ex post, it is ‘impossible to determine whether preferences determine outcome

or whether preferences shift to reflect outcome’. She suggests that, given the consider-

able risk of reverse causation in preference formation, preferences should only be used

as causal explanation of outcome if it is clear that they have not been affected by out-

come (Gash, 2008: 669). Gash concludes that preferences are weak predictors of

worker outcomes, but that market rigidities and family care responsibilities are likely

to impede working-preference attainment—contingent on national context, policies

and practices supportive (or otherwise) of maternal employment.

404 Sian Moore, et al.

© 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd