Dr. Kendra Briken (Goethe University Frankfurt/Germany): More than a feeling? Marketing and Producing Security. A German Case Study.
ILPC 2010 – full paper draft – please, do not cite or quote without permission of the author
Contribution to the 28th ILPC, 15-17th March 2010Rutgers University
Stream 4:
The economy of feelings: emotional labour, 'soft' skills and emotional intelligence at work
More than a Feeling?
Marketing and Producing Security. A German Case Study.
Kendra Briken (Frankfurt a.M./Germany)[1]
Abstract
Private security officers have to provide a very particular interactive service: the ‘production of security’. Little is known about their everyday life experiences and the challenges they face. A short overview on the private security industry and a literature review reveals this ‘missing link’ in the research on private security in the first sections of this paper. The current framing patterns relevant to the interpretation of security work, namely the “actually existing neoliberalism” (BrennerTheodore 2002), are briefly described in the second section; the German Hartz laws, introduced in 2005,serve as examplesin order to clarify within which framework security guards are impacted between low wages and workfare; in short,I describe the characteristics of service work and the idiosyncrasies of ‘security work’ in neoliberal times. In the third section, I make use of empirical qualitative data and, for the purpose of this paper,analyse the human resource strategies deployed by security managers.In the fourth section,I discuss the working conditions of security guards. In the fifths section, I describe currently changing demands on the security market and the respective challenges security workers face. In sum, I point out that the interactive character of security work is based on a paradox situation: The required production of (a subjective feeling of) security needs interaction, but the product itself is not part of it. It is the client and the security manager who agree on the definition of the product, set the rules to enforce its stability, and have chosen the technological and human means to sustain it. The security guard as part and parcel of this contract is not only embodied by the determined security concept but also embodies it while on duty. The security guards encounter conflicts based on a heteronomous definition of the product.
Introduction
As in other European countries, the German private security industry has experienced a constant and rapid growth. The sectors’ expansion peaked in the 1990s and now starts to show first signs of consolidation: Since 2004, the turnover is stable with around 4.0 to 4.5 billEuros annually. Even though the industrial structure remains SME-based, it has lately seen some relevant mergers. Today, the 10 leading companies represent 60% of the overall turnover; the about 800 companies that are members of the Industry Association are estimated to represent 80% of the employees, employers and market share. The core activities of security provision - guarding, cash in transit, and alarm services - have grown steadily and business became even more differentiated, but over the years remained relatively stable with regard to their relative percentage.[2]
Cost cutting strategies, namely outsourcing, explain most of the security sector’s expansion; this is also true for the service sector more generally. The highest demand though is related to the security industries’ core competencies like physical protection of mass private property and in industrial districts. The impact of gated communities[3] or community policing for German private security companies is weak compared to other countries. However, the official data offer only little opportunities to differentiate and are strictly linked to the type of activity rather than the place of action. The percentage of security officers working in the most controversial field of security provision - private policing of public space - is neither known to the experts nor to the public; estimations range from 5 to 15 per cent of all private security workers (HDE 1999; BDWS 2010). The visibility of private security services in public spaces has not only grown but it seems that the process of ‘discursive normalisation’ (Link 2006 [1997]) of private security services is coming to a ‘successful’ end. Current societies seemed to be obsessed by the‘problem of security.’
All quiet on the workplace?
Despite the security industries’ growth and the fact that not only in Germany security is said to be the public’s highest priority, by now not much empirical research has been done on security work.[4] Even though it is known that security work in large parts is done under bad conditions, that the degree of union organization is low and workers’ solidarity obviously difficult to achieve (Bremme et al. 2007), the sociology of work did mostly neglect security work as a research topic.
Among the research that has been done so far is the study “Selling Security,” done by the British criminologist Wakefield (2003). She gives a lucid overview on security work, the workers and their workplaces. Using the example of security work in two shopping malls, she analyses the paradoxical situation of security guards as they have to follow the script of the friendly guide and the repelling guard at the very same time. The German political scientist Kirsch(2003) highlights this “double character of helping services” private security officers are confronted with. Button (2007), also a criminologist, analyses security work with regard to the different corporate objectives. He reveals that these objectives are highly influential for the self conception of the security guards. The most comprehensive study on private security understood as work is up to now the Canadian case study “The New Parapolice: Risk Markets and Commodified Social Control”by Rigakos (2002). Marx’ ‘fetishism of commodity’ and Foucault’s gouvernementality approach, combined with a critical reading of Ulrich Beck’s idea of the ‘risk society’ are the research strands of his ethnographic study of new forms of private public policing. It gives valuable insights to the everyday work of security guards by analyzing patterns of control and resistance as well as of working ethos and culture. Given its breadth, nevertheless, the case study is in at least two ways limited: First, the Canadian security company ‘Intelligard’ represents a private company with unique characteristics, including, to name just one, being the basically uncontested market leader in Toronto; therefore, generalizations are hard to draw. Secondly, even though Rigakos is interested in risk markets, apart from ‘Intelligard’ no other competitor is mentioned; very little is known the different kinds of competition taking place in this sector (insightful: Eick 1998; Eick 2006).
Additional research has been done focussing on doormen, and it is Bearman (2005) presenting an insightful ethnographic approach analysing the close in a way ‘familiar’ relations the inhabitants establish to the employees. More spectacular because of its thrilling connection to violence, is literature on bouncers. Rigakos (2008), for example, is connecting them to the idea of risk but also taking into consideration the possibilities of organizing them as worker. Interested in the nightlife economy and its intimidating subculture areHobbs et al.(2005), and in a gender perspective, Monaghan (2002) is shedding light on bouncers work. These research strands include useful inspirations for the interpretation of security work as - to use a common definition - interactive service work (Leidner 1993) as I suggest in this paper. My aim is to connect new management strategies with broader socio-economical developments to draw a rough sketch on what I propose to call a “security service regime”, warily relying on Burawoys (1985) famous “factory regime”.
I start with identifying the framing patterns relevant to understand the production of security as work. Firstly, the changing socio-political governance of labour markets marks an important step in the “creative destruction” of the Fordist-Keynesian welfare state and is one characteristic of “actually existing neoliberalism” (BrennerTheodore 2002). The German labour market reforms focus on the idea of ‘support and stipulate’ (Fördern und Fordern), thus combining state subsidies with a strict work commitment known as workfare. Called the Hartz laws (Dingeldey 2009; Eick 2010), these reforms increased the German low wage sector - and put pressure on the jobless and the working population at the very same time (Klute 2008; LegnaroBirenheide 2008). Secondly, with the shift from industrial to service work ‘soft skills’ became more relevant and significantly started to qualitatively restructure the access to labour markets and to decent work. Today, workers are not only to enact but to embody social and cultural values negotiated by their employer while doing their work (inter aliaWarhurstThompson 1998; Wolkowitz 2006; McDowell 2009). Thirdly, security itself is a heterogeneous and socially constructed good. To make security marketable, potential insecurities first need to be constructed. Once done, it is now possible to negotiate on the technical measures as well as on the human resources needed to ensure secure environments. Finally, if the security service has been successful at all and to the clients’ content is, paradoxically enough, be measured only by considering its opposite, the production of ‘insecurity’: Only if ‘something’ happened, security work is visible because it failed.
Framing patterns of security work
Labour market reforms: Support and Stipulate
The implementation of the Law for Modern Services in the Labour Market[5] marked a major change in Germany's system of unemployment benefits. This shift can be analysed in the light of a more or less convergent European development towards the (re-)formation of the welfare state mainly focused on ‘employability’ and ‘activation’; in addition obligations to work have been introduced.[6]
With ‘Fördern und Fordern,’ (at least) two goals are to be accomplished aside from the extension of the low-wage sector: Measures should be taken to (re-) integrate the long-term unemployed into the labour market by supporting job searches, offer training, or otherwise (‘support’). In order to achieve compliance, increased sanctions and coercion are used (‘stipulate’). Both strategies are discursively labelled in a very frankly manner: For those being unemployed but able to work and for those (still) having jobs, ‘work’ should be understood as a ‘gift’ for the latterand a ‘duty’ for the aforementioned at the very same time: The Hartz laws include the obligation to take any job offered by the JobCenters - regardless of one’s formal qualifications or previously occupied positions; in addition, wages can be below local standards and/or collective agreements.
The German Hartz reforms helped to increase in particular the low wage sector. Over the last decade, the low-wage sector saw growth rates close to 10%. Today, more than 20% of the German working population occupies jobs in the low-wage sector; about 75% of them in the service sector. In addition, low-wage jobs no longer affect only non- or semi-skilled workers, nor only young or especially older job seekers, nor are they any longer mainly based on part-time contracts. On the contrary, four out of five low-wage workers today are skilled/trained employees working full time on the basis of an unlimited labour-contract (KalinaWeinkopf 2009). Whereas this is a European trend, Germany is one of the few countries within the European Union that does not know a minimum wage.[7] Consequently, this lack of regulation lead to increased numbers of full-time workers not reaching the minimal basic income and thus, increases the numbers of people depending on additional state benefits.[8] It is for this reason that German unions use the slogan ‘Arm trotz Arbeit’ (‘Poor while on duty’) in order to describe the intensification and (re-) production[9] of social inequalities.
In sum, the Hartz laws ended the socially protecting and insurance-based regulations of the Keynesian-Fordist welfare state. They implemented the obligation to take any job, irrespective of wage levels and one’s qualification. Long-term unemployed are forced into any kind of workfare measures. It is in particular the service sector within which such measures are deployed (Eick 2010).
Service work: Shifting and Simmering
The described changes within welfare policy from the 1980s onwards, (so far) culminating with the Hartz reforms in 2005, are paralleled not only with the growth of the service sector but also with a discursive shift concerning the normative classification of service work. In the face of high unemployment rates, the then-Federal President of Germany, Roman Herzog,[10]in 1996 identified a twofold German ‘gap of mentality’ (Mentalitätslücke): The Germans, he said, on the one hand have difficulties to be served and he insisted that on the other, the Germans have a missing ‘virtue of serving’. The simple fact that already in this ‘logic’ not all Germans are equal, i.e. do not have equal opportunities is obvious - as his middle class biased master-and-servant-game does not allow for equality.[11] As Marek Korczynski justifiably notes, ‘service’ shares etymological roots with ‘servant’, ‘servitude’ and ‘slave;’ so not surprisingly “sales or service workers occupy a social role of implied subordination or even explicit subservience” to customers, who are entitled to “the right to define and to direct the relationship” (Korczynski 2002: 135). It is thus no coincidence, that the “privileged band” to be served (BoltonHoulihan 2009:5) more often than not is said to be employed in a ‘knowledge society’ whereas the ‘servants’ do their job under poor conditions just in a ‘service society’.
Although the service sectors’ heterogeneity in terms of required skills and work patterns, contemporary analyses still tend to focus on two blueprints of new forms of labour. On the one hand, the knowledge worker, that became famous by Robert Reich’s notion of the symbolic analyst (Reich 1992), is seen as the ‘vanguard’ in a brave new world of work. The symbolic analyst’s work comprises what policy-makers keep repeatedly praying as the ‘good job’: liberating the workers from unsafe and unhealthy working conditions because of its ‘informated’ or ‘immaterial’ grounding. In fact, the notion of ‘good job‘ refers not only to a - often only marginal - better pay, or more decent working conditions; it has a close connection to the notion of (social) recognition and reflects thus a normative order as well (see for the German context: Holtgrewe et al. 2000). In the materialist as well as in the normative system of ordering, it is the call centre agent and other service staff in retail and hospitality that became emblematic for the ‘new bad jobs’.
Today, such polarised views are differentiated based on multiple empirical workplace studies with different theoretical backings. By and large, they all agree on the fact that today education, training, but also ‘skills’ like self-adjustment to expected styles, presentation as well as the ‘ability to convince’ are crucial to gain access to the (bitter-) sweet labour market.[12] In addition, scholars stressed the fact, that the latter ‘skills’ are important to gain access to the better part of the bad jobs within the poorly rewarded service sector.According to Bourdieus’ concept of habitus (Bourdieu 2009 [1972]), particular internalized dispositions (speech, body language, and dress codes) deemed to be integral to do service work and require aesthetic or emotional/affective skills are already distributed unequally.Empirical research currently has shown differences in how middle class educated workersoccupy these jobs, i.e. how they try to appear as the more suitable employees. New lines of competition are drawn making it much more difficult for others to enter these jobs (Warhurst & Nickson 2007: 788). Warhurst and Nickson analytically carved out a newly arising labour aristocracy taking over (‘cherry picking’) the few ‘good’ jobs (Warhurst & Nickson 2007). In other words: There is some evidence that members of the middle class are displacing members of the working class from such jobs, including, as Hofman and Steijn (2003) observed, ‘student entryism’.
Thus, even in the low wage sector, the idea of the every(wo)man’s job is pure rhetoric, i.e. neither true for race nor class nor gender relations. What is true in fact, employees are hired for the use value of their labour power. But with the new interactive, personal related requirements of service work, the labour power’s implicit cultural and social capital to a much larger extent are important to guarantee the‘successfulprocess of (service) production itself.
Workers no longer are just the mere adjunct of (the) machine, but, according to Witz et al. (2003: 39), employees have been transformed into ‘corporate hardware’. They are hired not only to meet the companies’ needs and to embody its identity and its particular service style but also to internalise the customers’ wishes. For employees, to develop, mobilize and commodify their corporeality today has to be understood as a basically uncircumventable precondition in order to meet the requirements within the service industry. This is, as I argue below, an important shift in the understanding of service work as it used to be understood just as semi- or even unskilled work. In turn, such prerequisites are the basis for qualitative new processes of exclusion/marginalisation.
Precarious amalgamation: Social and Secure