‘The symbolic value of work:
the case of cleaning in a context of change’
Jo McBride and Miguel Martínez Lucio[1]
Paper presented to: Annual International Labour Process Conference, Athens, April 13-15 2015[2]
Introduction
The paper aims to study the way in which we value the work of ‘unskilled workers’ such as cleaners. There is a growing literature and set of political concerns on the question of how we reward and support workers in low skilled jobs and who face ever deteriorating standards of living and challenging working conditions. The debates have emerged in the face of concerns with low pay, poor labour relations and the general invisibility of such work in contemporary society. The paper will review some of these studies and through the use of research on various employers it will attempt to argue that we need to broaden our analysis to not just how the workers in question should be fairly or decently treated but, especially, how their work and the value of that work should be recognised in various ways. We argue that the problem is not just the social background of the workers and their marginal status but also the way such work is not acknowledged and socially recognised.
Literature and Background
The impacts of successive UK Governments’ neoliberal policy agendas, mainly in terms of privatisation and outsourcing since the 1980s, have made a huge impact on cleaning and related work. Gill-McClure and Seifert (2008) found that the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) on the labour process of cleaners and general maintenance workers in local governments led to hours being reduced, with working time no longer being calculated by the workers and the introduction of task fragmentation made it impossible for them to do their jobs promptly and satisfactorily. Furthermore a joint working framework with the unions was discontinued with change increasingly imposed rather than negotiated.
Indeed, union numbers within these workforces have declined leaving these workers with little protection. As Wills (2008) has noted the privatisation and subcontracting of cleaning inevitably led to the breakdown of collective agreements for cleaners who used to be employed by large private or public organisations. This has also made it harder for cleaners to organise, and if they do attempt to and successfully organise, then they will price themselves out of the market. As Bauman (2001) also highlights, the impact of short termism of cleaning and high rates of turnover are not particularly useful aspects for achieving successful collectivism. Nonetheless, Wills (2008) demonstrates how a campaign to organise cleaners at Canary Wharf in London was successful in achieving a strong sense of collectivism from cleaners, unions as well as the local the communities, forming TELCO.
Wills (2008) also notes the concerns raised about groups of migrant workers in the cleaning labour market, in particular those who felt they were ‘condemned’ to this type of work (p.317). Many felt that their skills and educational background were not reflected in their position in the labour market (see also Perrett et al 2012). Indeed there are many significant contemporary debates focusing on migrant workers and this particular type of work (see for example Tapia and Turner, 2013; Wills et.al, 2009; Wills et.al 2010; Wills and Linneker 2012). The debate tends to be focused on the challenges and limitations related to the way trade unions respond to migrant communities in terms of lack of participation within the union, a service driven approach, a lack of systematic community engagement and a need for a more systematic approach to organising and new union methods which whilst visible are not generalisable (Simms and Holgate, 2010), or are linked to different national regulatory priorities and general union traditions which vary (Connelly et al, 2014). The question of occupational identity in the cleaning sector tends to be discussed in terms of external labour market changes (wages and employment) but rarely in terms of the changing dynamics of the work and activities within work. Yet, Gill-McClure and Seifert (2008) in their analysis of the introduction of CCT on cleaning work, do note that the changes to these jobs also led to the “…deterioration of public service, which means that workers are subjected to public complaints and even violence, thereby increasing levels of stress.”(p22). This is extremely significant as we intend to provide a closer engagement with the way these issues are taking place around specific categories of workers in the cleaning sector for these particular points have not been followed up in further research on these categories of workers.
In fact, the core contemporary debates relating to these workers are primarily focused on living wage issues, general union representation and rights with an increasing attention on the organising debate and migrant workers (see Tapia and Turner, 2013; Wills 2008; Wills et.al, 2009; Wills et.al 2010; Wills and Linneker 2012). Whilst not denying that this work is significant, the debates are mainly framed around the individual and their working terms and conditions and environment but less on the importance of the tasks and jobs, and more importantly the value of the work.
Building on interventions in the study of the labour process and on the impact of gender based research within labour studies there has been a greater sensitivity to this type of work. Questions of gender, working conditions and the structure of employment relations have emerged as an important issue. This paper intends to build on this work discussed above by providing a closer engagement with an understanding of the value of this work. Building on – and engaging with - the work of Sayer (2011), we consider the appreciation of this work’s role and its value, as much of the literature has not always looked at the value and representation of the work being done by cleaners and related types of workers and the way this is in great part invisible – which in turns suggests we need to look at a slightly broader set of debates about the changing nature of work. Sayer’s (2011) main focus is on the questions people face in their everyday lives including how others are treating them and how to act. He argues that the central obstacle of the understanding of ‘values’ is the belief that they are merely subjective. He considers people’s concerns of how they behave or should behave in relation to others, with respect to their well-being with the major focus on how people treat one another. In this respect he deals with the relationship and comportment aspects of workplace or work related relations. In relation to ‘work’, he moves to a more fundamental matter of concern to people - their dignity in the broadest sense of the term. It is accepted that dignity is notoriously difficult to define and Sayer argues that the term is generally associated with autonomy, yet his analysis reveals that dignity requires an acknowledgement of vulnerability. He suggests that dignity is much more dependent on how others interpret and treat us, particularly in terms of relations of equality and difference. In this respect it is a question of how we are valued as citizens and individuals irrespective of what we do.
The association of dignity with autonomy is whereby people primarily treat each other as means to some ends and not just end in themselves (Kant as quoted in Greenwood 2002). Sayer suggests this is clearly the case in employment, in particular where individuals fill jobs that are easily substitutable. Issues of dignity at work can also be viewed in the occupational and pay hierarchy where there will be inequalities that potentially expose the individual to undignified treatment (p199). Therefore this may be a response to the position in the hierarchy irrespective of their gender or race – with the latter determining where they are in that hierarchy. He also notes that the distribution and definition of dignified and undignified work varies strongly by class, gender and race and tends to be taken as confirming the status of those who do it (p212). Nonetheless, it is also acknowledged that the rules governing these distinctions are often inconsistent. For example some men will consider cleaning the toilet as beneath their dignity, but are willing to do much harder and more unpleasant manual work (see also Nixon 2009) so there is a relative aspect and social relations dimension to this discussion.
What is significant to this paper is in the acknowledgement of the importance of simple pleasantries to people, even in the minimal form of making eye contact with the person we are dealing with, and/or nodding slightly to them signal that we acknowledge them as a person (p199). Using several examples such as this, he demonstrates how an employee can feel valued as a person. (ibid.). He also draws on Bolton’s (2007) examination of dignity at work to exemplify the social character of human being and the importance of autonomy and not taking advantage of people’s vulnerabilities.
Yet, a problem with Sayer’s approach, and in fact much of the concern of the discussion about the nature of work and the poor treatment of workers, is that there is the curious irony that the ‘job’ itself is not a part of the main discussions. The actual contribution of the worker and what it is they do and the difficulty of what they do is not a significant part of the main discussions. It could be that this can be understood in the way in which such work is deemed as ‘invisible’. This is a discussion that helps resolve some of the issues around the silence towards what is being done and why it is important. This literature has been an important academic and policy intervention into how the work of ‘unskilled workers’ has been almost side-lined in debates on work and how, due to the nature of the workforce involved in these posts, they are part of a growing army of workers – even skilled workers – who operate in the shadows of the economy and society. The major body of work relating to the invisible workforce is primarily based on a US analysis of the informal economy (see for example Benson, 2001-2002). It is generally focused around those without formal immigration status such as farm workers and domestic and home care workers. There is also a significant body of work concerning domestic workers who are not counted in statistics in countries such as Africa, Pakistan, Turkey and India (www.ilo.org.). The idea of domestic work being invisible is of course also a major concern in the vast feminist economic literature on the importance of all the activities where women predominate such as childcare and domestic work even though these activities are the most easily observable parts of what is termed invisible work. Others focus on the ‘invisible worker’ through forms of work such as home based work or outsourced temporary labour whereby the workers themselves are seldom seen. Then there are those workers who are not part of the complement of permanent, full time individuals but are on the periphery of the social environment of the workplace deemed as ‘invisible workers’(see for example Jacobs, R.A. 1994).
However, despite this vast amount of literature, there remains very little on those workers and work in the cleaning sector as categorised in our paper. Possibly the closest analogy to our paper is illustrated in Lundberg and Karlsson’s (2011) opening line, “Few guests notice the cleaners when staying at a hotel unless they find things to complain about.”(p.141) Here, demonstrating that the worker is engaging in work that is often ‘invisible to others’ but the workers themselves are actually visible to the customer (hotel cleaners are regularly passed by customers in corridors for example when cleaning rooms)[3] Is this ‘invisible’ work, or perhaps, ‘not-significant’ work? In part, of course, this may be due to the nature of the stigma towards this work (as discussed in the ‘dirty work’ section later). Yet, the issue highlighted here is that the problem (of value/worth of the job) may be due to the (negative) perception of the ‘job’, not the ‘person’. This reinforces our earlier point that these highly significant debates are not always concerned with the contribution of the work but more the absent interest and focus on the workers who do these types of job. Hence, again, we see social inclusion debates framed around the individual and their working environment but less on the importance of the tasks and jobs.
We would further argue that the fact that cleaning and related work is complex, requires commitment, is ridden with risks (unsocial travelling hours, danger from ‘customers’, responsibilities in relation to care and significant cleaning, a space for workers with disabilities and educational learning problems) is significant yet missing in much of the literature. Our research provides an insight into, not just how such work is deserving, but how it is engaging in social terms, significant in process, and meaningful. Even before we account for the value it adds, it is also valuable in social terms. We intend to shape the view of how significant this work is in operational, social and economic terms. The paper demonstrates how questions of isolation, violence from exposure to parts of the public and client organisation employees, declining safety and work intensification are emerging yet not considered in previous literature. This also draws some parallels with another body of literature around the concept of ‘dirty work’ and how such work needs to, or can be, valued. Broadly speaking, we feel that the insights of debates on ‘dirty work’ are of significance to any discussion on this area as it highlights the question of how the value of work is engaged with and redefined.
Research on ‘dirty work’ transcends several themes. There is the feminist literature that critiques the work of the cleaner and the suggestions that domestic work is viewed as ‘unproductive’ which excuses it invisibility (Anderson, 2000; Duffy, 2007). Occupational psychology literature looks at, for example, individual characteristics in dirty work occupations (Lopina and Rogelberg, 2012). However, the majority of the literature on dirty work is written around the theme of identity. Ashforth et al. (1999) argue that the stigma of dirty work fosters development of a strong occupational or workgroup culture. They demonstrate how processes of ideological reframing and selective social comparisons are used to counter the question of ‘taint’ through social validation and supporting self-definitions, which highlight specific aspects of the work and of the customers and their perceptions over others. Their later work shows how management responds to various popular perceptions and approaches to such work in various ways so as to limit the taint associated with it (Ashforth et al, 2007). It is a body of work which manages to show how the negative of the job in terms of its association with dirt or grime nevertheless are a part of its identity and it is for organisations to re-represent the work in ways that create a more positive view of it (ibid). This is an important body of work much ignored in sociology of work and industrial relations: this is partly due to the failure to recognise that it is not so much the nature of ‘dirty work’ but the way it is not ‘valued’ or understood. However, a problem with the literature by Ashforth et al is the failure to recognise that it is not so much the nature of ‘dirty work’ which is only the challenge, but the way it is subject to ever more significant contextual changes which undermine the ability to sustain a dignified, professional and ordered feel to the work.