Work and Leisure

58 Chris Rojekin the self-management of personal fiscal arrangements. This stratum alsosuffers from time famine, with vacations often postponed on the groundsthat they cut into work time and the building up of a reliable market network.The move towards the individualisation of employment contracts meansthat occupational health and pension schemes are replaced with privatealternatives.Low-skilled and unskilled workersGlobalisation and deregulation have weakened the bargaining power of thelow-skilled and unskilled group. They suffer a ‘double squeeze’ as automationthreatens to replace them, and the over-supply of labour in other countriesencourages the professional and executive class to transfer demand.These are the classic ‘overworked’ workers described in Schor’s (1991) study.They are often forced to take multiple jobs to make ends meet. An importanttrend in the work experience of this class is the move towards casualisationand fixed-term contracts, with the consequent diminution of benefits, notablyin respect of health and pension rights. This intensifies the motivation formulti-work, with the result that time-famine is often acute in this class withthe resultant negative consequences for health and family life described bySchor (1991).The new residuumThe term residuum is used by historians of nineteenth-century labour conditionsto describe the class of unskilled workers who constitute either thelocalised poor, or the migrant jobbing seasonal labour force (Steadman-Jones 1971). The residuum consists of the classic ‘emiserated’ worker, identifiedby Marx, who suffers from poverty, ill-health and low life-expectancy.This is the class that the post-war welfare state sought to eliminate throughthe provision of universal public education, health care and housing.However, with the retrenchment of the market during the Thatcher-Reaganera and the associated rolling back of the welfare state, the size and prominenceof this class has increased. For this stratum, the casualisation of workand the experience of regular unemployment combine to intensify poverty.The welfare safety net is not the last resort for this class, but the stapleform of support. According to World Bank estimates, global unemploymentstands between 600 million and 800 million, and to fully employ theeconomically active population which will come on to the labour marketbetween now and 2025, some 1200 million new jobs must be created (Gorz1999: 25).