There is a widespread view that ‘jobs for life’ and stable employment have been consigned to the past. The impact of technological and institutional changes are said to have eradicated traditional labour market patterns, brought about the destandardisation and individualisation of work and ushered in a new ‘age of insecurity’. The transformation of work, according to Sennet (1998), has witnessed the advent of a ‘New Capitalism’ in which there is ‘no long term’. This paper is concerned with explanations for the paradox of pervasive insecurity and the rise in long-term employment in the 1990s in the UK. The analysis of long-term employment in the UK suggests that insecurity is not explained by compositional changes in the workforce or in terms of labour market restructuring. Instead insecurity is best understood in its institutional and ideological contexts, as the ‘manufactured uncertainty’ that attends the greater exposure of the state sector to market forces, corporate restructuring in the private sector in terms of mergers, acquisitions and sell-offs and the diminution of social protection systems.

Strategies for work life reform amongst informal sector workers in developing countries are currently dominated by resource-based approaches such as the micro-credit movement. This policy framework is predicated upon certain liberal assumptions about individual human action and the relationship between human behaviour and economic development. This article contends that these assumptions are inappropriate when applied to informal sector workers and their economic activities. A focus on the intersubjective conditions of work and economic development, based on the work of Axel Honneth (1995), provides an alternative way of conceptualising the work life experience of marginalised workers and appropriate interventions for economic and social security. An example of a collective strategy implemented by the Self Employed Womens' Association (SEWA) in India, demonstrates the important role that interpersonal recognition plays in activating worker identity and agency to achieve development. The success of SEWA's methodology has implications for how we think about the meaning of development and work life reform in poor countries, suggesting that interventions for economic and social security must engage workers at both the economic and cultural levels at which insecurity, moral injury and social exclusion are produced.

The size and source of the gender wage gap in Britain has been well researched. Women's typically lower status employment and their reduced, discontinuous career profiles when they have caring responsibilities have combined seriously to damage their ability to earn a decent wage. Such marked gender differences in employment patterns produce a substantial gender gap in levels of wealth too, yet despite this there has been less attention paid to the gendering of assets than there has to gender differentials in earnings and income. So to pull out these multi-dimensional effects of a gender disadvantaged labour market, this article explores the extent of wage and assets inequality in Britain in the mid 1990s. Analysis of the Family Resources Survey shows that women continue to have lower incomes than men even with their increased entry to the labour market, and have fewer chances to build up a safety net of savings in their working lives and a good income for their retirement. It would seem that in a future Britain where individuals will increasingly depend on private pensions rather than a state minimum, even if women continue to increase their participation levels, the poverty they face in old age will persist.

Education in law in Norway must be characterised as an open educational field, with lower entry requirements than other prestigious professional fields. Such an open system might be expected to lead to a high degree of equality by social class origin among the graduates. The impact of social origin is assessed at different steps of the educational and occupational career in a unique sample consisting of all Norwegian graduates in law between 1981 and 1996. The results demonstrate that there is a high level of social inequality in academic performance, which is greater at later stages than early in the educational career. Large and increasing income inequality is found also, for graduates with equal levels of academic performance. Various mechanisms that may produce this pattern are discussed, including specific forms of cultural capital, such as knowledge about strategies of self-employment, social and financial capital.

This article presents a new approach to measuring the most important dimension of gender segregation – the vertical dimension – in quantitative survey data. This, in turn, allows for a reassessment of the view that high levels of gender segregation are synonymous with high levels of social inequality. In order to do this, the article also draws upon significant conceptual developments. ‘Segregation’ as it is commonly understood is named as ‘overall’ segregation, and is the resultant of two components, ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ segregation, representing difference and inequality separately. This provides a clear approach to measurement. The argument is developed with a case study of the British labour force. The pattern of segregation, in terms of its overall level and its components, varies considerably across sections of the labour force. In terms of inequality, the vertical components measured indicate that British women working full-time are more advantaged than we would expect, and that women working in part-time manual occupations, though facing the greatest relative disadvantage in terms of pay, are actually slightly advantaged over men working in manual occupations in terms of social stratification. Although overall segregation has remained relatively unchanged over the five year period from 1991 to 1996, there have been some significant changes to its components within the various sections of the employed British labour force in that time. By looking at the various sections of the labour force, relative to the labour force as a whole, we can achieve a better understanding of how segregation operates with respect to gender inequalities.

The scoring of occupational categories has a long history. After reviewing the historical background, we develop and discuss the properties of two new Australian scales based on current theorising in stratification research. The first is based on the operation of the labour market and scores occupations to reflect their central role in converting educational credentials into market income. The second is based on patterns of social interaction and scores occupations to reflect the choices that people make in marriage markets. While these two scales are not theoretically or empirically equivalent, they are closely related and provide equally valid, but alternative, ways of measuring the underlying stratification order of modern societies.

Local Exchange Trading Schemes (LETS) are networks for exchanging goods and services using a local currency. They are seen by some as providing an ‘alternative’ way of negotiating changing and complex livelihoods. Current literature on LETS and work understands participation as a response to dissatisfaction around work and as a strategy for re-valuing work. In this paper we draw initially on new quantitative data to understand who engages in LETS work and find that trading is small-scale and limited to a particular group of people. The data also suggest that contrary to previous research exchanges on LETS sometimes transform and sometimes reinforce existing work relations. To illuminate these complexities we draw on in-depth interviews with Stroud and Brixton LETS members. First, we highlight the multiple ways in which their relations to work connect with their motivations for joining LETS. Second, we examine how these motivations are translated into practice by looking at how prices for LETS work are negotiated. This illustrates that the way power interweaves during these negotiations is multiple and dynamic. Finally, we suggest that for LETS trading to be more equal, the different capacities that people have to negotiate needs to be considered.

This article argues that in the current context of rising unemployment and growing exclusion from the traditional locus of social cohesion and income distribution, a new approach to social policy and employment is required. The scope of informal employment strategies to tackle social exclusion needs to be examined. One such initiative, which has been attracting increasing attention from policy-makers, is the Local Exchange Trading Scheme (LETS) local grassroots community currency which operates as a cashless trading network for members. LETS have been growing throughout the UK in recent years. Findings are presented from a case study of a LETS scheme. LETS was found to be successful at delivering new informal employment opportunities to socially excluded groups, boosting their income, and providing a forum for social interaction and community-building. However, there is scope for much greater participation. LETS's small size restricts its usefulness in the labour market for informal employment, and current state policy towards benefit recipients working on LETS is an obstacle. Possibilities for mainstream incorporation into welfare strategies are limited by the informal, non-commercial and deeply personal value regime enacted within LETS. Yet professionalisation would threaten this nascent socially embedded economic geography. State support for LETS, while highly desirable, should not be considered an unproblematic advocacy issue.

There is a growing literature on employment in call centres, much of which suggests that they are characterised by high levels of work intensification and surveillance. Recently, a debate has emerged about the nature of surveillance in such workplaces and the level and character of employee resistance (Bain and Taylor 2000; Fernie and Metcalf 1998; Mulholland 1999) with some, such as Bain and Taylor, claiming that the argument is characterised by a paucity of empirical evidence. Against this background, this paper reports on the results of an observational study of call centre work. In what follows we describe the ways in which managers, supervisors and call centre operatives oriented to the monitoring and surveillance capabilities of call centre technology, to the complex social context in which it was embedded and to a range of negotiated definitions of the nature and purposes of the centre's operations. We make no claims here that the call centre reported on is typical of all such centres. Nor do we seek directly to enter the debate about whether call centre surveillance is panoptic in character or about the extent and character of resistance. Nevertheless, it will become apparent that our findings do have relevance for these debates.

There is now a large literature documenting the significance of paid domestic work as a sector of employment for women (Gregson and Lowe 1994; England and Steill 1997). In this article I focus on the ways in which gender hierarchies intersect with those of caste in the organisation of paid domestic work in a village on the outskirts of Delhi, India. The article has two broad aims. First, I seek to examine some of the ways in which paid domestic work is organised in India and highlight the social stratification that is central to the organisation of such work. I focus on part-time paid domestic work in which the tasks performed and the organisation of labour have specific spatial dimensions and are based on the caste division of labour. Part-time paid domestic workers usually live in their own households and visit the employer's house once or twice a day to perform the tasks for which they are paid. They often work in more than one house. Thus, part-time implies that the domestic worker's labour and time are not exclusively available to one employer, unlike the case of full-time domestic workers. Secondly, the article explores some aspects of the gendered re-negotiation of these tasks following urbanisation.

Social mobility research has consistently demonstrated that a strong link exists between an individual's social class origins and their social class destination. Yet, in absolute terms, the relationship between class origins and destinations does appear to be weaker now than it was in the past. There has been a increase in the numbers of those of all class origins entering higher-level service class occupations, and a decrease in those entering manual employment. However, while this would appear to be evidence of a high degree of fluidity in the class structure, these patterns can largely be explained by changes in the occupational structure: the expansion of non-manual occupations while manual ones have contracted (Goldthorpe 1987:59). When these structural effects are controlled for by looking at relative mobility rates, it is clear that there has been virtual stability in such rates over time. A relationship between origins and destinations is still in evidence (Goldthorpe 1987; Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992). The relationship between class origins and destinations has therefore become widely established in social mobility research, and as a result, the emphasis is now moving towards explaining how these trends are created (Saunders 1995; Breen and Goldthorpe 1999).

Temporary employment agency working has increased dramatically in recent years. Labour Force Survey figures reveal that the number of workers employed on a temporary basis through agencies increased in the UK from 50,000 in 1984 to 250,000 in 1999, by which point temporary agency staff (temps) constituted 1.1 per cent of the employed workforce (Casey 1988: 490; Department of Trade and Industry 1999: 109). Studies which have considered UK employers' use of different forms of labour have revealed a range of reasons as to why firms seek recourse to employment agencies (McGregor and Sproull 1991; Hunter and MacInnes 1991; Cully et al. 1999). The 1998 UK Workplace Employee Relations Survey, for example, has indicated that of workplaces using agency staff, 59 per cent were doing so to provide short-term cover. Adjusting the workforce in line with demand was cited as a reason by 40 per cent of firms, and covering for maternity leave by 22 per cent of users (Cully et al. 1999:37).

Kenneth Lunn and Ann Day (eds.), History of Work and Labour Relations in the Royal Dockyards, London, Mansell, 1999, hardback £49.95, xxi+1200 pp.

David Howell, Respectable Radicals: Studies in the Politics of Railway Trade Unionism, Aldershot, Ashgate, 1999, hardback £55, viii+1446 pp.

At a time when over a thousand dockyard jobs are threatened at Rosyth and there is growing evidence that whatever skilled workforce the railway industry once possessed is rapidly being eroded, it is vital to reflect on these important industries and the quality of their work and labour relations. Both railways and the Royal Dockyards represent special workplaces with their own norms, values and traditions. Employment in each occupies an uneasy occupational border country between the civilian and the military. In each loyalty was expected, whether it be to king and country or railway company and director. Royal Dockyard communities lived under the shadow of naval discipline and at times threat of impressment into the monarch's service. Similarly, early literature on the rail industry made frequent reference to the ‘railway army’, and newly established companies drew heavily on military personnel and organisational models in disciplining their nascent workforces. Staff were organised by ranks, each with their own uniform, and railway officers enjoyed messes and their rulebook was the equivalent of King's Regulations (Gourvish 1972; Revill 1989).

Howard Glennerster, British Social Policy since 1945. Second edition. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Hardback £55.00, paperback £15.99, xi+260 pp.

Janie Percy-Smith (ed.) Policy Responses to Social Exclusion. Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000. Hardback £55.00, paperback £17.99, viii+244 pp.

Peter Taylor-Gooby (ed.), Risk, Trust and Welfare. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 2000. £16.99, xv+240 pp.

Exactly fifty years ago Richard Titmuss delivered his inaugural lecture as Professor of Social Administration at the London School of Economics, the first such appointment in any British University. His influence was considerable. As Wilding (1995:149) notes,

More than anyone else, Titmuss established social administration as a subject of academic study and as a worthwhile intellectual activity. He exerted an enormous influence on the subject in its formative academic years, and a more than marginal influence on the development of social policy in the world outside the academy.

A. Danford, Japanese Management Techniques and British Workers, London: Mansell, 1998, hardback £55.00, xv+248 pp.

P. Garrahan and J. Ritchie, East Asian Direct Investment in Britain, London: Frank Cass, 1999, paperback £16.50, 242 pp.

A visitor touring in South Wales, by train or car, is quickly confronted by Wales' most easterly town, Newport. When arriving at Newport, the visitor passes one of the three integrated steel works of Corus Group (formerly British Steel). As the train leaves Newport, a huge new electronics complex looms, owned by LG, the Korean electronics combine. The fate of these plants represents a rather unique British manufacturing crisis. It seemed like the steel plant had won a reprieve from closure, but its longer-term future is now bleak. The LG complex, meanwhile, is an embarrassing white elephant. Built with enormous government subsidy it has been the source of national (Welsh) and national (UK) controversy over the levels of subsidy and the opportunity costs. While one plant in the complex, producing computer monitors, is up and running, the majority of the complex built to house semi-conductor manufacture has never been used. Moreover, with LG's semi-conductor interests worldwide being taken over by Hyundai (which has a similar plant lying idle in Scotland), utilisation of the plant in the near future seems a distant prospect.