Introduction

A central concern of this chapter is to consider some of the evidence for an evolving process of de-professionalisation, and to pose the question as to whether the direction and substantive nature of this process may have been emboldened by austerity. In Chapters 1–3 it has been suggested that de-professionalisation lies at the heart of the United Kingdom (UK) austerity agenda, symbolised by profound cuts to public services in the form of efficiencies, pay cuts, rationing, and reducing staff training and development, along with negative effects on overall economic productivity. The suggestion is that globalisation has become associated with this process, along with its resultant destabilisation of the public sector workforce. The notion of a democratic or collaborative framework, described in Chapter 5 as a device for studying professions, articulates a version of professional development in the context of broader societal trends involving increasing flexibility, mobility and individualisation, arguably leading to a changed socio-economic climate, namely that of de-professionalisation.

It goes without saying that there is a need to ensure that individuals are properly trained and able to undertake particular tasks to work in the public sector and that any differences in rewards are both fair and proportionate. Previous reforms to public services have entailed outsourcing coupled with a dogmatic adherence of the public sector to the purchaser/provider split. This has meant that local authorities, the National Health Service (NHS) and others no longer directly provide in-house services, but commission them from external private sector providers through forced competition, where costs are minimised to win a contract. If all austerity has done is to reinforce a trend going back to the New Right of the 1980s, encouraged by New Labour in their turn (with their academies, Private Finance Initiative-supported schemes, extended partnerships and so on), then this should in effect be regarded as continuity rather than radical change.

An aim is to develop an analytic framework for understanding the context in which a process of de-professionalisation exists within an employment culture dominated by capitalism, globalisation and inequality. The argument is that this is a feature of a deepened marketisation of public welfare systems, extending the logic of competition in everyday life, where the notion of meritocracy appears to contradict the principle of equality.