A lot of the debate about WorkChoices, quite properly, revolved around not just the severe distraint that the legislation placed on bargaining power in the employment relationship but also on its failure to accord employees basic civil rights in the workplace. Much of recent thinking on employment has revolved around extending the rights proper to civil society to the workplace - and reframing a perspective that saw rights only at issue insofar as they revolved around liberal principles of contract. But basic rights within the workplace should just be a baseline, as it were. I don’t agree with all of the arguments in his paper, but I’m pleased to see David Coats from The Work Foundation publishing a provocative piece for the new(ish) Australian thinktank Per Capita entitled Quality of Work and A New Politics of A Quality of Life. [link to pdf]

The principal goal of progressive politics is to create a society in which people have the capabilities to choose a life that they value. Allied to this of course is the profound conviction that unless certain goods are provided collectively – education, healthcare, infrastructure and physical security for example – then some citizens, generally the poorest and most vulnerable, will fall by the wayside. The opportunity to choose a life that one values is inevitably diminished if an employee is condemned to insecure poorly paid work with limited opportunities for progression. “Bad work” in this sense is a significant constraint on individual liberty.

There’s no doubt, I think, that work continues to be central to our late modern society not just in terms of the creation of wealth, but also in enabling or potentially enabling fulfilment, creativity and self-actualisation. (more…)