‘Realities and Future of Work’ Review

Excerpt from Barbara Pocock’s review of David Peetz’s Realities and Future of Work

Labour History • Number 119 • November 2020

The pandemic experience reveals what many workers know: formal rights at work are not available to many Australians. This includes those who work every day and for years at a time, who now fall outside the definition of “worker” and lack the citizenship rights that are recognised in a pandemic, and beyond…

For the past four decades, David Peetz has taken the measure of the Australian workplace relations scene, and it is reflected throughout this book. He has been a persistent analyst about many aspects of work – pay, conditions, working time, unionism and collective bargaining, the changing nature of employment law. This wide canvas is reflected in the structure and content of the book. Peetz is also an internationalist and, while the focus throughout is upon Australia, the international context is evident throughout…

Peetz is scholarly in approach, and this book stands on a large store of evidence and literature embedded in a hefty set of footnotes on almost every page. This makes this book an invaluable source for both students and teachers of work. However, the book also makes use of music, film and literature to provoke our imaginative connection with work and its potential futures. Peetz is not only good with numbers and managing a large stock of academic literature, but he sees our vision of work and society constructed – and critiqued – in our culture also, and he leavens his analysis with it…

Early in the book, the impact of globalisation, neoliberalism and financialisation are set out, and their impact upon power in the world of work is explored. Key trends in employment are then outlined, including the digitalisation of work and demographic shifts, like the growth in women’s employment and our ageing population. The book successively reviews both management strategies (especially their impact upon growth in “uberised” or “not there” employment), and the organising responses of workers. The circumstances of women are the subject of a chapter, as are the ethics and sustainability of work, including the potential effects of climate change on productivity and work…

Peetz has set a high standard in his lifetime of work, and this volume assembles the fruit of it, mobilising it as a platform for knowledge, challenge and change. As we move to confront the consequences of the financialisation of capitalism, of climate change and its impacts, and the continuing shift of risk from the more powerful to the less, new terrains for analysis open before us. Let us hope they are subjected to the kinds of long-term, theoretically and practically informed analysis we find in this book.

University of South Australia
BARBARA POCOCK