ABSTRACT
This chapter draws upon data from the Job Insecurity and Work Intensification Survey ( JIWIS).1 Although the project started with a narrower focus on job insecurity, the interviews and early analyses of the data quickly brought us to realise that there was another recent change in the United Kingdom workplaces that might be even more important than job insecurity – work intensification. There has been a lot written recently about the longer hours of work in the United Kingdom and the United States than in Continental European countries. While this is an important phenomenon in its own right, work intensification, or the effort that employees put into their jobs while they are at work, has received less attention. But, as the data we will be presenting in this chapter show, the intensification of work may be a far greater problem in terms of stress, psychological health and family tension, the quality of working life and the functioning of establishments.
