ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how the changes are impinging on employment and the quality and experience of work, though inevitably the comments will be patchy as the data is both incomplete and soft. It focuses on the impact of organisational innovation in the public sector, looking at the new managerialism, quasi-markets, and contractualisation, drawing comparisons with changes claimed to be affecting the private sector. The chapter presents some major contextual social and economic developments which are conditioning changes in the nature of work. It discusses some of the changes, firstly in the private sector in relation to vertical disintegration, and secondly, in the public sector in relation to quasi-markets and the contractualisation of work. The growth of what Robert Reich termed the anxious class derives largely from the coincidence of the processes of casualisation of labour power with cutbacks in welfare states. The chapter concludes with some remarks concerning work and social settlements.
