'Long Hours' work culture; Empty labour
Laurie Taylor explores how and why some employees spend large percentages of their day engaged in private pursuits. Also, the professionals caught up in a 'long hours' work culture.
Empty labour - international statistics suggest that the average time an employee spends engaged in private activities is 1 and a half to 2 hours a day. Laurie Taylor talks to Roland Paulsen, a Swedish sociologist, who interviewed 43 workers who spent around half their working hours on 'empty labour'. Are such employees merely 'slacking' or are such little' subversions' acts of resistance to the way work appropriates so much of our time? They're joined by the writer, Michael Bywater. By contrast, Jane Sturges, discusses her research into professionals caught up, both reluctantly as well as willingly, in a 'long hours' work culture.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
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Roland Paulsen
Sociologist, Department of Sociology at Uppsala University
Find out more about Roland Paulsen
Dissertation: Empty Labor: Subjectivity and Idleness at Work
Empty Labor: Idleness and Workplace Resistance
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN-10: 1107066417
ISBN-13: 978-1107066410
Michael Bywater
Writer and broadcaster
Find out more aboutMichael Bywater
Lost Worlds: What Have We Lost and Where Did it Go?
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN-10: 1862077983
ISBN-13: 978-1862077980
Jane Sturges
Reader in Organisational Behaviour, King’s College London
Find out more about Dr Jane Sturges
Abstract:A matter of time: young professionals’ experiences of long work hours
Work Employment & Society April 2013 vol. 27 no. 2
pp. 351-367ISSN: 0950-0170
Broadcasts
- Wed 5 Jun 201316:00BBC Radio 4 FM
- Mon 10 Jun 201300:15BBC Radio 4
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