Sociologist reviews quality of work

The Quality of Work: A People-Centred Agenda
Graham Lowe,
$21.95 paper 0195414799, 200 pp., 6 X 9,
Oxford University Press Canada,
Reviewed from bound galleys

By Lynne Van Luven

Work is just another four-letter word, the cynics say. Certainly, Canadians talk about it all the time - either struggling under the weight of too much of it or desperate about the lack of it. As British Columbia poet Tom Wayman has long maintained, given labour's importance in our lives, it deserves a lot more intellectual attention than it usually gets.Alberta sociologist Gordon Lowe agrees entirely. "Work, jobs, careers, employment, unemployment - these have generated more worry among Canadians than any other public issues in the 1990s," Lowe writes in his introduction to The Quality of Work. Lowe sees his book as an attempt to spark "an informed, wide-ranging debate about the changing work world." The result is a clearly written, well-argued 10-chapter analysis drawn from both the economic and historical roots of Canada's current employment/unemployment scene.

Lowe argues for workplace restructuring and innovation based on the humane view that unhappy and disenfranchised workers will never be fully productive workers. When working conditions improve, so does the human condition, he maintains. And when a country works well, democracy works better.

This is a difficult book to summarize because of its wide-ranging argument and analysis, but it should be read by everyone, boss and worker alike. Lowe begins with the optimistic quality of work arguments from the 1970s, works through the greedy, get-it-all era of the 1980s and pauses long on the workplace wasteland of the 1990s . He maintains that the present -- in what he sees as the bleak aftermath of the negative effects of public-sector cutbacks and wholesale corporate downsizing - may be the "most opportune time since the late 1970s to carefully consider the benefits of workplace reform."

Employees' needs for work-security and satisfaction seem at odds with employers' push for productivity and flexibility, but Lowe cites "small patches of common ground where innovation can be cultivated," even though the change may be defined differently from one workplace to another.

"The future of work is the future of society," Lowe asserts, to which all but the independently wealthy would respond with a heartfelt "amen."

(Lynne Van Luven teaches non-fiction and journalism at the University of Victoria)

-- This review first appeared in Quill and Quire