In my posting "039. The strike of the Heathrow girls" I suggested that this strike of 2003 would go into the history books in due course as being as important as the Match Girls' strike at Bryant & May's factory in 1888. In the latter case, they were striking for decent physical conditions, hours and pay. On the other hand, at Heathrow Airport, in far more clean and attractive conditions, the British Airways' check-in girls were striking for something quite different and intangible -- something that couldn't have been dreamed of even 20 years ago, never mind 115 years ago. Many of them had young children and had gradually evolved very complicated child-care arrangements between themselves and their duty hours. Suddenly, the airport management imposed new work schedules on them without consultation. Normally, legislation demands that strikers have to give notice and hold ballots and so forth. But this matter was too important for that, because it affected a vital aspect of their lives immediayely, and the girls -- good for them! -- walked out promptly. (And good for the Financial Times -- this so-called mouthpiece of business interests -- which also approved!)
Well, I was right, though the first book in which the Heathrow Girls' Strike account appears is not exactly a history book -- apart from being about contemporary history, I suppose. The book, Complicated Lives, is saying something very similar to what I am concerned about on this Evolutionary Economics website. It is saying that people's lives are becoming pretty jammed full -- with work, with commuting, with transporting children to nurseries and schools, and, of course, the never-ending stream of consumer goods which has caused the average consumer's debt swell to a year and a quarter's worth of disposable income. I disagree with the authors in thinking that the range of choice is too much -- though I must admit that my better-half doesn't shop in Sainsburys because they have too much choice there and prefers a smaller store. However, for the most part, I agree with the reviewer of the book, Stefan Stern; I don't think that choice is a problem. What certainly is a problem, however, is that while modern customers quite cheerfully cope with new types of PCs, plasma TV, DVDs instead of CDs, SUVs and so forth, these are only replacement for former status goods. Once bought, they don't require any great expenditure of money, or time, or additional effort. If they did, then they probably wouldn't be bought.They maintain the existing status of the consumer. And they are no happier at the end of it. However the modern customer certainly has no time left over for the really major item -- what I term the Status Good -- the equivalent of the motor car 100 years ago, or the TV set 50 years ago -- that could significantly move the modern economy into higher gear. Those goods are missing these days.
I follow with the review.
Keith Hudson
<<<< SO MUCH TO DO, SO LITTLE TIME TO DO IT
Book Review of: Complicated Lives: sophisticated consumers, intricate lifestyles, simple solutions, by Michael Willmott and William Newlson (John Wiley and Sons)
Stefan Stern
Rod Eddington, chief executive of British Airways, should read this book. In it he would find why so many of his check-in staff at Heathrow suddenly walked out in a wildcat strike this summer, throwing the company -- and its passengers -- into chaos.
For the check-in staff, life had simply become too complicated. Trying to balance responsibilities at work and at home, while finding time to enjoy their private lives, proved impossible. According to one union leader, who was also surprised by the industrial action, "time is the new money". But time was what BA check-in staff did not have.
Not that all employees are working ever longer hours. As the authors of Complicated Lives point out, working time has if anything slightly decreased for the average worker over the past 30 years. It has increased for white-collar elites, including journalists, thus leading to endless coverage of the issue.
But just about all of us feel we have less time. And this, Willmott and Nelson argue, is because of the proliferation of choices and activities open to us these days.
Anxiety over time spent at work stems from "a frustration, an irritation" with the rest of our lives. "People have so much more they want to do now than they did in the past," they write. "Work gets in the way. We have become greedy for life and its experiences. It is this, rather than longer working hours, that is creating the perceived time pressures of modern life."
The complications of modern life are to some extent a tribute to the creative genius of capitalism. Researching for this book, the authors discovered 14 types of dental floss in one UK pharmacy, a similar range of brandies in a Spanish supermarket and 22 microwave cookers in a French hypermarket.
Eight kinds of orange juice are available under the Tropicana brand alone. And, as the economist Roger Bootle has pointed out, we would need a latter-day H.M. Bateman to portray the reaction to the hapless customer who, on entering a branch of Starbucks, asks simply for "a cup of coffee".
The authors take a wide-ranging look at our fragmented modern lives, quoting from many texts of recent sociological scholarship -- the work of, among others, Richard Sennett, Robert Putnam, Richard Florida and Frank Furedi.
Willmott and Nelson, co-founder and analysis manager respectively of the Future Foundation, a consumer think-tank, are not unquestioning champions of the consumer age. Their own Future Foundation research, quoted here, shows that most consumers do not want any more choice when it comes to buying a car, an insurance policy or a washing powder. For most of us, it seems, the world is complicated enough already.
But ultimately the authors do come out on the side of choice. They see the challenge facing bewildered citizens, struggling with their complicated lives, essentially in terms of time management. They are optimistic about the chances of people learning to live with greater choice and variety.
For them, there is nothing to worry about in the emergence of the free-wheeling, consumerist individual -- indeed, they celebrate the rise of new high-technology networks of competing lone wolves.
Willmott and Nelson reject what they regard as rose-tinted nostalgia for a simpler past that will never return.
Dismissing Sennett and Putnam as pessimists, they deny that society's fragmentation, and the decline of certain institutions, are worrying developments. "It is a fairly futile exercise to hark back to past times and past institutions," they write, "or to bemoan the demise of forms of social organisation that were appropriate then, but not only have less relevance now but are actively rejected by individuals."
But that is too simple and . too hasty. Putnam was right, in his 2001 work. Bowling Alone, to draw attention to the breakdown of communities. Internet chat rooms are not an adequate replacement for civil society. And Sennett described with deadly accuracy, in The Corrosion of Character (1998), the harm that can be done to employees in the era of individualised contracts and overmighty bosses.
Back to the harassed check-in staff at British Airways. Of course they felt stressed, overworked, overwhelmed by their "complicated lives". As radicalised individuals they did want more for themselves and for their families.
But when they walked out, they did it together. It was a fine example of what, in the good old days, we used to call collective action.
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Keith Hudson, 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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