Control Over Work

Abstract

Compared to their counterparts in most European countries, Dutch workers enjoy more control over their work. Yet burnout is on the rise. Almost half of all workers report they they lack sufficient autonomy. Are more people losing control over their work, or does this problem only affect specific groups concealed below the surface of the overall averages? This chaper explores these questions and examines how the automation, flexibilization and intensification of labour may affect people’s control over work.

“Busy, busy, busy.” Ask people about their working lives and they will often respond with this staccato summary. With titles such as Busy: How to Thrive in a World of Too Much, One Second Ahead, Mindfulness at Work and Crazy Busy, self-help books promise to make our lives less stressful. More and more workplaces are offering courses in yoga and mindfulness or stress tests to help people stay on top of the pressure.

Compared to their counterparts in most European countries, Dutch workers are doing quite well. Their workloads are average, many enjoy a relatively high degree of autonomy, their tasks are varied, and most receive support from colleagues and managers. Only in the Scandinavian countries, especially in Finland, do people enjoy more control over their work.¹ Yet burnout is on the rise. Moreover, if almost half of all workers report that they lack sufficient autonomy, is their work really good enough? Are more people losing control over their work, or does this problem only affect specific groups concealed below the surface of the overall averages? This chapter explores these questions and examines how the automation, flexibilization and intensification of labour may affect people’s control over work.

1 Busier than Ever? The Intensification of Work

The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research² finds the “burden of work” among Dutch workers to be high and continuous (Fig. 4.1). Almost four in ten claim they frequently have to work hard and rapidly, for example to meet successive deadlines. This is the narrow, quantitative definition of the intensification of work. If we include a qualitative definition of intensification, almost eight out of ten workers find their work intellectually taxing, while one in ten consider their work emotionally challenging, placing them in tough situations that demand a high level of engagement.

Fig. 4.1

The intensification of work, 2007–2018

Source: Houtman et al., 2020

Working people have not suddenly become busier. Their working lives were already demanding but have become more so over the past decade. In 2008, 34.5% of working people reported that they had to work fast; by 2018, this figure was 38.6%. The prevalence of mentally taxing work declined slightly in the same period, from 81.8% to 76.6%. The opposite applies to emotionally demanding work; its prevalence rose from 9.4% to 10.7%, particularly affecting workers in service and caring professions.

People who have emotionally demanding jobs also often consider their work rewarding and valuable. At the same time, they are far more likely to experience symptoms of burnout.³ Fig. 4.2 shows aspects of the quality of work associated with burnout. Although the term “hard work” is still largely used to refer to physically demanding activity, the hard work in today’s service economy is found primarily in intellectually and emotionally strenuous jobs.

Fig. 4.2

Relationship between quality of work and burnout complaints

Note: All variables are measured on a three or four-point scale, unless otherwise indicated with “binary scale” or “ratio scale”

Source: Pot & Smulders, 2019

These statistical time series apply to the entire workforce and are based on what people report. But work often changes of its own accord, unnoticed. These figures may thus also reflect human adaptability, of becoming accustomed to our tasks. Drawing on specialist expertise,⁴ Van den Groenendaal et al. has mapped out the changes over recent decades in six common occupations: homecare worker, primary-school teacher, IT systems administrator, mobile security patrol officer, domestic truck driver and order picker.⁵ In all six occupations, workers now face stricter quality requirements, greater time pressure and more emotionally demanding tasks; they all need better communication skills, greater stress-resistance and keener judgement of human nature. The only burden to have decreased is the physical workload. Although observed across the board, these trends differentially affect the surveyed occupations (see Box 4.1 and the professional portraits between the chapters in this book).

Box 4.1 Changing Requirements in Four Professions

The mobile security patrol officer must monitor a greater area and more premises than ever before. They now do this alone, carrying hand-held computers to remain in direct communication with the control room. They also need to be able to de-escalate confrontations with members of the public, who have become increasingly aggressive towards them.

The homecare worker must deal more frequently with illness and death due to their ageing client base. This makes the job emotionally tougher. At the same time, their schedules have become tighter – to the extent that these often part-time employees are inclined to help clients on their own time.

The primary-school teacher spends as many hours in the classroom as in the past, but now with much more diverse pupils: children from different countries and with a wide range of special needs. They have been required to take on a lot of additional work including extracurricular activities and updating the electronic student monitoring system.

The IT systems administrator has become busier because technology is increasingly central to organizations. Under greater pressure from bosses, clients and colleagues, they must deal promptly with incidents and consult more widely with a variety of people.⁶

2 Autonomy as Achilles’ Heel

Whether people can cope with the quantitative and qualitative intensification of their work depends, among other things, on whether they feel they receive enough in return. The “burden of work” is not simply a synonym for workload but refers to the strain caused by the mismatch between task requirements (a lot of work and difficult work) and opportunities for control (the extent to which the worker has a say over how they do their work).⁷ While workers may be as busy as ever, this need not be a problem so long as they feel in charge, that they have a certain degree of freedom in their activities. As Ulbo de Sitter wrote in his 1981 book Op weg naar nieuwe fabrieken en kantoren (Towards New Factories and Offices): “Simply put, it is not the problems which cause the stress but the obstacles to solving them.”⁸ We thus refer to an appropriate degree of freedom; not everyone thrives by being part of a self-managing team, while too much autonomy can itself cause stress.⁹

Compared to other European countries, Dutch workplaces offer a high degree of autonomy; only Finland scores higher.¹⁰ Nevertheless, almost half of all workers in the Netherlands still say that they lack sufficient autonomy. This figure has grown in recent years, from 38.3% in 2007 to 44.3% in 2018.¹¹ Declining autonomy is most pronounced among high-school graduates, who were already more likely (59.2%) to report being too strictly regulated and having too little space and freedom in their work (Fig. 4.3). The same applies to 47.7% of Dutch workers with post-secondary vocational education. A striking 31.1% of university graduates also say they lack autonomy at work – a percentage that has also been rising. Women on average have less autonomy in their work than men (Fig. 4.4), largely due to the professions and sectors in which they work. Along with hospitality and transport, work in female-dominated areas of the public sector – healthcare and education – provide the least occupational freedom.¹² These fields also have a relatively high percentage of personnel – almost a quarter – whose work combines limited autonomy with demanding requirements: a toxic combination that leads to high levels of stress and absenteeism.¹³

Fig. 4.3

Lack of autonomy by level of education, 2007–2018

Source: Houtman et al., 2020

Fig. 4.4

Lack of autonomy by gender, 2007–2018

Source: Houtman et al., 2020

Declining autonomy can hinder workers as they try to manage the intensification of their working lives. Seth van den Bossche and colleagues warn of its economic consequences: “Since autonomous personnel are often more innovative and productive, it is important to ensure that employees retain sufficient autonomy, especially in times of crisis.”¹⁴ Work only brings out the best in people when they have control over how they do this work (see Chap. 2).

2.1 Declining Autonomy at Work: Explanations

How can it be that worker autonomy in the Netherlands is falling across the board? One possible explanation is the flexibilization of the labour market, in particular the growth of temporary and agency jobs.¹⁵ Temporary staff generally have less control over how they do their work; when people are insecure in their positions, employers can exert greater pressure.¹⁶ In this light, growing self-employment can be seen as a strategy by workers to maintain their freedom. Across Europe, “wanting autonomy” is the leading reason why people go freelance.¹⁷ Self-employed individuals often find work organizations too restrictive, bureaucratic or hierarchical, and prefer the freedom that comes with “being their own boss”.¹⁸ The greater job satisfaction they experience, and the fact that they less frequently suffer health problems and burnout, is mainly due to the control they exercise over their work.

The self-employed are the canaries in the coal mine of work organizations - to bring up another “bird metaphor” (see Chap. 1). When former employees strike out on their own, it may signal insufficient workplace autonomy. Research suggests that if companies and institutions allowed their employees as much autonomy as freelances, they would be just as satisfied with their work.¹⁹ Not only would employees feel less incentive to leave; the organization would benefit from giving staff greater initiative. Werner Liebregts and Erik Stam refer to “intrapreneurs” – enterprising employees within organizations who “can impel the growth of (new or established) companies” – who “may go on to become independent entrepreneurs later in their career. Whatever their position, working people must remain creative to generate new value. They are increasingly responsible for the investments made in their own careers. In addition to investing in expertise for specific tasks, this also means investing in entrepreneurship as well as collaborating in new contexts so as to create new tasks.”²⁰

Another explanation for declining workplace autonomy lies in New Public Management – the infiltration of management techniques and models from the private sector into the public and semi-public sectors.²¹ Although meant to improve services, control costs and provide greater transparency for taxpayers, the introduction of accountability systems, protocols and performance measurements adversely affect the quality of work.²² The “organized mistrust” they reflect results in ballooning administrative workloads for public-sector professionals, combined with shrinkage of their discretionary space. The control the government seeks to exert over them comes at the cost of the control they want over their own work.

The Professional Ethics Foundation (Stichting Beroepseer) believes that the practices of New Public Management have led to “professional distress”, with experts in areas such as mental healthcare, education, youth services and science witnessing the “de-souling” of their professions.²³ This has repercussions not only for professionals personally, but for the public at large. As the Council for Health and Society reiterates, the erosion of the quality of professionals’ work will ultimately have adverse consequences for the quality of public healthcare and other services.²⁴

The autonomy of many workers in the private sector has declined as well, most notably affecting workers in logistics, business services and retail. Global competition encourages revenue models and work processes that privilege short-term thinking and accountability to “impatient capital”.²⁵ This means that employers embrace temporary work and assume greater, more structured control over work processes. Especially in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, many firms sought to “tighten the reins”²⁶ – visible in the above-mentioned changing protocols governing the work of security guards and truck drivers.²⁷

Finally, the use of new technologies can result in declining autonomy, particularly at the bottom end of the labour market. Firms today often use technology to monitor their employees, reducing their control and freedom at work.²⁸ Truck drivers are required by law to have a tachograph in the vehicle – a device that allows the employer to keep track of their driving behaviour, location and efficiency. Order pickers at distribution centres are monitored so the firm can see how many items they pick per hour; those who fail to meet productivity targets rarely have their contracts extended.²⁹ These are examples of the Taylorization of work, in which people increasingly function as “robots made of flesh”. Technology can increase the pace of work and constrain workers’ room for manoeuvre while making it easier for management to penalize them if they perform below set standards.³⁰

But technology can also help increase workers’ autonomy and scope for control. In the chemical industry, Eurofound³¹ research across five countries found that digitization gives employees greater latitude in the conduct, documentation and monitoring of processes. The use of cobots – collaborative robots that work with people – can make human tasks less routine and physically demanding as well as more challenging and interesting, pushing workers to draw on their teamworking, analytical, creative and problem-solving skills. Technology can thus take work in either direction: more or less interesting, augmenting or undermining workers’ autonomy (Box 4.2).³²

Box 4.2 Bringing out the Best in People? Not for Everyone

Good work means enabling people to use their abilities to the fullest extent possible. One indicator is the degree of autonomy people are allowed in their work. Another is the extent to which people are working below their abilities, with a third of Dutch workers claiming they do not use all their professional talents and skills at work.³³ Some also work at a level below that implied by their educational attainment, although this percentage is comparatively low.³⁴

Women’s capacities are under-utilized at work. From the age of 35, women in the Netherlands are more likely than men to work at a level lower than is appropriate for their education.³⁵ This is sometimes their own choice as they wish to devote more time to their children and so “choose” a less demanding job. But all too often, women encounter the glass ceiling which prevents them from rising to the top of an organization, or a “sticky floor” which keeps them bogged down in its lower regions.³⁶

People with migration backgrounds often have jobs requiring a standard of education inferior to their actual qualifications. Statistics Netherlands concludes that the Dutch labour market has an inherent “ethnic sanction”: after adjusting for their course of study and the grades they obtained, a person with a migration background needs a higher level of educational attainment than someone of Dutch origin to secure the same job.³⁷

Finally, people with occupational disabilities are less likely than their able-bodied peers to be working at a level below that implied by their educational attainment. In many cases, this is probably because their health problems or disability prevented them from obtaining qualifications matching their intellectual ability. This group reports more frequently than their able-bodied peers that insufficient use is being made of their skills and know-how. This is in part due to the lack of workplace adjustments and adaptations, and in part due to prejudice and discrimination.³⁸

3 Camaraderie at Work

Compared to workers in other countries, Dutch workers experience a high degree of social support at work, both vertically from managers and horizontally from colleagues. The figures are higher in Ireland and Norway, but lower in Germany.³⁹ Social support is not only a buffer against the intensification of work; it can reduce symptoms of burnout (see Fig. 4.2), improve occupational well-being, and is necessary for co-operation within the work organization. People who work well with others are the building blocks of social innovation, and the Netherlands values good workplace relationships like no other nation.⁴⁰ Although this desire for camaraderie is frequently fulfilled, the country also has one of the highest scores in Europe for aggressive workplace behaviour.⁴¹ We explore this apparent contradiction in more detail below.

3.1 Aggression at Work

Workers in the Netherlands are more likely to encounter aggressive workplace behaviour, mostly in verbal form, than their peers in Germany, Belgium and France. It is difficult to explain. One probable factor is the size of the Dutch service sector, which is particularly prone to aggressive conduct. Across different service subsectors, the rate of violence is higher in the Netherlands than in other countries. The Dutch “direct culture” may also play a role.⁴²

To some extent, it is colleagues and managers who make work a battleground. 16% of Dutch employees experience inappropriate behaviour at work from colleagues and managers, including harassment, bullying, unwanted sexual advances and physical violence.⁴³ People with migration backgrounds, especially the first generation, who are affected most (one-fifth), also report more discrimination by people they work with or report to.⁴⁴

Clients, in the broadest sense of the term, are the principal source of workplace aggression: a quarter of employees experience harassment, bullying or unwanted sexual advances from clients.⁴⁵ The problem is the most severe in the health and social care sector. In the past 3 years, Algemeen Dagblad, one of the largest newspapers in the Netherlands by circulation, has reported cases of aggressive behaviour against disability care workers, prison guards, psychiatric care workers, paramedics, pharmacists and medical receptionists. While working with people is intrinsic to the service economy, it demands resilience and strength of character.

In the public sector, the aggression is largely due to increasingly vocal clients. Parents for example expect a great deal of say in their children’s schooling; public policy encourages this empowerment. Combined with cuts to services that leave public-sector workers less time and space to do their jobs well, this can lead to problems escalating more quickly and more often.⁴⁶ The flexibilization of the labour market also fuels aggressive behaviour as clients find themselves dealing with a different employee each time they interact with the organization. The resulting frustration is one reason why nine out of ten employees in disability care face aggression – not just from clients, but also from their relatives and friends.⁴⁷ Research by the Dutch teaching union aob states that “parents are a factor in the workload that should not be underestimated” and that conflicts with assertive parents are one of the major causes of teacher burnout.⁴⁸

Private-sector workers are also experiencing increased pressure and aggression from customers. Again, this is because many occupations have taken on a service dimension.⁴⁹ Security guards may be confronted by violent criminals, but more often by irritated drivers delayed at checkpoints. Truck drivers can experience road rage and then angry customers when they arrive late at their destination. Broader social changes are penetrating the workplace. When citizens become assertive consumers, in some cases encouraged by government policy, this can suppress human empathy for the person standing in front of them. We are treated everywhere as buyers of products and services, as consumers with a right to be demanding – “the customer is king (or queen)”. But this is only possible because there are people working to provide these goods and services. In our current consumer society, we sometimes forget that we are not only consumers but working people.

The pressure empowered citizens and consumers place on workers in healthcare and the service economy can be further increased by digitization and social media. People working via online platforms in the gig economy are subject to the “reputation mechanism”: the systemic use of customer reviews to encourage them to perform well. But other organizations, including governments, have begun using such mechanisms for direct review as well. Consumers and patients are often more motivated to write negative reviews than positive ones. The digital culture of constant evaluation can thus reinforce feelings among workers that they are always walking on eggshells and that their colleagues have become competitors. It was largely for this reason that staff at the Dutch department store De Bijenkorf, led by their trade union, resisted the introduction of a rating system for sales personnel.⁵⁰

3.2 Camaraderie in the Age of Flexible Work

Platform-based work can undermine workplace camaraderie. When one’s boss is an algorithm and one’s colleague a competitor, it is difficult to build or experience any sense of fellowship. New technologies can also lead to more solo work, for example security guards who now patrol with handheld computers rather than partners, and order pickers who receive their instructions from portable devices which direct them along the most efficient walking route, leaving them few opportunities to chat with colleagues.⁵¹

Temporary work can also hinder bonding in the workplace. The sociologist Richard Sennett in The Corrosion of Character⁵² paints a portrait of a “short-term society” in which contacts are always temporary and fleeting. But although it is true that temporary workers, especially agency and on-call personnel,⁵³ receive less support from colleagues and managers than permanent staff, collegial atmospheres can be maintained when everyone is in the same boat, as is often the case in hospitality or cleaning.⁵⁴ Contact with managers, however, remains problematic; in much precarious work, the actual employer is nowhere to be seen.⁵⁵ In flexible work, the problem lies primarily in vertical relationships at the workplace (see Chap. 6).

Labour market flexibility has ushered in counter-movements. As noted in the wrr publication For the Sake of Security, many self-employed individuals participate in various forms of “work community-light”.⁵⁶ Wanting to be one’s own boss is not the same thing as wanting to be alone in the world of work. Freelances meet in coffee bars and shared offices, join mutual aid funds and form groups to help members with work and facilities.⁵⁷ Sometimes these contacts evolve into a kind of “work organization 3.0” that allows members both independence and basic ties to collectively cover risks.

4 Differences in Control over Work: Education and Occupation

When people have little control over their work, this constitutes bad work. Are bad jobs growing in the Netherlands, as Arne Kalleberg observed for the United States?⁵⁸ We observed earlier that work has been intensifying, especially in terms of time pressure and emotional labour, while workplace autonomy is declining. While everyone seems to have a little less control over work, there are important differences between workers, particularly according to their educational attainment and occupation.

At the bottom end of the labour market, work is generally unchallenging and workplace autonomy is in short supply. Especially young people, people with non-western migration backgrounds and people with less formal education are more likely now than in the past to have routine, boring jobs with little autonomy.⁵⁹ Figs. 4.1 and 4.3 show the decline in intellectually challenging work. Autonomy at work is lowest among high school graduates and has also declined the most for this group, although it has declined for workers with post-secondary education as well. While jobs have been created at the lower end of the market, these are mainly bad jobs offering little in the way of challenge.

There are also specific occupations in which control over work has eroded. Figure 4.5 shows the “burden of work” (both the quantitative and qualitative intensification of work) on the x-axis and the resources available to deal with this burden (social support, autonomy) on the y-axis. The professions under greatest pressure are in the bottom-right corner: primary and secondary-school teachers, nurses and truck drivers. While care workers for the elderly, printers, loaders/unloaders, and bus and train drivers are not far behind, they enjoy somewhat more social support and/or autonomy. These are precisely the occupations that have been demanding better conditions in recent years, sometimes through industrial action. In the top-right corner are professionals such as architects and managers who also work intensively, facing tight deadlines and complex situations. But they generally have more resources at their disposal, which allow them to better cope with the increasing demands.

Fig. 4.5

Burden of work and resources in various occupations, 2014–2018 (ages 15–74)

Source: Houtman et al., 2020

Strikingly, the occupations in which workers have the least control are mainly in the public and semi-public sectors. The 2018 annual review of working conditions by the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research found healthcare and education (alongside hospitality) to be the sectors where workers most often face heightened demands alongside limited autonomy. Conditions have also been deteriorating over the previous decade.⁶⁰

5 Who Is Responsible for Control over Work?

However helpful training courses, stress tests and self-help books may be – and however much we may ultimately be racing against ourselves – control over work is not an individual problem but one that suffuses the modern work organization. We should be focusing not only on how workers handle stress, but on how to minimize risks in the first place. First and foremost, it is up to companies and institutions to create healthier work organizations. But to date, improvements have been lacklustre. Who or what is holding back progress?

The Netherlands, like other corporatist European countries, has a highly developed system of social dialogue that makes extensive use of legally binding collective labour agreements that cover about 80% of all employees. Many actors participate in this system, including the government; employers’ organizations and trade unions (the government’s “social partners”); and working people alongside their professional associations. We discuss each in turn below.

5.1 Government

The government’s first pillar, the Working Conditions Act, has since 1989 covered the quality of work (Section 3, Well-Being at Work). Initially focused on extending learning opportunities and reducing stress-related risks, measures were added in 1999 to prevent workplace bullying and discrimination. These are just a few of the provisions in the Act’s 44 sections, most of which cover the physical aspects of work (hazardous substances, heavy lifting and so on).⁶¹ The Working Conditions Act holds employers responsible for the quality of work and obliges them to conduct risk assessments. The question is whether legislation is paying adequate attention to the non-physical aspects of work that also undermine workplace well-being.⁶²

While the Social Affairs and Employment Inspectorate is responsible for ensuring compliance with working conditions legislation, it lacks the human and financial resources needed for comprehensive enforcement. Its inspections reveal that many firms do not even undertake the mandatory risk assessments. Overall, the inspectorate concludes, the business community is falling short of its legal obligations.⁶³ Although the inspectorate’s remit includes workloads, workplace aggression and discrimination, it rarely checks – certainly not in actual workplaces. Inspections still tend to focus on the physical aspects of work.⁶⁴ While work today is more likely to entail psychosocial risks, the law and what enforcement there is focus on their detection rather than on how the work organization can be improved to bring out the best in people.⁶⁵

The government’s second pillar consists of legislation governing sick leave and reintegration in the workplace. Employers are obliged under the threat of fines to take care of staff on sick leave. This system, unique to the Netherlands, has successfully reduced absenteeism. The guidance provided by occupational physicians, however, is directed mainly at individuals, not the work organization, and it remains questionable whether the medicalizing of individual employees is the right approach. Improving the design of companies and institutions cannot be left to doctors alone; it sometimes requires more structural changes for which labour or organizational experts are needed.

The government’s third pillar is the law on staff councils. These bodies are highly developed in the Netherlands and allow employees to influence the quality of their work through legally binding rights of advice and consent. Not all work organizations are required by law to implement this form of employee participation; many small firms are exempt, while workers in the platform economy, self-employed individuals and flexible temporary staff generally fall outside of its remit.⁶⁶ Workers with insecure flexible jobs rarely take part in decision-making, are less familiar with this form of participation and are not strong enough to enforce changes.⁶⁷ The larger the proportion of temporary personnel on a company’s books, the less likely it is to have a staff council.⁶⁸

5.2 Social Partners and Professional Associations

Employees can exert influence to improve their control over work.⁶⁹ After all, who is better placed to do so? The question is whether employees are sufficiently powerful and whether existing forms of staff representation focus enough on the quality of work. Compared to especially the Scandinavian countries and France, the Netherlands has low trade-union membership; unions generally lack meaningful presence in individual workplaces. At the national level, trade-unions advise the Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands (ser) and campaign to shape Dutch and European regulations. The ser⁷⁰ is an advisory body comprising representatives of trade unions and employers’ organizations as well as independent experts, one of the main platforms for social dialogue in the Dutch system of broad consultation known as the “polder model”. In its 2016 report People and Technology, the ser advocated combining technological and social innovation.⁷¹

Collective labour agreements provide further opportunities for improving the quality of work. Although discussion about implementation has yet to begin, two agreements recently concluded in the metals sector contain provisions to promote workplace “social innovation”. Many industries publish working conditions catalogues specifying occupational health, safety and well-being requirements tailored to their particular contexts, along with recommendations and examples of best practice.⁷² Renewing their traditional interest in their members’ professional development would allow unions to more effectively participate in the debate on how technology can improve the quality of work and workplace well-being.⁷³

While professional associations – for example v&vn, representing nurses and social care workers in the Netherlands – often emphasize professional development and workplace autonomy, they are not always large enough or sufficiently resourced to press their demands home within individual companies and institutions.⁷⁴

5.3 Workers

Effective staff representation improves the quality of work and protects workers from occupational stress.⁷⁵ There are three levels at which workers can strengthen their positions within organizations: on the shopfloor, in the staff council and in the boardroom. Particularly the system of staff councils could be better exploited to improve the quality of work. Companies with staff councils generally have working climates where employees can take initiative.⁷⁶ Staff councils can facilitate consultation and teamwork on the shopfloor; the more influence employees have over the organization of their own work, the more effectively their representative bodies operate.⁷⁷ But it remains unclear to what extent staff councils are able to influence decision-making. While they already have a broad statutory remit, they may – judging by their past track record⁷⁸ – be hard pressed to tackle broader issues such as emotional stress or how technology is used in the workplace.

Employees do not always feel represented by existing structures. Organizations have thus begun experimenting with more pro-active forms of participation alongside, instead of, or within staff councils.⁷⁹ Examples include the banking group abn amro’s participant pool and Haarlem City Council’s theme groups that draw many more employees than only staff council members into work-related discussions.

How far can workers influence corporate governance? From his research on how employee participation has affected the market value of 700 European companies in the period 2006–2008, Robert Kleinknecht⁸⁰ concludes that employee participation heightens managers’ awareness of long-term goals. In the Netherlands, the debate thus far has focused mainly on gender balance in governance (see the ser advisory report Diversity in the Boardroom: Time to Accelerate).⁸¹ Elsewhere, French President Emanuel Macron, former uk Prime Minister Theresa May and former us presidential candidate Elisabeth Warren have advanced proposals to reserve more places on company boards for staff or trade union representatives.⁸² In the Netherlands, one suggestion is for a nurse to sit on the board of every healthcare institution⁸³ – an idea that has long been on the agenda in the us.⁸⁴

Finally, it is possible to create work organizations in which the personnel take charge from the outset. Although workers’ co-operatives are not as common in the Netherlands as they are in Italy or Spain, interest is growing: groups of the self-employed have begun pooling their resources while new initiatives are emerging in the platform economy (see Box 4.3). Some companies have introduced initiatives combining profit-sharing and representation.⁸⁵ More recently, social enterprises with a different approach to doing business than traditional firms are emerging,⁸⁶ although they may encounter legal and regulatory obstacles from the requirement to establish staff councils⁸⁷ to the ban on employees who are also claiming benefits from sharing in the profits. To strengthen control over work, initiatives to democratize work must be supported.

The three structural developments at the heart of this report – the automation, flexibilization and intensification of labour – can all undermine control over work. To ensure that this does not happen, different actors need to play their part.

Box 4.3 Workers’ Co-Operatives

Co-operatives enable self-employed individuals and platform workers to enter into collective agreements about rates and other matters. A platform co-operative is owned and managed by the platform’s users. Examples include Stocksy, a website operated by a group of photographers, and Green Taxi, formed by 800 taxi drivers in Denver, Colorado. Smart, originally founded in Belgium, claims to represent 85,000 freelances, many of them artists and performers. Co-operatives have effectively functioned as trade unions when new platforms appear on the market, forcing for instance food-delivery services Deliveroo and Take Eat Easy to accept collective agreements covering their members.⁸⁸

There are businesses where the staff are in charge in other industries as well. Schoongewoon, founded in 2012, is a group of ten local workers’ co-operatives in the cleaning sector. Everyone participates in the firm’s decision-making and shares in its profits; all say they prefer this work to their previous job – not because their wages are higher (they are not) but because they feel that they are their own boss, that there is mutual trust and everyone helps each other.⁸⁹ In the home care sector, the Helpgewoon co-operative is organized along similar lines.

6 Conclusion: Control Over Work Requires More Autonomy and Camaraderie

Dutch workers are constantly trying to adapt to the changing and growing demands of their jobs, which are leaving them with more to do and less time to do it. Although the Netherlands, on aggregate, scores well in “control over work”, it does not do so consistently. Aggression in workplaces is increasing while almost half of all workers experience limited and declining autonomy. While new technologies and flexible contracts are part of the story, the government itself is part of the problem when public-sector professionals are suffering the brunt of New Public Management and the organized mistrust it entails. With little autonomy at work, people are less able to cope with its intensification. All in all, it is a recipe for burnout and absenteeism.

Lack of control over work is not an individual problem that can be solved through stress tests and self-help books. It concerns work organizations and, more broadly, society. How can we ensure that companies and institutions take responsibility for the quality of work they provide as they make strategic decisions about the automation, flexibilization and intensification of labour? After all, the prime responsibility for the quality of jobs and workers’ ability to exercise meaningful control over their work rests with management. Much remains to be done, not least by employers’ organizations and trade unions; workers also need greater influence over their organizations (see recommendations in Chap. 8).

It is crucial that people have control over their work – for their own health and well-being as well as for the functioning of the work organization. For the same reasons, workers need to be able to put boundaries around their work so that they may exercise control over the rest of their lives. That is the subject of the next chapter.

A Day at Work: The IT Worker

“Data is the new gold”, says IT worker Gerco, “and I help mine that gold.” Gerco was hired on a freelance basis by the German energy company Innogy, the parent company of Essent – a leading supplier of gas and electricity to the Dutch market. Innogy wants to make the most of its data on its 2.5 million customers in the Netherlands, such as their energy consumption and their responses to special offers. Gerco is part of a “Big Data Team” of 20 specialists organizing and analysing this material, converting it into behavioural predictions.

Aged 48, Gerco is self-employed and currently engaged by several clients, mostly on long-term projects. He works for Innogy about three days a week, partly at home and partly at its offices in Den Bosch. Today there is a short sub-team meeting at 9:30 am to identify problems and define new tasks. Because of its international composition, the team works in English. After the meeting, Gerco takes a seat at one of the workstations in the “flexible space” where the Big Data Team has gathered. He is working on a program for an improved data library. “Programming is not so creative”, he explains. “It’s mainly making use of solutions other people have already come up with. Programmers are constantly googling.” He types in a question, goes through the search results and finds a possible answer. Then he cuts and pastes, polishes, does a test and finds that it works. A big laugh: “We are very pleased with Google.”

The self-managing team works in “three-week sprints”, each with new goals. From these are derived specific tasks, which are delineated and allocated through mutual agreement. At 11 am there is a stand-up meeting in a cramped, glass-walled conference room to mark the end of the current sprint. Against the back wall is a 3×2-metre board with the project timetable, covered with stickers and Post-It notes. The team members report briefly on their progress and discuss successes, problems, solutions and new estimates. Post-Its are moved and new ones added. The conclusion: they are still on schedule. Everyone returns to their own computer.

Shortly after noon, someone calls out something about lunchtime. Gerco drags himself away from his screen. It is rare for anybody to work through lunch with just a sandwich at their computer. In the canteen, six members of his team sit together at a table. 45 min later, everyone is back in the office. Gerco continues to work on his program. Now that he has found the right route, he can set about perfecting it.

Information technology is developing rapidly. Gerco keeps up to date by reading and talking with colleagues, but above all by doing. He had to learn the trade largely on the job – his degree is in Mechanical Engineering, not IT. His criticism of many training courses and companies is that they tie employees down to a specialist domain, say Java, when broad knowledge is essential to keep up. “As a freelance, I’m in on a wide range of projects. You learn from that.”

Becoming self-employed was a deliberate choice for Gerco. He has joined 4Synergy, a group of 45 freelance IT specialists who work together to acquire and share knowledge. He is saving for a rainy day and is insured against illness through a mutual aid fund. His rate varies between €700 and €1200 gross per day, depending on the type of assignment.

At about 2 pm, Gerco has an appointment with a colleague from Innogy. The Big Data Team needs permission to link its cloud platform to the firm’s data files. This is a major information security issue. The two men sit together in a small interview room, each behind his own laptop. The jargon flies: “gateway”, “aws management console”, “user landing”. The perfect solution cannot be achieved at the moment, but Gerco says that the alternative they have found is more than adequate: it sounds an alarm if anyone tries to break in. But his colleague doubts this will satisfy his superiors. Gerco is not happy. Co-ordination with the company often leads to delays, he sighs.

He returns to his computer. Stress is not a problem for Gerco. Nor does he have the idea that companies are racking up their demands or expecting orders to be completed faster. It is rare for him to work in the evening or on weekends.

Gerco notes that technology is taking over more and more work, including that of people in IT. “The hardware specialists, especially in non-graduate positions, are losing their jobs. For example, because servers are being replaced by the cloud.” Which does not mean that he, as a cloud specialist, is sitting pretty. “In ten years’ time that could be replaced by artificial intelligence.” So? “So I have to make sure I stay up to date and in demand. How? By continuing to work. Beyond that, you can’t plan things.”

It is 5 pm. Gerco finishes his program and then goes home.

The number of IT workers in the Netherlands continues to grow; at the beginning of 2019 there were 395,000 of them, 85% of them men. They are relatively highly educated: 62% have a university degree, 22% a post-secondary vocational qualification. The number with permanent contracts is declining. In 2017, they accounted for 73% of the profession, while 15% were on flexible contracts and 16% were self-employed. According to a 2014 survey of IT professionals by the technology website Tweakers, almost 60% have a gross income of between €2000 and €4000 per month. The average (modal) income in the Netherlands in 2020 will be just over €2800 per month, excluding holiday pay. Freelance IT workers are more likely than employees to earn less than €2000, but also more likely to earn more than €4000.