Towards an Understanding of the Dynamics of Work and Employment Relations during Austerity
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Towards an Understanding of the Dynamics of Work and Employment Relations during Austerity Dennis Pepple 1
& Kehinde
Olowookere 2
Accepted: 5 October 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This study considers how public sector organisations respond to the effects of austerity. While some organisations take advantage of austerity to increase the workload of employees with little or no engagement with employees, others encourage dialogue by increasing employee and union engagement. Drawing on a systematic analysis of 26 articles, the study finds that austerity policies have negative consequences for public sector employees and presents employee voice as a potential mitigator of the negative consequences. This study is one of the first to review the small but growing literature on the effects of austerity on work and employment relationship. Keywords Austerity policies . Employment relations . Employee voice . Union
engagement . Work
Introduction The effects of the 2008–2009 financial crisis were severe for the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland (Hodson and Quaglia 2009; Lane 2011; Mori 2020). Both countries experienced a significant decline in their real gross domestic product (GDP) which also affected the finances available for public services (Stanley 2016). As it was with other Western states, UK and Ireland had widening fiscal deficits and ballooning sovereign debts. This required an urgent political intervention in other to lessen the pressures of the crisis (Thompson 2013). In response, the governments of the UK and
* Dennis Pepple [email protected] Kehinde Olowookere [email protected]
1
Department of HRM, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK
2
Department of HRM, Coventry University, Coventry, UK
Pepple D., Olowookere K.
Ireland introduced fiscal consolidation plans which brought about austerity and was characterised by increase in taxes and spending cuts in the public sector (Stanley 2016). The challenges of austerity still persist with local authorities struggling to provide social care services (Addabbo et al. 2018). While the governments in both countries have declared an end to austerity, public sector employees continue to experience a decline in real wages and are expected to work twice as hard due to the cuts in employment (Addabbo et al. 2018). Austerity policies have also created uncertainties and increased the anxiety levels of these employees. Public sector organisations were usually regarded as a secure place to work, but the recent cuts in services have made employees uneasy about the future prospects of their job (Fanelli and Brogan 2014). For this reason, many scholars have become interested in investigating the effects of austerity. Studies have been conducted on how work and employment have been transformed (Roche and Teague 2012), the impact on work life balance policies, the implementation of policies aimed at engendering gender and pay equality (Conley 2012; Gregory et al. 2013) amongst other topics. Yet, whi
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