For those looking for work in these troubled times, there is good and bad news. On the positive side, there are at last “British jobs for British workers” as migrant labour heads home. The bad news? The vacancies include meat packing, sorting potatoes, grating carrots, cleaning, and – the least bad options – working as a retail assistant or in a fast-food restaurant. In Spain, strawberries are being harvested by Spaniards for the first time in years. “Picking strawberries is the last resort, but it’s all there is,” said Jose Maria Gomez, a 29-year-old former construction worker, in The New York Times last month.

As one employment agency manager told this newspaper recently, a new type of job-seeker has emerged. “It’s what I’d call older, middle-aged people who have been in work for 10, 15, 20 years in one place,” she explained, “and now with the climate as it is, they are made redundant and are willing to take on anything. It is heartbreaking.” It is sad seeing highly skilled people being forced to take on semi or unskilled jobs. But while such work may be back-breaking, is it really “heartbreaking” as well? Having a good job – that is, interesting work in civilised conditions – is clearly preferable to having a bad one. But better a miserable job than no job at all.

So with unemployment rising just about everywhere, it might seem an odd time to start a debate on “good work”: what it is and to how create more of it. That is what the Smith Institute, a London think-tank, has done, launching a pamphlet* on the subject at a seminar last week.

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April 7, 2009 1:25am in Career/skills, Hard times | Comment