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Privatizing employment services in Britain

Lancaster University, c.grover{at}lancaster.ac.uk

This paper focuses upon the privatization of Britain's employment services. It explores the extent to which the private sector is involved in the delivery of state-funded employment services, and the reasons why its involvement is to be extended in the future. The paper examines the catalyst — the Freud review of work-related social security policies — for extending private sector involvement in employment services before going on to critically engage with the privatization of such services. Here, the focus is upon ways in which such developments commodify non-employed people by creating an economic value for them, and the amount and nature of paid work that will be available through such services. The paper argues that the privatization of employment services will be more advantageous to the private sector than it will be to non-employed people because it is essentially a conservative policy that will not address the barriers that people face in securing paid employment.

Key Words: commodification • employment services • inequality • paid work • privatization

Critical Social Policy, Vol. 29, No. 3, 487-509 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0261018309105181


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