Employment. Work is an essential economic activity

Ø 1) Read the text.

Work is an essential economic activity. Like people all over the world, some Britons are hard working and some are not, but they are afraid of finding themselves out of a job and not just for financial reasons. Some really enjoy hard work; they are committed “workaholics.” The rest do the work and escape when they can, and try to get as many ad­vantages out of the system as they can.

Most of the working population in Britain (about 90 per cent) is employees who work for wages which they get either weekly or monthly. Another 6 per cent are the self-em­ployed, working on their own and paying themselves from the profits of their businesses. However, it is not simply true that the 3% of employers employ all the employees. About a third of the working population works for the State. And many of the biggest “employers” in Britain are not individuals, but trusts, or financial organisations representing hun­dreds of thousands of shareholders. The big businesses are managed; it is in the interests of managers to make profits. Part of them will go back into the business in the hope that it will become even more profitable, and the rest will go to the shareholders. The management will be among the shareholders. Employees have different interests. They want more wages, easier working condi­tions, and as many benefits as they can get out of the system. If the business fails to make profits, the employees will not get their pay; if the conditions of work of the employees are unsatisfactory, they will not work well enough to produce profits.

State employees are in a different position. They include national and local administration; almost all school teachers, doctors and medical staff, many research workers, the police, and all the service personnel. Their wages come from taxation, both from individuals and businesses, and from taxation on goods and services. So it is in the interests of these employees that the State should raise plenty of money. But employees (working both in the private and the state sector of the economy) are taxpayers, whose interest, naturally, is to pay as little tax as possible. They are also consumers of state services, like health and education, which are funded from public net.All these conflicts of interest mean that no part of the economy and no services implied by the society for its members can operate independently. In the middle stands: a citizen, who, like any human being anywhere, wants food, housing, education, medi­cal care, and then opportunities to move about, to enjoy himself, to make his home comfortable and to make his future secure for his children.

Employmentis a contract between two parties, one being the employerand the other being the employee. In a commercial setting, the employer conceives of a productive activity, generally with the intention of creating profits, and the employee contributes labor to the enterprise, usually in return for payment of wages.

To the extent that employment or the economic equivalent is not universal, unemployment exists.

Some people consider the employment system to be unfair given that the people who contribute the majority of work to an organisation do not receive a proportionate share of the profit. However, the surrealist movement is one of the few groups to actually opposework, and during the partially surrealist-influenced events of May 1968 the walls of the Sorbonne were covered with anti-work graffiti.

Laborers often talk of “getting a job, ” or “having a job.” This conceptual metaphor of a “job” as a possession has led to its use in slogans such as “money for jobs, not bombs.” Similar conceptions are that of “land” as a possession (real estate) or intellectual rights as a possession (intellectual property).

An employer is a person or institution that hires employees or workers. Employers offer wages to the workers in exchange for the worker’s labour-power. Employers include everybody from individuals hiring a babysitter to governments and businesses which hire many thousands of employees. In most western societies governments are the largest single employers, but most of the work force is employed in small and medium businesses in the private sector. Note that although employees may contribute to the evolution of an enterprise, the employer maintains autonomous control over the productive infrastructure of land and capital, and is the entity named in contracts. The employer typically also maintains ownership of intellectual property created by an employee within the scope of employment and as a function thereof. These are known as “works for hire.” Within large organisations the management of employees is often handled by Human Resources or Personnel departments.

An employee is any person hired by an employer - typically, a worker hired to perform a specific “job”. Typical examples include accountants, solicitors, lawyers, photographers, among many other worker classifications. There are different classes of employees. Some are permanent and provide a guaranteed salary; other employers hire workers on short term contracts or rely on consultants. The employee contributes labor and expertise to an enterprise. Employees perform the discrete activity of economic production. Of the three factors of production, employees usually provide the labor. Some companies feel that a happier work force is a better one and thus offer extra benefits to improve morale and performance.

However, other employers try to increase profits by providing low wages and few benefits. To resist this, employees can organise into labor unions (American English), or trade unions (British English), that represent most of the available work force and must therefore be listened to by the management. This is the source of considerable bad feeling between the two sides, and sometimes even violence.

An individual who entirely owns the business for which he labors is known as self-employed, although if a self-employed individual has only one client for whom he performs work, he may be considered an employee of that client for tax purposes. Workers who are not paid wages, such as volunteers, are generally not considered as being employed. Someone who works under a threat of physical force is known as a slave and slave-owners are also not considered employers. Some historians suggest that slavery is older than employment, but both arrangements have existed for all recorded history.

Ø 2) Answer the questions to the text:

a) How can you characterise the attitude of Britons to work?

b) What do we call people who enjoy work and are committed to it?

c) Are you a workaholic?

d) How many people work in the state sector?

e) Who are the biggest employers in Britain?

f) Whom do trusts represent?

g) What do employees want to get out of the system?

h) Whom do we call “state employees”?

Ø 3) The following phrases appear in this text. Find them and note their meanings: out of a job; the profits of the businesses; raise plenty of money; shareholders; consumers of state services; taxpayers; public net; in a commercial setting; a proportionate share of the profit; real estate; the private sector; ownership of intellectual property; the available work force; a self-employed individual; under a threat of physical force.

Ø 4) Find the words/word combinations which have the opposite meaning to the given ones from the text: ad­vantages; different; hard working; to hire; to improve; to include; permanent; profitable; to resist; to secure; slavery; unemployment.

Ø 5) Write a summary of the text.