The changing nature of the employment contract
Summary
Research suggests that the extent to which contractual relations between employees and employers have changed recently has been underestimated. Our review of how the changing nature of contracts of employment has affected industrial relations and organisational culture finds that:
The contract of employment is at the heart of industrial relations; it not only determines pay and benefits, working time and other conditions of employment, but also sets the scene for the "psychological" work contract which in turn characterises organisational culture.
One standard legal textbook on employment contracts notes that "the contract of employment is like no other type of contract, mainly because it directly affects the relationships between people in the very core of their lives. It is trite to say that we spend more time at work than in any other facet of our lives, but the terms and conditions that affect that part of our lives are, or at least should be, of considerable significance to us."1
A recent report by Institute of Employment Research considers that little attention has so far been given to the wider implications of the changing nature of contracts of employment. The author argues that "increasing employment fragmentation and changing boundaries between organisations present formidable obstacles to identifying trends in 'contingent' employment and almost certainly lead to underestimation of the extent to which contractual relations between employers and employees have changed and are likely to change in the future."2
"Non-standard" contracts of employment of all types are spreading rapidly amongst the workforce. This article looks at some of the important industrial relations and organisational culture implications of the adoption of such contracts, focusing on short-term contracts, flexible hours arrangements, annualised hours, personal contracts and homeworking. We also examine recent developments in the public sector, which has had to deal with the breakdown of national bargaining and the impact of market testing and compulsory competitive tendering, and where non-standard employment is particularly prevalent.
The main forms of "non-standard" contract
There are a number of different types of employment contract which have come to be called "non-standard". Non-standard working is often defined as anything which is not performed under a permanent full-time contract of employment. The most common categories of non-standard contract are: part-time working, fixed-term contracts, casual employment, and zero hours contracts.
The great majority of organisations make use of one or more non-standard employment contracts. Our 1994 survey of non-standard working found that 84% of organisations employed at least one person on a non-standard contract, whilst only 16% said that the entire workforce was employed on a permanent full-time basis (IRS Employment Trends 570).
Other significant forms of non-standard working may be identified, in addition to the above. Leaving aside agency-supplied temporary workers (where there is generally no contract of employment with the organisation) and certain special arrangements such as term-time working (which are as yet uncommon), further "non-standard" contracts considered in this review are: flexible hours contracts, annualised hours, "personal contracts" and homeworking/teleworking.
Part-time working
The most common non-standard working arrangement found by our 1994 survey was part-time working for more than 15 hours a week (used by nine in 10 organisations with some form of non-standard contract). A half of all organisations had part-timers working between eight and 15 hours a week, and three in 10 employed some people on contracts of less than eight hours a week.
Part-time workers are not distributed evenly across occupations: few managers work part time. Where senior part-time posts exist these are more likely to be professional and technical jobs. Part-time working is concentrated in clerical and secretarial areas (with nearly nine in 10 organisations employing part-timers here) and in semi-skilled and unskilled jobs (just over half of organisations had these kinds of part-time worker).
Different sectors of the economy have very different concentrations of part-time workers. In hotels and catering, the survey found, one-quarter of the workforce works part-time, in public services and distribution nearly one in five, and just over one in 10 in finance. In engineering and transport and in communications, however, less than one worker in 40 is a part-timer.
Of all the forms of non-standard contract part-time working seems to have the least industrial relations implications. Our recent survey of part-time working (IRS Employment Trends 632), however, identified a number of industrial relations and cultural issues surrounding part-time working. Changing lifestyles and greater business competition have brought with them an increasing desire for more convenient opening hours and service provision. Pressures on employers to reduce costs and improve productivity have also resulted in a trend to employ some workers to cover peak hours only, rather than pay out for full-time labour costs. These pressures have resulted in an increase in part-time work.
Within the workplace, the most important reason for the growth of part-time work is employers' need for flexibility to meet these consumer demands, and the second is a demand from employees themselves, particularly from mothers returning to work, for part-time work.
Temporary employment contracts
Temporary working of all kinds - including fixed-term contracts, agency work, casual work and seasonal work - has grown much faster than employment in general over the past few years. Successive quarterly Labour Force Survey results show that while employees in employment (including the self-employed) grew by 2.4% between the spring of 1992 and the spring of 1996, the number of temporary workers increased by 30%. During the same period, fixed-term contract workers rose by 39%, agency workers by 148% and casual workers by 21%, whilst the number of seasonal workers was broadly unchanged.
This differential growth means that the proportion of temporary workers rose from 5.5% of all employees in employment in 1992 to 7.0% in 1996, the proportion of fixed-term contract workers increased from 2.8% to 3.6% during the same period, agency workers from 0.4% to 0.9%, and casual workers from 1.2% to 1.4%.
Two-thirds of organisations in our 1994 survey employed some people either on fixed-term contracts or as casual workers or both. Temporary working is far more prevalent in the public than in the private sector, with temporary workers making up 10% of all public sector employees compared with 5.7% of workers in the private sector. A 1993 IRS survey of fixed-term contracts (IRS Employment Trends 539) found that 38% of organisations across the whole economy had employees with this type of contract.
Employers' use of short-term contracts is becoming a very important industrial relations issue, particularly in the public sector. Some of the trade unions' views on short-term contracts in local government and further and higher education are examined below.
Flexible hours contracts
Many employees work under contracts of employment which provide for formal flexible hours working, where some or all employees can - within limits - normally vary the length, and the start and finish times, of their working hours.
One of the most common and well-established flexible working hours arrangements is "flexitime", surveyed in A survey of flexitime arrangements. Almost invariably, however, employers reserve the right to suspend flexitime if business conditions make it difficult to operate. Similarly, clauses in flexitime agreements will normally provide for an employee to be excluded from flexitime working as a formal disciplinary measure, particularly for bad (flexible) time-keeping or abusing the flexitime system.The interrelationships between flexitime, organisational culture and wider industrial relations issues has been demonstrated in IRS Employment Trends' company case studies and employers' responses to surveys. Over and above the practical advantages of flexitime for organisations and employees, employers have stated that flexitime was introduced for wider employee relations and cultural reasons - for example, "to improve employee morale", to "encourage an atmosphere of 'give and take' between employer and employee", as "a good employment practice", to "meet variations in workload and remain consistent with the [company's] values", and to "aid employee relations" (A survey of flexitime arrangements ).
Significantly, flexitime once introduced is seldom withdrawn, and its abandonment is almost always due to organisational factors - such as mergers, relocation, closure of sites, or changes in ownership or business culture. Two examples of organisations where cultural changes have led to the abolition of formal flexitime schemes are Cable and Wireless (IRS Employment Trends 453) and Clerical Medical and General (IRS Employment Trends 539).
When Cable and Wireless was privatised in 1981, it inherited a formal flexitime system very similar to a standard civil service scheme. Increasingly, the company found that these arrangements were not consistent with its new culture. In particular it felt that, because management was not covered by flexitime, clocking in "symbolised a relationship between management and employees far removed from the one to which it aspired - namely one based on trust and shared responsibility." A new flexible hours regime was therefore introduced, based more on the "quality of output" of employees' work in determining time off in lieu of hours performed, rather than simply the time spent in the office.
The Clerical Medical and General Life Assurance Society discontinued its formal flexitime scheme in 1993 because it felt that it militated against the type of organisational culture which it believed had now become necessary to provide fully effective customer services. The company argued that "from the angle of psychology and organisational culture, flexitime, with the consequent counting of hours and minutes and the focus on elapsed working time rather than effort and achievement, was at odds with the company's management philosophy: in particular, the fundamental concept of total quality."
Annual hours
While formal flexitime remains largely restricted to the public and voluntary sectors, other working arrangements which vary hours from the standard day or set shifts have grown considerably in recent years. One very important non-standard working time contract that has spread rapidly in the private sector - and to some extent in the public - is the annual hours contract.
Originally restricted to manufacturing and services with seasonal variations in demand and output - like ice cream production and municipal park gardening - annual hours contracts have spread to other types of work (IRS Employment Trends 608). These non-seasonal areas where annual-hours type contracts have been adopted include security services, goods distribution and broadcasting. Perhaps the most important industrial relations and cultural effects of the application of annual hours arrangements are in the areas of remuneration policy and job security. In many organisations annual hours contracts have - as they were planned to do - replaced an "overtime" culture, in which employees often worked excessive overtime hours during very busy periods.
Employers are also using annual hours contracts to influence industrial relations and work culture in the important areas of job security and maintaining as large a "core" workforce as possible. This approach has the effect of reducing recourse to hiring short-term contract and casual labour. For example, Panasonic uses annual hours contracts specifically to "provide stability of employment for employees and maintain as large a core workforce as possible." Similarly, the Port of Ipswich Authority introduced annual hours, hours banking and flexible hours to "eliminate overtime and to save jobs in a redundancy programme".
Other flexible hours arrangements
Our 1996 flexible working hours survey identified a number of other forms of flexible working which are focused on the working hours of employees (IRS Employment Trends 608). One significant development is the "flexiplace" schemes operated by some county councils for some categories of employee, for example trading standard officers and social workers, where employees can spend some time visiting clients, some time at home on administration, and some time in the normal office. These arrangements have mainly been devised to make the best use of employees' time by obviating the need to keep returning to the office during the day.
Another new concept in flexible working governed by an employment contract has been introduced at Tesco Stores (IRS Employment Trends 620). For a minority of its store staff - between 5% and 10% - a new flexible working hours arrangement is being introduced based on a span of 10 to 16 "core" hours a week, and a potential maximum of 31 hours a week. Core hours are fixed with the employee, and additional voluntary hours agreed in any one week. An important aspect of the scheme is the safeguards in employees' new contracts of employment, which include: at least 24 hours' notice of additional hours; a minimum period between shifts of 12 hours; and a minimum shift length of three hours.
These arrangements have been introduced to deal with the peaks and troughs of business in a structured way, but equally as importantly to give employees contractual safeguards, to avoid the "casualisation" of the workforce and to minimise the use of temporary staff. The arrangements are specifically intended to distinguish the scheme from "zero hours contracts".
Zero hours contracts
A recent study from the University of Huddersfield3 defines a "zero hours contract" as an arrangement "where the worker was not guaranteed any work at all but in some way was required to be available as and when the employer needed that person". Often, however, under a zero hours contract an employee had the right to refuse work, the study found.
The 1994 IRS survey of non-standard working (IRS Employment Trends 570) found that 32 of the 170 organisations in the survey used zero hours contracts but did not necessarily use the term zero hours. The great majority of organisations which used zero hours contracts did so "to provide a flexible pool of labour where extra work was required". Zero hours contracts are not new, the IRS survey pointed out, and it found that "most of the organisations which told us they used personal contracts have done so for a substantial period of time," including Queen's University Belfast which has had zero hours contracts since 1845. There was evidence, however, that the use of zero hours contracts was increasing, with eight of the 32 respondents using these contracts having adopted them in the five years to 1994.
The Huddersfield University study found that the proportion of employers using zero hours contracts was about 22%, broadly in line with the IRS 1994 finding of 19%. It, too, commented that employers have been using zero hours contract staff for a "substantial" number of years and that their use is spreading. One reason suggested for this apparent growth was that some employers are using them on a more formal basis.
A number of industrial relations issues surrounding zero hour contracts were highlighted by the Huddersfield survey. In particular:
The report concludes with a question relating to zero hours contracts and organisational culture. It says that, although the study did not attempt to investigate the ethical considerations of using zero hour contracts, "the results at least raise the question of the ethics of employing people on this basis in so far as some workers are being deprived of protection. In the light of the findings some employers may wish to re-assess their use of zero hour contracts."
Teleworking and homeworking
A recent report4 identifies a number of different types of teleworking - multi-site, tele-homeworking, freelance, mobile, and relocated back office. The report considers that teleworking is not a separate category of work but represents a component part of many kinds of work. It argues, however, that an important characteristic of teleworking is that terms and conditions of employment for homeworkers differ significantly from those normally found amongst employees working in traditional offices.
The TUC and the National Group on Homeworking5 have called for a three-point programme to safeguard homeworkers. They urge that:
BIFU is one union that has sought to protect its members who are teleworkers. An agreement with the Co-operative Bank signed at the end of last year says that "teleworking [and homeworking] is proving to have a growing importance as an alternative working option which can bring benefits to both the employer and the employee." The agreement states that teleworkers and homeworkers will be managed in line with collective agreements reached between the bank and BIFU that cover permanent staff, with the exception of the terms set out in the agreement.
These terms are intended to be as favourable as those that apply to other permanent staff. Key terms for teleworkers and homeworkers include: the provision of workstations; health and safety (including a survey by the bank of the intended workplace); and a clause which provides for teleworkers and homeworkers to attend meetings and for daily contact to be maintained. The bank has also negotiated a special teleworkers' and homeworkers' allowance to cover reasonable household expenses such as heating and lighting.
One of the key cultural issues highlighted by the agreement is the possible isolation of teleworkers and homeworkers. The Co-operative Bank agreement explicitly states that "it is recognised that teleworkers [and homeworkers] may feel a sense of isolation, through the loss of regular face-to-face contact with their colleagues." Hence, the agreement contains the clauses on meetings and day-to-day telephone contact. In industrial relations terms, special health and safety measures are particularly important for teleworkers and homeworkers, and the bank's agreement provides for, amongst other things: a pre-homeworking health and safety survey of the intended workplace; visits from BIFU health and safety representatives; and the maintenance of equipment.
Personal contracts
The spread of personal contracts, that is, individual employment contracts which make no reference to collectively bargained terms and conditions, in the past 10 years demonstrates clearly the link between the nature of contracts of employment, industrial relations and organisational structure. Trade unions are generally opposed to the introduction of personal contracts, and Unison has bluntly stated that "the mushrooming of 'personal contracts' over recent years, and their spread to larger groups of staff, is part of an overall employer strategy to weaken collective bargaining and union organisation."6
One of the largest groups of employees to move to personal contracts are members of the 3,000-strong new Senior Civil Service (IRS Employment Trends 610). Collective bargaining rights for this group was not the main issue, since the majority of this group - former grades 1 to 4 - were not previously covered by collective bargaining. Only grade 5 was covered by one of the old "central" agreements. This collective agreement for grades 5 to 7 was the last of the civil service national (central) agreements to be terminated.
The Government's rationale for introducing personal contracts was expressly cultural, although more subtle and more constructive than suggested by Unison's general views. In its consultation with the trade unions and senior civil servants, the Government argued that "the creation of a new Senior Civil Service is an important signal of the importance of effective leadership by a highly professional group of senior advisers and managers in preserving the values of the Civil Service and securing a sustained improvement in its performance." In any other public or private sector organisation, the Government maintained, it would be "standard practice" for comparable professional groups to have a written contract which makes clear their principal terms and conditions and their rights and obligations.
In the past, the terms and conditions under which civil servants were employed were set out in a number of documents, such as individual letters of appointment, various codes, circulars, guides, general circulars and departmental circulars. The Government believed that these arrangements have "contributed to the perception, which in consequence is more difficult to dispel, that senior civil servants enjoy personal appointments, not contracts, and hence a privileged position and a 'job for life'." A written contract would, the Government thought, help to dispel that notion.
Moreover, a written contract would, together with new pay arrangements, identify the senior group as a "distinct corporate group". "More importantly," the Government stressed, "it would be an important signal of the approach and culture of the Senior Civil Service, and of the change programme it leads."
Public sector developments
Many of the significant changes to the nature of contracts of employment in recent years have taken place in the public sector. The most important development to have occurred in most of the public sector is the decentralisation of pay and conditions of employment, leading to local or organisation-specific contracts. These arrangements have generally replaced nationally negotiated agreements, except in local government.
Civil service delegation
As with new contractual arrangements for the Senior Civil Service, the decentralisation of pay and conditions of employment - termed "delegation" in the Civil Service - has explicitly organisational and cultural roots.
Unlike the Senior Civil Service, there is no pay review body for the junior civil service grades. Whilst pay and conditions for senior civil servants are determined on a departmental basis, the government and the review body stress the need for "cohesion" across the whole service. This is because the Government defines the Senior Civil Service as "a corporate resource" which, in cultural terms, needs to have a much greater service-wide vision than lower grades. Senior civil servants are being encouraged to look beyond the particular interests of their departments.
In the White Paper The Civil Service: continuity and change, published in July 1994, the Government set out its reasons, essentially organisational and cultural, for introducing and extending delegation to staff who are not members of the Senior Civil Service. It argued that "experience has shown that delegated pay and grading systems have a number of advantages. They can be more flexible and more closely tailored to the needs of the organisation. No two civil service organisations are identical, any more than two organisations elsewhere in the public and private sector."
Local government
Local government employees, numbering 2.8 million including teachers, firefighters and the police, make up one in eight of the workforce in the UK. In view of the high incidence of non-standard employment contracts in local government and the size of the workforce, coupled with the enormous range of occupations within it, the scope of such contracts is probably greater than in any other sector of the economy.
The local government workforce is predominantly female, and the proportion of female workers has grown steadily over the past 20 years: 57% of the workforce were women in 1974 compared with 70% in 1996. The growth has mainly been amongst part-timers - 31% of the workforce in 1974 and 41% in 1996.
The proportion of temporary workers in local government is significantly higher than in the workforce as a whole. In 1996 temporary workers made up 7% of the workforce in Great Britain, whereas 13% of employees in local government were employed on a temporary basis according to the Local Government Management Board, based on figures from the Labour Force Survey. These figures comprise all temporary workers. The main difference between the workforce as a whole and local government employees is that in Great Britain half of all temporary workers are on fixed-term contracts, compared with two-thirds of local government temporary workers.
Various factors may account for the greater incidence of fixed-term contracts in local government. Local government is subject to tight year-to-year budget constraints from central government, over which individual authorities have little control. Compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) may also have had an impact, in that employees in direct service organisations may not have guaranteed work once service contracts they have won have expired.
Other special factors include the high proportion of female workers in local government, which means that short-term contracts to cover maternity leave may be more common than elsewhere, and the recent reorganisation of local government when affected authorities increased the use of temporary workers in the run-up to reorganisation.
The Federated Union of Managerial and Professional Officers (MPO) raised the issue of short-term contracts at last year's TUC. The moderate union, which has only recently affiliated to the TUC, submitted its first Congress motion in 1996. Part of MPO's motion argues that "Congress believes in taking a long-term view of the individual's contribution to society. This is best achieved within an environment that offers permanent secure tenure. Congress particularly abhors the use of short-term, fixed-term, and temporary contracts within the public service for professionals as this discourages long-term commitment to the very communities they serve."
Local government is still dominated by nationally negotiated agreements for different groups of employees. As a general rule, employees in councils which adhere to the national agreement have its current provisions incorporated into their contracts of employment.
Since the late 1980s a number of local authorities - around 50 - have opted out of one or more of the national agreements, replacing them with local contracts of employment. The great majority of these are small councils in the south east. The Local Government Management Board says that the rate of opting out has slowed considerably in more recent years.
Of far more importance, however, is the impact of CCT on the industrial relations culture of local government. Our survey of employee relations in local government (IRS Employment Trends 594) found that the single most important influence on industrial relations in the five years to the summer of 1995 was the introduction of CCT. Many councils who otherwise followed the national agreements found that they have had to put some workers onto local contracts in order to compete successfully with private contracts. Councils were divided, however, on whether CCT has had a beneficial or a detrimental impact on industrial relations.
In another development of industrial relations and cultural importance, unions are now poised to accept a wide-ranging single-status and harmonisation deal which both unions and employers have hailed as "historic". If the deal is eventually accepted, the great bulk of local authority manual and non-manual employees will be covered by one national agreement, with other smaller groups such as engineers and builders to follow. This will mean that contracts of employment - including hours of work - will be harmonised. There will also be a single pay spine for manual and white-collar workers.
The deal is the result of over three years of consultation and negotiation, after local government employers launched a "new industrial relations strategy" centred around the theme of single-status employment. Four "fundamental reasons" underpin the employers' pursuit of single-status contracts, which all focus on cultural considerations:
Also, in industrial relations and cultural terms, Unison has said that "the deal on offer marks the dawn of a new age of equality and fair treatment for all local government employees", and that "the old-fashioned divide between manual and white-collar workers will be ditched." Similarly, the TGWU welcomed the draft agreement since, "in future, whether you push a broom or a pen, whether you fry chips or use microchips, all in local government will enjoy equal treatment. Discrimination against manual workers will end, with new common conditions of employment for blue- and white-collar, including a 37-hour week. So, too, will discrimination against women, with new fair grading arrangements based on equal pay."
National Health Service
Industrial relations in the NHS have been affected in the past few years by the introduction of local contracts of employment and local pay bargaining. An increasing number of NHS workers are being employed on local contracts. Existing staff have the right to remain on national terms and conditions until they are promoted, their jobs change or they move employer. Staff on local contracts are not, however, covered by the national pay review body for nurses, midwives and health visitors, or by Whitley council arrangements.
From 1 April 1995, the review body recommended a two-tier approach to pay rises. It awarded a 1% increase in pay, to be topped up by local pay awards agreed individually at the level of trusts. Subsequently, the unions and employers agreed that the national rates would be uprated at the end of the bargaining year by a percentage which reflected the average of these local "top-ups". However, no agreement was reached and it was left to the review body to establish a figure, which was set at 2%. Hence, in total, the national scales were increased by 3% as a consequence of the 1995 pay review body award.
Similarly, in 1996, the review body awarded 2%, with the same provision to uprate the national scales by a measure of the average local top-up. Again, the unions and management could not agree a figure, leaving the review body to decide that scales should be increased by a further 0.8% - so the pay increase for 1996/97 was 2.8% in total. In 1997 the review body awarded 3.3% (which was staged by the last Government) with no provision for further local increases to be taken into account.
These local pay arrangements and disputes over other terms of local contracts of employment have led, in some trusts, to bad feeling and limited industrial action. A particularly contentious issue is that some trusts are attempting to "claw back" part of the 1996 local pay awards this year, where these exceeded the 2.8% uprating figure that the review body decided upon. The absence of any local element to the 1997 pay review body awards was warmly welcomed by the unions, with the Community Practitioners and Health Visitors Association (an autonomous section of MSF) saying that the 1997 award was "a return to sanity" and that it "vindicated its campaign against local pay in recent years". Unison said that it was a "snub to the Government which has been trying to force local pay on the NHS. It has been a fiasco, with half of all trusts still [in the middle of February 1997] to settle the 1996 increase - due on 1 April 1996."
A further consequence of the introduction of employment contracts within individual trusts is a potential confusion over who actually is the employer - the trust or the NHS. A handful of industrial tribunal cases have had to examine this issue recently.
Higher education
The use of short-term contract staff has been increasing in higher education in recent years, particularly for research staff in the "new" universities, which traditionally did not employ a large number of researchers. In addition, there are large numbers of hourly-paid part-time lecturers.
The replacement of permanent lecturers by staff on short-term contracts is causing the lecturers' union NATFHE some concern. Increasingly, staff are being employed on contracts of between one and three years, sometimes on one contract after another.
In the area of industrial relations, NATFHE is worried that fixed-term contract workers are difficult to organise and support, particularly where such workers have signed "waiver" clauses in respect of continuity of employment in a succession of short-term contracts. More generally, the union is concerned that an over-reliance on short-term contracts will have a demoralising impact on lecturers and may affect the quality of higher education.
Further education contract conflict
National negotiations for lecturers in the further education sector in England and Wales broke down in September 1994, a year after further education colleges left local authority control. The continuing dispute is over new employment contracts which the Colleges' Employers' Forum (CEF) insisted upon. Under local authority control lecturers' contracts of employment incorporated local authority pay and conditions of employment contained in the so-called "Silver Book", which were applied nationally across the country.
The CEF and many individual colleges, with the backing of the then Government, sought to negotiate contracts of employment which required lecturers to work longer hours than specified in the Silver Book, particularly regarding the number of days in the working year, hours in the working week, and maximum annual "contact" hours. The employers also sought to shorten the minimum redundancy notice period from 12 months to four.
Since the beginning of the contract dispute there have been no increases in the payscales of lecturers who have refused to move from Silver Book contracts. Over half of all further education colleges have been affected by strikes or disruptive industrial action.
Attempts by the CEF and the two lecturers' unions NATFHE and the ATL to resolve the dispute at ACAS failed in the summer of 1995, when NATFHE, the largest union, pulled out of talks after being unable to support a compromise contract. The much smaller ATL did reach an agreement at ACAS on the terms of a national contract. NATFHE, on the other hand, concentrated on negotiating local contracts. This added to the bitterness of the dispute by causing bad feeling between the two unions.
As in higher education, short-term contracts are common in further education, and the use of agency lecturers is growing as an alternative to part-time staff.
1"Contracts of employment", Neil Fagan, Sweet and Maxwell, 1990.
2"Employment flexibility" , Kate Purcell in "A review of the economy and employment", Institute of Employment Research, 1996.
3"Zero hours contracts", Katherine Cave, University of Huddersfield, 1997.
4"Teleworking: guidance for good practice", Ursula Huws, Institute of Employment Studies, 1997.
5"No sweat: why Britain's one million homeworkers need a new deal", Ursula Huws and the TUC, 1996.
6"Nothing personal", Unison, 1997.
