It seems we live in changed times, where the average person knows the current cash rate and hangs on the RBA's monthly rate decisions. Have you noticed that the calls for the banks to pass on the entire rate cut (when it comes) are becoming louder and more earnest? The first Tuesday in November is no longer entirely devoted to the form guide, the fashions in the field, and predictions given in the office around what horse you drew in the sweep.
It wasn't always this way.
While some would suggest we are simply taking a greater interest in finance, Dick Bryan and Mike Rafferty have a different theory. Their article 'The new class politics of financial risk' was published in Dissent magazine in issue 37.
An excerpt appears below.
The growth of part-time work is part of a larger set of changes facing labour at work. These changes in the world of work include the growth of casual work as a new norm in labour markets, and growing intensity of work, and the general precariousness of all work…
Labour and the households they live in are now also at the forefront of another form of risk shifting – the shifting of risks that used to be managed collectively by the state…
Workers are now exposed to greater financial risk via higher debt, mortgage stress and fixed costs (utilities, childcare etc) and reliance on superannuation.
The state commercialised and privatised many services which were once free or provided at cost, increasing entanglements with financial markets to fund or insure against these exposures to life course events. In the process workers and their households have taken on an additional role of financial subject, or if you excuse the pun have become an asset class.
More than just as borrowers, households have been encouraged to think of themselves as small businesses – managing the assets and debts, and the risk exposures through financial (and Labour) markets (the ownership Society)…
Capitalism has been changing in very important ways over the last 20 or so years. Many of these changes seem to be piecemeal or one-off changes. Looking back we can now see them as part of a consistent and coherent process, and despite the GFC the process still has strong momentum…
It will be the job of organised labour to develop a dialogue with workers in this country and globally about their significance and what might be done.
And it may well be that in articulating and representing these new experiences and challenges new ways of organising develop, new needs will be articulated and new sites of organising might be found. If so, it would be entirely consistent with the history of innovation and renewal of organised labour.
If you wish to access the entire article, back issues can be purchased from Dissent magazine
We have certainly seen a casualisation of the workforce. Work has become less secure over the past 20 years. Mortgage payments have grown as a percentage of discretionary spending. Power bills are affecting people like they never have before. These changes are indisputable.
What are your thoughts on the idea that a heavier financial burden is being borne by individuals rather than by the State or the Commonwealth? And what role do you think collectivism will play in changing and even reversing this trend?