Surplus Labour: Two Extremes
“Without food, clothing and shelter, man would most certainly die; no shadow of doubt about it. And since no service can be rendered to man that is more valuable than to prevent him from dying, is it possible, as a matter of actual fact, for any kind of labour to be worthy of greater compensation than that which is devoted to the production of food, clothing and shelter?” - From Socialism Made Plain: Why the Few are Rich and the Many Poor by Allen L.Benson (1904)
Mobilizing around a vast, empty Scottish hospital last weekend, a group of individuals dissatisfied with normative working models organised in solidarity. They often worked unpaid, some of them 15 hours at a time with indeterminate shift patterns. The hospital was for them simultaneously a site of abandonment and creative fertility, a rotten husk from which a new, collective experience might emerge. They had struggled to receive the little funding they had by tumbling head first through funding applications, just another form of unsolicited labour to add to the ever growing list...
Meanwhile in the south, a group of people with decidedly more practical vocational interest, the junior doctors, mobilized in a desperate attempt to protect the most vital aspects of their profession. In contrast, the hospitals they operate in are often overflowing with people in need of care, stretched to their limits by a receding pool of funding and resources. They are also overworked and underpaid. Unfortunately for us all, their livelihoods are currently under siege from politicians and bureaucrats with no first hand knowledge of how their care can be most effectively implemented (See Aaron Bastani’s insightful account of Mr.Hunt’s aristocratic inheritance and shaky legitimacy for the role of Health Secretary*). The Conservatives are hell-bent on privatising weekend treatments, arguing for a ‘Seven Day NHS’; a straw man proposal - the NHS already operates across seven days. Subsequently ninety eight per cent of junior doctors voted in favour of strike action. This was a last ditch attempt to resist the unreasonable encroachment of rampant privatisation currently being implemented by a stone face Tory party.
It is frankly unnerving that in my short, basic analysis of the two social groups above, many similarities and connections may be traced. This is because these two social groups should by all means, conventionally speaking, share almost nothing directly in common. In the first instance, I was referring to my own voluntary participation in the production of a film that will be premiered at Glasgow International 2016. I was actively a part of this group of unpaid, overworked artists chasing the golden carrot of ‘experience’, but then this picture is nothing new in the contemporary art field. ‘Free labour and rampant exploitation are the invisible dark matter that keeps the cultural sector going’ as Hito Steyerl rightfully observed. I therefore consider my committee membership at an artist-led gallery as existing within the realm of some form of creative solidarity, but one with an underlying voluntary self-exploitation. For precisely the same reason that the artist filmmaker might view an asbestos ridden husk of a hospital as a sight of boundless opportunity, they elsewhere in society may not fit so comfortably into traditional categories of labour. An artists job is to see things differently. Aside from being expected to labour for free, there is also the widely accepted view that the work of the contemporary artist is, quite necessarily, functionally useless. In times of austerity such as ours then, it is almost understandable that the arts struggle to maintain their place alongside more serious issues on the policy making table.
In marked contrast, the work of a junior doctor is necessarily functionally useful. Unlike an upturned urinal, a lobster telephone, or an ambiguous film projection, it will not be a surprise to hear that a junior doctor is usually far more effective at saving lives. So what then are these similarities of vocation that I mention previously? Why on earth would I bother attempting to make such an absurd connection between an artist and a doctor? Perhaps we can begin to unearth some semblance by looking at a couple of quotes by junior doctors themselves, both of which were used recently on the Andrew Marr show as ammunition against a disconcertingly smug Jeremy Hunt:
“Mr Hunt has made me feel demoralised, insulted and cheap. He implies we are the problem. Well I give my life to the NHS. It’s so grim on the frontline now, I sometimes work 14 or 15 hours straight without a second to even eat. I have never felt so despairing or close to quitting medicine.” - Rachel Clarke, Doctor in Oxford
“With so many patients to see I am absolutely petrified, I’m too exhausted to look after them safely. If we are stretched even more thinly over 7 days I’m certain patients are going to die.” - Andy King, also a Doctor in Oxford
As we can see the issue is not so much about pay, or even the method of work currently undertaken by the junior doctors. The source of their frustration and stress lies in their exhaustion, a symptom of being consistently overworked. This exhaustion is now coupled with the looming threat of becoming forcibly estranged from their patients. In trying to understand the details of the deliberately deceptive Tory proposal, we cannot find a direct increase in hours worked mentioned, but rather a careful deconstruction of the barriers between doctors normative and so called ‘unsocial working hours.’ As the BMA states on their website:
‘An increase in funding is needed if the health service is to provide a comprehensive seven day service. Seven day services cannot, and should not, be funded from the current pay envelope. Nor should they be resourced by increasing the burden of unsocial working across the current workforce. However, Jeremy Hunt, the secretary of state for health, has so far failed to provide details of how seven day service will be funded or staffed.’
This persistent increase in ‘unsocial working hours’ should be read as the increasing precarity of a profession that should fundamentally remain stable and secure. The junior doctors like many other workers under this government find their job security, material and psychological welfare under threat. It is through these notions of precarity and ‘unsocial working hours’ that the labour of both junior doctors and artist has become unknowingly intertwined. The sheer characteristic polarity of these vocations: functional/deliberately un-functional, rational/irrational, in this case simply demonstrates the phenomenal extent to which precariousness has spread across society. The study of precarity is subsequently a popular, even fashionable method of critique for a Neoliberal age. However in all of my research around labour and the precarious nature of work today: from readings of Franco Berardi, Guy Standing, Alex Williams & Nick Srnicek or David Frayne, I have not once heard the figure of the doctor used as an example of the precariat. This is not to say these thinkers would necessarily reject it in their analyses, the doctor is just not usually counted among the victims of state oppression.
At each end of this spectrum of contemporary labour, there are also questions of value and importance. The Conservative government apparently, paradoxically, deems the work of the junior doctors as too important to be left to the whims of the doctors themselves, or even their representatives the BMA. Preferring what would be for many an economically unattainable service, in the name of a ‘quality service.’ This question of value cuts to the heart of the NHS debate, for the junior doctors find themselves stuck in the middle of oppositional political agendas: the market fundamentalist approach vs the last remnants of a socialist welfare programme.
Whereas the junior doctors work within a sphere of solicited importance, the artist on the other hand operates within a realm of un-solicited importance. The artist and art worker often exists in a state of permanent precariousness, consistently required to prove him or herself through funding applications, receiving little or no commercial return. The artist or art worker is frequently expected to work for free. This unpaid work is rationalised by the employer or gallery as ‘work experience’, or as a labour of love. It is interesting to note that this is also the case with the junior doctor, and even more so under the new contract proposal. They are required to prove themselves through working ‘unsocial hours’, sometimes unpaid, because they are expected to enjoy every minute, or because they too need the experience. In both cases then, it is the surplus labour that becomes the problem. It is the expectation of a society that thrives on exhaustion, stress, and toil that is the problem.
* IMO: Jeremy Hunt: Aristocrat, Liar, Secretary of State for Nepotism and Privatisation: http://novaramedia.com/2016/02/imo-jeremy-hunt-aristocrat-liar-secretary-of-state-for-nepotism-and-privatisation/
* Karolina Bregula - Glasgow International: http://glasgowinternational.org/artists/karolina-bregula/
* Hito Steyerl - Politics of Art: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/politics-of-art-contemporary-art-and-the-transition-to-post-democracy/
* Andrew Marr Show: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b070rt5r/the-andrew-marr-show-07022016
* BMA Website: http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/Junior_doctor_contract_reform%E2%80%94as_bad_as_it_seems%3F
