The close supervision of further education lecturers: ‘You have been weighed, measured and found wanting’

Abstract

This is an empirically based study of changes in the FE lecturer labour process driven by college managers under pressure from central state targets and funding controls. Two elements of labour management are considered: close observation and professional development. The dialectical dynamic of workplace employment relations is exposed as an endless struggle between managers seeking to degrade the staff through control over task and staff seeking to maintain professional standards to protect themselves and their vision of education. The findings are expressed in the words of the lecturers themselves and reveal the everyday pathology of ever more oppressive workplace labour management in the context of a particular organizational political economy.