White-Collar Proletariat?

Abstract

• Summary: This paper considers the experience of a small cohort of agency care managers 1 ( N = 23) in the context of the ongoing debate about the deskilling of social work. Evidence is presented and discussed in relation to post-war studies of the labour process and asks whether Braverman's proposition that deskilling is an inevitable outcome of capitalism's labour process has any relevance in explaining whether agency social workers are `white-collar proletarians' or not. • Findings: The article identifies that there have been important changes to the social work labour process, including the regimes of care/case management and the subsequent intensification of employee workloads and deskilling (particularly for agency workers). However, for agency workers there are important processes that have stood to contain the full impact of proletarianization. • Applications : The evidence provided suggests that 1) social work is still experiencing significant forces of change which continue to extend the process of proletarianization; 2) the expansion of the private sector in social care and the continuing reliance upon agency care managers remain but two examples of such detrimental change for both social work and service users/carers; and 3) without resistance deskilling and marginalization are likely to continue.