Connected Yet Disconnected: New Public Management and Labour Expropriation within Public Employment Services Work

Abstract

This study examines public employment services in Ontario from the standpoint of those who deliver the services. There is a paucity of empirical research in this particular field of public service delivery, specifically Canadian based research that focuses on the work of the employment specialists who are client-facing workers. The thesis distinctly applies Marxist Labour Process Theory and Foucauldian Governmentality to explicate the work experiences of employment specialists in Ontario’s current iteration of public employment services, Employment Ontario (EO), while taking into consideration the transitions of the EO labour process. In researching public employment services in advanced neoliberal capitalist countries, such as Canada, New Public Management (NPM) is likely unavoidable and is a focal point in this analysis. The thesis presents NPM as a systemic outgrowth of neoliberal governance and as a mechanism by which the government seeks to control-manage vulnerable people and public resources through the imposition of for-profit-businesslike practices in public service administration and delivery. With EO, NPM governance stretches to not-for-profit (NFP) work, and stimulates a drift from NFP social economy values. The current EO service delivery network predominantly consists of publicly-funded NFP organizations. This research takes a distinct focus in how it applies a unique analytic framework while it simultaneously seeks to fill a gap in public employment services and NFP research. Using qualitative interview data from thirty-two research participants, this thesis analyzes the work, identity, and behaviours of NFPs and their EO employment specialists, as well as the current outgoing and incoming funding structures of EO. It highlights the intended and unintended consequences of operationalizing public employment services through market-based policies and practices. The thesis concludes by providing a discussion on pathways to extend this study and alternative policies and practices that challenge the current businesslike approach to the administration and delivery of public employment services in Canada.