UBS is key to worker autonomy and redefining work outside of capitalism

Redistribution and reduction of commodified productivist work also enables fairer sharing of decommodified social reproduction, itself a necessary dimension of post-growth. Earlier discussion of feminist social policy drew attention to the need to advance a ‘reproductive economy of care’ in a degrowth context which necessitates revaluing paid and unpaid work (Nierling, ), as well as restructuring of and reduction in working time to decrease stress, increase gender equality in working time, and facilitate the achievement of work–life balance, as well as greater ecological sustainability. A post-growth and feminist informed care ethic understands care as ‘a species activity’ and includes care for ‘our bodies, ourselves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life sustaining web’ (Fisher and Tronto, :). Proposals for decommodification that speak directly to redistribution of care and paid work include shorter working weeks, long part time hours      .  https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279422000150 Published online by Cambridge University Press ( per week) and three-quarter working time arrangements. Many countries, led by the Nordic states, are actively experimenting with parental and paternity leave policies that enable a shift from adult-worker regimes to a more decommodified post-growth distribution of care and work or ’universal care giver’ regimes, where both care and paid work are more equally shared within households (Folbre : ). In  Ireland’s Citizen’s Assembly on Gender Equality recommended such a combination of care policies. Decommodification in a post-growth and post-productivist world also requires redistribution of work across the life course. Policies and debates about raising the pension age, ‘the commodification of life’s time’ (Biggs et al., ), are common across the OECD. Shifting from a productivist approach points towards policies that enable earlier retirement and deco modifies pensions, disentangling them from commodified work (as in the New Zealand Superannuation). Biggs et al. () address decommodification and sustainability from the perspective of aging, arguing against ‘productive ageing’ and ‘commodity consumption’ that denies older people alternative personal, bodily and psychosocial elements of a ‘long life’. Choice in retirement refers not only to retirement age, which averages  in  but is projected to rise to  within  years (OECD, ); flexibility and choice requires access to retirement income and universal care services. Valuing the decommodified, post-productivist contributions people can make to sustainability is key to enabling generational relationships evolve in a complementary sustainable rather than competitive framework. Repurposing of active labour market measures Over the last forty years many OECD countries experienced a shift from passive to active social policy where work-first conditional activation regimes commodified income support. Shifting the present focus of activation policy is a key requirement for a shift to a decommodified, post-growth and postproductivist world. Brodkin and Marston () understand activation as a combination of enabling, compensatory and regulatory policies that in the contemporary context amount to a workfare project which seeks to commodify people in low paid precarious labour. Decommodification requires a reorientation of such policy and institutions to focus on enabling functions, enhancing capability so citizens can transition at different stages in their life cycle, and seeing work as a form of social participation (Jackson, ). Activation policy has been widely critiqued for its failure to generate sustainable, good quality employment, especially for the more vulnerable (Brodkin and Marston, ). Both public employment services (PES) and active labour market programmes (ALMPs) can support new forms and patterns of participation including decently paid labour market participation, but also other forms of sustainability enhancing participation, which could work in conjunction with -, -    https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279422000150 Published online by Cambridge University Press PI and UBS as already discussed. Activation policy and practice can be resituated in a voluntary decommodified PES focused on promoting a broader navigational agency for active citizenship (Claassen, ). This is the focus of active experimentation in the Netherlands Participation Act and in local experiments in Denmark and Scotland (Larruffa et al., ), where processes of co-production enable welfare claimants to identify and take up forms of socially valuable participation. Rethinking the aims and value of ALMPs from an ecosocial perspective – that is, valuing and designing activation policy around ecological and social goals – speaks to how various countries have historically used ALMP to promote non-labour market objectives, and how some are consciously widening what is seen as acceptable forms of activity in contemporary ALMPs (Dukelow, forthcoming). Stamm et al. () find examples in Finland, Germany, Belgium and Italy of ‘ecosocial innovation’; activation projects that support local communities, and are of clear holistic benefit to participants and the environment. Swaton () describes as ‘ecological citizenship’ the use of labour market programmes in France to meet ecological objectives. In Ireland aspects of activation policy had clear roots in the social economy, social cohesion and local communities, and such ALMPs have supported ecological participation. Across Europe such existing ideas, instruments and programmes ‘hiding in plain sight’ can be integrated into a new understanding of ecosocial welfare policy. These programmes offer modest but clear starting points to reconfigure social policy towards new forms of active citizenship in an ecosocial model of activation, and for providing vital care, ecological and community services.