I am grateful to Blackburn and Prandy for their responses to the bookConstructing Classes (Rose and O'Reilly 1997) and the paper ’ChangingEmployment Relations...?’ The former reported on progress made bymid-1997 in producing a new official social classification schema for theU.K. As such it offered only an interim version of the proposed newschema. The WES paper, using this interim schema, was intended only asa modest contribution to the debate on labour market ‘flexibility’ and itssupposed effects. As is made clear in the conclusions to the paper, we donot regard the data presented there as providing anything other than primafacie evidence that, notwithstanding recent labour market changes, classescan still be distinguished using employment relations criteria. I readilyconcede that neither the individual level survey data used in the paper norits very simple analyses could possibly provide conclusive evidence.