Work and Employment PDF

WORK AND EMPLOYMENT DEFINITIONS  Work – the performance of tasks requiring mental and physical effort, whether paid or unpaid  Occupation (job) – work done in exchange for a wage  Work is the basis of the economy, including the production and distribution of goods and...

WORK AND EMPLOYMENT DEFINITIONS  Work – the performance of tasks requiring mental and physical effort, whether paid or unpaid  Occupation (job) – work done in exchange for a wage  Work is the basis of the economy, including the production and distribution of goods and services.   Pre-industrial societies included 20-30 trades and specialized roles, e.g., priest, blacksmith, teacher, merchant, etc.  Traditional craftwork, or the apprenticeship/mastery model.  Not entirely pre-industrial – e.g., housebarns, late 19th century  Production and household activity were mixed, with production occurring near or inside the home.  Production was distributed and women often had considerable influence in Housebarn, Steinbach Mennonite Heritage Museum economic matters, just as children were more likely to participate in work. A BRIEF HISTORY OF WORK  Industrialization/urbanization multiplies roles:  Separation of domestic and economic spheres (private/public)  Thousands of positions with high levels of economic interdependence (Durkheim and organic solidarity)  Daily lives become largely dependent on the products and services of others.  Erased small scale artisanship and deskilled the workforce  Hyper-specialized, driven by scale  New types of work also introduce a qualitative change in the experience of work. A BRIEF HISTORY OF WORK  Adam Smith (1723-1790) – identified the advantage of the division of labour, e.g., pin manufacturing. Simplified tasks would greatly increase production, by as much as 240x over working alone.  Frederick Winslow Taylor (1865-1915) – Taylorism (scientific management) as a system of production intended to maximize output by investing all knowledge of production in management (vs workers).  Henry Ford (1863-1947) – Fordism (early 20th century – early 1970’s) using specialized tools and tasks to increase speed and precision = assembly line. A BRIEF HISTORY OF WORK This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA  New forms of ‘dull’ and seemingly meaningless work – without purpose, or purpose unknown.  David Graeber (2018) – nearly ½ of all work has become pointless and psychologically destructive, forcing people to adopt a type of virtuous suffering.  Flunkies – help superiors feel important  Goons – who do ‘dirty’ work  Duct Tapers – who patch over problems  Box Tickers – pretend to be useful  Taskmasters – who ‘make work’  Alienation (Marx) – loss of control over the production process, leading to indifference and hostility. As a result, work becomes alien to the worker. A BRIEF HISTORY OF WORK   By mid-1970’s, international markets opened and there was new competition for the Fordist model – beyond domestic production and consumption.  Fordism only applied to large, uniform markets.  Too inflexible  Wage pressures due to globalization  Low-trust and high surveillance – machines were the preferred alternative. 1969 – Honda sells its first  High-trust systems grant workers some car in America control over pace and content of work. NEW FORMS OF WORK?   Post-Fordism – departure from Case Study – Volvo (SCRIBD) Fordist principles, toward flexibility and innovation that meet the demand for diverse and customized products.  Mass customization or the New Industrial Revolution – or just the illusion of choice.  Group production – collaborative groups of workers subject to peer oversight and less managerial direction. How do we interact with the jobs we have?  Is it all about the money?  Proportionate to special skills/training?  Does wage = intelligence/ability? (argument to the purse)  Proportionate to responsibility? Value? Seniority?  What type of work is essential for social life to continue? But…  ‘Essential’ workers are typically paid less than others, e.g., food sectors less than journalism, childcare less than architecture.  What about status? WHAT DOES WORK MEAN? This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND   Carpenter – $70,000  Cardiologist – $294,000  Marking writer – $66,247  Dentist – $200,000  Journalist – $62,400  Lawyer – $149,674  Interior Designer – $60,315  Data science – $135,260  Accountant – $58,500  Electrical Engineer – $134,178  Bookkeeper/Clerk – $49,273  Investment Banker – $128,903  Private investigator – $48,750  Air traffic controller – $127,294  Instructor/teacher – $48,688  Architect – $126,497  Bus driver – $44,767  Civil Engineer – $111,735  Proofreader – $43,269  Accounting Manager – $110,000  Restaurant Manager – $42,412  School Principal - $104,797  Landscaper – $39,975  Software developer – $103,404  Cook – $37,050  Credit Analyst – $100,115  Concierge – $35,100  Database Admin – $91,650  Assembler – $34,125  Biologist – $86,939  Warehouse worker – $33,394  Dietician – $78,614  Cosmetician – $32,424  Building Inspector – $78,534  Bank Teller – $31,673  Police officer – $72,345  Cashier – $29,259  Paralegal – $72,271  Nanny – $27,300 Talent.com  Ways of thinking about work (Budd):  A source of money to meet needs and wants  Activity that exercises and teaches skills THE DIVERSE  Variety or access to new contexts ATTITUDES TO  Temporal structure that provides WORK rhythm and purpose  Social contact, including friends and social participation  As a source of personal identity (esteem, contribution) that is socially validated  Work may not conform to the ‘orthodox’ category of paid employment.  Informal economy – production and transactions outside the sphere of regular employment, e.g., cash economy, barter systems, etc. This form of work is rarely recorded.  >2 billion work worldwide  >80% of the workforce in Africa  >60% of the workforce in Asia/Pacific and Arab world  40% of the workforce in the Americas  25% of the workforce in Europe and Central Asia TYPES OF WORK  Global South is characterized by agricultural and informal work, with a smaller % of the population working in the industrialized (formalized) economy.  Global North is characterized by large service sectors (white collar) that are tightly regulated, e.g., hours of work, minimum wage, etc.  Labour saving machinery = less labourers  Welfare state development and bureaucratic expansion  Loss (export) of manufacturing jobs, 1970’s…e.g., clothing manufacturers now rarely employ garment makers directly. TYPES OF WORK   Unions developed in response to new and expanding modern industry, when workers had little or no influence over the conditions of work.  Collective organization  Defensive posture  Counters the power of employers  Membership declining in the late 20th century UNIONS 1919, Wpg General Strike (6 weeks) Issues: impoverishment, rising prices, unstable work, ethnic discrimination, and relative poverty   % of employees who were UNIONS IN union members decreased from 38% in 1981 to 29% in 2022. CANADA  Union membership remains stable in non-commercial sectors e.g., education, health care, social assistance, public administration, etc.  Union membership is declining in commercial sectors, e.g., goods production, manufacturing, forestry, mining, construction, etc.  Why the decline?  Decline in manufacturing = decline in large workforces (collective identities) = decline in trade unions.  Unemployment in some sectors and the export of labour weakened workers’ bargaining position  Flexible production/Casualization – the turn to part-time/casual  The paradox of right and left leaning governments  Right-wing governments likely oppose unionization  Left-wing or labour ‘friendly’ political parties introduce worker protection = reducing the need for unions UNIONS  Feminization of work – the increasing involvement of women in the paid labour force in the 20th century (61.6% vs 69.7% for men).  The increase in women’s economic activity correlates with the growth of part-time and low pay positions (23.8% of PT positions in Canada vs 12.8% of men).  The average age of motherhood has increased  Smaller families = fewer obligations at home  Economic pressures on households  Work as a site for personal fulfillment FEMINIZATION OF WORK  Occupational positions become associated with cultural meanings.  Occupational Gender Segregation – women occupy categories of occupations that are low paying, mundane/routine, and with little opportunity of promotion.  5C’s – cleaning, catering, caring, cashiering, and clerical  Vertical segregation – jobs that provide little or no opportunities for advancement or increasing authority.  Horizontal segregation – the tendency for men and women to occupy ‘gendered’ job categories, e.g., STEM research. INEQUALITIES AT WORK In Canada? Gender pay gap – is based on gender segregation but also within similar/same occupational roles, e.g., same work, but less pay. This gap is closing in developed countries.  Ann Oakley (1974) – housework as a major sphere of unpaid work, essential to social life:  Unacknowledged and unrewarded (monetarily and/or in status), even though housework accounts for 25-40% of wealth in industrialized countries.  Separation of home and work through industrialization – home becomes the center of consumption and leisure  Domestic work increasingly becomes invisible and the natural domain of women  Economic dependency  A sphere of isolation that is difficult to escape – women experience no clear division between work and home, or they work in both.  Domestic work changed with automation, e.g., appliances, heat, water, etc. without being reduced. Why? WORK AND THE DOMESTIC SPHERE  Will changes to the orthodox nuclear family also change the domestic division of labour?  Intergenerational studies  The negotiation of domestic tasks has not changed on pace with the negotiations of salary in the labour market.  Men tend to have more leisure time  Men tend to take on easier tasks  Outsourcing of domestic work, if income permits WORK AND THE DOMESTIC SPHERE Where is automation and technology taking us as a society?  Maybe this eliminates jobs that people generally hate – reducing alienation.  Maybe this just increases distance from products and production, e.g., more hyper-specialization.  Bifurcated workforce – small groups of highly skilled/specialized professionals (high control) with larger groups of clerical/service workers (no control)  A return to ‘low-trust’ and ‘low-skill’ production? AUTOMATION AND DESKILLING   Futurology – extrapolating current trends into the future – bright or dark? Happy or hopeless?  Will automation lead to more time-off, or just rising unemployment?  Does technology stop, so we can think about it? DOES LESS WORK MEAN A BETTER Wall-E, Disney/Pixar LIFE?   30-50% of jobs are at risk due to automation. Or not?  Widespread adoption of AI and the automation of:  Commercial vehicles (320,000 truck drivers and 50,000 taxi drivers in Canada)  Menial and dangerous tasks  Product distribution  Bio-medicine, e.g., reading scans  Accommodation and food sectors KCBS Radio Mercedes Humanoid AUTOMATION robot – parts delivery. AND DESKILLING Futorology Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974)  Automation increasingly leads to deskilling and intensifies feelings of alienation (detached and unthinking).  The increase of automation is due to social class divisions.  Monopoly Capitalism – since the late 19th century, smaller firms are increasingly absorbed or pushed out of the market by larger firms. These larger firms can afford technologies that enhance efficiencies. A new age of Taylorism. DON’T BLAME THE MACHINES! This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA  Post-industrial society/Knowledge Economy – is the new information age when most of the workforce withdraws from physical production of goods, and is primarily involved in their design, technological development, and servicing.  High technology, education, training, R&D  Multi-skilling – employment based on adaptability and acquisition of new skills.  Portfolio Workers – works that have skill portfolios, or various skills and credentials, enabling occupational shifts.  Homeworking – liberation from the fixed office or workplace, or a re-blending of work and home, care and instrumental work. TOWARD A KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY?