Work and Economic Life

Jockey's Story and the Changing Nature of Work

Jockey, at 15, began making bronze mushroom valves for steam engines in 1885. His foreman instructed him on how to operate the lathe, emphasizing a solid stance for the arduous task. Jockey's initial question about the quantity of valves was met with the foreman's ambiguous reply, "'Ow many stars in 'eaven?'", indicating a never-ending workload. After an initial promotion from tea-making and errands to valve production, Jockey remained in that role for 61 years.

Throughout his tenure, Jockey faced challenging working conditions. Several times, the floorboards beneath him broke, requiring repair. He took only five days off in 61 years: three for the Spanish flu in 1918 and two upon his wife's death in 1935. After making his millionth valve and shortly after the end of the Second World War at 76 years old he quit.

On his last day, after the floor collapsed yet again, Jockey informed his foreman, George, of his retirement. His colleagues gifted him an armchair, humorously suggesting he would wear it out and need the joiner again. Introducing the new apprentice, the foreman asked Jockey to show him the ropes. Jockey, echoing his initial instruction, advised the boy to get comfortable against the lathe and "rip into 'em!"

Transformation of Work in Modern Societies

Robert Roberts' description of Jockey's life in Salford during the early 20th century contrasts sharply with work in developed countries today. This chapter explores the evolution of work and the structure of modern economies, examining recent trends and the understanding of "work" itself.

Defining Work

Work, whether paid or unpaid, involves mental and physical effort to produce goods and services that meet human needs. An occupation or job is work done for a wage or salary. Work is the basis of the economy in all cultures. The economic system comprises institutions for the production and distribution of goods and services.

It's common to equate work with a paid job, but non-paid labor, such as housework or car repairs, is significant and contributes to the continuation of societies. Voluntary work for charities and organizations plays an important social role, filling gaps in services and enhancing quality of life. Various types of work don't fit traditional employment categories. The informal economy, involving cash transactions and self-provisioning, isn't always recorded in employment statistics.

The informal economy includes transactions outside regular employment, such as exchanging cash for services without receipts or exchanging stolen goods for favors. Self-provisioning activities, like do-it-yourself projects and using household tools, provide goods and services that might otherwise be purchased (Gershuny and Miles 1983).

Global Differences in Work Experience

The experience of work varies significantly between developed and developing countries. Agriculture remains the primary employment source in most of the developing world, while it accounts for a small proportion in industrialized countries. The term "industrialized countries" is becoming less accurate as service employment increases. The realities of paid work differ greatly between rural settings in developing countries and office environments in the developed world. Employment laws in developed countries protect workers' rights, health, and safety, whereas "sweatshops" with long hours and low pay persist in less regulated developing countries (Louie 2001). This global labor division results in cheaply produced goods being sold to relatively wealthy workers in industrialized countries.

Employment Patterns and the Informal Economy

Employment patterns differ globally. The informal economy (or "black economy") is relatively small in most developed countries compared to the formal paid employment sector, although many recent migrant workers earn their livings in it. In developing countries, the informal economy thrives due to cheap labor and enforced flexibility. Many people primarily experience work in the informal sector, which is often considered the norm. While many rely on informal work to survive, governments face constrained spending plans due to lost tax revenues, potentially hindering economic development. What work means to people varies significantly across different regions of the world.

The Significance of Housework

Having a paid job is crucial, especially in the developed world. The category of work stretches widely to include unpaid work in the informal economy. Housework, traditionally done mostly by women, is usually unpaid despite being hard and exhausting. Ann Oakley's studies explore housework in detail.

Gender and Domestic Labor

Sociologists are interested in how women's increasing involvement in the labor market has affected the domestic division of labor. With the amount of domestic work remaining consistent but fewer women being full-time housewives, household affairs must be organized differently.

Craft Skills and the Division of Labor

The primary concern of sociologists is to understand how the increase of women in the workforce impacts the division of labor within households. For example, metalworkers would forge iron, shape it, and assemble the implement themselves. As industries have modernized, conventional crafts have been taken over by larger-scale production processes.

Modern societies exhibit a complex division of labor, with work being divided into numerous specialized occupations. Traditional societies involved mastering a craft through lengthy apprenticeships. Modern society has witnessed a shift in the location of work. Before industrialization, most work took place at home and was completed collectively by all members of the household. Advances in industrial technology, contributed to the separation of work and home and factories owned by entrepreneurs became focal points of industrial development.

The contrast in the division of labor between traditional and modern societies is extraordinary. Even in the largest traditional societies, there were typically no more than 20 or 30 major craft trades, along with roles like merchants, soldiers, and priests. In a modern industrial system, there are thousands of distinct occupations, and UK Census Lists some 20,000 distinct jobs in the British economy. Traditional communities were economically self-sufficient, producing their own food, clothes, and necessities.

Economic Interdependence

Economic interdependence has expanded enormously. We depend on many other workers for the products and services that sustain our lives. Most people in modern societies do not produce their own food, houses, or material goods.

Early Sociologists on the Division of Labor

Early sociologists extensively discussed the potential consequences of the division of labor for both individual workers and society as a whole.

Karl Marx

Karl Marx speculated that modern industry would reduce work to dull, uninteresting tasks, alienating people from their work. Alienation refers to feelings of indifference or hostility not only to work but also to the overall framework of industrial production within a capitalist setting. In traditional societies, work was often exhausting, but peasants had real control over their work. Many industrial workers have little control over their jobs, contribute only a fraction to the creation of the overall product, and have no influence over how or to whom it is eventually sold. For workers like Jockey, work appears as something alien, a task that must be carried out to earn an income but that is intrinsically unsatisfying.

Émile Durkheim

Émile Durkheim had a more optimistic outlook about the division of labor, although he too acknowledged its potentially harmful effects. According to Durkheim, the specialization of roles would strengthen social solidarity within communities through mutual dependency. Solidarity would be enhanced through multidirectional relationships of production and consumption. Durkheim saw this arrangement as highly functional, although he was also aware that social solidarity could be disrupted if change occurred too rapidly, resulting in normlessness or anomie.

Taylorism and Fordism

Adam Smith, identified advantages that the division of labor provides in terms of increasing productivity. In The Wealth of Nations (1776), Smith described the division of labor in a pin factory. A person working alone could perhaps make 20 pins per day. However, by breaking down that worker's task into a number of simple operations, ten workers carrying out specialized jobs in collaboration with one another could collectively produce 48,000 pins per day. The rate of production per worker, in other words, is increased from 20 to 4,800 pins, each specialist operator producing 240 times more than when working alone.

Frederick Winslow Taylor's "scientific management" involved studying industrial processes to break them down into simple timed operations. Taylorism maximized industrial output and impacted workplace politics and eroded the basis on which craft workers maintained autonomy from their employers (Braverman 1974). As such, Taylorism has been widely associated with the deskilling and degradation of labor.

Fordism designates the system of mass production tied to the cultivation of mass markets. In certain contexts, the term has a more specific meaning, referring to a historical period in the development of post-Second World War capitalism, in which mass production was associated with stability in labour relations and a high degree of unionization. Under Fordism, firms made long-term commitments to workers, and wages were tightly linked to productivity growth. Firms and unions negotiated formal agreements that ensured worker consent to automated work regimes and sufficient demand for mass-produced commodities. The system is generally understood to have broken down in the 1970s, giving rise to greater flexibility and insecurity in working conditions.

Henry Ford designed his first auto plant at Highland Park, Michigan, in 1908 to manufacture only one product - the Model T Ford - involving the introduction of specialized tools and machinery designed for speed, precision and simplicity of operation. One of Ford's most significant innovations was the introduction of the assembly line. Each worker on Ford's assembly line was assigned a specialized task. By 1929 production of the Model T ceased, more than 15 million cars had been produced.

Ford was among the first to realize that mass production requires mass markets. In 1914, Ford took the unprecedented step of unilaterally raising wages at his Dearborn, Michigan, plant to US$5 for an eight-hour day - a very generous wage at the time and one that ensured a working-class lifestyle that included owning such an automobile. Ford also enlisted the services of social workers who were sent into the homes of workers to educate them in the proper habits of consumption.

Limitations and Difficulties of Fordism and Taylorism

As firms adopted Fordist methods, the system encountered certain limitations. The system can only be applied effectively to industries producing standardized products for large markets. Setting up mechanized production lines is expensive and rigid. Fordist production is easy to copy if funding is available, but firms with expensive labor find it difficult to compete with cheaper wages (e.g., Japanese and South Korean car industries).

Fordism and Taylorism are low-trust systems where jobs are set by management and geared to machines. Workers are closely supervised with little autonomy. Continuous monitoring can erode commitment and morale, leading to worker dissatisfaction, absenteeism, and industrial conflict.

High-Trust Systems

A high-trust system permits workers to control the pace and content of their work within guidelines. Such systems have become more common, transforming how we think about work.

Globalization and Post-Fordism

Flexible practices have recently been introduced in many areas, including production and techniques. Group production, problem-solving teams, multi-tasking, and niche marketing are strategies adopted by companies in order to restructure and take advantage of the global economy. Post-Fordism describes an era where flexibility and innovation are maximized. The term refers to overlapping changes occurring not only in work and economic life, but also in society as a whole. Some writers argue for it within areas of party policies, welfare programs, and lifestyle choices.

Group Production

Group production - collaborative work groups in place of assembly lines to increase worker motivation by letting groups of workers collaborate in team production processes rather than requiring each worker to spend the whole day doing a single repetitive task, like inserting the screws in the door handle of a car.

An example of group production is in quality circles (QCs): groups of between five and twenty workers who meet regularly to study and resolve production problems. Workers who belong to QCs receive extra training. They represent a break from the assumptions of Taylorism, since they recognize that workers possess the expertise to contribute towards the definition and method of the tasks they carry out.

Positive effects of group production for workers can include the acquisition of new skills, increased autonomy, reduced managerial supervision and growing pride in the goods and services that they produce. Direct managerial authority is generally less apparent in a team process, but other forms of monitoring exist, such as supervision by other team workers. Graham (1995) also found that Subaru-Isuzu used the group-production concept as a means of resisting trade unions.

Flexible Production and Mass Customization

One of the most important changes in worldwide production processes over the past few years has been the introduction of computer-aided design and flexible production. Henry Ford's famous quip was that 'People can have the Model T in any color - so long as it's black.' Computer-aided designs have altered this situation in a radical way. Stanley Davis speaks of 1he emergence of 'mass customizing': the new technologies allow lhe large-scale production of items designed for particular customers. Stanley Davis says that it is now possible to customize every one of 1he shirts just as quickly as, and at no greater expense lhan, producing five thousand identical shirts (Davis 1988).

Laurie Graham's study of 1he Subaru -Isuzu factory documented instances when workers were left waiting until the last minute for critical parts in the production process. As a result, employees were forced to work longer and more intensely to keep up with the production schedule. Technology such as the Internet can be used to solicit information about individual consumers and then manufacture products to their precise specifications.

The manufacturer that has taken mass customization the farthest is Dell Computer. Consumers who want to purchase a computer from Dell must go online to navigate Dell's website to select the mix of features they desire. After the order is placed, a computer is custom built. Dell firms used to build a product first, then worry about selling it; now, mass customizers like Dell sell first and build second. Such a shift has important consequences for industry.

Global Production

During the past 20 or 30 years, another form of production has become important - one that is controlled by giant retailers. In retailer-dominated production, firms such as the American retailer Wal-Mart- which in 2000 was the world's second largest corporation - buy products from manufacturers. Bonacich and Appelbaum (2000) show that clothing manufacturers do not responsible for the conditions under which the clothing is made. Tu•o-1hirds of all clothing sold in America is made in factories outside the United States, where workers are paid a fraction of US wages. Bonacich and Appelbaum argue that competition resulted in a global 'race 10 the bottom', in which retailers and manufacturers go any place on earth where they can pay the lowest wages possible.

Criticisms of Post-Fordism

Some transformations are occurring in the world of work, commentators reject the label 'post- Fordism', exaggerated from Fordist practices is something seen as neo-Fordism. (Wood 1989).

The idea of transition from Fordist to post-Fordist, argues that Fordist techniques were never as entrenched as some have suggested. Pollen states mass production techniques still dominate in many industries.

Changes in Occupational Structure and Trade Unionism

The occupational structure has changed very substantially since the beginning of the twentieth century. At the stare of the twenti- eth century the labour marker was domi- nated by blue-coUar manufacturing jobs, but over time the balance has shifted towards white•collar positions in the service sector. Table 20.1 shows the gradual decline of manufacturing work and the rise of the service sector in the UK since 1981. In 1900, more than three-quarters of the employed population of the UK was in manual (blue- collarJ work. Between 1981 and 2006, manufacturing jobs were reduced from 31 per cent to just l 7 per cent (male) and 18 per cent 10 6 per cent (female).

One is the continuous introduction of labour-saving machinery, culminating ln the spread of information technology industry in recent years.Another is the rise of manufacturing industry outside the West, particularly in the Far EasL. The older indusnies have experienced major cutbacks.

Trade-Unionism in Decline?

Though membership levels and the extent of their power are variable and are recognized by governments to legally "go on strike." Why unions? negotiating with employers. In the early development from industry, workers in mos1 coun1ries had no right of political rights and influence. However, union influence exists primarily in the form of a veto power, both a1 1he level of the local plant and nalionally.

The post-Second World War period witnessed a drama1ic reversal in the posi- tions of unions in advanced industrial societies. High union density was common in Western countries for several reasons. First, s1rong working-class political parties created favourable conditions for labour organiza1ion.Second, bargaining between firms and 1rade unions was coordina1ed at 1he na1ional level. The sociologist Bruce West- emn(I 997) argued for general a good period for unions (although not In the United Slates) and yet was also charac1erized by a structural shift from manufacruring 10 serv- ices.

World economic activity weakens bargain position and the increase intinsity. Union proctected working condictions continue to decline, or fail and 29 - 28.4 (ONS 2007). Trends.

Gender and the 'feminization of work'

Most of the new jobs have been created in omces and service centers and airports and many of these new job~ are being filled by women. The trans- forming the experience of paid work but is also transforming gender relations in every area of society, including education and the domestic sphere.

Yet the nature of this pannershlp and the distribution of responsibilities within It have taken dlfferem forms over time. Predominantly spent in Paid work Over the past few decades, though. this situation has changed radically as more and more women have moved into the labour force in what has been described as the 'feminization' of work (Caraway 2007).

In most regions of the world today, women make up at least half of the work- force see figures 20.1 and 20.2, though the types of employment they are engaged in differ widely. In reports from the UK suggest tlmt truee-quancrs of the working female popu-lation arc engaged in part-time, low-paid work: clerical, cleaning, cashiering and catering and some have been repeated. The origins and implica- tions of this phenomenon are some of the most important

Women and the Workplace: The Historical View

For the vast majoriry of the population in pre-industrial societies and that domestic workers had children. Individual hired to work. with time and the progress of industrialization, an increas- ing division was established ber.veen home and workplace. The idea of separate spheres divided within attitudes. and markets. Women came 10 be associated with domestic values to maintain a home for food to provide to the family. Affluent women enjoyed domestic services. The burdens were harshest for poorer women, who had to provide with industrial work.

Employment outside low until the r.ventieth century. British, most women that in offices had were often sent to their parents. and concentrated with their obligations.

The Growth in Women's Economic Activity

Since the World War, and gender to change in the tasks to the scope of nature of which have traditionally been asscoiated wiht children of paid work to return after, domestic tasks. Auto helps.
There are also financial reasons, nuclear economic and pressures for households. The number of economic pressures mean it's financial.