The World of Work in Canada

ISSUES Tonight

1. TRENDS IN WORKFORCE

2. WOMEN AND WORK

3. CONSUMERISM

4. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

PERSPECTIVES ON WORK

• STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL-consensus, cooperation, function

• Conflict-power, domination

• Symbolic Interaction-status dynamics

• Feminist-patriarchy

• Post Modern-fragmentation

Work and Identity

• Work and Identity.

 

1. Work defines: opportunities, incomes and lifestyles. 

2. Work believe it or not, still occupies half of our waking hours..

3. In a lifetime, one spends one year having sex, one year on the toilet…30 years working.

Work in Canada

• THREE PHASES: See Daniel Bell (1993)

1. EARLY INDUSTRIALISM

2. FACTORY INDUSTRIALISM

3. POST INDUSTRIALISM

The first Industrial Revolution began in Britain in late 18thc.

Turned peasants (serfs)into wage-earning factory workers (proletariats)..see K. Marx.

A HISTORY OF WORK IN CANADA I

MID 20TH Century

• ASSEMBLY LINES

• FACTORIES

• SYSTEMATIC PRODUCTION

• UNIONISM (8hr day, worker rights protected)

MANAGERIAL STRATEGIES FOR ORGANIZING WORK I

Taylorism, or scientific management, involved identifying the components of jobs and giving management almost complete control over how they were carried out.

The human relations school of management developed out of studies showing that friendly supervision and attention to the social environment increase workers’ co-operation and productivity.

Information technology is used to reorganize work and improve a firm’s productivity and efficiency.

Telecommunication enables the globalization of work.

Management often uses computers to help control the work process and employees.

TECHNOLOGY AND THE SERVICE INDUSTRY I

In today’s service economy:

outcomes desired by management;

the type of technology a company can afford; and

whether workers are given a say in its implementation.

Whether technology positively or negatively affects work depends on:

TECHNOLOGY AND THE SERVICE INDUSTRY II

Public sector and other service workers have the most potential for increased unionization.

The rise of non-standard work and the ease with which companies can move their businesses to other countries raise serious challenges to unions.

The union response to this challenge will decide whether they grow or decline.

UNIONS II

Trends in the Workforce:

1. INFORMAL Work

2. UNDEREMPLOYMENT

3. TWO TIERED ECONOMY

4. LESS STANDARDIZED WORK

5. DE-INDUSTRIALIZATION

ISSUE 2:Women and Work

• From the expressive homemaker to double day of labour. (I.e. Meg

• See Luxton’s, More than a Labour of Love (1980)

Current data:Canada

• Women in 2005 earned just 70½ cents

• Compare this to the 72 cents women in the 1990s

WAGE GAP EXPLANATION

• FIVE KEY:

1. Patriarchy,

2. Status Dynamics,

3. Power at work,

4. Interaction,

5. Glass ceiling, objectification..

DO MEN AND WOMEN MANAGE DIFFERENTLY?

Some research shows that women managers are more interactive and people-oriented.

Other research finds that management strategies depend more on organizational context (e.g., position in the organizational hierarchy) than on gender.

There is growing consensus that no real differences exist between men’s and women’s managing styles.

Nancy Bonvillian-

• Women and Men: Cultural Constructs of Gender (3rd ed).

• THESIS:Women and Work-modernization increases women’s oppression

Bonvillian on Social Development

1. Hunter and Gathering

2. Horticulture –

3. Agriculture –

4. Industrialism and capitalism-

From Agriculture to Manufacturing

• In the early 1900’s most jobs were in manufacturing and agriculture,

• Women worked side by side with men

• More equality according to Bonovillian

However, by the 20th century..

• Women’s work increasingly became secondary supplement to man’s income.

• WOMEN WORK…was associated with the invisible labour in the home..

Important material change: The Type writer

• INCREASED WOMAN’s OPPRESSION

• W. F. Ogburn, Social Change (1933)

• -Material culture affects non- material culture.

20th century stages in women’s work

1. 1900-1914-Cult of Domesticity

2. World War One Rosie the Riveter

3. World War Two. Rosie the Riveter

4. 1946-Late 1950’s -Domesticity returns

   1950’s Women work -

• BECOMES LESS VALUED, MORE INVISIBLE…but MORE CRUCIAL..

• Post World War Two and particularly following economic booms and busts

•

    Since 1960s :

1. More women in the labour force

2. Pill and the sexual revolution

3. Second Wave feminism

4. Third wave feminism

Now Dual Income Families Vital

• As fertility declines following the introduction of the pill in 1963, we see a corresponding rise in female labour force participation

ISSUE THREE

CONSUMERISM and Capitalism

Consumerism

• A term used to describe the effects of equating personal happiness with purchasing material possessions and consumption.

Commodity Fetishism

• It is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen

• Karl Marx calls capitalistic consumption-Commodity Fetishism

Veblen.Commodities as Veblen goods

• Consumerism can also refer to economic policies that place an emphasis on consumption.

• The value of a commodity increases with its price…see `COOL THREADS’ VIDEO

Consumer Sovereignty?

• …should dictate the economic structure of a society (cf. Producerism, especially in the British sense of the term).

Theory of consumer choice

• In a liberal, democratic society, which is the institutional framework of a marketor "capitalist" economic system,

• This translates into an ideology of CONSUMER SOVEREIGNTY.

Consumerism, Conflict theory and Hegemony

• Consumerism- is part of the general process of social control and hegemony

• Consumerism is part of bourgeois `false consciousness’

ECHO CONSUMERS

• Canadians under the age of twenty—the "Echo Generation," as they're often called—make up a quarter (26 per cent) of the country's population.

ECHO GENERATION-Y

• Once an ignored demographic for advertisers,

• ECHO GENERATION-

• Now the most marketed-to generation in history

MENTAL LIFE

• Constant bombardment of marketing messages that have become a ubiquitous force in MENTAL LIFE

• SEE WOODSTOCK 1 vs. 2

Consumer culture

• There has been a rise in consumer culture affecting all including children.

•  

• THIS IS: The Branding of Culture

The Averages:

Two year old child can name products

I. By Four years, they can evaluate a product

II. By Six years old they can distinguish products by brand.

Brands as Symbols Expensive brands better,

• III. By age eleven has a child started to perceive deceptive advertising,

• IV. By Sixteen years can/or not make a reliable judgment about qualities of product and truthfulness of sales pitches.

Consumerism=More Work

• Studies show that in 1992, UK labour force survey

• 60% working-people spend more and more of their lives at work…

ISSUE FOUR

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT)

Question –conflict theory vs. functionalism

• Does information technology increase or decrease social stratification?

The Digital Divide

• The phrase "digital divide" has emerged as a public policy issue in Canada.

• DIGITAL DIVIDE

• There is an increasing for need knowledge• However, access to information available

is contentious• Those who can afford computers and time

to understand how to extract information is reduced under neo-liberal economics

Who has the Technology?

• Statistics Canada reported that in 1998, about 36 per cent of Canadian households were connected (Dickinson and Ellison, 1999).

• Private sector surveys put this figure over 50 per cent in 1999.

Good jobs are found mainly in core-area industries. Firms tend to be capital-intensive, large, and highly unionized.

Bad jobs are found mainly in peripheral areas. Firms tend to be small, labour-intensive, and non-unionized.

LABOUR MARKETS II Labour market segmentation theorists argue that where you enter the labour market may limit your chances of getting a better job.

McCauley

• See…Theoretical Foundation for Work and Professions in Jacobs and Bosonac eds., The Professionalization of Work

Professionalism

• CREDENTIALS

• POWER(control of information?

• SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

Professions are occupations in which people: control bodies of abstract knowledge; enjoy considerable autonomy at work; exercise authority over subordinates

supposedly focus on helping clients.

Professions act as labour market shelters that protect members’ access to good jobs.

Semi-professionals such as nurses and teachers exercise less control and autonomy than professionals.

PROFESSIONS

and clients; and

Job ghettos are created when discrimination by employers traps some women, people with disabilities, members of visible minority groups, and young and old workers in bad jobs.

Discrimination makes it relatively hard for these groups to enter the primary labour market, which offers upward mobility and the best jobs.

JOB GHETTOS

Morgan, 1994.

• By the late 1980s…

• The social welfare consensus that marked the post-war period in North America was beginning to come apart

• The end of Keynesian Economics…

• "

21st century ISSUES:

1. Increased competition 2. Attract capital 3. Generating employment 4. Find sources of tax revenues 5. Widening inequalities between

cities, 6. Discrepancies in the level of

essential services provided to citizens

Summary

• WORK is a central part of post industrial society

• Work has changed since the feudal age…

• Capitalism=early, mid and post modern stages.

• Areas-women, consumerism, and information..

Internet (1992)

• In G8 countries' a new political culture there emerged:

• An ideology of information technology (IT) that challenged the concept of universal access –universality erodes..

Ideology of information technology

• THE FREE MARKET:

• Gained hold of the IT sector by the early 1990s…

• FIRST PIZZA SOLD=1994.

Three IT Forces

1. Drew upon the conservative (right wing) politics,

2. Classical liberal laissez-faire free market values,

3. Technological determinism (Birdsall, 1996; Birdsall, 1997) See McLuhanism..

Neo-liberal Knowledge based economy

• The raw material or basic commodity of this society is information.

• KNOWLEDGE =POWER?

Knowledge-based economy

• Only the marketplace should determine which goods and services are produced and how they are generated; there are no "public goods."