The Meaning of Work
Although it may seem easy to define when asked, in fact it is very difficult as no particular action can be described exclusively as work. What is considered as work varies, depending on such things as time, place, society and individual preferences.
Examples
1. The Task of Planting Seeds
If this is done by a farmer growing crops for sale, or for professional use in an agricultural society then it is work. If it is done (even by the same people) as the leisure activity of growing flowers for pleasure in a garden, then it is not work.
2. Playing a Sport
If a professional plays football, then it is work; if a sociology student plays it is likely to be for pleasure
THE MOST COMMON ELEMENTS OF WORK ARE THAT
· It is paid
· It is not done primarily for pleasure
· Usually, there is an employer who imposes his or her authority on the worker in exchange for wages
· Usually work takes place in a special place put aside for that purpose e.g. office or factory
· Usually there is some productive or useful outcome of the work e.g. the building of a car
· The amount of time spent at work is clearly marked off from the hours of non-work
Not all of the elements of work need to be present for an action to be considered work.
Why do People Work?
People work for two reasons: extrinsic and intrinsic.
1. Extrinsic. This means simply that a person works for a wage and little else. This is typical of people who work in repetitive, manual jobs such as a worker on the factory floor. This attitude to work is often connected to feelings of alienation at the place of employment.
2. Intrinsic. This means that a person works for more than a wage. It may be for the interest and enjoyment of the job, such as in the case of professional sportsmen.
However, this division glosses over the fact that work has a social aspect to it as well.
3. People work for the companionship they find among their workmates
4. For many women, it is to escape the restrictive role of housewife: indeed 4 out of 5 women questioned in a national survey in 1979 wanted to work irrespective of how much they were paid.
5. Work gives people a sense of identity and status
The Occupational Structure
The occupational structure refers to the types of jobs performed by the working population:
1.
Manual Labour,
work that involves physical labour of some kind such as a miner, bricklayer or
mechanic performs;
2. Non-Manual (or white collar) Labour, work that involves little physical labour but relies more on mental effort or force of personality. For example, shop assistant, clerk or teacher.
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Types of Industry
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1. Primary e.g. mining or 2. Secondary or Manufacturing 3. Tertiary or Service
agriculture, which involves e.g. industry, where objects are involving providing a service of
exploiting our natural resources. created to be sold. some kind such as transport.
Throughout this century, the following trends have been apparent in the British occupational structure:
1. A move away from manual towards non-manual work In 1911, non-manual workers formed only 19% of the total workforce, today the figure is over 50%. It is important to note that within this trend:
· The growth of non-manual employment among women has been more rapid than for men. Today 2 out of every 3 female workers are in non-manual work, which is double that of men.
· The Biggest areas of growth have been in the professional and technical areas of employment, which have more than doubled in size over the last 20 years.
2. A move away from primary and manufacturing industries towards service industries.
· The number of jobs in service industries has stopped increasing in the last few years whilst the loss of jobs in the manufacturing industry continues.
· The statistics cover all jobs, including part-time work; therefore the true decline is not clear.
3. An increase in the number of women in the workforce In 1961, there were 7 million women in paid employment; by 1990 this had risen to 10.8 million. The number of male workers, however, has remained almost static.
· The increase in female employment occurred through the growth in married women working. Today 70% of women work, over twice the proportion of 25 years ago.
· Most female employment is part-time: 90% of part-time workers are women
· Women are concentrated in the lower-paid jobs
4. Growth in unemployment Since the late 1970s the numbers unemployed has risen dramatically. It is difficult to calculate the exact figure although it is believed that around 2 million are unemployed today.
Core and Periphery Sectors
There is a growing difference between
(a) the core or primary sector - workers in safe, often well-paid work with decent conditions of service, full holiday entitlements, and a degree of security and
(b) The peripheral or secondary sector - workers in part-time/low paid work who have little job security, poor working conditions and rights, few holidays and who often work on temporary or 12 contracts One indication of the growth of the peripheral sector is the increase in part-time work (25% of workers) who are not entitled to many of the legal rights of full-time workers in terms of job security, holiday entitlement etc.
Changing Technology
British society is based upon industry - the mass production by factories of objects for our use. Britain was the first country in the world to move from a society based upon agriculture and manufacture in the home to one based upon industry, a process that began in the middle of the 18th century. The process of moving from agriculture to large-scale factory production is known as industrialisation. Today most countries of the Western world e.g. Europe, the USA and parts of south-east Asia notably Japan have industrialised.
The main characteristics of an industrialised society are
· Production is based upon complex machinery situated in factories (mechanisation) rather than the home
· Most people live in towns near the factories (urbanisation) rather than evenly all over the country
· Most people work for an employer and receive fixed wages, rather than working for themselves
· In order to get higher wages and better working conditions, workers have banded together in trade unions to argue their case against employers and industrial conflict is common.
· Goods produced by factories on such a large scale become cheap and available to everyone
· An ever-evolving technology with the movement from mechanisation to automation
· A division of labour in society, such that people only produce one part of the finished product
The Division of Labour
The most effective way of producing goods is by dividing the work into small, simple repetitive tasks. Today the division of labour is regarded as the normal factory way of producing televisions, cars etc.
Advantages
· Goods are produced at a lower price so more people can afford to purchase goods and a higher standard of living is achieved
· The low levels of skill required mean that people unable to cope with complex tasks find employment
· Henry Braverman suggested that the true advantage is that employers can earn greater profits
Disadvantages
· The work is boring and repetitive, so the worker gains little or no job satisfaction
· The boredom and dissatisfaction can cause industrial disputes
· Traditional skills and pride of craftsmanship are lost which can lead to a lower quality of product
· Workers lose control over their work and the pace at which they work
Mechanisation to Automation
Mechanisation and the consequent division of labour were the main changes bought about by industrialisation although since then technological changes have occurred.
· Assembly line production
In this process operatives work on products which move along a conveyor belt from one worker to the next. Each worker performs some simple repetitive task, which adds another part or stage to the product.
Goldthorpe & Lockwood in The Affluent Worker studied car assembly workers at a Vauxhall Factory in Luton. They found workers were bored and frustrated in work and the noisy conditions prevented the formation of friendships. The workers were mainly concerned with earning as high a wage as possible to spend on family and leisure pursuits. Relationships with employers tended to be hostile.
· Process Production
This involves a continuous process in which raw products such as chemicals and petroleum enter one end as raw material and are refined into the finished product.
Nichols and Benyon in Living with Capitalism found that those in control had relatively pleasant, interesting work, but those who loaded and maintained the processing plant were engaged in work that was equal in skill and amount of effort and unpleasantness to production-line work.
· Automation
This term covers the use of machinery to perform the tasks traditionally performed or at least controlled by workers. The simplest form of automation is where machines performing complex tasks are linked together by another machine which eliminates the need for unskilled labourers carrying and lifting things e.g. bread passing from the oven to a slicing machine and finally being passed to a packing machine.
With the growth of new microchip technology automation has taken a huge step forward; now skilled jobs that involve measurement and close quality control can be undertaken by machinery. Fiat manufactures most of its new cars entirely by computer-controlled machines. On a wider scale, microchips have radically changed the service industries, so that we have cash dispensers, word processors, pocket calculators etc.
Advantages
· Boring, repetitive tasks are eliminated
· Need for more highly educated workers to understand and control the machinery
· More goods can be produced in fewer hours
· Blauner argues automation brings the possibility of eliminating divisions between production line workers and management who would all become involved in a team to solve work problems
· Work would become healthier and safer as the dangerous jobs would be eliminated
Disadvantages
· The major disadvantage with microchips is their advantage for employers – they can perform complex tasks that are the essence of a person’s skill. Word processing can be learned in a few hours and can produce perfectly typed letter whereas previously the skill of a typist would have been required. The word processor has also removed the skills of printers- what once took 5 years to learn can now be learned in a day. Henry Braverman has called this process deskilling – whereby workers lose their skills to machines. Employer’s use deskilling to cut the workforce therefore decreasing wages.
· Deskilling leads to a loss of pride and craftsmanship in virtually every form of employment
· Unemployment will increase and wages will decrease
· A decline in interaction will occur as people stay at home to work and to engage in leisure pursuits. This could alter the basis of our society, which depends on social mixing in shops, offices and factories.
Work Satisfaction
As work forms one of the main activities of our lives, the degree of satisfaction obtained from work influences our whole lives.
· Alienation
Karl Marx used the term alienation to describe the situation of people who gain no pleasure from their work
Blauner has suggested that alienation have the following elements:
· Meaninglessness - A feeling that the job makes no sense. This occurs when the division of labour breaks work down into such unrelated tasks that the point of the job becomes difficult to see.
· Powerlessness - A belief that the worker has no power over the form his work takes, or the speed at which it is done. A car production line is a good example of this.
· Normlessness – The employee feels that what his employer says he should feel about the job is not how they see it. It is difficult to feel pride in the construction of a car if your job simply involves putting on the wheels. This difference can lead to conflict.
· Isolation – Workers are cut off from each other by the noise and discomfort of the workplace.
· Self-estrangement – Ideally any job ought to use the abilities and intelligence of the worker, so that their work fulfils them. I f their job fails to do this then the worker gradually loses their personality and tries to express themselves in their leisure activities.
What factors influence the degree of alienation and work satisfaction?
· The division of labour can make the individual’s task irrelevant and small
· Repetition can lead to boredom and;
· Noisy unpleasant conditions can stop workers communicating with each other
· Low levels of skill. According to Baldamus the greater the level of skill the greater the degree of job satisfaction
· Control over production - When workers have some degree of say in the pace and form of the production process, the degree of commitment increases
· Peer Group Pressure - In the 1920s Mayo, studied a group of workers in ‘The Hawthorne Studies’ and found that workers who tried to hard to increase output were bought back in line by their peers by their use of sarcastic comments, practical jokes and occasional use of sending the perpetrator ‘to Coventry!’
· Daydreaming - In order to pass the boring time away workers daydream about life, particularly what they will do in their leisure time. Ditton studied a group of bakery workers and found that they regularly passed the time in a series of fantasies.
· Playing tricks and practical jokes – Another way of passing the time is to play jokes on one another -– this may be a way of easing the boredom, but it also serves as a way releasing tension, allowing disputes between individuals to be sorted out by the use of practical jokes.
As we can see, people engaged in non-routine work in pleasant conditions, such as professional, managerial and skilled manual workers, gain far more work satisfaction and are less alienated than those in routine, unskilled work such as car assembly workers.