Wpw

• Labour process: the circumstances in which people apply their labour at work to produce goods and services, including how they work, who controls the work, and what skills they have
• The division of labour: the way in which the labour process, or the range of occupations, is divided into specialized tasks or jobs, each carried out by one worker or groups of workers
• Post-Fordism: modern industrial production moving away from mass production in huge factories towards specialized markets based on small flexible manufacturing units
• Productivity refers to how much workers produce during the labour process - their output in terms of items made or processed in a given time period
• Scientific management (Taylorism): a theory that the management of workers in an industrial firm and the tasks they perform should follow scientific principles, involving strict control of the workforce and performance of work tasks in the same way as industrial machinery
• Taylorism involves breaking work down into its simplest elements, with workers given clear and simple instructions on exactly how they should do their job by managers who plan and co-ordinate these different tasks
• Fordism is the application of scientific management to the mass production of standardized goods using assembly-line technology, involving few skills and repetitive work by employees
• McDonaldization is the process where the principles of the fast food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of society
• Deskilling is the process through which the skills of workers are removed from work by the application of technology
• Upskilling is the process of giving extra training to workers so they have more skills to make them perform better in their jobs
• The Hawthorne effect is what happens when the presence of a researcher, or a group's knowledge that it has been specially selected for research, changes the behavior of the group
• Responsible autonomy means workers are given a limited degree of control over their work, and the opportunity to use their initiative and to organize their own work routines
• Alienation is the condition whereby workers lack power and control at work and have no job satisfaction or sense of personal creativity and fulfillment from their work. Work becomes meaningless apart from as a means of earning money
• Technological determinism is the view that the technology or machinery used in production is the major influence in explaining workers' attitudes and involvement in work
• Craft production is the production of goods by human skill using hand tools
• Primary labour market

  Relatively secure section of the labour market consisting of full-time standard jobs with good pay, working conditions, job security, training, and career opportunities
• Knowledge work


  Deals with ideas, information, and analysis rather than making or distributing physical products
• Economically active population consists of those in the population who are either in work or looking and available to work
• Secondary labour market

  Insecure section of the labour market involving part-time, short-term or temporary work, lack of job security, lower levels of training, poorer pay, and few promotion opportunities
• Automation

  Machinery and computers not only make goods, but also control the speed of production, the input of raw materials, and the correction of any mistakes with very little human supervision
• Peripheral workers

  Employees often in insecure non-standard part-time jobs, short-term zero hours or temporary full-time contracts, employed on a casual, temporary basis, easily dispensable and replaceable
• Anomie


  Refers to a sense of normlessness, confusion, and uncertainty over social norms, often found in periods of rapid social change and other disruptions of the routines and traditions of everyday social life
• Core workers


  Well-paid, qualified, skilled workers who make up the full-time permanent employees in a workplace
• Flexible specialization


  Production methods using technology that can be quickly adapted to producing new, more specialized products to meet rapidly changing consumer demands
• Mechanization


  Production of goods by machines taking over manual skills involved in craft production
• Unemployment rate is the percentage of economically active members of the population who are unemployed
• Age UK


  • Advocacy/pressure group for pensioners
  • Convinced the New Labour government to introduce a new benefit pensions credit in 2003
• The first way in which voluntary and informal welfare providers may have affected the extent of poverty is the ways in which some charities function as pressure groups
• Marxists' perspective

  • Charities like Shelter are seen as a 'sticking plaster' for problems created by capitalism
  • Charities may not address the root cause of homelessness and poverty - capitalism
• When universal credit was introduced in 2010 and pensions credit was moved under its umbrella, pensioners saw the value of this element of their benefit reduced through stricter means testing
• Charitable organisations acting as 'advice centres'

  1. Experts in their area

  2. Bring years of knowledge and expertise working in benefits, poverty relief, NHS, or housing

  3. Offer advice and, in some cases, actual housing to keep people off the streets and with a roof over their head
• Pressure groups

  1. Advocate on behalf of groups

  2. Do research on areas of interest such as poverty, domestic violence, or access to education

  3. Collect data - quantitative and qualitative and present this to the government

  4. Hope to sway government policy decisions, bring about new laws/policies or change existing ones, argue for extra funding for existing policy initiatives
• Pressure groups such as Shelter


  • Play a key role in the accountability of the welfare state
  • Expert knowledge in specialised areas increasing support for the poor
  • Unequal access to providers based on location
• Introduction of pensions credit in 2003

  Helped lift 100s of 1000s of pensioners out of poverty
• Another way in which voluntary and informal welfare providers may have affected the extent of poverty is through charitable organisations acting as 'advice centres' for the poor
• Shelter


  • Works with the homeless
  • Offers advice and housing to soften some of the worst experiences of poverty
• Conservatives have been in power since 2010
• New Labour government has been in power since 2010
• Continuing the policies of New Labour
• Policies continued from New Labour

  • Moving people from welfare dependency into work
  • Supporting parenting with funding on nursery education