Work, Occupations and the Economy

• Bourgeoisie


  Owners of the means of production
• Proletariat


  Workers who sell their labour for a wage
• Means of production


  Owned by the bourgeoisie
• Labour


  Sold by the proletariat for a wage
• Owners exploit workers


  Through extracting surplus value from their labour
• Alienation


  The process of feeling disconnected from something that was previously well-known and familiar
• Types of alienation


  • Alienation from the product of labour
  • Alienation from the labour process
  • Alienation from oneself
  • Alienation from other workers
• Rationalization


  The process of replacing decisions, ideas, or actions based on traditions or emotions with practicality, calculation, and reason
• Bureaucratic organizations


  • Hierarchy
  • Vertical command chain
  • Formal division of labour
  • Technical qualifications
  • Formal decision-making processes designed to eliminate inefficiencies and biases
• Mechanical solidarity


  Characteristic of pre-industrial economies
• Organic solidarity


  Characteristic of industrial economies
• Labour process theory


  Seeks to explain the structural effects of the capitalist organization of labour on workers as they struggle for autonomy and control over their labour and skills
• Scientific management


  Seeks to increase control of the labour process by automating skill and dividing workers and production into small specialized tasks
• Deskilling


  Capitalist production alienates workers through this
• Agency


  Workers' subjectivity and ability to act
• Making out


  Workers actively participate in processes of negotiation
• Professions


  • Advanced credentials
  • Specialized knowledge
  • Lengthy induction or mentoring programmes
  • Licensing
  • High autonomy
  • High authority
  • High pay
  • High social status
• Post-industrial society


  Shift in economic focus from manufacturing to knowledge-based work, typically performed by technicians and professionals, who were poised to become the new preeminent social group
• Significant shift from manufacturing goods to providing services
• More people are employed in service jobs like retail, education, healthcare than blue-collar manual labour
• Rise in self-employment
• Emotional labour


  Requirement of this in post-industrial work
• The construction of the "ideal" worker is bound up with race and gender
• Vertical mosaic


  Describes the uneven distribution of social class along lines of ethnicity in 1960's Canada
• Inequality by ethnicity is still a reality today
• Split labour market


  Gender and racial/ethnic segregation
• Entire workplaces and organizations are gendered and racialized
• Neoliberal ideology


  Privatizing state resources, marketization of social services, and individualism
• Perspectives on the shift from traditional to new/neoliberal forms of work

  • Allows more flexibility and autonomy for workers
  • Contributed to increased insecurity, anxiety, and inequality
• Uber has upended the taxi industry
• Perspectives on Uber


  • Benefit to customers and potential drivers
  • Threat to taxi drivers and company owners
• Uber continues to face challenges around fair wages and benefits for drivers