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INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY A Canadian Focus Ninth Edition
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Chapter 14 Lecture Notes
Transcript
Chapter 14
Organizations and Work
What Is Work?
Work: Making physical materials (manual) or mental constructs/ideas (intellectual) more useful to the producer. Human work is different.
Humans conceptualize the end product
Human work is purposive and conscious, not performed by instincts
Difference is enabled by ability to communicate symbolically through language.
Evolution of Modern Work
Social division of labour: men hunted and women gathered.
Then, with more complex societies:
Detailed division of labour: division of a single job into many parts.
Industrialization: mass production of goods.
Marx, Durkheim, and Weber saw problems
Rise of Scientific
Management
Scientific Management: Eliminating inefficiencies by breaking down processes into simpler tasks that were easier for workers to learn and be supervised.
Called Taylorism after inventor, Frederick Taylor
Fordism: the application of Taylor’s ideas to the assembly-line by Henry Ford.
People were made into machines and they rebelled.
Social contract: so long as the economy maintained itself, people’s jobs would be secure.
Where We Work
Formal organizations: a division of labour to achieve a goal; they make work more efficient.
Rationalization: the overriding concern within capitalist societies for constantly increasing efficiency.
But sometimes informal organization, informal groups and rules arise to meet challenges.
Can be positive or dysfunctional
More flexible and easily transformed (cont’d)
Where We Work (cont’d)
Organizations are thus ever-changing through the negotiation of its members.
There is an ongoing trend of Rationalization driving organizational change
McDonalidization: the principals and organization of fast-food restaurants are coming to permeate society more generally.
(cont’d)
Where We Work (cont’d)
Four principals of McDonalidization:
Efficiency – finding the best way to achieve a goal
Calculability – emphasis on quantity over quality
Predictability – consistent products
Control – tightly controlled employees and customers
Bureaucracy
Weber suggested common characteristics
Specialization and division of labour
Hierarchy of authority
Rules and regulations
Impersonality
Technical competence, careers, and tenure
Formal communication
Inequalities in Work
Organizations often have hierarchical structures, with top executives directing those working under them.
Occupational Segregation – people in different social categories tend to do different types of work.
Different types of Occupational Segregation exist:
Sex segregation
Ethnic and Racial segregation
Segregation based on Age
Insert Table 14.1 Here
This table is on page 333 in the text
Youth and the Labour Market
Youth Workers – Age 15 – 24
High Unemployment Rates – In 2006, almost twice the national average
1990’s – Fulltime employment rates for youths dropped 27%
Fewer youth employed outside the home
Youth wages have dropped over the past 30 years
Youths have negative work experiences
Youths are staying in school longer due to lack of employment opportunities and pursuit of education
Work: Satisfying or Alienating?
Marx saw that workers had no control, they were directed in tasks, separated or alienated from their “humanity.”
Durkheim saw the break-up of integrated communities causing anomie, normlessness.
A person’s life is separate and different from others in society. Strikes, sabotage, and protest show lack of commitment to new society.
Instrumentalism and Resistance
Instrumentalism: working only to earn money.
Work is supposed to be fulfilling
Resistance: passively or actively slowing, reversing, avoiding, or protesting management directions or strategies.
The potential occurs when experience and self-understanding are denied or undermined
New approaches like Total Quality Management have been tried to improve work place with little success in North America
Sabotage: activities aimed at destroying employers’ property or disturbing the flow of production
Unions and Resistance
Union: represents a group of workers in negotiations with the employer to get a contract.
Won the right to exist in the late 19th century
Growth of Unions linked to a series of conditions:
New management systems
Job insecurity
History of poor working conditions
Unionization is a response to powerlessness.
End of the Social Contract
Downsizing: great reductions in workers to maintain market share and investment returns.
Workers can be productive, but companies want to out-source, doing work elsewhere for lower wages, to make profits.
General flattening of wages of workers in Canada.
Decrease in standard of living for most
Rich get richer
Globalization
Globalization of production: companies look worldwide for the most profitable place for production.
New sites create competition for Canadians to lower wage expectations
Free-trade agreements have forced Canada to drop programs that protected workers’ jobs
Deficit cutting led to employment insurance reductions
Unemployment
Higher than necessary unemployment?
Small-batch production
Movement of jobs to developing countries
Smaller government safety net
Unemployment rate is higher now than 1964-1973.
Does not count those who have given up looking for work or are on assistance
The Future
“Lack of work” problem is foremost on agenda.
Major issues: how will globalization affect them?
Imbalance between resistance and consent
People fear the loss of jobs, fewer strikes in the 1990s
How to organize the work that has to be done: increase the skill of workers or follow scientific management
Click to edit Master title style
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Chapter 14
Organizations and Work
What Is Work?
Work: Making physical materials (manual) or mental constructs/ideas (intellectual) more useful to the producer. Human work is different.
Humans conceptualize the end product
Human work is purposive and conscious, not performed by instincts
Difference is enabled by ability to communicate symbolically through language.
Evolution of Modern Work
Social division of labour: men hunted and women gathered.
Then, with more complex societies:
Detailed division of labour: division of a single job into many parts.
Industrialization: mass production of goods.
Marx, Durkheim, and Weber saw problems
Rise of Scientific
Management
Scientific Management: Eliminating inefficiencies by breaking down processes into simpler tasks that were easier for workers to learn and be supervised.
Called Taylorism after inventor, Frederick Taylor
Fordism: the application of Taylor’s ideas to the assembly-line by Henry Ford.
People were made into machines and they rebelled.
Social contract: so long as the economy maintained itself, people’s jobs would be secure.
Where We Work
Formal organizations: a division of labour to achieve a goal; they make work more efficient.
Rationalization: the overriding concern within capitalist societies for constantly increasing efficiency.
But sometimes informal organization, informal groups and rules arise to meet challenges.
Can be positive or dysfunctional
More flexible and easily transformed (cont’d)
Where We Work (cont’d)
Organizations are thus ever-changing through the negotiation of its members.
There is an ongoing trend of Rationalization driving organizational change
McDonalidization: the principals and organization of fast-food restaurants are coming to permeate society more generally.
(cont’d)
Where We Work (cont’d)
Four principals of McDonalidization:
Efficiency – finding the best way to achieve a goal
Calculability – emphasis on quantity over quality
Predictability – consistent products
Control – tightly controlled employees and customers
Bureaucracy
Weber suggested common characteristics
Specialization and division of labour
Hierarchy of authority
Rules and regulations
Impersonality
Technical competence, careers, and tenure
Formal communication
Inequalities in Work
Organizations often have hierarchical structures, with top executives directing those working under them.
Occupational Segregation – people in different social categories tend to do different types of work.
Different types of Occupational Segregation exist:
Sex segregation
Ethnic and Racial segregation
Segregation based on Age
Insert Table 14.1 Here
This table is on page 333 in the text
Youth and the Labour Market
Youth Workers – Age 15 – 24
High Unemployment Rates – In 2006, almost twice the national average
1990’s – Fulltime employment rates for youths dropped 27%
Fewer youth employed outside the home
Youth wages have dropped over the past 30 years
Youths have negative work experiences
Youths are staying in school longer due to lack of employment opportunities and pursuit of education
Work: Satisfying or Alienating?
Marx saw that workers had no control, they were directed in tasks, separated or alienated from their “humanity.”
Durkheim saw the break-up of integrated communities causing anomie, normlessness.
A person’s life is separate and different from others in society. Strikes, sabotage, and protest show lack of commitment to new society.
Instrumentalism and Resistance
Instrumentalism: working only to earn money.
Work is supposed to be fulfilling
Resistance: passively or actively slowing, reversing, avoiding, or protesting management directions or strategies.
The potential occurs when experience and self-understanding are denied or undermined
New approaches like Total Quality Management have been tried to improve work place with little success in North America
Sabotage: activities aimed at destroying employers’ property or disturbing the flow of production
Unions and Resistance
Union: represents a group of workers in negotiations with the employer to get a contract.
Won the right to exist in the late 19th century
Growth of Unions linked to a series of conditions:
New management systems
Job insecurity
History of poor working conditions
Unionization is a response to powerlessness.
End of the Social Contract
Downsizing: great reductions in workers to maintain market share and investment returns.
Workers can be productive, but companies want to out-source, doing work elsewhere for lower wages, to make profits.
General flattening of wages of workers in Canada.
Decrease in standard of living for most
Rich get richer
Globalization
Globalization of production: companies look worldwide for the most profitable place for production.
New sites create competition for Canadians to lower wage expectations
Free-trade agreements have forced Canada to drop programs that protected workers’ jobs
Deficit cutting led to employment insurance reductions
Unemployment
Higher than necessary unemployment?
Small-batch production
Movement of jobs to developing countries
Smaller government safety net
Unemployment rate is higher now than 1964-1973.
Does not count those who have given up looking for work or are on assistance
The Future
“Lack of work” problem is foremost on agenda.
Major issues: how will globalization affect them?
Imbalance between resistance and consent
People fear the loss of jobs, fewer strikes in the 1990s
How to organize the work that has to be done: increase the skill of workers or follow scientific management
Chapter 14
Organizations and Work
What Is Work?
Work: Making physical materials (manual) or mental constructs/ideas (intellectual) more useful to the producer. Human work is different.
Humans conceptualize the end product
Human work is purposive and conscious, not performed by instincts
Difference is enabled by ability to communicate symbolically through language.
Evolution of Modern Work
Social division of labour: men hunted and women gathered.
Then, with more complex societies:
Detailed division of labour: division of a single job into many parts.
Industrialization: mass production of goods.
Marx, Durkheim, and Weber saw problems
Rise of Scientific
Management
Scientific Management: Eliminating inefficiencies by breaking down processes into simpler tasks that were easier for workers to learn and be supervised.
Called Taylorism after inventor, Frederick Taylor
Fordism: the application of Taylor’s ideas to the assembly-line by Henry Ford.
People were made into machines and they rebelled.
Social contract: so long as the economy maintained itself, people’s jobs would be secure.
Where We Work
Formal organizations: a division of labour to achieve a goal; they make work more efficient.
Rationalization: the overriding concern within capitalist societies for constantly increasing efficiency.
But sometimes informal organization, informal groups and rules arise to meet challenges.
Can be positive or dysfunctional
More flexible and easily transformed
(cont’d)
Where We Work (cont’d)
Organizations are thus ever-changing through the negotiation of its members.
There is an ongoing trend of Rationalization driving organizational change
McDonalidization: the principals and organization of fast-food restaurants are coming to permeate society more generally.
(cont’d)
Where We Work (cont’d)
Four principals of McDonalidization:
Efficiency – finding the best way to achieve a goal
Calculability – emphasis on quantity over quality
Predictability – consistent products
Control – tightly controlled employees and customers
Bureaucracy
Weber suggested common characteristics
Specialization and division of labour
Hierarchy of authority
Rules and regulations
Impersonality
Technical competence, careers, and tenure
Formal communication
Inequalities in Work
Organizations often have hierarchical structures, with top executives directing those working under them.
Occupational Segregation – people in different social categories tend to do different types of work.
Different types of Occupational Segregation exist:
Sex segregation
Ethnic and Racial segregation
Segregation based on Age
Table 14.1
[Insert Table 14.1 – page 333]
Youth and the Labour Market
Youth Workers: Age 15 – 24
High Unemployment Rates – In 2006, almost twice the national average
1990’s – Fulltime employment rates for youths dropped 27%
Fewer youth employed outside the home
Youth wages have dropped over the past 30 years
Youths have negative work experiences
Youths are staying in school longer due to lack of employment opportunities and pursuit of education
Work: Satisfying or Alienating?
Marx saw that workers had no control, they were directed in tasks, separated or alienated from their “humanity.”
Durkheim saw the break-up of integrated communities causing anomie, normlessness.
A person’s life is separate and different from others in society. Strikes, sabotage, and protest show lack of commitment to new society.
Instrumentalism and Resistance
Instrumentalism: working only to earn money.
Work is supposed to be fulfilling
Resistance: passively or actively slowing, reversing, avoiding, or protesting management directions or strategies.
The potential occurs when experience and self-understanding are denied or undermined
New approaches like Total Quality Management have been tried to improve work place with little success in North America
Sabotage: activities aimed at destroying employers’ property or disturbing the flow of production
Unions and Resistance
Union: represents a group of workers in negotiations with the employer to get a contract.
Won the right to exist in the late 19th century
Growth of Unions linked to a series of conditions:
New management systems
Job insecurity
History of poor working conditions
Unionization is a response to powerlessness.
End of the Social Contract
Downsizing: great reductions in workers to maintain market share and investment returns.
Workers can be productive, but companies want to out-source, doing work elsewhere for lower wages, to make profits.
General flattening of wages of workers in Canada.
Decrease in standard of living for most
Rich get richer
Globalization
Globalization of production: companies look worldwide for the most profitable place for production.
New sites create competition for Canadians to lower wage expectations
Free-trade agreements have forced Canada to drop programs that protected workers’ jobs
Deficit cutting led to employment insurance reductions
Unemployment
Higher than necessary unemployment?
Small-batch production
Movement of jobs to developing countries
Smaller government safety net
Unemployment rate is higher now than 1964-1973.
Does not count those who have given up looking for work or are on assistance
The Future
“Lack of work” problem is foremost on agenda.
Major issues: how will globalization affect them?
Imbalance between resistance and consent
People fear the loss of jobs, fewer strikes in the 1990s
How to organize the work that has to be done: increase the skill of workers or follow scientific management
Chapter 14
Organizations and Work
What Is Work?
Work: Making physical materials (manual) or mental constructs/ideas (intellectual) more useful to the producer. Human work is different.
Humans conceptualize the end product
Human work is purposive and conscious, not performed by instincts
Difference is enabled by ability to communicate symbolically through language.
Evolution of Modern Work
Social division of labour: men hunted and women gathered.
Then, with more complex societies:
Detailed division of labour: division of a single job into many parts.
Industrialization: mass production of goods.
Marx, Durkheim, and Weber saw problems
Rise of Scientific
Management
Scientific Management: Eliminating inefficiencies by breaking down processes into simpler tasks that were easier for workers to learn and be supervised.
Called Taylorism after inventor, Frederick Taylor
Fordism: the application of Taylor’s ideas to the assembly-line by Henry Ford.
People were made into machines and they rebelled.
Social contract: so long as the economy maintained itself, people’s jobs would be secure.
Where We Work
Formal organizations: a division of labour to achieve a goal; they make work more efficient.
Rationalization: the overriding concern within capitalist societies for constantly increasing efficiency.
But sometimes informal organization, informal groups and rules arise to meet challenges.
Can be positive or dysfunctional
More flexible and easily transformed
(cont’d)
Where We Work (cont’d)
Organizations are thus ever-changing through the negotiation of its members.
There is an ongoing trend of Rationalization driving organizational change
McDonalidization: the principals and organization of fast-food restaurants are coming to permeate society more generally.
(cont’d)
Where We Work (cont’d)
Four principals of McDonalidization:
Efficiency – finding the best way to achieve a goal
Calculability – emphasis on quantity over quality
Predictability – consistent products
Control – tightly controlled employees and customers
Bureaucracy
Weber suggested common characteristics
Specialization and division of labour
Hierarchy of authority
Rules and regulations
Impersonality
Technical competence, careers, and tenure
Formal communication
Inequalities in Work
Organizations often have hierarchical structures, with top executives directing those working under them.
Occupational Segregation – people in different social categories tend to do different types of work.
Different types of Occupational Segregation exist:
Sex segregation
Ethnic and Racial segregation
Segregation based on Age
Table 14.1
[Insert Table 14.1 – page 333]
Youth and the Labour Market
Youth Workers: Age 15 – 24
High Unemployment Rates – In 2006, almost twice the national average
1990’s – Fulltime employment rates for youths dropped 27%
Fewer youth employed outside the home
Youth wages have dropped over the past 30 years
Youths have negative work experiences
Youths are staying in school longer due to lack of employment opportunities and pursuit of education
Work: Satisfying or Alienating?
Marx saw that workers had no control, they were directed in tasks, separated or alienated from their “humanity.”
Durkheim saw the break-up of integrated communities causing anomie, normlessness.
A person’s life is separate and different from others in society. Strikes, sabotage, and protest show lack of commitment to new society.
Instrumentalism and Resistance
Instrumentalism: working only to earn money.
Work is supposed to be fulfilling
Resistance: passively or actively slowing, reversing, avoiding, or protesting management directions or strategies.
The potential occurs when experience and self-understanding are denied or undermined
New approaches like Total Quality Management have been tried to improve work place with little success in North America
Sabotage: activities aimed at destroying employers’ property or disturbing the flow of production
Unions and Resistance
Union: represents a group of workers in negotiations with the employer to get a contract.
Won the right to exist in the late 19th century
Growth of Unions linked to a series of conditions:
New management systems
Job insecurity
History of poor working conditions
Unionization is a response to powerlessness.
End of the Social Contract
Downsizing: great reductions in workers to maintain market share and investment returns.
Workers can be productive, but companies want to out-source, doing work elsewhere for lower wages, to make profits.
General flattening of wages of workers in Canada.
Decrease in standard of living for most
Rich get richer
Globalization
Globalization of production: companies look worldwide for the most profitable place for production.
New sites create competition for Canadians to lower wage expectations
Free-trade agreements have forced Canada to drop programs that protected workers’ jobs
Deficit cutting led to employment insurance reductions
Unemployment
Higher than necessary unemployment?
Small-batch production
Movement of jobs to developing countries
Smaller government safety net
Unemployment rate is higher now than 1964-1973.
Does not count those who have given up looking for work or are on assistance
The Future
“Lack of work” problem is foremost on agenda.
Major issues: how will globalization affect them?
Imbalance between resistance and consent
People fear the loss of jobs, fewer strikes in the 1990s
How to organize the work that has to be done: increase the skill of workers or follow scientific management
Chapter 14
Organizations and Work
What Is Work?
Work: Making physical materials (manual) or mental constructs/ideas (intellectual) more useful to the producer. Human work is different.
Humans conceptualize the end product
Human work is purposive and conscious, not performed by instincts
Difference is enabled by ability to communicate symbolically through language.
Evolution of Modern Work
Social division of labour: men hunted and women gathered.
Then, with more complex societies:
Detailed division of labour: division of a single job into many parts.
Industrialization: mass production of goods.
Marx, Durkheim, and Weber saw problems
Rise of Scientific
Management
Scientific Management: Eliminating inefficiencies by breaking down processes into simpler tasks that were easier for workers to learn and be supervised.
Called Taylorism after inventor, Frederick Taylor
Fordism: the application of Taylor’s ideas to the assembly-line by Henry Ford.
People were made into machines and they rebelled.
Social contract: so long as the economy maintained itself, people’s jobs would be secure.
Where We Work
Formal organizations: a division of labour to achieve a goal; they make work more efficient.
Rationalization: the overriding concern within capitalist societies for constantly increasing efficiency.
But sometimes informal organization, informal groups and rules arise to meet challenges.
Can be positive or dysfunctional
More flexible and easily transformed
(cont’d)
Where We Work (cont’d)
Organizations are thus ever-changing through the negotiation of its members.
There is an ongoing trend of Rationalization driving organizational change
McDonalidization: the principals and organization of fast-food restaurants are coming to permeate society more generally.
(cont’d)
Where We Work (cont’d)
Four principals of McDonalidization:
Efficiency – finding the best way to achieve a goal
Calculability – emphasis on quantity over quality
Predictability – consistent products
Control – tightly controlled employees and customers
Bureaucracy
Weber suggested common characteristics
Specialization and division of labour
Hierarchy of authority
Rules and regulations
Impersonality
Technical competence, careers, and tenure
Formal communication
Inequalities in Work
Organizations often have hierarchical structures, with top executives directing those working under them.
Occupational Segregation – people in different social categories tend to do different types of work.
Different types of Occupational Segregation exist:
Sex segregation
Ethnic and Racial segregation
Segregation based on Age
Table 14.1
Youth and the Labour Market
Youth Workers: Age 15 – 24
High Unemployment Rates – In 2006, almost twice the national average
1990’s – Fulltime employment rates for youths dropped 27%
Fewer youth employed outside the home
Youth wages have dropped over the past 30 years
Youths have negative work experiences
Youths are staying in school longer due to lack of employment opportunities and pursuit of education
Work: Satisfying or Alienating?
Marx saw that workers had no control, they were directed in tasks, separated or alienated from their “humanity.”
Durkheim saw the break-up of integrated communities causing anomie, normlessness.
A person’s life is separate and different from others in society. Strikes, sabotage, and protest show lack of commitment to new society.
Instrumentalism and Resistance
Instrumentalism: working only to earn money.
Work is supposed to be fulfilling
Resistance: passively or actively slowing, reversing, avoiding, or protesting management directions or strategies.
The potential occurs when experience and self-understanding are denied or undermined
New approaches like Total Quality Management have been tried to improve work place with little success in North America
Sabotage: activities aimed at destroying employers’ property or disturbing the flow of production
Unions and Resistance
Union: represents a group of workers in negotiations with the employer to get a contract.
Won the right to exist in the late 19th century
Growth of Unions linked to a series of conditions:
New management systems
Job insecurity
History of poor working conditions
Unionization is a response to powerlessness.
End of the Social Contract
Downsizing: great reductions in workers to maintain market share and investment returns.
Workers can be productive, but companies want to out-source, doing work elsewhere for lower wages, to make profits.
General flattening of wages of workers in Canada.
Decrease in standard of living for most
Rich get richer
Globalization
Globalization of production: companies look worldwide for the most profitable place for production.
New sites create competition for Canadians to lower wage expectations
Free-trade agreements have forced Canada to drop programs that protected workers’ jobs
Deficit cutting led to employment insurance reductions
Unemployment
Higher than necessary unemployment?
Small-batch production
Movement of jobs to developing countries
Smaller government safety net
Unemployment rate is higher now than 1964-1973.
Does not count those who have given up looking for work or are on assistance
The Future
“Lack of work” problem is foremost on agenda.
Major issues: how will globalization affect them?
Imbalance between resistance and consent
People fear the loss of jobs, fewer strikes in the 1990s
How to organize the work that has to be done: increase the skill of workers or follow scientific management
Chapter 14
Organizations and Work
What Is Work?
Work: Making physical materials (manual) or mental constructs/ideas (intellectual) more useful to the producer. Human work is different.
Humans conceptualize the end product
Human work is purposive and conscious, not performed by instincts
Difference is enabled by ability to communicate symbolically through language.
Evolution of Modern Work
Social division of labour: men hunted and women gathered.
Then, with more complex societies:
Detailed division of labour: division of a single job into many parts.
Industrialization: mass production of goods.
Marx, Durkheim, and Weber saw problems
Rise of Scientific
Management
Scientific Management: Eliminating inefficiencies by breaking down processes into simpler tasks that were easier for workers to learn and be supervised.
Called Taylorism after inventor, Frederick Taylor
Fordism: the application of Taylor’s ideas to the assembly-line by Henry Ford.
People were made into machines and they rebelled.
Social contract: so long as the economy maintained itself, people’s jobs would be secure.
Where We Work
Formal organizations: a division of labour to achieve a goal; they make work more efficient.
Rationalization: the overriding concern within capitalist societies for constantly increasing efficiency.
But sometimes informal organization, informal groups and rules arise to meet challenges.
Can be positive or dysfunctional
More flexible and easily transformed
(cont’d)
Where We Work (cont’d)
Organizations are thus ever-changing through the negotiation of its members.
There is an ongoing trend of Rationalization driving organizational change
McDonalidization: the principals and organization of fast-food restaurants are coming to permeate society more generally.
(cont’d)
Where We Work (cont’d)
Four principals of McDonalidization:
Efficiency – finding the best way to achieve a goal
Calculability – emphasis on quantity over quality
Predictability – consistent products
Control – tightly controlled employees and customers
Bureaucracy
Weber suggested common characteristics
Specialization and division of labour
Hierarchy of authority
Rules and regulations
Impersonality
Technical competence, careers, and tenure
Formal communication
Inequalities in Work
Organizations often have hierarchical structures, with top executives directing those working under them.
Occupational Segregation – people in different social categories tend to do different types of work.
Different types of Occupational Segregation exist:
Sex segregation
Ethnic and Racial segregation
Segregation based on Age
Table 14.1
Youth and the Labour Market
Youth Workers: Age 15 – 24
High Unemployment Rates – In 2006, almost twice the national average
1990’s – Fulltime employment rates for youths dropped 27%
Fewer youth employed outside the home
Youth wages have dropped over the past 30 years
Youths have negative work experiences
Youths are staying in school longer due to lack of employment opportunities and pursuit of education
Work: Satisfying or Alienating?
Marx saw that workers had no control, they were directed in tasks, separated or alienated from their “humanity.”
Durkheim saw the break-up of integrated communities causing anomie, normlessness.
A person’s life is separate and different from others in society. Strikes, sabotage, and protest show lack of commitment to new society.
Instrumentalism and Resistance
Instrumentalism: working only to earn money.
Work is supposed to be fulfilling
Resistance: passively or actively slowing, reversing, avoiding, or protesting management directions or strategies.
The potential occurs when experience and self-understanding are denied or undermined
New approaches like Total Quality Management have been tried to improve work place with little success in North America
Sabotage: activities aimed at destroying employers’ property or disturbing the flow of production
Unions and Resistance
Union: represents a group of workers in negotiations with the employer to get a contract.
Won the right to exist in the late 19th century
Growth of Unions linked to a series of conditions:
New management systems
Job insecurity
History of poor working conditions
Unionization is a response to powerlessness.
End of the Social Contract
Downsizing: great reductions in workers to maintain market share and investment returns.
Workers can be productive, but companies want to out-source, doing work elsewhere for lower wages, to make profits.
General flattening of wages of workers in Canada.
Decrease in standard of living for most
Rich get richer
Globalization
Globalization of production: companies look worldwide for the most profitable place for production.
New sites create competition for Canadians to lower wage expectations
Free-trade agreements have forced Canada to drop programs that protected workers’ jobs
Deficit cutting led to employment insurance reductions
Unemployment
Higher than necessary unemployment?
Small-batch production
Movement of jobs to developing countries
Smaller government safety net
Unemployment rate is higher now than 1964-1973.
Does not count those who have given up looking for work or are on assistance
The Future
“Lack of work” problem is foremost on agenda.
Major issues: how will globalization affect them?
Imbalance between resistance and consent
People fear the loss of jobs, fewer strikes in the 1990s
How to organize the work that has to be done: increase the skill of workers or follow scientific management
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