Degraded Work

Degraded Work PDF Author: Marc Doussard
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816685657
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Critics on the left and the right typically agree that globalization, the loss of manufacturing jobs, and the expansion of the service sector have led to income inequality and rising numbers of low-paying jobs with poor working conditions. In Degraded Work, Marc Doussard demonstrates that this decline in wages and working conditions is anything but the unavoidable result of competitive economic forces. Rather, he makes the case that service sector and other local-serving employers have boosted profit with innovative practices to exploit workers, demeaning their jobs in new ways—denying safety equipment, fining workers for taking scheduled breaks, requiring unpaid overtime—that go far beyond wage cuts. Doussard asserts that the degradation of service work is a choice rather than an inevitability, and he outlines concrete steps that can be taken to help establish a fairer postindustrial labor market. Drawing on fieldwork in Chicago, Degraded Work examines changes in two industries in which inferior job quality is assumed to be intrinsic: residential construction and food retail. In both cases, Doussard shows how employers degraded working conditions as part of a successful and intricate strategy to increase profits. Arguing that a growing service sector does not have to mean growing inequality, Doussard proposes creative policy and organizing opportunities that workers and advocates can use to improve job quality despite the overwhelming barriers to national political action.

Degraded Work

Degraded Work PDF Author: Marc Doussard
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816685657
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book Here

Book Description
Critics on the left and the right typically agree that globalization, the loss of manufacturing jobs, and the expansion of the service sector have led to income inequality and rising numbers of low-paying jobs with poor working conditions. In Degraded Work, Marc Doussard demonstrates that this decline in wages and working conditions is anything but the unavoidable result of competitive economic forces. Rather, he makes the case that service sector and other local-serving employers have boosted profit with innovative practices to exploit workers, demeaning their jobs in new ways—denying safety equipment, fining workers for taking scheduled breaks, requiring unpaid overtime—that go far beyond wage cuts. Doussard asserts that the degradation of service work is a choice rather than an inevitability, and he outlines concrete steps that can be taken to help establish a fairer postindustrial labor market. Drawing on fieldwork in Chicago, Degraded Work examines changes in two industries in which inferior job quality is assumed to be intrinsic: residential construction and food retail. In both cases, Doussard shows how employers degraded working conditions as part of a successful and intricate strategy to increase profits. Arguing that a growing service sector does not have to mean growing inequality, Doussard proposes creative policy and organizing opportunities that workers and advocates can use to improve job quality despite the overwhelming barriers to national political action.

Labor's End

Labor's End PDF Author: Jason Resnikoff
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252053214
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Labor's End traces the discourse around automation from its origins in the factory to its wide-ranging implications in political and social life. As Jason Resnikoff shows, the term automation expressed the conviction that industrial progress meant the inevitable abolition of manual labor from industry. But the real substance of the term reflected industry's desire to hide an intensification of human work--and labor's loss of power and protection--behind magnificent machinery and a starry-eyed faith in technological revolution. The rhetorical power of the automation ideology revealed and perpetuated a belief that the idea of freedom was incompatible with the activity of work. From there, political actors ruled out the workplace as a site of politics while some of labor's staunchest allies dismissed sped-up tasks, expanded workloads, and incipient deindustrialization in the name of technological progress. A forceful intellectual history, Labor's End challenges entrenched assumptions about automation's transformation of the American workplace.

Women's Work

Women's Work PDF Author: Alice A. Kemp
Publisher: Pearson
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
This explicitly feminist look at women and work presents data and research on the wide range of work performed by women in our society, and analyzes it from the distinct theoretical perspective of socialist feminism. It highlights the lives, the work, and the experiences of women of different races and classes through the different types of work they do. KEY TOPICS: Addresses the full range of women's work--productive work done in the labor market, reproductive work performed mainly in the home, and the additional work women perform for the state (by the state regulation of women's lives in the areas of employment and children). Contrasts the socialist feminist perspective with other major theoretical perspectives from sociology and women's studies. Expresses the voices and experiences of women through qualitative research data and excerpts from the creative literature (by and about women, including women of color). Features original tables that describe the contemporary socio-economic standing of women in the U.S. MARKET: For anyone interested in women's studies, the sociology of women, gender roles, social stratification, women cross-culturally, work and occupations.

Meaningful Work

Meaningful Work PDF Author: Andrea Veltman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190618191
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This book examines the importance of work in human well-being, addressing several related philosophical questions about work and arguing on the whole that meaningful work is central in human flourishing. Work impacts flourishing not only in developing and exercising human capabilities but also in instilling and reflecting virtues such as honor, pride, dignity, self-discipline and self-respect. Work also attaches to a sense of purposefulness and personal identity, and meaningful work can promote both personal autonomy and a sense of personal satisfaction that issues from making oneself useful. Further still, work bears a formative influence on character and intelligence and provides a primary avenue for exercising complex skills and garnering esteem and recognition from others. The author defends a pluralistic account of meaningful work, arguing that work can be meaningful in virtue of developing capabilities, supporting virtues, providing a purpose, or integrating elements of a worker's life. In light of the impact of meaningful work on living well, the author argues that well-ordered societies provide opportunities for meaningful work, that individuals would be well advised to pursue these opportunities, and that the philosophical view of value pluralism, which casts work as having no special significance in an individual's life, is false. The book also addresses oppressive work that undermines human flourishing, examining potential solutions to mitigate the impact of bad work on those who perform it. Finally, a guiding argument of the book is that promoting meaningful work is a matter of ethics, more so than a matter of politics. Prioritizing people over profit, treating workers with respect, respecting the intelligence of working people, and creating opportunities for people to contribute developed skills are basic ethical principles for employing organizations and for communities at large.

 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 3978

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Book Description


Labor and Monopoly Capital

Labor and Monopoly Capital PDF Author: Harry Braverman
Publisher: New York : Monthly Review Press
ISBN: 9780853453406
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
This widely acclaimed book, first published in 1974, was a classic from its first day in print. Written in a direct, inviting way by Harry Braverman, whose years as an industrial worker gave him rich personal insight into work, Labor and Monopoly Capital overturned the reigning ideologies of academic sociology. This new edition features an introduction by John Bellamy Foster that sets the work in historical and theoretical context, as well as two rare articles by Braverman, "The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century" (1975) and "Two Comments" (1976), that add much to our understanding of the book.

Critical Social Theory and the End of Work

Critical Social Theory and the End of Work PDF Author: Edward Granter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317157028
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Critical Social Theory and the End of Work examines the development and sociological significance of the idea that work is being eliminated through the use of advanced production technology. Granter’s engagement with the work of key American and European figures such as Marx, Marcuse, Gorz, Habermas and Negri, focuses his arguments for the abolition of labour as a response to the current socio-historical changes affecting our work ethic and consumer ideology. By combining history of ideas with social theory, this book considers how the 'end of work' thesis has developed and has been critically implemented in the analysis of modern society. This book will appeal to scholars of sociology, history of ideas, social and cultural theory as well as those working in the fields of critical management and sociology of work.

Introduction to the Thermodynamics of Materials, Fifth Edition

Introduction to the Thermodynamics of Materials, Fifth Edition PDF Author: David R. Gaskell
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1560329920
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 763

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Book Description
"The CD contains data and descriptive material for making detailed thermodynamic calculations involving materials processing"--Preface.

The Factory Girl and the Seamstress

The Factory Girl and the Seamstress PDF Author: Amal Amireh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136712607
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This book studies the representations of working-class women in canonical and popular American fiction between 1820 and 1870. These representations have been invisible in nineteenth century American literary and cultural studies due to the general view that antebellum writers did not engage with their society's economic and social relaities. Against this view and to highlight the cultural importance of working-class women, this study argues that, in responding to industrialization, middle class writers such as Melville, Hawthorne, Fern, Davies, and Phelps used the figures of the factory worker and the seamstress to express their anxieties about unstable gender and class identitites. These fictional representations were influenced by, and contributed to, an important but understudied cultural debate about wage labor, working women, and class.

An Introduction to W. E. B. Du Bois

An Introduction to W. E. B. Du Bois PDF Author: Kalasia S. Ojeh
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100385737X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
An Introduction to W. E. B. Du Bois examines the historical contributions to social science and the continuing relevance of the work of W. E. B. Du Bois in an accessible manner. The first volume of its kind, it places the theories of Du Bois in context, showing how the socio‐racial environment in which he grew up and came of age influenced the development of his thought. In addition to covering well‐known concepts such as double consciousness, the veil, and religious fatalism, the authors discuss Du Bois’ uncoined theories emanating from the Atlanta University Studies, as well as his contributions to the development of Black sociology and research methodology. A groundbreaking contextualization and summary of the importance of Du Bois’ work to sociology and sociological theory, this book constitutes a much‐needed resource for scholars and students seeking to understand this scholar’s significance to the social sciences beyond the elementary level.