Search

In this paper, I examine the efforts of personal care workers to gain security through unionization and its impact on people with disabilities. I draw on a case study of the dominant model of service delivery in Ontario ? delivery by non-profit organizations contracted to the government ? using policy analysis and key informant interviews. The paper is organized into three sections. The first section describes the interpersonal and intermittent nature of personal care work, and the two vulnerable groups engaged in care work: racialized women and men as workers and people with disabilities as clients/consumers. Section two outlines the difficulties of organizing personal care workers under an industrial labour relations regime, including the need to establish than an organization, rather than an individual, is the employer and structural problems due to the fact that collective bargaining legislation is based on the norm of a direct and continuous, employment relationship with one employer where the work is performed at a single, formal worksite. Moving to the case study, section three focuses on how part-time, shift and on-call workers have won fair wages, extended benefits and the ability to enforce fair labour standards by joining Local 40 of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) yet highlights how the industrial labor relations regime does not fit well with the demands of people with disabilities for a more flexible delivery of services. This case illustrates the need for a new labour relations regime that can bring security with flexibility to both workers and clients/consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As women continue to move into blue-collar occupations, it proves essential to revisit the gender identity literature. Women within these jobs are placed into a difficult situation as they are "inappropriate" socially in terms of their biological category. This paper documents the need to look at the construction and presentation of gender identity at work. By melding the two seminal works, West and Zimmerman's (1987) Doing Gender and Goffman's (1977) Presentation of Self, I urge the development of Situational Identity Management. The essence of SIM is that gender identity is presented in various ways to maximize benefits and minimize stigma from all social situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Excessive work hours can be detrimental to workers and their families, thus it is important to understand how long work hours are generated within a variety of contexts. Recent studies focus on professional and managerial employees. In contrast, this paper explores the meanings of overtime among a blue-collar, manufacturing workforce at an auto parts plant in the U.S. manufacturing Midwest. Maximizing income is a powerful incentive for workers at the plant to accept and seek overtime work. Yet, we argue that interests in income maximization present only one cultural "face" of overtime. In addition, working overtime is embedded within meaningful social relations in the plant and offers workers an opportunity to transgress the status order outside of the factory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The placement of the middle class above the working class in conceptions of the social class hierarchy does not reflect a working class viewpoint. Interviews with blue-collar men working in construction or in factories revealed a consensus that blue-collar work is preferred over white-collar work for a number of reasons. These men all agreed that accepting white-collar jobs would mean giving up meaningful, intrinsically rewarding work that is a source of pride. Informants recognize that the general standing that their job has, using the words of the NORC survey upon which occupational prestige rankings are based, is low relative to white-collar work, but they disagree with that determination. Middle class disdain for blue-collar work, they argue, is based in ignorance. The design of this research allowed for the inclusion of a variety of job categories across two vastly different occupations, it allowed workmen to describe their occupational experience in their own words to an interviewer that shared their class identity, and it did not assume blue-collar work to be positive or negative. These qualities are reflected in conclusions that are not consistent with dominant conceptions of the social order. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the relatively high-paying, traditionally unionized blue-collar jobs are being de-industrialized out of existence; more working class people are finding themselves in the service sector whose policies often make it extremely difficult for them to find the time and resources to care for their families. A grounded theory approach was undertaken in order to provide a theoretical framework for a proposed larger study. The goal of this study was to better understand how working families are adjusting to recent economic, social and political changes, affecting their lives. Six in-depth, face-to-face interviews were undertaken with participants residing in a small working-class suburb of Metropolitan Detroit (three women, ages 33- 60; three men, ages 35-49). This research supports the previous notion that economic interests and experiences of the working class are set apart from more highly educated and affluent citizens. These families find it harder to accomplish their hopes and dreams in the midst of recent economic changes, and they are having constant difficulty supporting and preserving family life. These working class families are finding themselves in a different world than their parents and grandparents, and implementing new policies that support them economically and socially will require organized constituencies advocating for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on workplace inequality between men and women. It has been widely seen the women are unable to climb the ladder of success as quickly as men do. And this goes with both blue collar as well as white collar profession. In this regard two theories have been focused: human capital theory and gender role socialization. The former theory assumes that labor market works in a neutral manner. It pays its workers according to their skills, experience, and productivity irrespective of the gender. The latter theory analyses factors like the family, schools, and the media and behavior of the gender.

This study examined underground iron ore miners' occupational narratives to uncover how these stories socialized miners into blue-collar careers and reinforced their work identities. We identified occupational narratives and themes by using Brown's (1990) and Owen's (1984) criteria. Through the root theme of sisu (Finnish for inner determination), miners constructed meaning in their work, markers for career success, and value in relationships. Their discourse provided alternatives to white-collar conceptualizations and practices of careers and success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on labor relations in the South Korean shipbuilding industry have emphasized that employers and managers fostered cooperation with manual workers, achieving industrial peace. What these scholars have often neglected to note is the extraordinary growth of lower-paid non-regular workers and the wage inequality between regular and non-regular workers. Given that the large-scale shipyards have historically been an epicenter of labor unrest and a stronghold of democratic labor unions in South Korea, both the enduring dualism and the relative lack of solidarity between regular and non-regular workers are especially puzzling. Through an in-depth case study of the Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), one of the world's largest ship manufacturers as well as a birthplace of militant labor unionism in South Korea, this article develops a relational account of dualism and inequality in the workplace. The author maintains that employers at HHI, in an attempt to reduce labor costs and improve export competitiveness, installed and perpetuated the dualism and inequality beginning in the early 1990s. The author also highlights the changing pattern of interaction between regular and non-regular workers from solidarity to fragmentation which contributed to increasing the workforce dualism and wage inequality at HHI. By investigating the dynamic interactions between regular/formal and non-regular/informal workers as well as the changing laborcapital relations, this article can enhance our understanding of how relational processes of exploitation, opportunity hoarding, and claim-making played key roles in strengthening or weakening the dualism and inequality in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report describes the ascension of a small group of working men at a large grain elevator. They gained immense organizational power as the result of a careless restructuring during the "farm crisis" of the 1980s, a process that typically spelled disaster for workmen. I refer to classical contingency theory and to the concept of induction to explain what happened and detail the language among the men involved. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese system of school-work has been widely admired for the strong communication and recruitment relationships that exist between high schools and employers. Building on theoretical literature on employment systems and educational institutions, we develop a framework for understanding the macro-level conditions that fostered the effectiveness of Japan's high school-work system up until the early 1990s. These conditions included a stratified educational system, a large supply of high-quality high school graduates, and firm-internal labor markets for blue-collar workers in large firms. We use original data from a sample of urban high schools to analyze how employers' recruitment patterns changed in the 1990s and beyond. The results of that analysis and a counterfactual analysis suggest that recent changes in Japanese employment institutions have had a significant impact on weakening school-employer relationships. We suggest implications of the Japanese case for school-work processes in other postindustrial societies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social theories of blue-collar work and, by association/definition, the working class, define working class jobs in negative ways. Our theoretical conceptions of blue-collar work, and those that do it, are remarkably similar to those advocated by F. W. Taylor as he promoted "Scientific Management" in the early twentieth century. The negative images of the working class, advocated by both social science and Taylor, justify the deskilling and control of workers by industrial management. While theories of class and work support negative images of blue-collar workers, data presented here from interviews with men working in blue-collar jobs in construction or in factories reveal that workers retain much control over, and knowledge of, the production process. Because of incorrect or incomplete directives from white-collar managers, workers must frequently use their knowledge and skill to overcome inadequacies of management and to properly perform their jobs. These findings challenge our theoretical perception of blue-collar work as subordinate, controlled, simplistic, and mindless. The negative theoretical conceptions of blue-collar work shape the findings of social researchers. If devalued theoretical assumptions are redressed, the conclusions of past research may require revision. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of its arguable limitations, Goldthorpe's class scheme seems to allow a more fine-grained way of measuring social class. However, only a few sociologists have undertaken an investigation of empirical validation of this class schema. This study attempts to assess the validity of the Goldthorpe class scheme in South Korean context, following Evans (1992) and Evans and Mills (1998)'s studies. After pre-examining a multi-cross table by class indicators, this study analyzes latent class models, and examines to what extent the latent class structure matches the types of occupational classes identified on theoretical grounds by Goldthorpe. The author finds that Goldthorpe class scheme is roughly applicable to class structure in South Korea in that there is a clear distinction between employment relations: service relationship versus labor contract. Definitely, a four-class latent model that this study used clearly shows the existence of manual workers regulated by labor contract in a similar way with Goldthorpe class schema. However, this does not mean that Goldthorpe class schema is clearly valid. There are a lot of inconsistencies that should be investigated in further study. In order more clearly to understand class structure in Korea and to assess Goldthorpe class schema, there needs the more accumulation of studies investigating this issue. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explicitly links processes of organizational socialization to social mobility and reproduction. Specifically, it is an examination of the socializing messages exchanged between blue-collar parents and their children (n=66) during a period of heavy deindustrialization. The results demonstrate that family-based messages about work and career do not occur in straightforward, unambiguous messages. Instead, communication about these issues--and ultimately communication about social class mobility and reproduction--emerges and comes to be understood through relational dialectics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional markers of adulthood - leaving home, completing school, establishing financial independence, marriage, and childbearing - have become strikingly delayed or foregone in the latter half of the twentieth century, particularly for the working class. While existing literature focuses on the disappearance of these markers, this study investigates the processes through which working-class men and women project meaning, coherence, and biographical continuity onto their dislocated experiences of coming of age. Drawing upon 100 interviews with working-class men and women in their mid-twenties to early thirties, I ask: in an era of increasing uncertainty and insecurity, where self-evident markers of adulthood have disappeared, what kinds of cultural codes and resources do working-class young people employ to validate their self-growth? And, what are the implications of their new visions of adulthood for the reproduction of inequality? In the absence of institutionalized rites of passage, I find that respondents are faced with the challenge of creating narratives of adulthood on their own. Specifically, over three fourths of respondents rely on a model of therapeutic selfhood - that of an inner-directed self preoccupied with its own emotional and psychic repair - to cope with the disappearance of traditional forms of identity. However, respondents often lack the economic and social resources to realize their new visions of competent adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]