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Printers have long been considered the epitome of the skilled blue-collar craftsmen. The complexity and variety of the work process, the state of technology in the industry, and the role of strong unions in maintaining shop floor autonomy have been important factors in preserving high levels of skill, and thus power, among printers. Recently, however, all this has been changing. The steady decline of industrial profit margins after World War II has led many large printing establishments to introduce more sophisticated printing technologies, particularly computerized typesetting processes, which have routinized work tasks and led to a decline of skill among printing craftsmen. In this paper, we provide substantive and empirical evidence for these processes with a time-series analysis of data from the printing industry for the years 1931-1978. We find support for our theory of industrial transformation. Specifically, our data suggest that skill levels in the industry have indeed declined and, moreover, that these declines are largely due to the shift to more capital-intensive printing techniques. Our arguments also support the view that social relations of production between employers and employees influence the nature of technology utilized in an industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of programmable machines into blue-collar machining occupations affords an opportunity to study the conditions under which occupational skill upgrading occurs with technological change. How do workplaces that permit blue-collar occupations to take on programming responsibilities differ from those that do not? This paper presents a contingency model explaining how this choice of job design is mediated by four types of factors: techno-economic forces, internal labor market structures, institutional mechanisms for governing the labor-management relationship, and the organizational context. The data are from a 1986-87 national survey of production managers in a size-stratified random sample of manufacturing establishments in 21 industries. A multivariate logistic regression analysis reveals that the technology and product market alone do not determine job design. The least complex organizations (small plant, small firm) tend to offer the greatest opportunities for skill upgrading, independent of techno-economic conditions -- a finding at variance with current labor market segmentation theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tensions between the demands of the knowledge-based economy and remaining, blue-collar jobs underlie renewed debates about whether schools should emphasize career and technical training or college-preparatory curricula. We add a gendered lens to this issue, given the male-dominated nature of blue-collar jobs and women’s greater returns to college. Using the ELS:2002, this study exploits spatial variation in school curricula and jobs to investigate local dynamics that shape gender stratification. Results suggest a link between high school training and jobs in blue-collar communities that structures patterns of gender inequality into early adulthood. Although high school training in blue-collar communities reduced both men’s and women’s odds of four-year college enrollment, it had gender-divergent labor market consequences. Men in blue-collar communities took more blue-collar courses, had higher rates of blue-collar employment, and earned similar wages relative to otherwise comparable men from non-blue-collar communities. Women were less likely to work and to be employed in professional occupations, and they suffered severe wage penalties relative to their male peers and women from non-blue-collar communities. These relationships were due partly to high schools in blue-collar communities offering more blue-collar and fewer advanced college-preparatory courses. This curricular tradeoff may benefit men, but it appears to disadvantage women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars recognize that labor market structure affects job mobility. However, existing research rarely considers the impact of structural change on mobility. I develop a model for how the size of organizational labor markets and the instability resulting from industry expansion, contraction, and equity reorganization influenced rates of internal mobility, external mobility, and unemployment during the industrial restructuring of the 1980s. Analysis of data from the Current Population Surveys, the Current Employment Statistics program, the Small Business Data Base, and the Mergers and Acquisitions database shows that structural change has predictable effects on job mobility and that labor market structure channels mobility in predictable ways. However, the results also show that the ability of labor market structure to buffer environmental turbulence was limited during the turbulent 1980s, and that the "flexible" character of American labor markets had important consequences for blue-collar and service workers in the American work force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do intraclass struggles shape the political terrain on which ensuing struggles, within and between classes, are fought and resolved? Out attempt to answer this question focuses on the rivalry among the factions and parties involved in organizing American industrial workers from the late 1930s on. We assess how the political practices of the Communists and their rivals determined which political camp won power in the new CIO unions. A logit model shows that two ensembles of political practices "loaded the historical dice" in favor of the Communists. The chances that Communists would win union leadership were far higher: first, if the union had seceded from the AFL and joined the CIO from below, in an insurgent workers' movement, rather than from above, in a revolt of its top officers; and second, if the union had been organized independently, rather than by a CIO "organizing committee." Two other political practices indirectly favored the Communists: earlier Red union organizing in the industry (although its effects were contradictory); and forming the union as an amalgamated rather than as a unitary organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The orders of precedence issued by the City of London between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries provide a measure of occupational status that has several advantages over modern prestige scales. A selection of the forty orders located shows dramatic changes in the status of occupations over this period, as do the records and chronicles of individual companies. Correlation coefficients suggest that both antiquity and wealth are important determinants of status, but the histories of the city companies suggest that organizational or political factors are also important. The investigation is not simply of historical curiosity; it suggests an alternative strategy for the study of occupational prestige in contemporary societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]