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An essay is presented on the subject of cigarette smoking among U.S. laborers in factories, corporate spying on workers, and the social culture of shopfloors in the U.S. during the 20th century. It examines the records of Erie, Pennsylvania, paper manufacturer Hammermill Paper Company concerning employee cigarette consumption, how employees attempted to evade corporate surveillance of their smoking, and labor relations in the U.S.

This paper examines the determinants of National Labor Relations Board certification election outcomes in individual election units between 1972 and 1980. Particular emphasis is given to the role of national union characteristics in determining union success or failure. The authors find that union success in organizing both blue- and white-collar workers is influenced positively by union size and internal democracy and negatively by strike activity and the centralization of its decision making. Benefits provided directly to members by unions significantly increase, and higher dues significantly reduce, white-collar organizing success, whereas the same factors have no significant effect on blue-collar organizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the effect of imports on US manufacturing wages using the NLSY79 data-set, estimating differential impacts on blue- and white-collar wages. I find that rising imports put downward pressure on wages between 1979 and 1988. This correlation holds for both white- and blue-collar workers, with a somewhat stronger impact on the latter group. Evidence suggests that imports from low-wage countries are responsible for the negative relationship between imports and wages, but only for blue-collar wages. A one-percentage-point increase in the low-wage import share is associated with a 2.8% decline in blue-collar wages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relationship between intelligence and occupation and, secondly, relates occupation to various aspects of migration. The relationship between occupation and test intelligence has been the subject of considerable investigation. There tends to be a hierarchy of occupational structure which is closely related to test intelligence, whether the classification is based on the subject's parental occupation or on his own occupation. The material for the investigation consists of the Ohio State University Intelligence Test scores for about 5,000 boys and girls who were high school seniors in 116 Missouri communities in 1939-41. There seems to be a distinct tendency for the brighter boys and girls in rural areas and small towns of Missouri, to find their occupational levels in the higher prestige occupations, especially the professional groups, while those who perform more poorly on tests are more likely to become manual worker and farmers with somewhat lower rankings on the prestige scale.

Ground-based high voltage electrical line inspection is one of the difficult and highly dangerous job as far as a manual worker is concerned. The transmission line inspection by robots avoids temporary interruption of power supply that affects the end user and transmission grid. Also, robot-based inspection reduces maintenance cost and hazards. The electrical line inspection is normally carried out using binoculars and rarely by helicopters in most of the countries because of the low cost. Wire traversing or aerial robots are being used in Japan, Canada, USA and Russia for inspecting and monitoring faults in transmission lines and towers. However, most of these robots require a lot of human effort for installation due to its weight and complex design. Cost of these robots is also very high. This paper presents the mechanical design, fabrication and testing of a novel, low cost, light weight and compact power transmission line inspection robot. This work also includes kinematic, static and dynamic analysis of various subsystems of robot. Proposed robot is capable of traversing on straight transmission line and jumper cables present in tension towers. The robot has 10 DoF dual arm for crossing operation and a base system to achieve the locomotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most skills acquired through on-the-job training may be specific to an occupation and therefore transferable to some but not all firms. This paper explores the relationship between the size of the local market for an occupation-specific skill and job-training outcomes. The Stevens (1994) model of training predicts that as market size increases, job turnover increases and training becomes more general. I test these predictions using data on blue-collar workers and variation in market size across US metropolitan areas. The empirical results support the theoretical predictions and the impacts are most relevant at low levels of market size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on various studies conducted by Purdue University's Industrial Relations Committee. Roy R. Nasstrom of the Department of Education conducted a study of teacher associations and unions. Researcher John F. Baum of the Krannert Graduate School of Industrial Administration conducted a study on absenteeism among blue-collar workers in the automobile industry. Researcher James R. Chelius of the Krannert Graduate School of Industrial Administration studied the impact of occupational safety risks on the structure of wages. Researcher L.F. Dunn of the Krannert Graduate School of Industrial Administration investigated manpower problems in the rural southern U.S.

The article discusses issues related to subjective powerlessness in the U.S. The paper focuses on changes since 1952 in citizen efficacy or feelings of control over government for various sub-groups in the U.S. population such as blacks, blue collar workers, Southerners, Jews, young and old people. As with most issues in the study of social change, there is widespread disagreement on trends in citizen efficacy for industrial societies such as the U.S. Most theory predicts trends in objective powerlessness, rather than subjective powerlessness, although it is possible that trends in objective powerlessness do not match trends in subjective powerlessness. Within the U.S. at each point of observation, powerlessness does not vary much by stratum, except when education and race are used as indicators. And within the white population, some of the differences are heavily explained by educational differentials. It therefore seems fair to conclude that white subordinate interest groups are not oriented toward government as a result of what would seem to be objective powerlessness but more on the basis of their educational achievement.

We examine the effects of the population turnaround on unemployment rates in a nine-county region in northern lower Michigan. Data from census reports and a mailed questionnaire were used to test the following competing hypotheses about unemployment impacts: (1) labor-market infusion (or positive employment impacts), (2) labor-market overload (or negative impact on unemployment and increased competition for jobs), and (3) a mixed model in which the balance of positive and negative impacts differs depending on occupational status. Our major finding is that blue-collar persons (both newcomers and long-term residents) experienced much higher unemployment rates than white-collar persons. In other words, for white-collar strata, labor-market infusion is supported; for blue-collar strata, labor-market overload is supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the study of the hostility of male co-workers towards women working in non-traditional blue collar jobs. This paper compares full-time women workers in traditionally male blue-collar jobs to those in predominantly female, lower white-collar positions within a single, large company, using five dimensions of job satisfaction pay, work content, promotion opportunity, co-workers and supervisors. Authors Brigid O'Farrell and Sharon L. Harlan compares the blue and white-collar women's degree of satisfaction with coworkers and other job aspects and then the relative importance they attribute to these job aspects. They measure the blue-collar women's perception of male co-worker hostility Third, controlling for demographic characteristics and job type, we measure the effect of perceived co-workers' attitudes on the five dimensions of women's job satisfaction The analysis supports the feminist critique of traditional explanations for women's work motivations Our conclusions demonstrate the implications of this research for theories of job segregation and for equal employment policy.

The article focuses on the interrelationship of occupational selectivity patterns among city, suburban and fringe areas of major metropolitan centers. The analysis reported in the paper is based on the occupational distributions of employed white male non-farm workers within the 76 metropolitan areas that had populations of 300,000 or more. In order to ascertain the occupational selectivity patterns of city, sub-urban and fringe resident populations, Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSAs) were divided into zones or sub-areas as follows, the central city of an SMSA is identified as the city, the part of the urbanized area outside the central city is identified as the suburb and the area outside the urbanized area but within the SMSA is referred to as the fringe. Occupational selectivity refers to the differential residential distributions of persons in the major occupation classes. it was found that metropolitan areas with central cities in which the higher status white collar occupations were under-represented and the lower status white collar occupations usually were over-represented tended to have suburban areas in which the higher status white collar occupations were over represented and lower-status blue collar occupations were under-represented.

This article presents the author's observation on some elements of a sociological theory of wages. The key to an understanding of the role of sociological forces in wage determination lies, I believe, in an appreciation of the nature of on-the-job training and its significance in the development of job skills. My own research suggests that for blue-collar workers it occurs within informal social groups and may be understood in terms of what sociologists call socialization, that is, the adaptation of the individual to the norms and role patterns of the work group. The moral character of custom permits the work group to punish violations through the imposition of sanctions which the moral code of the larger society proscribes and which the workers themselves would normally adjure as illegal and unethical. American trade union organizations are grounded on the shop level. They thus encompass within them the informal social groups in whose domain custom lies. In both the craft and the industrial case, the forces driving toward some kind of national organization, and, hence, requiring a reconciliation between conflicting customs, are economic in character. An alternative approach is to examine the relationship between the customary wage structure and the competitive pressures generated by the economic system. A tendency for workers and management to import a customary wage structure into new plants from other work situations would also work for uniformity.

Since the early 1980s, the way in which goods and materials are exchanged and moved has changed in what has been called the 'logistics revolution'. In the USA, the value of goods moved as freight has doubled since the late 1990s, the number of warehouses has grown by two-and-a-half times, while the amount carried by intermodal transport has grown by five times over these years. This article will argue that the system of logistics that has taken shape in the last two or three decades is deeply affected by contradictions inherent in capitalism that magnify the potential power of labour to disrupt supply chains. Among these are: the tension between the desire for the seamless movement of goods and the disruptive reality of competition and the fight for value appropriation up and down the supply chain; the push by both retailers and manufacturers for ever faster delivery of goods to market; the burden of high fixed costs that underlie the structure of contemporary logistics; and the growth of huge 'logistics clusters' concentrating tens of thousands of manual workers in important metropolitan areas. It will be argued that each of these contradictions renders the firms in these logistics networks highly vulnerable to worker actions. While such actions have been relatively rare so far, communitybased pre-union organising in some major clusters, such as Chicago, is laying the basis for a future upsurge in worker organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of interplant sex segregation in the U.S. manufacturing industry improves on previous work by using more detailed information on the characteristics of both workers and firms and adopting an improved measure of segregation. The data source is the Worker-Establishment Characteristics Database (a U.S. Census Bureau database) for 1990. There are three main findings. First, interplant sex segregation in the U.S. manufacturing industry is substantial, particularly among blue-collar workers. Second, even in analyses that control for a variety of plant characteristics, the authors find that female managers tend to work in the same plants as female supervisees. Finally, they find that interplant sex segregation can account for a substantial fraction of the male/female wage gap in the manufacturing industry, particularly among blue-collar workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides evidence that wages in the public sector tend to be higher than in the private sector for most blue-collar jobs and lower level white-collar jobs, but salaries are generally lower in the public sector for managerial and professional occupations. The authors argue that these differentials, many of which are accentuated by differences in fringe benefits and job security, can be explained in large part by a combination of two factors: the discretion that public employers must exercise in implementing the prevailing wage rule adopted by most cities and larger government units, and the nature of the political forces that affect governmental wage decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compared the perceptions of need satisfaction and importance for blue-collar workers in the USA and Mexico. Organizational and technological differences were controlled to isolate culture as the independent variable. Porter's need questionnaire was used to tap employees' attitudes. The data indicate that there were significant differences in nearly every need item score between the two countries. Mexican workers were more satisfied than their counterparts in the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the impact of unionism on relative wages of blue-collar workers for different ages and levels of educational attainment in the U.S. The study shows that labor unions benefit less educated employees more than more educated employees and tend to provide higher wage effects for young and old employees than for middle-aged workers. Meanwhile, labor unions appear to have the greatest relative wage effect when African American union members are in their early forties. These findings suggests that unions increase the rate of wages of their members by 34.2 percent over their nonunion counterparts.

The article presents a synthesis of correlation studies of job satisfaction in the U.S. Although there is a positive relationship between income and job satisfaction, there apparently is a stronger association between satisfaction with income and job satisfaction. Employees who report satisfaction with their housing situation are more likely to report job satisfaction. Meanwhile, there is little variation among the reports of job satisfaction at different levels of education. Satisfaction appear to be higher for employees in professional, farm and skilled blue-collar occupational categories than for workers in the unskilled category.

This article uses administrative data from seven states to examine repeat use in the U.S. unemployment insurance (UI) system in 2003, a period of moderate unemployment. Findings show that more than half of recipients on temporary layoff and nearly a third of displaced recipients became repeat users, that is, started a new UI claim within a year of the end of their initial claim. Repeat use was more prevalent for workers with weak prior attachment to the workforce, those employed in cyclical sectors or blue-collar jobs, low-education workers, and older workers. Further analysis shows that repeat users collected substantially higher benefit amounts than nonrepeat users, causing a substantial burden on the UI Trust Fund. Finally, the article presents evidence that providing reemployment assistance to displaced recipients may be an effective policy for reducing repeat use and alleviating its burden on the UI Trust Fund. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. We examined the relationship between unemployment and mortality in Germany, a coordinated market economy, and the United States, a liberal market economy. Methods. We followed 2 working-age cohorts from the German Socioeconomic Panel and the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1984 to 2005. We defined unemployment as unemployed at the time of survey. We used discrete-time survival analysis, adjusting for potential confounders. Results. There was an unemployment-mortality association among Americans (relative risk [RR] = 2.4; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.7, 3.4), but not among Germans (RR = 1.4; 95% CI = 1.0, 2.0). In education-stratified models, there was an association among minimum-skilled (RR = 2.6; 95% CI = 1.4, 4.7) and medium-skilled (RR = 2.4; 95% CI = 1.5, 3.8) Americans, but not among minimum- and medium-skilled Germans. There was no association among high-skilled Americans, but an association among high-skilled Germans (RR = 3.0; 95% CI = 1.3, 7.0), although this was limited to those educated in East Germany. Minimum- and medium-skilled unemployed Americans had the highest absolute risks of dying. Conclusions. The higher risk of dying for minimum- and medium-skilled unemployed Americans, not found among Germans, suggests that the unemployment- mortality relationship may be mediated by the institutional and economic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worker-level data from the 1984–2000 Displaced Worker Surveys are employed to examine the effects of trade on manufacturing workers’ probabilities of job displacement. Observed changes in import and export penetration rates yield increases in displacement probabilities for the North Central, Middle Atlantic and South Central regions yet lower displacement probabilities for the Plains/West and Pacific regions. Changes in import and export price indexes lead to increases in displacement probabilities for the Pacific, Southeast and Northeast regions and decreases for the South Central and Middle Atlantic regions. However, while the influences of imports and exports on job displacement vary considerably across states and regions, the estimated net effect of trade on displacement probabilities is minor, generally speaking, when compared to the combined influence of other factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the construction of oil company camps in the U.S. Oil companies established camps on the outskirts of flourishing oil towns as an option to the hard living conditions that were common in boomtowns. In the construction of camps, the company designated to perform more than simply meet the demand for shelter. It is averred that oil company camps include white-and blue-collar personnel and gathered the immediate need for housing for those worked in the field.

Using the 1888 Cost of Living Survey, I estimate the demand for calories of American and British industrial workers. I find that the income and expenditure elasticities of calories for American households are significantly lower than the corresponding elasticities for British households, suggesting that American industrial workers were nutritionally better off than their British counterparts. I further find that the calorie elasticity differential between the two countries was driven by the higher wages enjoyed in the United States. Additional analysis reveals that the relative price of calories was approximately 20 percent greater in Great Britain than in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on changes in occupational staffing patterns in the United States during the 20th century. Professional, managerial and clerical workers grew from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment between 1910 and 2000. There had been a shift in the workforce once composed mostly of manual workers. Occupational staffing patterns changed radically over the 1910-2000 period in response to changes in the mix of goods and services produced and the methods used to produce them.

Two questions concerning enjoyment of work asked on a 1955 American Gallup Poll were asked on a 1980 United States national survey to gauge the net change during a quarter of a century. Only the responses of persons employed full-time were used for this study. Indicated enjoyment of work was substantially lower in 1980 than in 1955. The difference was especially great for manual workers, Protestants, and older persons. A tentative conclusion drawn from examining trend data for one birth cohort is that the change resulted from cohort succession and from orientations and attitudes members of younger cohorts brought to their work rather than from changes in work conditions which affected workers of all ages and in all birth cohorts. Some implications of the findings are disscussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a preliminary study of the behavior of U.S. male blue-collar workers on four-day workweeks. Effect on the way free time is used; Patterns of time allocation.

Examines the effects of collective bargaining as measured for men in blue-collar jobs in the United States. Three dimensions of labor market experience; Degree to which any advantage of unionized hourly earnings has been offset by more unemployment; Differences in hourly earnings, unemployment experience and growth in hourly earnings.

Discusses results of a study describing work conditions in the U.S. and their impact on blue collar workers. Emergence of worker discontent; Principal sources of worker discontent; Job satisfaction surveys.

Data from a national survey of inequalities in educational opportunity were analyzed to estimate the independent and joint effects of race, socioeconomic level, religion, and place of residence on chances of boys and girls dropping out of high school. Low socioeconomic level, non-Catholic religious identification, and residence in the South were found to be more closely associated than the other variables with leaving school before graduation; these relationships were relatively independent of race and urban residence. The latter were associated with leaving school, but the relationships were not independent of effects of the former. Patterns of interaction were examined, and blue-collar Negro males in the urbanized areas of the North and West and blue-collar white males in the more rural part of the South were found to have much higher dropout rates than expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]