Sociology of Work words
Race to the bottom
A race to the bottom is a socio-economic concept that occurs between nations. When competition becomes fierce between nations over a particular area of trade and production, the nations are given increased incentive to dismantle currently existing regulatory standards. Such a race may also occur within a nation (such as between states or counties), but this occurs much less frequently because the federal government has recourse to enact legislation slowing or halting the race before its effects become too pervasive. The term is often used pejoratively, to describe the elimination of what is seen as beneficial legislation: environmental safeguards or workers' rights, for example. It should be noted, however, that in many instances a race to the bottom proves to be a force for good by eliminating pointless bureaucracy or graft......The situation in which companies and countries try to compete with each other by cutting wages and living standards for workers, and the production of goods is moved to the place where the wages are lowest and the workers have the fewest rights. [1]
Adam smith
Adam Smith is often touted as the world's first free-market capitalist. While that designation is probably a bit overstated, Smith's place in history as the father of modern economics and a major proponent of laissez-faire economic policies is quite secure. Read on to learn about how this Scottish philosopher argued against mercantilism to become the father of modern free trade. Early Life The recorded history of Smith's life begins on June 16, 1723, at his baptism in Scotland. His birthday is undocumented. Smith attended the University of Glasgow at age 14, later transferring to Balliol College in Oxford, England. He spent years teaching and tutoring, publishing some of his lectures in "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" in 1759. The material was well received and laid the foundation for the publication of "An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" (1776), which would cement his place in history. Laissez-faire philosophies, such as minimizing the role of government intervention and taxation in the free markets, and the idea that an "invisible hand" guides supply and demand are among the key ideas Smith's writing is responsible for promoting. These ideas reflect the concept that each person, by looking out for him or herself, inadvertently helps to create the best outcome for all. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest," Smith wrote. By selling products that people want to buy, the butcher, brewer and baker hope to make money. If they are effective in meeting the needs of their customers, they will enjoy the financial rewards. While they are engaging in their enterprises for the purpose of earning money, they are also providing products that people want. Such a system, Smith argued, creates wealth not just for the butcher, brewer and baker, but for the nation as a whole when that nation is populated with citizens working productively to better themselves and address their financial needs. Similarly, Smith noted that a man would invest his wealth in the enterprise most likely to help him earn the highest return for a given risk level........
Alienation
Alienation is a concept that refers to both a psychological condition found in individuals and to a social condition that underlies and promotes it. Karl Marx argued that alienation results from the private ownership of capital and the employment of workers for wages, and arrangement that gives workers little control over what they do. In alienated systems, people no longer work because they experience satisfaction or a sense of connection to the life process, but instead work to earn money, which they need in order to meet their needs. Alienated work becomes a routine, mechanical activity directed by others and serving merely as a means to an end. EX: worker attacking machine since it he felt like it took his job
Neoliberalism
An approach to economics and social studies in which control of economic factors is shifted from the public sector to the private sector. Drawing upon principles of neoclassical economics, neoliberalism suggests that governments reduce deficit spending, limit subsidies, reform tax law to broaden the tax base, remove fixed exchange rates, open up markets to trade by limiting protectionism, privatize state-run businesses, allow private property and back deregulation......INVESTOPEDIA EXPLAINS 'NEOLIBERALISM' The use of the term "liberal" in economics is different from its use in politics. Liberalism in economics refers to "freeing up" the economy by removing barriers and restrictions to what actors can do. Neoliberalism's policies seek to create a laissez-faire atmosphere for economic development.....The economic model that the word "neoliberalism" was coined to describe was developed by Chicago school economists in the 1960s and 1970s based upon Austrian neoclassical economic theories, but heavily influenced by Ayn Rand's barmy pseudo-philosophy of Übermenschen and greed-worship.
Taylorism
Consider, for example, the enduring legacy of scientific management. Frederick Winslow Taylor introduced this managerial philosophy (also known as Taylorism) at the beginning of the 20th century to increase the productivity of workers laboring in factories. He advocated the benefits of redesigning work to wrest control from workers and place it in the hands of management. His Principles of Scientific Management ([1911] 1964) argued for the separation of "thought" from "execution" to establish clear divisions between managers (whose job was to think and design) and workers (whose job was to carry out managers' instructions). He used time- motion studies to decompose production jobs into the simplest component tasks in order to increase worker speed and accuracy. And managers' jobs were redefined to absorb worker skills into the machines and organization and to keep the flow of knowledge going in one direction— from the shop floor into managers' hands. The result was the creation of legions of deskilled jobs, the dissolution of many craft skills, and a decline in the individual worker's ability to control the conditions and rewards of work
Detail division of labor
Detailed division of labor, one of the two aspects of the division of labor, is where the labor required for one product is distributed between many people, each producing a part of the final product. So instead of each worker making a product piece by piece, each worker specializes in making one piece of the product, and all of the workers' pieces come together to make the final product. This enhances productivity by increasing workers' "dexterity in performing a simple operation repeatedly" and "Saving time that is generally lost in passing from one type of work to the next."[1] The most common example of this is Henry Ford's assembly line. The reason Ford Motor Company became so successful in the early 20th century is because Henry Ford was the first to master the assembly line, which uses detailed division of labor. Detailed division of labor can be seen on a larger scale where multiple companies will work together, each making interchangeable parts for a final product.
Federal Social Security act
Federal Social Security Act provides a nationwide system of social insurance to protect wage earners and their families in old age, in the event of illness and disability, and in the event of economic hardship. Many key social programs of the 20th century developed from this act including Social Security, unemployment insurance, and Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC). The National Labor Relation (Wagner) Act establishes the first national policy of protecting the rights of workers to organize and elect their representatives for collective bargaining purposes.
Mass production
Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines. With job production and batch production it is one of the three main production methods.[1] The term mass production was popularized by a 1926 article in the Encyclopedia Britannica supplement that was written based on correspondence with Ford Motor Co. The New York Times used the term in the title of an article that appeared before publication of the Britannica Mass Production involves making many copies of products, very quickly, using assembly line techniques to send partially complete products to workers who each work on an individual step, rather than having a worker work on a whole product from start to finish.
Fordism
Of course, these are not the only phrases used. Others use the term Fordism to describe the old economy, and depending on the political slant of the analysis, post- Fordism and flexible specialization are used to describe the new economy, as are knowledge economy , global economy , and postindustrial......Fordism, named after Henry Ford, is a notion of a modern economic and social system based on an industrialized and standardized form of mass production. The concept is used in various social theories and management studies about production and related socio-economic phenomena....philosophy that aims to achieve higher productivity by standardizing the output, using conveyor assembly lines, and breaking the work into small deskilled tasks. philosophy that aims to achieve higher productivity by standardizing the output, using conveyor assembly lines, and breaking the work into small deskilled tasks....a manufacturing philosophy that aims to achieve higher productivity by standardizing the output using conveyor assembly line and breaking the work into smaller de-skilled task.
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Scientific management
Scientific management, also called Taylorism,[1] is a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows. Its main objective is improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management.
Protestant Work Ethic
THE PROTESTANT ETHIC: Karl Mark felt that the rich manipulated people with religion to keep poor people from have mobility in their social class, and keep the rich people in power. And it was used as a tool to keep them distracted and content with their circumstances. He believed it kept people docile and more likely to obey. If people obey, the rich can get away with overturning laws, and rearranging conditions to meet their benefit. He felt the poor were sold to believe that working more was equated having better morals, and you were part of a higher cause of doing Gods work, and were deserve of getting into heaven. Max Weber on the other hand felt that it benefitted a society to be more productive. And that it was responsible for capitalism, and that it had more positive results for social change, than negative. This belief causes stigma on people who can't get work(like Jamal in the book). It makes people feel like hard work is the only way. Work is worth it for the end reward of eternal life. Work serves God. If you don't work/can't get work you're not trying hard enough. Shame on you. And you must not want to get into heaven. Blaming the victim.
Taft Hartley act
Taft-Hartley was one of more than 250 union-related bills pending in both houses of Congress in 1947.[4] The bill was a conscious effort to decrease the gains made by the labor movement, particularly by the National Labor Relations Act, or NLRA/Wagner Act, which was established as Constitutional despite conservative Republican efforts in 1935 to defeat it. With this failure, the Republicans turned to crafting their own bill to mitigate the influence of labor unions. The architect of the bill, Fred Hartley, was known for his dislike of unions. After World War II, 25 percent of the workforce was unionized (around 14.8 million workers had union contracts, 10 million of them being union security agreements), and with the war now over, their promise not to strike so as not to impede the war effort had expired......The Taft-Hartley Act was seen as a means of demobilizing the labor movement by imposing limits on labor's ability to strike and by prohibiting radicals from their leadership.[7] The law was promoted by large business lobbies including the National Association of Manufacturers.[8]
McJobs
The legacy of managerial philosophies— in this case, scientific management— highlights how culture and social structure intersect. Managerial perspectives that embraced the proposition that workers are indolent and should not be trusted are directly responsible for the creation of many of the alienating, low- wage "McJobs" present in America today. These philosophies initiated the development and application of assembly lines, promoted the acceptance of the idea that some people should be paid to think and others to labor, and fostered divisions between "white- collar" and "blue- collar" jobs. Dan performed blue- collar work during the bulk of his career, and these approaches to organizing work are directly responsible for shaping Jamal's tasks in the fast- food restaurant.
Race to the bottom
The race to the bottom is a socio-economic phenomenon in which governments deregulate the business environment or taxes in order to attract or retain economic activity in their jurisdictions, resulting in lower wages, worse working conditions and fewer environmental protections. An outcome of globalization and free trade, the phenomenon may occur when competition increases between geographic areas over a particular sector of trade and production.
Labor Intensification
The use of new technologies to increase exploitation through higher labor productivity. The intensification of extracting more effort from a worker at anytime. Trying to squeeze every drop of labor from a worker.
Structural Vs Individual
Theory One: Poverty Is Individual The right-wing view is that poverty is an individual phenomenon. On this view, people are in poverty because they are lazy, uneducated, ignorant, or otherwise inferior in some manner. If this theory were true, it would follow that impoverished people are basically the same people every year. And if that were true, we could whip poverty by helping that particular 15% of the population to figure things out and climb out of poverty. Thus, a program of heavy paternalistic life contracts to help this discrete underclass get things together might conceivably end or dramatically reduce poverty. Theory Two: Poverty Is Structural The left-wing view is that poverty is a structural phenomenon. On this view, people are in poverty because they find themselves in holes in the economic system that deliver them inadequate income. Because individual lives are dynamic, people don't sit in those holes forever. One year they are in a low-income hole, but the next year they've found a job or gotten a promotion, and aren't anymore. But that hole that they were in last year doesn't go away. Others inevitably find themselves in that hole because it is a persistent defect in the economic structure. It follows from this that impoverished people are not the same people every year. It follows further that the only way to reduce poverty is to alter the economic structure so as to reduce the number of low-income holes in it.
Underemployment
Underemployment DEFINITION OF 'UNDEREMPLOYMENT' A measure of employment and labor utilization in the economy that looks at how well the labor force is being utilized in terms of skills, experience and availability to work. Labor that falls under the underemployment classification includes those workers that are highly skilled but working in low paying jobs, workers that are highly skilled but work in low skill jobs and part-time workers that would prefer to be full-time. This is different from unemployment in that the individual is working but isn't working at their full capability. INVESTOPEDIA EXPLAINS 'UNDEREMPLOYMENT' For example, an individual with an engineering degree working as a pizza delivery man as his main source of income is considered to be underemployed and underutilized by the economy as he in theory can provide a greater benefit to the overall economy if he were working as an engineer. Also, an individual that is working part-time at an office job instead of full-time is considered underemployed because they are willing to provide more employment, which can increase the overall output.
Wagner act
Wagner Act, officially National Labor Relations Act (1935), Labor Unions: Robert Wagner and the NLRB [Credit: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.]the single most important piece of labour legislation enacted in the United States in the 20th century. It was enacted to eliminate employers' interference with the autonomous organization of workers into unions. Sponsored by Senator Robert F. Wagner, a Democrat from New York, the Wagner Act established the federal government as the regulator and ultimate arbiter of labour relations. It set up a permanent, three-member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with the power to protect the right of most workers (with the notable exception of agricultural and domestic labourers) to organize unions ... (100 of 219 words)
Capitalism
an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.
Agency
people's efforts, whether as individuals or in groups, to direct their own biographies, shape the lives of others, and respond to and sometimes modify the structure and culture of work. One's agency is one's independent capability or ability to act on one's will. This ability is affected by the cognitive belief structure which one has formed through one's experiences, and the perceptions held by the society and the individual, of the structures and circumstances of the environment one is in and the position they are born into.......AGENCY: • In the social sciences, agency refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. • In the social sciences, agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. By contrast, structure are those factors of influence (such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, customs, etc.) that determine or limit an agent and his or her decisions.[1] The relative difference in influences from structure and agency is debated - it's unclear to what extent a person's actions are constrained • self-determination, volition, or free will; it is the power of individuals to act independently of the determining constraints of social structure. • In the social sciences there is a standing debate over the primacy of structure or agency in shaping human behavior. Structure is the recurrent patterned arrangements which influence or limit the choices and opportunities available.[1] Agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.[1] The structure versus agency debate may be understood as an issue of socialization against autonomy in determining whether an individual acts as a free agent or in a manner dictated by social structure.
Industrialization
the process of converting to a socioeconomic order in which industry is dominant. How or why some agrarian societies have evolved into industrial states is not always fully understood. What is certainly known, though, is that the changes that took place in Britain during the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries provided a prototype for the early industrializing nations of western Europe and North America. Along with its technological components (e.g., the mechanization of labour and the reliance upon inanimate sources of energy), the process of industrialization entailed profound social developments. The freeing of the labourer from feudal and customary obligations created a free market in labour, with a pivotal role for a specific social type, the entrepreneur. Cities drew large numbers of people off the land, massing workers in the new industrial towns and factories.
Laissez fare
the theory or system of government that upholds the autonomous character of the economic order, believing that government should intervene as little as possible in the direction of economic affair