fJaneth has 10 post(s)

In Saskia Sassen’s essay, “Strategic instantiations of Gendering,” she argues that the media and policy circles believe that the leading narrative of our current global economy is based on the factors that place and distance are no longer relevant and that the main key players are the highly educated professionals. Sassen argues that with the emphasis on this particular narrative the information outputs are missing other key factors. As the fact that global migration of maids, nannies, nurses, sex workers and contract brides play a major role in globalization. As the information outputs are neglecting to acknowledge that these low wageworkers have been in existence way before our current economic globalization and are now major players.

Globalization does create the demand for high-level professionals; which then require heavy demands on their lives with long work schedules. This in return generates the need to have the household task to be taken care by the “ serving classes,” which are mainly composed of immigrant and migrant women (5). With the demand of service workers, these low wageworker are incorporated into global markets and play a major part to its growth, but unfortunately they go unnoticed. They are not seen as viable members of globalization.

Globalization has created global growth but has placed many countries in great debt that in return has created a great deal of unemployment. As governments find new creative ways to shrink their debt to be able to compete with the global markets they have implemented exporting workers and permitting mail order brides, as ways to coping with their unemployment. Unfortunately the exportation then gets tied in with global sex trade as criminal organizations look for the means to cash in as they start trafficking in migrant workers. As the workers go over to other countries for employment they tend to send remittances to their families back home. Which then becomes a major source for their government.

As the world economy grows so does the demand for the low wageworkers. Consequently we can see how globalization helps to promote the exploitation of the migrant women who tend to suffer the most without any recognition or without the opportunity to grow. Sadly the mass media and policy makers don’t’ believe that they are not considered to be major contributors to globalization, as the serving class workers tend to hold jobs with limited growth opportunities and the ones that face the most exploitation.

In the report, “The Roots of the Widening Racial Wealth Gap,” by Thomas Shapiro, Tatjana Meschede, and Sam Osoro, they discuss the main factors that fuel the racial wealth gap. Those factors as per their report were:

Homeownership: As per this study homeownership is the largest form of investment for most Americans. The length of homeownership plays a big role on the return of its investment, therefor the significant forecaster of the wealth gap. Unfortunately African American faced a large numbers of foreclosures during the real state crisis of 2008, which contributed to the high wealth disparity between whites and African American (3,4).

Income and Unemployment: As per this study the increase of income plays a major role in wealth accumulation. It is historically known that African Americans have suffered discrimination in the job markets. That has resulted is getting jobs where they don’t have the same benefits and face work instabilities that most whites don’t have to worry about (4-5).

College education: Education was known as the “great equalizer,” but that is no longer the case. Now that colleges are getting too expensive, African Americans are more likely to drop out to avoid dept. Versus the wealthier whites that are more likely to afford the higher education who are the one’s taking advantages of the benefits of attending college.

Inheritance: Even though most Americans inherit very little to no money, Whites are 5 times as likely to inherit than African Americans. The major difference in what happens to the inherence its whites are more like invest their inheritance. As for African Americans, they are more likely to save it just in case they have to use it for an emergency (5).

Social and Cultural Factors: As per this study, marriage seems to benefit already higher earning white families. When they combine their incomes together that tends to help then build on their current wealth. As for African Americans, marriage doesn’t help much in the accumulation of wealth. Yes, combining two incomes does help but when they are both significantly low, it doesn’t make much of an impact (6).

I can both agree and disagree with this study. Yes there has been a significant amount of discrimination that African Americans have faced and therefore have struggled in getting a fair chance in accumulating wealth. At first they struggle with trying to get fair loan. Afterwards, they were victims of predatory lending which have left many to lose their homes after the real state crisis. But I’m such a believer that even though the world seems to be going against you, there is no reason to give up. I believe that when there is a will there is a way. Many African Americans have gotten out of poverty and have become major entrepreneurs. So even though the study shows enough evidence to support the argument there are always exemptions to this.

Part B

In Michelle Budig and Paula England’s essay, “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood,” they both present the arguments of why our society penalizes mothers by paying them lower wages than their male counterparts. Budig and England present us with the data that supports the link between motherhood and low wages and why we should care. They tell us that it’s not only a large issue that symbolizes gender inequality that has always existed but because it has a lifetime effect on our society.  The following are the causes of why women in their childbearing years have lower hourly pay:

The first cause is believed to be because of the lost of job experience. As the mother needs to be away from work and stay at home to take care of the children, in return creates the break of employment. It is believed that mothers lose job experience with the interruption of work, as it stops the involvement of the on-the-job training. As per Buding and England, there are studies that show that continuation and experience may influence higher pay (205).

The second cause is that motherhood reduces job effort and productivity. Children take up a lot of time, which in return leaves the mother exhausted and distracted from work. Working mothers are considered to be less productive at work because they are always more concern with what is happening with their children rather than concentrating on their jobs. It is believed that non-mothers have more time for leisure and therefore have more energy for paid work.

The third cause is believed to be that mothers trade off higher wage jobs for “mother friendly” jobs that support their parenting. Mothers need to have flexible jobs that allow them to have time to take care of their children. They often settled for less paying jobs so they can have flexible hours, pay sick leave and vacation.

The fourth cause is that they are discriminated by their employers. They often place mothers in less rewarding jobs. If there is chance of a promotion they will likely give that job to woman who doesn’t have kids as they are viewed as more dependable and productive.

The fifth cause is the effects of motherhood on wages. They argue that lower wages leads to having more children. They are less interested in affluence therefore are more likely to have more children. As they find themselves valuing their family more than money.

Budig and England concluded that motherhood leads to employment breaks. That through time the lack the accumulation of work experience and seniority, which in return diminish the pension payments needed for retirement. We should be concentrating on “caring labor” that ultimately increases the level of care for the next generation (205).

Part A

In Elaine Hall’s essay “Doing Gender by Giving ‘Good Service,” she explains the association between gender and organizations by identifying two different models: the gender-in organization and the gendered organization approach. Hall explains that the gender-in organization tends to be gender-neutral organizations that affect men and women differently. This model tends to be a disadvantage for women, as it tends to steer men towards the better jobs. As for the gendered organizations instead of supposing neutrality it directs the worker to their given role. This model tends to breakdown how organizations and workers differentiate gender at work. (Hall 453).

Hall clarifies that the gender-in organization model identifies men and women as different types of workers that give specific meaning to their jobs. She uses the example of the role of a police officer; society tends to see policewomen as less authoritative than the policemen. Their gender is what brings meaning to a neutral setting. As for the Gendered organization model its when specific occupations are viewed as gender specific. Their gender is viewed as an essential part of doing their job and its something that people do with their behavior (Hall 454).

Elaine Hall believes that the gendered organization model has more explanatory power in the restaurant industry because they generally “do” gender by:

• Creating gender divisions, they view restaurant work as women’s work.
• Creating the image of deferential servant, waitresses have to learn to “accept one’s Place”
• Creating the image of women as being sexual objects, they hire attractive young women to attract the opposite sex.

The gendered model that restaurants use specifically allocates men and women to the different jobs that are needed in restaurants and they define the job performances in gender terms. Hall notes that regardless of the type of restaurant, in order for their employees to provide good service they must follow three scripts: Friendliness, subservience and flirting (Hall 465). In their initial training employees are taught to always welcome patrons with a smile, make them feel welcome. Being that women are viewed as friendlier, this is when the gender division comes in. The second script is subservience; in this the customers do differentiate, as they often treat their waitresses as less than and look down on them more so than a waiter. The third scrip is the flirting, this is suggested as the owners see it as essential to keeping the customers interested in coming back to spend their money.

McDonaldization is the term George Ritzer uses to describe the traits that modern American society finds itself acquiring as it moves towards revamping rationalization. Our capitalist society’s main goal is to achieve maximum cheap production through speed and efficiency. In doing so it starts to mirror the fast food industries principles of operation. As per George Ritzer, there are five principles that make up McDonaldization and our modern society seems to be moving more in that direction.

The first principle is Efficiency, which is the emphasis on looking for the best and fastest route to reaching the set goal. An example of this is how the fast food restaurants want to produce the fastest way to feed it’s customers by cutting corners in production. This is also true, with the busy modern families who want to find the fastest way to feed their families when they are on the go; therefore they find themselves either eating at a fast food restaurant or having frozen TV dinners.

The second principle is Predictability: It is to always know what you are getting. Fast food restaurants only offer a limited menu, as they don’t want to take chances in making any changes on the tastes of their menu items. Our society wants to know what to expect that is why TV dinners are so popular, as they tend to consist of the same entries; they are either Chicken with mash potatoes, turkey with roasted potatoes or something very similar.

The third principle is Calculability: It is the emphasis of quantity rather than quality. This is seen as how McDonalds advertises how many billions of hamburgers they have served versus telling us how delicious their hamburgers are. We see this in our modern school system as it places it’s emphasis on the standardized exams and the students are then reduced to their scores.

The fourth principle is Substitution of Nonhuman Technology: In the effort to limit human error, companies take away the human skills and build them into technology. For example most cash registers now have the prices of their menus items already program into them. Most individuals now days can’t seem to live without their smart phones. There is no need to call for the operator as they can use their phones for assistance.

The fifth principle is Control: It is to standardize a set of rule. This is used as companies / fast food industry want to control how their employees do their jobs to maximize their productivity. We also see how control comes into play as parents set many different rules to try to keep their unruly children in line.

Max Weber and George Ritzer both explain economic rationalization in their own terms. Max Weber explains the spirit of capitalism as the ideas and set values of hard work that derived from the protestant reform as the major contributors to the rational pursuit of economic gain. The Protestant work ethic influenced their people to work hard that in return contribute to the accumulation of wealth and the growth of capitalism. As per George Ritzer, McDonaldization is based on the principles that thrive in a vast consumption based economy that is goal oriented and in return fuels Capitalism.

Studs Terkel’s interviews numerous people to try to get to the meaning of work. Throughout theses countless interviews he tries to demonstrate that there is more to work than just a means to making a buck. To some individuals, they seem to just go through the motions of working from 9 to 5 from Monday through Friday. As to others they have manage to find some kind of meaning to their jobs. He gives us numerous examples but the ones that I found most profound were the fire fighter and the banker, who he used at the end of the introduction. The Fireman puts his life in danger every time he steps into a burning building, but manages to find a great deal of meaning and satisfaction in what he does. Versus the banker, who sees his job as not having any real worth, he just sees it as working with paper that is not real to him.

Studs Terkel found that some people were looked down and were judged simply because of the jobs that they held. As some individuals need to find some self worth in their jobs and the need to belong to “human community.” They find that they need to give their jobs deeper meaningful names. As janitors, are usually also known as building engineers (1972: XX). Just because they changed the names of their jobs, doesn’t mean that they didn’t like their jobs, they just needed to feel like they belong and worthy of their peers.

As working adults, I’m sure some of us are still striving to find “our dream job”. But what is the perfect “dream job”? It all depends on the individual. I’m sure what I think a “dream job” is, might be totally different to what you feel is the “dream job.” Just like Studs Terkel found in interviewing all the people that he did, as they were all from various walks of life, they all had different perspectives and views on what made work meaningful. I’m sure that most of us have heard time and time again, how teachers are the most unappreciated professionals. But when you speak to a teacher (some anyway), they will tell you how much they love teaching and they find it extremely meaningful. We know that they don’t get paid enough but they tell us, that they are not doing it for the paycheck; they are doing it because they truly love teaching our children.

Frederick Taylor theorizes that in order to obtain the maximum output of men and machines we have to do away with the causes of slow working and “Soldering.” In order to do away with the inefficiency that is crippling our country, we first have to understand the three main causes of “soldering”. The understanding of the three main causes is needed in order to be able to implement the scientific management that is required to help reach the maximums needed for true mutual success from both workmen and employers. Frederick Taylor discusses the following three main causes of “soldering”(Taylor p.5).

1. Fallacy is the illusion that exist among workmen which basically highlights the fact that if they work at their best speed to have the best production possible, they will do an injustice to the rest of the workers who don’t work as fast nor produce as much as they do.  Which in return will cause men to be out of work (Taylor p.5).

2. Defective systems of management, refers to the notion that there is a very poor relationship between employers and workmen. As a result of their poor rapport, employers don’t know how much time is needed to complete different projects. Which in return causes the employees to idle one’s time away.

3. The inefficient rule of thumb has been generated using previous results from earlier samples that were arrived by trial and error methods. Therefore creating various approaches to handle particular jobs. The fact that there is no set rule to handle certain jobs creates wasteful techniques that aid the “soldering.” (Taylor p.5)

According to Frederick Taylor scientific management would be the best option for eliminating the “soldering” of workmen that are not benefiting nor helping the employer prosper. That in turn results in the need to get rid of slow working in order to achieve prosperity for both the workers and employers. By implementing the scientific methods it would in turn result in higher labor production that consequently lower labor costs.  In using the scientific methods, the manager would be able to get involved in the labor processes and in response be better informed about the time it takes to complete the task assigned. By improving the involvement of management of the workers they will therefore be able to influence the results of productivity to be a positive one. Even though Taylor doesn’t claim that in using the scientific management slow working and soldering will end, he can definitely help the troubles that exist for the workmen and employers.

In Chapter two of Karl Marx’s ”Wage Labour and Capital,” Marx distinguishes the commodities the weaver uses to that of the finished cloth. The weaver is hired by the capitalist to make cloth; in return the capitalist pays the weaver for the work that was done to make the cloth. The capitalist supplies the weaver with all the required materials to make the cloth including the yarn, the raw material, the loom, and the instrument of labor all to produce the final product so in return he can then sell the cloth and make his profit. Being that the capitalist has purchased these commodities in order to produce a higher valuable commodity with money he already has on hand, the weaver doesn’t benefit from the sale of the cloth. To the capitalist, the waver’s labor power is just another commodity like the raw material and instrument that are needed for the production of the cloth. According to Marx, the weaver should not be concerned about if the cloth he made was sold for a profit because he was already paid his wage for the job he was hired to do. Anything that was made off his job belongs solely to the capitalist who hired the weaver. Sometimes the cloth can be sold for a significant amount or sometimes not at all, as a result the labor power the weaver has already provided for the production of the cloth, should not affect his wages.

Marx’s “Wage Labour and Capital” also gives us the example of how labor power wasn’t always a product that could be bought or sold. In the cases of the slaves and the serfs, due to the fact they were seen as property, the labor power that they provided was free. This is because they were forced into doing the labor. And because the slaves were seen as property, the labor power was no longer the highly sought out commodity, the slave itself turned into the commodity. In a similar aspect, the serfs were also forced into working on the land of the kings and the lords. Neither the slave nor the serf received wages for their labor. The ones to profit from their labor power commodity were the slave owners and the lords of the land.

Harry Braverman speaks about, how the capitalist true purpose is to boost the productivity and lower the cost of the labor force. This is achieved by breaking down each job to its simplest form to be able to maximize its profit. As the capitalist system needs to create division of labor, it does so by detailing the workmanship to the simplest form possible, as it aims to destroy craftsmanship.

In “ The Making of the working Class” The distinction that Harry Braverman is making between productive and unproductive work is that the capitalist system has used science and technology to make it possible to increase productivity and profit. This in turn created a shift that lessened the need for skilled workers. Due to this shift, in return created the need for robotic unskilled workers. As in the sample of the textile mills, with the industrialization of it’s manufacturing it lost their skilled workers. The machines were able to mass produce and increase its outputs. Its skilled workers were no longer needed and are then forced to go into unproductive work fields. This was usually in the accounting, banking or marketing firms that were considered to be very controlled industries, the workers there were considered cheap labor and very easily replaceable by other workers.

Hi Class,

My name is Janeth and I migrated to this country at the age of 9 with my parents and younger brother from Colombia. As an immigrant who has always been surrounded by a very hard working family, I hold a great deal of respect and admiration for all those who have paved the way for us all. I received my first job at the age of 16, as one of m High School’s teacher recommended me to a colleague who was looking for students to work at her costume jewelry shop on the weekends. I recalled taking the Long Island Railroad with three other classmates to Amityville, long Island on Saturdays, for an entire school year. I enjoyed that experience very much. I feel for the most part, that I have been very fortunate in most of my jobs that I have held. I believe that this Sociology of Work class will give us a better understanding of what is currently happening in the work force. I Especially believe it will help us decipher what our current politicians are trying to persuade us to believe about the current work markets.

I was recently promoted to administrative manager of personnel and academic affairs to the division of Cardiology at Columbia Medical Center. I have been working for Columbia University for about 10 years and have been very fortunate to have wonderful working environments. As for the work history of my grandparents, both sets of grandparents worked in Farms. My fathers’ parents own their own land and my mother’s parents were field workers. Both sets of grand parents were both very hard working as they often told stories of how early they were up working. As for my parents my mom was a stay at home mom and my dad worked as a mechanic. When we moved to the states they both when to work in factories, my mom as a seamstress and my dad as a technician who repaired the sewing machines.

I believe that my grandparents and parents have always stressed the importance of giving your all in whatever we were doing. My parents didn’t get a chance to go on to college because they were busy making a living and supporting their family, but they have always stressed the importance of finishing what we have started, therefor I have always wanted to finish my degree as I had to stop going to school to raise my kids. I give my parents thanks for being my role models and for teaching the importance of working hard.

In reading Max Weber’s excerpt, the statement that stuck out to me was when he quotes a writer trying to show the difference of the attitudes between the protestant and the Catholic religions, towards the economic life:

” The Catholic is quieter, having less of the acquisitive impulse; he prefers a life of the greatest possible security, even with a smaller income, to a life of risk and excitement, even though it may bring the chance of gaining honor and riches. The proverb says jokingly, “Either eat well or sleep well”. In the present case the Protestant prefers to eat well, the Catholic to sleep undisturbed” (p 8).

This statement very clearly states how the Protestantism believes largely influenced people to work hard to be able to accumulate wealth and live well. As per Catholicism influence people to take care of themselves and live peaceful lives, without stressing and killing themselves working. My parents raised us with Catholics believes that have influenced my work ethics. I do work hard because it’s the right thing to do not because I will get rich. My parents worked hard to make sure we had a roof over our heads but they stressed the value of our family and providing a good foundation for their children.