fEbony has 11 post(s)

In Sassen  essay, “Strategic Instantiations of Gendering,” Saskia Sassen (2003:1)  she argues “today’s dominant account about economic globalization in media and policy, as well as in much economic analysis, emphasizes hypermobility, global communications, and the neutralization of place and distance.”  Sassen states that place does not matter and only people with education matter.  the new transitional worker is over looked and only the privilege is accounted for and stated that the global migration of maids, nannies,nurses,sex workers and contract brides(1). Sassen talks about the immigrant cultures where women take on jobs to make ends meet and take care of their family in other country. Sassan argue that the contribution and marginalization of immigrant women are factors that contribute to the growth of the global economy but goes unnoticed in today’s society.  Low wage workers are overlooked and are not credited but is the driving force behind the country’s capital. She spoke about how these women would be trafficked across country lines for jobs and the trouble they faced.

Sassen argues that global cities in the U.S. and across the world contributed to the process of creating these industries and not recognizing the growth in global capital. She spoke about the sex workers and how much money the government made off these workers. She states that 4 million people were trafficked in 1998 which made a profit of 7 billion dollars. Which is so sad to think that these poor women who have been exploited generated so much money for the government. She argues that the work force is made up mostly of women and most of the country’s revenue is made up of the money that these women work by any means then send home to their families in other country. It’s funny how this article states that women make up the majority of resident workers and they are mostly women of color. Which the last piece we read by Paul England stated that women earned less and work less because of motherhood. Sassen shed light on how women are important to the working class. She said that immigrant women are important actors in the new informal economics of cities of the global north. Women take more important roles in society like active and social roles. Women have been exploited throughout time and it can be seen that they have been playing and doing their part but have not been recognized.

In the report “The Roots of the Widening Racial Wealth Gap,” Thomas Shapiro, Tatjana Meschede, and Sam Osoro (2013) they gave factors that fueled the racial wealth gap in the U.S. the factors are: home ownership, Income and Employment, Inheritance and College Education

They talked about how home ownership is the biggest driver of radical wealth gap between white homeowners and black owners. Growing up everyone’s dream is to get married and live in a house with the white picket fence. But due to limitations like residential segregation set by the government that is harder to achieve if you are African American families.

There’s a huge gap when it comes to income between blacks and whites due to hiring discriminations, training and promotions because if you have no training you can’t get the job then you can’t get a promotion if no one will hire you right. Because your name is Shanquisha and not Becky. Not having a great job leave people of color at a lower rate financially. Their jobs don’t provide retirement plans and sometime benefit so it leaves little room for savings or any kind of investment. Most people are only able to live from check to check. The article mentioned that wealth for African Americans is     needed to cover emergency savings while wealth in white families is well beyond the emergency and can be saved or invested more readily (Shapiro5).

When it comes to inheritance for African American chances are that there is none because you come from a struggling family and there is nothing to inherit but debt. But Shapiro mentioned that most Americans inherit very little or no money, but among the families followed for 25 years’ whites were five times more likely to inherit than African-Americans 36 percent to 7 percent (Shapiro5). In the study they found that whites receive inheritance ten times more than African Americans.

The homeownership and inheritance play apart in why there’s an education gap because if u live in an area that is segregated with low incomes then it’s already working against children. They can’t afford to go to private school so they must settle for public schools. It also cost to go to college so most people have to work instead of going to college or have to work and go to go to college in order to avoid debt which most of us is doing at this time.

I agree with their finding I feel like as an African American the cards are stacked against us when you look at only a handful of people can say they don’t know what struggle is and when you look into it trying to achieve the goal of owning an home, being financially stable and acquiring an education so you can be set for life with a little saving in the bank chances are it will take life time to achieving it due to the way life is set up. We see it every day where there is a different set of requirements and rules set for us where you can force an African American to turn over his birth certificate to prove he was born here to be the president but you do not have to make your taxes public in order to become the president if your white.

In Terkel’s work he argues that that our concept of a “work ethic” needs to be wrested from its more banal invocation as the effort putting into making a buck. I believe he is trying to show the relationship between people and work. He gives different examples of professions and peoples reaction to what they do. He goes on interviews asking people about their job. I think he is showing a different idea of a calling people who love what they do and aren’t just there for the money but work because they truly love what they do. For example, the musician he spoke to who told the story of juggling a lot of different jobs and how he can go from a show where he’s the center of attention to not being seen. He also said that he even played at a funeral and one would look at it as if his job is tiresome and something we would not do but he enjoyed what he did.

Terkel’s interviews show that no matter who you are of what kind of job hey had every one had a different meaning of what makes work meaningful to them.  When he interviews Mike he found out all the struggles that mike go through just to get his son to go to college and how he stops at the bar before going home because he have to de stress before he goes home because he cant take out his stress on his family.

Almost 50% of us hate our jobs but because of circumstances we are in the job we are we have no way out because of life but we must find meaning in what we do. It might not be what we want our long-term goal but it’s what we do to live and provide for our family so with that title we have to look for meaning and find a way to continue doing that job over and over again each day. Im sure if we take a survey now or interview my classmates we would not get 100% of students who find joy and take great pride in what they do. Maybe the few that are teachers who love molding and preparing children love what they do. He also mention people who were looked down upon because of their job title so they change the name to make it look better when they were with other people who had better job titles.

In Elaine Halls essay titled “Doing Gender By Giving ‘Good Service”, She mentioned the two identifiable approaches to the relationship between gender and organizations. They are gender in the organization approach and the gendered organization approach. Hall states that women and women are affected differently in gender neutral organizations.

The gender in organization approach is more geared towards gender differences. Hall mentioned that gender is embedded in the jobs that we do. They believe that women and men are different kind of people who bring different kind of meaning into gender neutral setting Hall states that the jobs we do rub off on us. She mentioned that police women role conflict of being police WOMAN and the professional role of POLICE woman (Hall454). Meaning that being a woman trumps over their professional title.The gendered approach is what people do with their behavior. This approach states that women and men and women encounter gender meaning in relationships in social settings(Hall454). She goes on to talk about the relationship between women sexuality and work. She talked about how women are refer to as waitress and men are servers.  She then spoke about how waiters are caring like mothers and how service jobs are women work.

Hall first points out three ways in which restaurants “do” gender.  Division and hiring gendered women to fill them.  Two where waiters learn their place and how to behave around costumers and three Hall also talk about women servers as sexual objects by both patrons and workers. She used the example of hiring young sexy women as waitresses and giving them uniforms that highlight those areas that men like. For example, in today’s society all the women at hooters are beautiful and mostly blonde women of a certain size that they hire to serve men wings. If you don’t fit the requirement, then you won’t get hired because they need these women to help sell their products men are compelled to order more and stay longer when they are in a room filled with attractive women.

Hall talked about the flirting game where the waitress flirts which is said to be a part of her job. In halls research she found that women were told to smile more be friendly and be more friendly than their male counter parts. Females were treated as worse servant than men in the gendered organization approach just like Hall’s findings of males and female’s treatment at work by their employers and the people they serve. Hall believed the gendered organization model has more explanatory power when it comes to the way gender is constructed within and between restaurants because it fits the data and because it encompasses the multidimensional ways of gender(Hall467). It appears as if it is more explanatory because I involve one’s work and their behavior to provide a full explanation of why society is the way it is.

                                                                                  Part B

In Michelle Budig and Paul England essay “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood,” they gave five explanations to support their claim why women in their “childbearing years” are more likely to be paid less than their male counter parts for the same work. They are as follows:

The first explanation that Budig and England mentioned is that women spend most of their time at home caring for their child so they don’t have time for a fulltime job because they already have one at home. Which in some case is true if you’re a single mother with no help or its your first child you would want to be there to hold that child and watch them grow. Frist time mother hate to miss a step in their child’s life.

The second explanation is that they would take a lower paying job that cater to the fact that they are a mother for example a job where they could bring their child or have a day care attached to it. They also would need flexible hours and work that they wouldn’t have to work on weekends, less travel time and can keep in contact with their children always.  It’s said that a Mother friendly characteristic is to work part-time (207).

The third explanation is that their children may distract them and leave them tired so their productivity at work is low, they don’t make their quotas or they slack off cut corners because they were up all night with a baby with fever. Mothers are less productive than non-mothers because they storing energy for home.

The fourth point is discrimination against them because they are mothers. They are treated differently for example they are given less rewarding jobs and are not considered for promotions. Sex discrimination creates a gap in pay but not a gap between women mothers or none mothers (Budig& England 208). They spoke about both types of discrimination taste and statistical discrimination.

Last but not least they mentioned that the fifth is the effects of motherhood on wages. Where they start of by saying maybe there Is no effect on wages just because they are mothers (210). They state that women with lower academic skills may more likely have children early because of their career prospects are not good and children give more satisfaction.  I am not sure I agree with this as a female but it sound like they said women have kids because that’s all they could do if they can’t get their life together. Maybe I read it wrong.

In Barbara Ehrenreich  introduction of her book, Nickel and Dimed, (2001:8)  she notes that certain family members told her she could complete her research without ever leaving her study.  They said that she could get an entry level job and charge herself for room and board, gas and add it up for the month. She goes on to elaborate on how much rent cost and the wages that she would make but she wanted to learn firsthand what it was like and how people survived. She had questions she needed answers to for example the one she used the single mother being able to live without welfare.

In chapter two of her book she explained why she choose to move to Maine and she said she choose it because of its whiteness. When I read that part I immediately went oh lord here come a trump supporter but She went on to say that everyone there was white the housekeepers, the cabdrivers. So it made sense that this would be a town with a poor white people. She then described her hotel that she was staying in which was pretty interesting. Motel 6 where she paid $59 a night next to a gas station, auto store and a shopping mart. She seemed happy to start her journey she said other than fugitives and refugees, how many people ever get to blow off all past relationships and routines, leave those mounds of unanswered mail and voice-mail messages, and start all over, with just a driver’s license and a Social Security card. (Ehrenreich34) which is very interesting a lot of poor people do this all the time. They leave their homes and family to find a better job so that their family can have a better life. I did this at 14 years of age where I left Jamaica to come to New York for a better education.

Ehrenreich went on to talk about her apartment searching and how she couldn’t get an apartment without a job and couldn’t get a job without an address which was funny. Because both go hand in hand and what she did in order to get one how she decided to use the pay phone and the teenagers as her receptionist and decided she would look both a job and an apartment at the same time. She talked about prices and how she couldn’t afford certain apartment so she decided to share an apartment and one the apartments she looked at the guy was sleep in the kitchen. I am sorry I don’t care how cheaper this apartment was I would not live somewhere where there’s a person sleeping in the kitchen and her question was how do I cook and the landlord response was he doesn’t sleep all the time  in my head I said girl run but apparently she really needed somewhere to stay.

Her job interviews was even more interesting , she couldn’t get a clerical job because of limited wardrobe, she couldn’t become waitress because tourist season was ending so no one was hiring.so she looked into  warehouse and nursing homework, manufacturing, and a position called “general helper( Ehrenreich37). She sounded like any typical person looking for a job she went through a bunch of random jobs, sent her application everywhere. Then finally she gets a job as a dietary aide, she said a dietary aide sounds important and technical. (Ehrenreich38) but then she realized what the job entails cleaning and handling dish washer.

All her experiences that she described in her book gave her a greater understanding to what life is really like when you’re poor and have a low wage job trying to make ends meet. Her going out and job hunting, meeting different people gave her the chance to see, live and breathe the struggles of others so she understands and can now give a great account of what it is like. And it gave her information to write her book and even though this is a temporary situation for her to get the answers she set out to get as a journalist but it’s an everyday struggle for us who have to work for low wage and try to survive. If she did not leave and listen to her family she wouldn’t have gotten the experience she did.

“McDonaldization” is the way society adopts the characteristics of the fast food restaurants. A nation driven by rationality, speed and efficiency. Ritzer used the success of the fast food restaurants as a metaphor to explain the trends happening in society.

The Ritzer’s work states five key aspects by which fast food restaurant’s work production and consumption can be compared. These aspects are calculability, efficiency, predictability, substitution of nonhuman technology and control over uncertainty.

The way fast food restaurants are set up to provide food fast make it more convenient, efficient at a high speed for people on the go anywhere at anytime make it efficient which cut time and cost. He spoke about predictable where he compared TV dinners with home cooking from scratch and which one is more predictable than the other. He also spoke about calculability which is the emphasis on quantity over quality. Where he uses McDonald’s burger to make his point about how they tell you about how many burgers were sold than the quality of its burgers.

Also, he touches on the recent events that is happening in society where machines is starting to replace humans in the workplace. For example, the self-help machines in the lobby McDonalds, the ones in the AT&T stores even the ATM machines in the banks they replaced the tellers. It’s funny when he stated that McDonalds haven’t had robots serving food yet which at the rate we are moving it’s a matter of time before it happen. But he stated that their work make them act like robots due to the automated work that they must perform for example drink dispensers that stops when cups are filled. What I found most interesting is when he mentioned religion and mentioned drive in churches and the replacement of human by television screens.

He then draws on control where he states that corporations also have control over uncertainties of life, death, birth, and production and control over the employees and customer who they serve. For example, drive through windows at night when the stores are closed.

The relationship between “McDonaldization” and the economic rationalization of Max Weber is that is used to represent the direction of the changing society. The principles of how the fast food restaurant is dominating society while weber spoke about how religion is pushing capitalism. So, both speak about the force behind the changes in society. Ritzer states that efficiency. Predictability, control and substitution are the force pushing the change in his article.

The relationship between work and education in this week’s reading is the less education the higher the unemployment rate and the more education one earn the higher the pay rate. so, the more education you receive the more money you make and the less the unemployment rate. The article on the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the unemployment percentages and earnings of people with different degrees and those who have no education at all. it also shows that people who have less than a high school diploma and less makes four hundred and ninety-three dollars a week and the highest level you can achieve is a doctoral degree is one thousand six hundred and twenty-three dollars. There is a huge cap between those who acquire a degree from those who do not.  But even though you get a good education there is no guarantee that you will receive a great job.

The NY times article shows that people and resource are being exploited due to the lack of education and the fact that they a minority who are trying to find work to take care of their family.  It mentions that workers are housed in camps and their passport are being taken away and they are working for less than they are being promised. The employment codes are being violated and workers are dying at the hands of these employees just to put up big beautiful buildings and museums.  They are losing their lives, not being paid, their pay being taken away ,they are scraping by to make ends meet and their families are suffering just so that these institutions can be erected in saadiyat island.in some cases they are working illegally to repay their recruitment debts.

According to the article on USAtoday website  on for-profit colleges it states that there is a 64% drop out rate at for-profit colleges and they spend most of their money on non-educational things like marketing and advertisements. So, many students who attend these colleges wont graduate and most of the money they acquire is spent on getting people to come to their colleges. These for- profit colleges are said to be alternatives to community or state colleges and might not be suitable for non-traditional students. The developments in the Persian Gulf to growth of for profits colleges can be connected in the united states to do it states that they boycotted the Guggenheim so now they are going cherry picking for globalization menu.

In Frederick Taylor’s work on “The Principles of Scientific Management,” he argues that workers could work harder and produce more for their company but because of the payment they receive they make less.  He discussed a term called “soldering” in the U.S, in England it is called “hanging it out” and in Scotland it’s called “ca canae” which is under working or deliberately working slow and safe, putting out less and avoiding doing a day’s work of work.  This proves that it exists in work places around the world and is a problem that he believes is universal and can be found in large establishments.

He stated three reasons for why workers do not produce at maximum capacity. His first reason states that a misconception workers are tossed together in the same environment could lead to a lot of men out of jobs.  Second The system and machines make workers work slower because they are trying to protect themselves and third the rule of thumb method to teach the new workers to perform the task.

Taylor believe that the scientific method would fix the problem of underworking and lower cost of production both home and overseas markets and would even the playing field with the competitors. The rule of thumb method workers is being trained by other workers so there’s a lot of other way of getting the task done. He believes that management should be more hands on and train their employees’ one definite way of doing the job efficiently thus producing more, less time being wasted which will result in more profit and higher wages, elimination of poverty and lower the cost of production. It would also have a better effect on their workers that would allow them to work at the best of their abilities, doubling speed that will eventually double production.

In Karl Marx piece on Wage Labor and Capital, he uses the weaver as an example to talk about the relationship of labor activity to a commodity. He was showing the relationship between supply and demand. He shows the chain of events in which the capitalist supplies the raw materials for the worker to make a product then that finish product is returned to the capitalist to be sold for x amount of money but none of that money belongs to the worker that makes that product. He is paid a set price for his work and none of the profits from the finish product belongs to the worker.  There is no true or intimate connection between that worker and the merchandise in which they produce because they are not producing it for themselves they were hired by a corporation to produce a certain number of goods at a specific time at a set price. So the love and attention that they would normally put into it if that product represents them is not there.

For example, Footlocker they are just the means in which the shoes are distributed but they have factories where they hire workers to make these shoes for cheap then bring them to America and sells them for hundreds of dollars but the workers in the factory already have a set price for their wage that they are being paid none of the money that they make off the shoes sold in the stores belong to these workers.  The worker only receives the amount of money he or she agreed to work for upon hire. As we can see today some products that are made in China are worth staying in china due to the way they were made they weren’t built to last long.

According to Marx labour power is the commodity that the worker sells to the boss and the reason is to make a living so the relationship he’s trying to make between commodity and wage labor is that the worker himself sells his commodity for a price so wages are a part of the commodity which means that wages create commodities. Marx said that wages are the already existing part of commodities. He gave an example where he spoke about slavery and how those workers did not sell their labor to the capitalist but they were already sold for a price. This shows that labour did not always a commodity and it was not always paid for it was also free.

In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber Weber coated lines written by Benjamin Franklin to describe the spirit of capitalism  where he stated :

“Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings

a day by his labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one-half of

that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or

idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has

really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides” (weber14).

Franklin was saying that our time equaled money and a person can either work for their money or go idle and spend the little that they have. But money can disappear as easy as it’s received. Plus, from I am drawing I think he believes that a man who works hard for their money would consider the and be more mindful of how he spends that money compared to one that did not work for it.

He connected rationalism and the spirit of capitalism by looking at capitalism as the pursuit of renewable profit. Everything is done in terms of balances, the amount of money gained versus how much is spent. He also quoted franklin on how money equals credit and how the government gets the interest.  “Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is due, he gives me the interest, or so much as I can make of it during that time. This amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit and makes good use of it”. Here he talks about business and loans and if you borrow and don’t pay on time they make a profit. This is where they rob poor people  who worked hard for their money. It’s all a money making business where the poor suffers.

Weber believes that Franklin’s idea is not about making an honest living and finding their way in the world and the work ethic is more of a forgetful duty. And it’s more about profit and greed.  He believed  Benjamin Franklin was irrational and that making money was just a means of supplying material needs. And the drive to earn more and more money is a means to and end because you spend all your time at work and not enjoying life.  He thought that capitalism was more than money and wealth to gain economic status.