Technology and Work Flashcards
Technology
The use of knowledge and organization to produce objects and techniques for the attainment of specific goals
Tech and the workplace
machine learning isn’t just for simple tasks like assessing credit risk and sorting mail anymore - today its used for more complex applications, grading essays and diagnosing diseases
Tech and unemployment
fear of new tech replacing jobs
tech may create jobs our make others obsolete
may reinforce inequality (benefit some than others)
How does tech influence work
deskilling
upgrading/enskilling
the mixed effects position
why its still a debate
Deskilling argument
reduce skills reduce autonomy reduce wages (easily replaceable, benefitting owners, powerless)
Comes from Marx
upgrading or enskilling argument
enhance skill levels (more complex)
enhance autonomy (more discretion, more responsibility)
enhance wages
Invest in them more
not easily replaced - more valuable
opens more doors for workers to work on more complex tasks
Mixed effects position
enskilling and deskilling occurring simultaneously
Polarization of skills
Doesn’t agree that things will cancel out
Think that the outcome will be polarizing
Bad jobs will be deskilled and get worse becoming less desirable
Jobs that are at the better end of the spectrum, they are going to get even better,
more complex and paid even more
Pushing these classes of workers even further apart
Greater increase in inequality
Widening gap of the lowest skilled jobs and the highest skilled jobs
Why its still a debate
problems with theory and date
larger implications of arguments
workers experiences at work
Workers’ experiences at work
Suggests that a lot of employees that are having really horrific work experiences
Alienating experiences
No control in the working place
how does technology influence work? The proletarianization of clerical work
Upgrading of blue collar work
declining status of clerical work
the impact of tech
the influx of women
Upgrading of blue collar work
Becoming more skilled again, regarding mechanics
As these factories became more complex in terms of mechanization (assembly line) –
people were becoming more highly skilled, people who had to run the machines and maintain it
Semi-skilled blue collar jobs
Pride in terms of the job that they are doing
Masculine, job security, pay better
Declining status of clerical work
1800 – predominantly male, middle class men
Desirable occupation
Stay in long enough move up to management
They would dress like their bosses
Wear suits to work, flashy dressers
Mix with more of the upper class
Successful, were comparing their masculinity to the blue collared workers, questioning if what they were doing was a man’s job
Unmanly, and pointless
influx of women
Reinforcing the lack of manliness as women started entering
Took it over
Job at the chance to enter a male dominated field if they get the sense that the men are exiting
Ex: medicine, law Occurring simultaneously Work is becoming feminized 97% of all secretaries are women 75% of women are clerical workers
proletarianization
specific type of deskilling
Referring to an occupation that starts of with high status and prestige
Starts off like a profession, and ending in a low skill job
Same sort of features that deskilling has Greater specialization, narrow defined tasks, less autonomy, wages go down More easily replaceable Lower wages
Technologies
When the men were clerical workers they had a more general approach to the workplace
Accounting, typing,balancing the books
Different tasks that were involved in clerical work
Started seeing that workplace offices started to revolve their jobs around these technologies
Telephone, new job (receptionists)
The type writer (typists)
These two office machines opened the door for other types of office machines, to which different jobs were assigned
Highly specialized tasks
Narrowly defined
Skill levels – can only use that one type of technology
Fragmented office place – highly specialized women working on these narrowly defined tasks
Influx of women
Preference for younger women
Little educational or skill requirements
high turnover rates
Even though it was appealing, safe, for women, they were quitting at high rates
Young women, work at this job from 18-early 20’s
When they got married and had kids they left the job
No advancement in this job
More horizontally but not upwards
They would get bored of these jobs and quit
