Work and Economy

Question 1

Trends impacting post graduation…

Answer 1

• growing number of overqualified workers
• expansion of contract work
• disappearance of company-sponsored pension plans
• corporate downsizing and restructuring

Question 2

Overqualified Workers

Answer 2

• those with university degree but work in occupations that require only a high school education
• 18% overqualified
• higher qualification = less likely to have job only requiring high school education
• younger = more likely overqualified
• older = chance of REMAINING overqualified

Question 3

Contract Jobs

Answer 3

• often do not have job security
• usually no health coverage
• hard to build a life off of this kind of job

Question 4

Corporate downsizing and restructuring

Answer 4

• high levels of education = high salaries = investing years from big companies and retiring and looking for new job
• harder to find job with similar benefits as previous ones

Question 5

Key Trends

Answer 5

• Demographic change (aging population)
• Globalization and deindustrialization
• Polarization of jobs
• School to work transition changed
• Work to retirement transition changed
• Unemployment (more young and old)
• Unionization

Question 6

Structural Functionalism

Answer 6

• Davis and Moore
• financial rewards are linked to importance of jobs
• critique: what about intrinsic rewards?
• educational inequalities

Question 7

Symbolic Interactionism

Answer 7

• interactions within the workforce are very important
• Donald Roy: Banana time
• it had meaning to how they psychologically coped with the job
• worker camaraderie helps to overcome alienation

Question 8

Conflict/Marx Theory

Answer 8

• labour processes are alienating for workers
• disconnected from products they make/sell
• no control over production processes
• they cannot show creativity and Marx does not agree with this because he thinks everyone should express their creativity

Question 9

Feminist Theory

Answer 9

• gender inequalities
• occupational sex segregation
• sexual harassment and discrimination
• glass ceiling and glass elevator
• ## maternal wall: barriers women face from birthing children

Question 10

Frederick Taylor (Taylorism)

Answer 10

• industrial scientific management
• maximize productivity by working as quickly as possible
• minimize “soldiering” (goofing off)
• want to double the amount of work being done in certain amounts of time
• mental labour is not performed by labourers - solely performed by management

Question 11

Henry Ford (Fordism)

Answer 11

• extends idea of productive management through the assembly line
• each person responsible for one piece of labour process repeatedly

Question 12

Max Weber

Answer 12

• modern bureaucracies: no freedom within workers, on very set schedules on how to work and manage time
• no flexibility
• hierarchy and formal protocol
• rules that cannot be bent or interpreted

Question 13

Michel Foucault

Answer 13

• workers always under control and strict surveillance
• physical abuse being compensated for non physical
• workers still monitored so much that awareness of it makes them discipline themselves because of their fear of being watched and fired

Question 14

Ritzer: McDonaldization

Answer 14

• globalization/McDonaldization of society
• rationalization
• principles of “McDonald” type restaurants are being carried on to both business and non businesses
• efficiency, calculability, predictability and control