Work, Poverty and Welfare Flashcards
1
Q
What is absolute poverty?
A
When a person lacks the minimum requirements to survive such as food or water
- United nations says anyone under $1.25 a day is in absolute poverty
2
Q
What are the advantages of the definition of absolute poverty?
A
- National and international comparisons made easier due to necessities being relatively easily identified
3
Q
What are the weaknesses of the definition of absolute poverty?
A
- Hard to objectively measure subsistent needs. This can be seen through Rowntrees study, drew up a budget for essential nutrition but was criticised for relying on opinions of people who drew up list. He also wasted nothing showing middle class cooking skills rather than resources available to the poor
- Ignores reality of people’s lives, doesn’t take into account social, psychological and cultural habits which influence people’s decision.
- No clear subsistence minimum, a builder may need more calories than a cleaner and minimums will be different in hot or cold countries
- People need more than just survival in life such as entertainment and socialising in order to live
4
Q
What is relative poverty?
A
- Townsend says that relative poverty is when people are socially excluded because they cannot afford things others can such as education, work and access to services etc.
- Minimum standards are related to the society the person is living in
- Social exclusion can cause problems such as bad health, poor housing, poor services etc. which can all contribute to eachother leading to a spiral of decline
5
Q
What are some examples of poverty apart from low income?
A
- Homelessness, 2014, 52,000 people named unintentionally homeless
- Poverty in healthcare, fewer doctors acting in inner city areas where most poor live and those that live there are overworked spending less time with patients because poor are more likely to have bad health.
- Poverty at school, concentration of social problems such as drugs, vandalism and lack of parental support causing high teacher turnover and parents are unable to buy extra resources.
- Poverty at work, neglect of working conditions and long shifts to make up for low pay. Lack of entitlement to paid holidays, insecure employment, no work security, sick pay or pension schemes
- Environmental poverty, pollution, overcrowding, access to essential services.
- Personal factors, poor health office for national statistics found millions of people were to die 9 years earlier due to being poor. Depression, can cause domestic violence and family breakdowns and low self esteem.
6
Q
What are the strengths of the definition of relative poverty?
A
- Recognises poverty is a social construct based on how other people are living in society
- Recognises definition of poverty can change in societies and over time
- Recognises social, cultural and environmental factors of poveryt
7
Q
What are the weaknesses of the definition of relative poverty?
A
- Measures social inequality rather than poverty. There will always be people who cannot afford things most people want and have no matter how rich a society becomes
- Riddled with value judgements such as Townsend deprivation index
- 60% of median income means some people will always be poor no matter how rich a society becomes
8
Q
What is subjective poverty?
A
- When people believe whether they are poor or not.
- This means people will judge themselves based on the group they identify with such as a rich executive not being able to afford a luxury lifestyle or someone in social housing who has more than those in the same living space not considering themselves subjectively poor
9
Q
What are the contemporary definitions of poverty?
A
- The poverty line, people living on or under 60% of median income of a country
- Minimum income standard, 2014, single people needed £16,300 to participate in society and have essential needs and couples with 2 children needed to earn £20,300 each . Decent standard of living calculated through surveys of the public
10
Q
How poor is the UK?
A
- 2012-13, 21% of population living below the official poverty line including 3.6 million children.
- 33% of households lack 3 necessities of life such as clothing or heating. 5.5 million people go without essential clothing and 18 million live in inadequate housing. 1 in 3 cannot heat their homes and 12 million are socially excluded
11
Q
What is the culture of poverty
A
(cultural explanations of poverty)
Culture of poverty, Oscar Lewis did research in Mexico, Puerto Rico and New York in the 1950’s and suggests reasons for them being poor such as.
- Didn’t take opportunities to escape poverty when they arrive
- Fatalism, believe nothing can be done to change their situation
- Reluctant to work
- Don’t plan for the future
- Marginalised and don’t accept themselves as part of society
Children grow up under this culture and continue this culture producing the same outcome.
12
Q
What do the new right (Marsland) say the explanation for poverty is?
A
(cultural explanation of poverty)
David Marsland says that poverty arises from generosity of the welfare state
- Handouts have created a dependancy culture where people abandon their jobs to live on handouts because they are lazy
- Universal welfare benefits take money away from investment and therefore the production of wealth
- Universal welfare should be removed and applied to people who actually need them through means testing where people have to prove their income in order to receive selective benefits
13
Q
What do the new right (Murray) say the explanation for poverty is?
A
(cultural explanation of poverty)
- The poor form an antisocial UNDERCLASS perpetuating their poverty forming a yob culture causing illegitimacy, lone parenthood, family instability, drug abuse, crime etc.
- Women have children they cannot afford but are supported by benefits reproducing yob culture
- Increasing of the welfare state has reinforced the underclass and the solution is cut benefits to encourage work and marriage
14
Q
What are the criticisms of cultural explanations of poverty?
A
- No clear evidence children inherit parent’s attitudes. Rutter and Madge found that half of all disadvantages arise in each generations. Blanden and Gibbons found that children are likely to be as poor as their parents. It is emphasised parents attitudes are one amongst many factors such as material deprivation
- Little evidence of dependency culture, Shildrick found 0.5% of households had 2 generations that never worked and there was no evidence for fraudulent working while claiming benefits
- Victim blaming, it is not cultural factors that cause poverty but economic ones
- Based on myths of the welfare state, Baumberg, Bell and Gaffney say welfare state is based on misinformation that demonises the poor.
15
Q
What are myths of the welfare state?
A
There are Generations of work less families - 0.3% of households with 2 or more generations where neither generation has worked
Benefits are too generous - Taking minimum wages would leave people 30% better off than receiving benefits
Fraud raises benefits bill - 2011/12, 0.7% pf benefit bill overpaid due to fraud compared to £70 billion lost through tax evasion
Benefit claimants claim for years without taking jobs - less than 10% of claimants claim for longer than a year and less than half for more than 13 weeks.
Most welfare spending goes to the unemployed - Over half goes to pensioners
Spending on families with hordes of children - Families with more than 5 children claim 1% of unemployed benefits
16
Q
What are material constraints?
A
(material explanations for poverty)
Material or situational constraints keep people poor such as illness, disability, not culture
- Hopelessness undermines opportunities to play for the future
17
Q
What is the cycles of deprivation?
A
(material explanations for poverty)
- Coates and Silburn
- Study in Nottingham
- People are trapped by their poverty despite their attitudes
- A child born into poverty may experience bad health, taking more days off school resulting in worse results and therefore a low skilled job and poverty.
- The cost of being poor is more than not being poor for example poor people have to finance meaning interest
18
Q
What is the social democrat version of the underclass?
A
(material explanations for poverty)
- Charles Murray, bottom social class filled with disadvantaged groups who are socially excluded
- Field and Townsend say this is filled with elderly, lone parents, low paid, disabled etc.
- Also can include illegal migrants who are exploited by dodgy employers who will threaten to report them
- This creates a poverty trap where available work pays less than benefits which demotivates people to work. 2011 if people worked 10 hours a week they’d lose 70% of income
- Ways to prevent this, raise wages, lower taxes or even lowering benefits
- Marxist, Milliband says poor are not a separate underclass but the lowest part of the working class who are all disadvantaged
19
Q
What is the structural explanation for poverty?
A
(structural explanation for poverty)
- Inequalities caused by capitalism such as the distribution of wealth, income and power create an unequal class structure
Functionalist - The poor are poor because capitalism requires people to be poor
Marxist - The poor are poor because they are exploited by the rich
Weberian - The poor are poor because they lack skills and power
Poverty remains because the poor don’t have he power to change their positions, the funding to form powerful groups and place pressure on the rich
20
Q
What are the different types of wealth?
A
- Marketable wealth, assets that can be bought and sold for financial gain such as a car, shares or land
- Non-marketable wealth, wealth that can’t be sold such as wages or a pension
- Productive property, wealth that provides unearned income such as shares, factories or land
- Consumption property, consumer goods for the owner such as clothes, food or the home that you own
21
Q
What are the different types of income?
A
- Disposable income, the money someone has left after paying taxes
- Discretionary income, what is left after taxes which can be used for food, travel costs and energy bills etc.
- Earned income, Income received for paid employment such as wages
- Unearned income, received from productive property such as lands, dividends
22
Q
How is wealth distributed and a consequence of that?
A
- Unequally distributed causing mass relative poverty and social divisions with the working class having less chance of attaining high incomes or inheriting it
23
Q
What are some statistics that show the inequality of the distribution of wealth
A
- 2023, richest 50 families in UK held welth of 50% of the population (33.5 million people)
- If this growth rate continues the richest 200 will have more than the entire UK’s GDP
- UK home to around 5% of global millionaires but has a wealth gini coefficient of 0,351 despite being the 6th richest nation in the world
24
Q
What are the different types of rich people?
A
- Aristocracy, own land such as the Duke of Westminster who owns £8.5 billion in land
- Owners of industry and commerce, rich through business such as Richard Branson estimated wealth of 3.6 billion
- Star of entertainment, use entertaining skills to gain wealth such as David Beckham and Victoria Beckham worth 210 million
- Around 1/3 of wealth of wealth in the UK is inherited through these people showing inaccessibility of wealth without winning the lottery of birth
25
What are some methods that attempt to redistribute wealth?
- Inheritance tax, to reduce the transference of wealth from one generation to the next before or after death
- Capital gains tax, reduces profit from income or shares, payable whenever they're sold
- Income tax, payable on earned and unearned income. The more you earn the more you (should) pay.
- Social welfare benefits, the poor's necessities are subsidised. ,
26
Why have the attempts to redistribute wealth failed?
Equality trust found the poorest 1-% of households pay 8% more in income thn the richest 10%
- Tax relief, some things can be accounted as business expenses such as school fees or private pensions which means less tax to be paid
- Tax avoidance schemes, legal loopholes in the tax system such as storing wealth in the company of another person
- Failure to claim, due to stigma and the difficult process
27
What are some statistics that display the extent of poverty in the UK?
- 2023, 14% of people in absolute low income before housing costs and 18% after
- 11% of people live in food insecure households in 2023 with 17% being children
- 2023, 1,9 million (13% of children) children in low income households and material deprivation, showing an increase of 300,000 in a year
- 2023, people from Bangladeshi or Pakistani households are more likely to be in poverty than white people
- 2023, 44% of social renters and 35% of private renters in low income households compared to only 14% of home owners and 10% of mortgage owners
28
What are the ethnicity trends of poverty?
- Kenway and Palmer, ethnic minorities more likely to be poor than whites showing Bangladeshis (65%) and Pakistanis (55%) have the highest rates of poverty and Indians (25%) and White British (20%)
29
What are the reasons for more ethnic minorities being in poverty?
- Low pay, Bangladeshi and Pakistani household usually have only one partner in paid work
- Unemployment tends to be higher in Black Caribbean, Black African, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis
- Family types, Lone parent families increasing amongst Black families and larger families increasing amongst Pakistanis and Bangladeshis
- Racism, ethnic minorities most of the time not able to obtain best paid jobs
- Underachievement in education, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Caribbean boys unable to claim highly qualified jobs
30
What are the age trends of poverty?
All statistics 2022/23
- London 140,000 children aged four and under live in households in poverty
- 33% of children aged 5-9 are in households in poverty
- Over a third of 10-19 year olds live in household poverty (35% of those aged 10-14 and 37% of those aged 15-19).
- 15% of people aged 30-34 living in a household in poverty, the lowest of any age group
- Pensioners less likely to be in poverty than children now.
31
What are the reasons for child poverty in the UK?
- Lone Parenthood, single parents means less income
- Lack of work for parents, means less income
- Disability of parents, undermines the ability to work, 1/4 poor children have a disabled parent
- Inadequate benefits,
- Inadequate childcare and flexible working policies, makes it difficult for lone or both parents to be in work at the same time
32
What are the disability trends for poverty?
All statistics 2022/23
- In the 3 years to 2022/23, 30% of families that included a Disabled person were in poverty compared to 22% of those without a Disabled household member.
- This is an increase of 3% in the last decade
33
What are the reasons more disabled people in poverty?
- Inability to take paid employment, if all of those wanting work found it 40% would still be reliant on benefits
- Unemployment, disabled people 4x more likely to be unemployed
- Low pay, more likely to be paid less than an able person for the same job meaning a smaller pension too.
- Employer discrimination, some people have a stigmatised view of disabled people meaning they're not as efficient as an able bodied person leading to discrimination.
- Inadequate welfare benefits, insufficient social security to provide for disabled people and their children
34
What are the gender trends of poverty?
All statistics 2016/17
- The proportion of single women living in poverty has stalled for three years at 25%, while the figure for poor single men has decreased to 23% (from 26% in 2016/17).
Nearly a quarter (23%) of single female pensioners are poor, the highest figure in 15 years.
- 45% of single parents - (90%) are women - live in poverty. Almost half of children living with a single parent (47%) are now in poverty.
35
What are the explanations of women in poverty?
- Women more likely to be in low paid work and miss out on benefits and are also forced to combine work and childcare
- Women are the majority of homeworkers, based on piecework and are extremely low paid
- Women more likely to be single parents and therefore have more economic responsibility
- Women more likely to sacrifice necessities for child such as food
- Women live longer than men but retire earlier, but due to the factors above are more likely to have a smaller pension and therefore live in poverty.
36
What are the functionalist explanations of poverty?
Davis and Moore
- Not everyone has specialised skills to make it to the top paid jobs
- There must be a system of unequal rewards to motivate people to gain the skills to do these hard jobs
Davis, Moore and Gans
- Ensure menial jobs are completed
- Creates jobs such as policemen and social workers
- Creates motivation for meritocracy by using poverty as a deterrent
- Keeps certain institutions running such as catering, healthcare etc.
- Allows certain types of governments to grow such as poundland or finance companies
37
What are the criticisms of the functionalist explanations of poverty?
- The 'most important' jobs are labelled due to value judgements, CEO's can only get rich if their employees work hard meaning they are just as important
- Some people are not rich because they have earned it but because they have inherited it
- People are not only motivated by material but by things such as job satisfaction or giving services to other people
- Saying that being poor is a necessity my create divisions in society.
38
What are the Weberian explanations of poverty?
- People are where they are because of their market situation
- Some people may have more valuable skills than others or a society may value some more than others
- Those in poverty have a poor market situation caused by lack of skills/qualifications and are marginalised as a result
39
What is the criticism of Weberian explanations of poverty?
Fails to explain position of people who have inherited their wealth and do not sell their skills on the labour market
40
What are the marxist explanations of poverty?
- Wealth and income held by ruling class and the working class are forced to be the source of profit in order to survive showing the result of capitalism will always be poverty
- Threat of poverty and unemployment motivates workers to work even if they are exploited
- existence of non-working poor keeps wages down as there will always be someone else to hire
- Poverty is divisive, separates non-poor working class and the poor preventing class consciousness
41
What is a welfare state?
- A state concerned with the social security of the people within it subsidising the needs of the people such as the elimination of poverty
42
What benefits does the welfare state provide?
- Variety of welfare benefits such as for thh sick, disabled, injured at work etc. 2012 all rolled up to collectively make universal credit
- 1948, The NHS providing dentists, hospitals, local GPs etc.
- Free and compulsory education up until age 17
- Social workers provided by local authorities and house the homeless, provide child protection and supervise adoption processes.
43
What is welfare pluralism?
When multiple factors provide welfare such family, community groups, charity, the state etc.
44
What is informal welfare provision?
- Provided by friends, family neighbours etc. which provide informal loans, childcare, cleaning, cooking meals etc.
- Provided by women mostly due to the stigma of women being housewives, 73%
- Saves the state 119 billion annually
- 2021 census, 7 million identified as carers in 2021 census
45
What are the origins of the welfare state?
- Prior to 1600's poor were supported by the church
- 1572, poor laws criminalised homelessness and begging
- 1602, poor laws were to be set to work
- 1834 poor laws set up workhouses
46
What are the advantages of the welfare state?
Advantages
- Provides a safety net for people - who fall on bad times
- It has secure funding
- Has a comprehensive range of - free services
- Are accountable to the state meaning the service user knows how to complain
47
What are the disadvantages of the welfare state?
Disadvantages
- Massive bureaucracy
- Encourages dependency
- People pay tax but might not actually use the service
48
What are the advantages of informal care?
- Doesn't cost the state anything
- Can have a choice over external care
- Allows looked after person to stay in the community
49
What are the disadvantages of informal care?
- Puts a lot of responsibility on female members of the family
- Care work is nearly always unpaid
- Many carers do not claim benefits
50
What are some examples of private healthcare?
- David Loyde
- Virgin care
- Bupa
51
What are the strengths of private care?
Can be seen more quickly
Gives people choice (new right view)
More efficient and effective than state care (new right view)
Competition drives up standards (new right view)
52
What are the weaknesses of private care?
Only those that cannot afford it
Private businesses can go bankrupt
Queue jumping (Marxist)
Two tier welfare service (Marxist)
Profit more important than care (Marxist)
53
What is the voluntary sector of the welfare state?
- Non-official, non profit
- Funded by services to the government or donations form the public
- Examples include the salvation army, Age UK and the child poverty action group
54
What are the strengths of the voluntary sector?
- Offer cheaper services than the state and private welfare
- Have high levels of expertise
- Able to respond more quickly to people's needs
- Better to respond to special needs such as domestic abuse due to having a better understanding of people's needs
- Major pressure groups keeping social issues in the public eye so they can be improved upon by either the government or the public
55
What are the weaknesses of the voluntary sector?
- May not be able to provide services due to lacking funds which they rely heavily on
- Do not exist in all areas that they'd be effective in
56
What is the private sector?
- Consists of for profit and non-profit businesses from which people or the government outsource services from
- Provides services such as schools, healthcare, care homes, pensions and medical insurance
- Also provides services such as work health assessments and moving people from welfare to work
57
What are the strengths of the welfare state?
Conservative view
- The private sector is better than the state as it is cheaper, provides more choice and effectiveness.
- This is because they have to compete for customers in order to survive in the economic climate
58
What are the weaknesses of the welfare state?
- Access to the private sector is limited to those who can afford it
- Many people do not gain service if it is not provided by the state
- Creates a two tier system of welfare meaning those who cant afford it receive less adequate welfare
- Those who can afford it can queue jump by seeing a NHS consultant privately and being put at the top of the NHS free operation list
- Private services can go bankrupt due to it operating in a free market
- Due to being a for profit organisation the business may need to cut costs and clients may suffer
59
What is the marxist opinion of the welfare state?
- A way of buying off working class protest by reducing risk to social issues.
- Also keeps the working class healthy to provide for the ruling class
- A form of social control
60
What is the feminist opinion of the welfare state?
- The welfare state supports the patriarchy
- Those who decide to distribute benefits are more likely to men and therefore have less understanding of a women's situation providing less benefits
- Informal healthcare is mostly provided by women meaning it contributes to the partiarchy
61
What is the social democratic opinion of welfare?
- The government provides welfare and should solve social insecurities
- Social inequality threatens stability and wealth should be redistributed through progressive taxation
- Universal benefits, benefits for few creates harmful stigmas meaning people will fail to claim
- The need for social cohesion, universal social provision creates a unified nation and therefore social cohesion
62
What is the new right opinion of welfare?
- Aimed to roll back the welfare state from 1979-1997
- welfare is a 'nanny' and undermines personal responsibility creating an underclass which forms a dependency culture who does not want to work and live off welfare benefits. This encourages lone parenthood because lone parents have a higher chance of gaining benefits?
- Benefits are better when provided privately or voluntarily
- Minimum taxation, should not be wasted on providing welfare for 'needy people'
- State benefits should be only for the very poor and the sick and disabled should be means tested. Rest should provide for themselves through the private sector
63
How did the New right affect the welfare state 1979-1997?
- Cutting welfare state back
- Opening up private competition to encourage better standards to stay profitable in an open market
Cuts include
- Charges for eye tests, dentists and prescriptions
- Student grants changed to loans
- Child support agency set up so absent fathers could pay child support
- Tax reduction
- Means tested benefits
This led to the UK having the highest levels of poverty in the EU in 1997, the most unequal country in the western world and the highest wage gap since 1886
64
How did the New Labour affect the welfare state 1997-2010?
Retained some ideas of the new right such as private services but aimed to lower relative poverty to reduce marginalisation known as a 'hand up not a hand out'
- Bigger spending on health and education
- Increase in benefits and a guaranteed minimum wage for pensioners
- Made national minimum wage which would help people escape the poverty trap aswell as tax allowances
- 5 half day nursery and sure start centres allow parents to go to work
- Family intervention project stopped cycles of deprivation be intervening in families with generational social problems
- Reduction in child poverty
- Neighbourhood renewal strategy to regenerate the most deprived communities
65
How did the Conservative and Liberal Democrats continue the policies of the new labour 2010-X?
- Welfare to work, emphasis on nursery education to improve parents work time and child poverty
- Benefits pay less than work with the aim of stopping the poverty trap
- Simplifying the benefits system to universal credit as means tested was too complicated confusing people if they were entitled to benefits or not but everyone's situations are different and this could have made people' situation harder
66
How did the Conservative and Liberal Democrats continue the policies of the new right 2010-X?
Reemergence of the deserving and undeserving poor and aim to punish 'benefit shirkers'
- Harsher medical tests and definition of unfit for work sending more disabled people to work
- Benefits for the disabled children were cut
- Childcare payments cut making it even harder for single parent families and less support for children through the tax system
- Child poverty targets removed and sure start centres closed down due to emphasis on culture being the reason for poverty
- Child benefits frozen for 3 years instead of increasing every year
- Housing benefit dropped meaning those in high rent areas were forced into north and west areas where rent was cheaper but there were fewer jobs
- End of EMAs, uni fees raised 9k a year
67
What is the inverse care law?
- An argument that says the people need the most help receive the least from the state and vice versa
- Julian LeGrand argues this is true throughout all of welfare systems due most being spent on universal benefits or services benefiting the middle class such as
- Middle class receiving more spending per head on health
- Due to being more self-confident they can navigate the health system better
- Spending more time in education means more money spent per middle class head
- More likely to be commuters and have cars meaning spending on them benefits on them
- more likely to use public services such as libraries
- Benefit more from tax relief on private pensions and business expenses
68
What inequalities are there between genders regarding welfare?
Women are more likely to be in part time work due to having to be carers under a patriarchy
This means they miss out on a range of work benefits such as jobseekers allowance and women's breast screening for cancer is underfunded
68
What inequalities are there between ethnic groups regarding welfare?
Ethnic minorities such as Black Caribbean, Pakistani and Bangladeshi experience racism of welfare distribution such as people not trained in cultural differences and information is not translated.
They are also most likely to be unemployed meaning they receive less work benefits
69
What evidence is there to show that that welfare state is succeeding?
- Elimination of absolute poverty in children, elderly, disabled and unemployed
- Access to free healthcare increased nationwide
- Free education from 3 to 18
- Universal cradle to grave security
- Specialist organisations for vulnerable groups such as social services
70
What evidence is there to show that the welfare state is succeeding?
- Relative poverty still remains due to low pay and the poverty trap
- Welfare fails to keep up with demands of the population causing long waits in the NHS
- Middle class benefit most from state services such as education
- Many people still slip through safety net and have to rely on underfunded safety net
- (new right) benefits create a dependency culture
71
What is the future of the welfare state?
- Welfare to work schemes by either reducing benefits or raising wages
- Cutting soaring state spending on welfare provision particularly the amount of pensions
- Making more people pay for things they can actually afford
- Getting people to help themselves by strengthening their communities encouraging people to save for late in life services
- Increasing efficiency of welfare systems such as schools and introducing competition so people drive up standards
72
What was work like in industrial societies?
- Pre-industrial, family was a work unit producing goods for themselves
- Industrial, Work and family separated, people selling labour for wages becoming dependent on employers
- This lead to an increase of the division of labour leading to deskilling and workers losing independence since they no longer owned the property they worked with and employers decided work hours, Marxists call this alienation
- Due to this workers motivation dropped forming low trust systems of management meaning high supervision and monitoring
73
What are the 4 different types of strategies to control the workforce?
All found by Abercrombie et al
- Direct control, not common now, in small businesses, direct supervision by owners or managers
- Technical control, people are controlled like a machine. Known as scientific management where people are given limited tasks of little skill. AKA Taylorism and Fordism
- Bureaucratic control, hierarchy of authority with every worker having a superior and having rules to control workers
- Responsible autonomy, workers given more freedom with less supervision
74
What is Taylorism and Scientific management?
- Developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor, workers controlled like machines with strict supervision and tight control and he did this by
- Making labour independent of creativity
- ‘time and motion study’, explaining tasks to the smallest details and calculating the time it takes to complete
- removing all skill from work
First practiced in 1908 in the US by Henry Ford
75
What is Fordism?
Where labour costs were kept low by ensuring jobs were low skill and small
- this meant cars were cheap and mass produced
- workers had no power and were heavily supervised
76
What is McDonaldisation?
Examples of Taylorism/fordism today. Principles of a fast food restaurant are becoming more dominant in society involving 4 aspects:
- Calculability, production process calculated to ensure each product is standardised
- Efficiency, everything evaluated to make sure everything is uniform and super simple
- Predictability, all parts of the environment are the same and can be replicated all over the world
- Control, high supervision through people and technology to reduce human behaviour
This have rise to the deskilling theory
77
What is deskilling and degradation of work?
Braverman criticised work under capitalism and is central in the Marxist labour process approach
- The labour process reflects the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat causing distrust and excessive supervision
- This supervision and scientific approach has caused the deskilling of the work pool
- This purposeful deskilling reduces cost, bargaining power and increasing profit and efficiency and employee change ability
Examples of deskilling include using self checkout instead of till operators
78
How had deskilling affected high skilled work?
Frey and Osbourne predict half of jobs lost due to computerisation within 10-20 years
- artificial intelligence is taking the jobs of people like doctors because they can diagnose illness wintout training reducing costs.
79
What are some criticisms of the deskilling thesis?
- 19th century, most people were in low skilled jobs anyway
- technology has created new skills such as computer programming and systems analysis
- Fordism is disappearing and workers look for a range of skills in order to operate technology and take on new skills
- Upskilling, decline in manual work with more training and qualifications needed to become employed
- Other Marxists argue deskilling is only one way of controlling the workforce
80
What is the Hawthorne experiment?
- 1927s, Elton Mayo found people worked harder if they felt valued
- 1927,
Elton Mayo found workers productivity Increased when they were being watched known as the Hawthorne effect for fear of punishment proposing better working conditions
81
What did Elton Mayo propose after conducting the Hawthorne experiment?
A move away from assembly like production and a move towards:
- Job enrichment, giving workers more jobs independence with a chance to use their own initiative
- Job rotation, giving workers wider jobs
- Job enlargement, including skills and wider range of tasks
- Teamwork
82
What is responsible autonomy?
Marxist, Friedman is critical of deskilling because employers gain more control and efficiency by involving workers directly in work.
- This make it easier to identify with one company requiring less supervision and allowing more responsible autonomy and therefore initiative improving efficiency.
83
What are the differences and similarities between employed and self employed?
15% of the workforce were self employed in 2014 with 8% being men and 7% being women
Similarities
- little choice in labour method and its outcome
- Dependent on selling services to others
- People can be flash self employed in order to reduce employer tax, national insurance and work benefits with the workers union estimating 50% being false self employed
Differences
- Self employed may have more choice over work conditions and labour process
84
What problems did Fordism lead to?
- High absenteeism, lack of trust and high job turnover
- insufficient training for workers
- low motivation and commitment
- workers couldn’t resolve problems when things went wrong
85
What is alienation?
Direct result of Fordism and Taylorism and overall lack of job satisfaction
- when someone feels they have lost control over their life
- Marx saw it as workers loss of power over the products they produced
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What is Blauners view of Alienation?
Involves 4 aspects
- powerlessness, worker has no control
- meaninglessness, work is seen as pointless
- isolation, no relationships are formed at work
- self-estrangement, worker feels full potential is not being used
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What is technological determinism?
Blauners idea that the extent of alienation a worker feels is influenced by the technology or machinery they use
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What is craft production?
(Blauners idea of alienation)
Craft production is where products are hand made
Blauner used an example of printing where people back then has responsible autonomy which meant they had high levels of job satisfaction.
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What is craft production?
(Blauners idea of alienation)
Craft production is where products are hand made
Blauner used an example of printing where people back then has responsible autonomy which meant they had high levels of job satisfaction.
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What is mechanisation?
(Blauners idea of alienation)
Where machines take over the production of goods and override the skill of workers.
Blauner used an example of people in the textile industry where people used machines and therefore felt higher rates of alienation.
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What is assembly line production?
(Blauners view of alienation)
Further development of mechanisation, workers conduct the same task on the same product without moving to hours on end meaning little control and little ingenuity leading to high rates of alienation.
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What is automation?
(Blauners theory of alienation)
Machines have almost full control with very little amounts of supervision
Blauners used an example of the chemical industry where the most boring jobs are mechanised and the workers have control over the complex machines and higher control giving workers more job satisfaction.
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What are some criticisms of Blauners concept of alienation?
- Marxist, the main cause of alienation is not technology but the bourgeoisie who alienate the proletariat
- Too much emphasis on technology,
- Automation is also alienating, Nichols and Beynon study found no evidence of reduced alienation and that workers found work boring and stressful . Hallow suggested managerial styles is much more important than technology used.
- Times have changed, the idea is out of date
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What are some responses to alienation?
Workers likely to produce low levels of trust
- produce poor quality goods
- taking unofficial breaks such as going to the toilet
- high levels of absenteeism
- high turnover rates
- industrial sabotage, trying to destroy the workplace
- conflict with management such as trade unions and strikes
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What is the idea of post Fordism?
The idea that consumers have become more demanding in personalised high quality goods and not the one size fits all approach meaning principles of mcdonalisation doesn’t apply to all workplaces
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What is flexible specialisation?
Piore and Sable
Flexible specialisation involves production methods using technology that can be used to produce new specialised changing consumer demands.
In response to post Fordism
Involves flexible technology, flexible skills and changing organisation and management of the labour process.
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What is changing organisation and management of the labour process?
In response to post Fordism
- workers given more responsible autonomy
- less bureaucratic and hierarchical control of workers as they are given more freedom and trust basically everything opposite to the scientific approach.
- more flexible working hours as workers can respond to changing demands
An example of this is Microsoft where they are open 24 hours and workers can choose their hours controlled by responsibility and commitment.
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What are the criticisms of Post-Fordism?
- Some products still mass produced such as DVD players or Fast food
- Flexibility restricted to largest firms who can afford such technology
- Thompson argues jobs have not been reskilled but workers have a range of low skills
- There is only short term commitment and a high job turnover
- Responsible autonomy can lead to peer pressure and therefore a new form of surveillance and therefore alienation in disguise
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What makes meaningful work?
- Pay and benefits align with the effort they are putting in such as pensions, healthcare and
- Variety of jobs, doing the same thing continuously leads to alienation
- Representation, trade unions are elected to represent the workforce especially in public services
- Health and wellbeing, good working conditions
- Work/life balance, allowed a split between work and life
- Terms of employment, temporary contracts such as 0 hour contract or a permanent contract where benefits are guaranteed. Permanent contracts are in decline because the tories stopped the power of the trade unions.
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What is Stan Parker's theory of work?
Opposition
- Hard and dangerous
- male dominated
- Occupations such as fisherman and tradesman
- Leisure is central to life to break from work hardship
Neutrality
- Boring routine and repetitive
- Office work, Sainsburys
- Leisure is taken to relax with family such as going to the cinema
Extension
- Middle class jobs
- High level of job satisfaction
- Such as teachers,
- Blurring between work and leisure such as networking
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What is post-modernity?
A historical era, after modernity and has been caused by globalisation.
Believed by post-modernists who believe class is dead
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What is globalisation?
The interconnectedness of people across the world
- Connection through ICT
- Travel such as planes, trains and boats etc.
- Outsourcing of production, rise of China
- Dropping of borders with trade groups such as ASEAN or the EU
- Exchange of capital
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What is Paul Doherty's theory about post-modernism?
- Language is heavily influenced by postmodernism and universalistic meanings are dead
- There is no relationship between the signifier (Word) and the signified (mental concept)
- There are no overarching understanding of the meaning of work. Known as the end of work theory.
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What are Paul Doherty's reasons for the end of work?
All below prove work has no fixed meaning
- It has been deskilled and meaningless
- Working hours have become more flexible
- There are a range of different contracts
- Constant job insecurity caused by globalisation
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