Pietrykowski 1999). It also fostered distrust and hostility between workers and their bosses (Montgomery 1979).
Exhibit 1.7 The Film Modern Times Offered a Poignant Illustration of the Alienating Nature of Work in Factory Jobs in the Old Economy
Source: Max Munn Autrey/Margaret Chute/Getty Images.
Why did Taylor advocate this way of organizing work, given its obvious negative consequences for the quality of work life and its negative effects on labor–management relations? In part, it was a response to something real—the fact that workers often did not work as hard as they could. His experiences had taught him that they did not show up to work consistently, took long breaks, and worked at a more leisurely pace than owners desired. These behaviors reflected workers’ cultural values and their definition of what constituted a reasonable amount of labor. Likewise, Taylor’s interpretation of this behavior was culture bound. He interpreted workers’ behavior not as a rational, class-based resistance to employers, but as an irrational unwillingness to work to one’s full potential. Taylor, like many Americans of his time, was embracing a cultural denial that class divisions within the workplace existed. His solutions also reflected the culture in which he was living. He advocated a reorganization of the workplace based on scientific methods, something that resonated tremendously in a society where science had come to be seen as the solution to many human problems. And he depicted the worker as essentially unintelligent and easily manipulated; Taylor was fond of using an example involving a worker named Schmidt (whom he described as “oxlike”), whom he persuaded to adopt his new system through a combination of simpleminded arguments and limited incentives. This, too, was typical of the dominant American culture at that time; many Americans believed that members of the lower classes, immigrants, and others at the bottom of society were inferior in various ways (including intelligence) to the more successful members of society. Taylor’s ideas also reflected an abiding cultural belief in the correctness of capitalism, particularly the proposition that it is natural that some should be owners and others laborers, that the efforts of those at the top were more important and valuable, and that an extremely unequal distribution of the fruits of labor was not just defensible but actually desirable (Callahan 1962, Nelson 1980).
The legacy of managerial philosophies—in this case, scientific management—highlights how culture and social structure intersect. Managerial perspectives that embraced the proposition that workers are indolent and should not be trusted are directly responsible for the creation of many of the alienating, low-wage “McJobs” present in America today. These philosophies initiated the development and application of assembly lines, promoted the acceptance of the idea that some people should be paid to think and others to labor, and fostered divisions between “white-collar” and “blue-collar” jobs. This cultural orientation to work can explain the types of jobs that Tammy held at General Motors, as well as the rationale for eliminating those jobs and moving them elsewhere in the global economy.
These examples of how culture shaped workplaces in the past suggest interesting questions about culture’s role in carving out the contours of the new economy. Have cultural attitudes about the role of work changed, and if so, have workplaces changed along with them? How long are people working, and why do they work so much? Have Americans begun to abandon long-standing Taylorist cultural assumptions about the proper way to organize work, or do we continue to construct workplaces on the assumption that workers are lazy, ignorant, and not to be trusted? To what extent do perceived divisions between the members of society continue to deprive some people of access to opportunity? We address these concerns in the chapters that follow.
Structure and Work
In contrast to culture and the way it creates meaning systems that orient people to work, social structure maintains enduring patterns of social organization that determine what kinds of jobs are available, who gets which jobs, how earnings are distributed, how organizational rules are structured, and how laws are formulated. Social structure does not exist independently of culture. Often, social structure reflects cultural attitudes, because people tend to create institutions that are consistent with their beliefs. And structure can also be in conflict with aspects of culture, creating tensions and contradictions with which individuals and societies must grapple. For example, consider how the structural reality of unemployment creates particularly difficult problems in a society such as the United States, where work is valued or structured as a mandatory part of citizenship. Americans are forced to make difficult choices between their cultural ideals and their social structural context: should the unemployed be made to work, or should they be helped because there are no jobs? If the latter, who deserves help, what kind, and for how long?
Throughout this book, we discuss various aspects of social structure, the access to different types of work, the division of labor, the social organization of workplaces, and legal and political arrangements that influence the design of jobs and the terms of employment. Here, we simply illustrate how social structure affects individuals’ experience of work by considering how a few aspects of social structure—social class, job markets, and labor force demographics—may be affecting opportunities and workplace practices in the new economy.
Class Structures
One of the great contributions of Karl Marx (1964 [1844]) was his analysis of class structures and how they shaped workplace practices and opportunity structures. In his classic analysis of the industrial capitalist economy, he argued that employers’ profits depend on the effort put forth by employees, which created incentives to limit wages and to push workers to labor as hard as possible. He also observed that the efforts of workers created far greater wealth for employers than it did for employees. Considering these class relations, Marx argued capitalism would tend to organize work in ways that led toward the creation of a polarized class structure, comprising a disenfranchised working class (the proletariat) and an affluent owner class (the bourgeoisie).
It is hard not to look at dead-end low-wage jobs in the new economy without some appreciation for Marx’s core insight. Tammy (the former manufacturing worker) and Mike (the disadvantaged young adult) are what Marx might have expected to see in an advanced capitalist economy. However, the contemporary class structure of the United States is more complex than the bifurcated and polarized structure Marx envisioned, as evidenced by Meg (the trader) and Emily (the contract worker). And the experience of upward movement among the disadvantaged, as evidenced by Rain (the Chinese restaurant worker) and Kavita (the call center worker), adds even more challenges to simplistic Marxist structural models. Although laborers and capitalists exist, large portions of the workforce seem to fit into neither category. Numerous professional and managerial workers have substantial education, some (or even considerable) workplace authority, and higher salaries than the typical frontline worker. Yet it is difficult to describe them as captains of industry or members of the dominant class, given that they are not in charge and work for someone else who has the ability to fire them. Sociologists have argued long and hard about how to describe these intermediate class positions. One sociologist described such workers as occupying contradictory class locations, combining elements of the classes above and below them (Wright 1985).
How best to map the precise shape of the class structure of capitalist societies is a matter for dispute, but what is not disputed is that class matters. For example, class affects people’s access to work opportunities, although the precise way in which it does so has changed over time. Before the Industrial Revolution, most children inherited their line of work from their parents through a process known as ascription. Farmers’ children tended to become farmers themselves, and craft workers would often learn their trade from their fathers. Women’s roles were largely ascribed as well. One’s occupation was to a great extent one of the things inherited from one’s parents; the cross-generational effects of class were obvious and straightforward. With industrialization, however, the range of jobs expanded profoundly, many
