Work and Occupations current issue

The Public Turn: From Labor Process to Labor Movement

Burawoy, M. — 2008-10-21

The year 1974 marked a rupture in the study of labor. It was the year in which Harry Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital was published, making a break with a moribund industrial sociology. It was a rupture inspired by the resurgence of Marxism, critical of the euphoric sociology of the 1950s. Since 1974, labor studies have undergone a mutation, shifting their focus from the examination of the labor process to an engagement with the labor movement. What explains this in light of the continuing assault on labor and the decline of overall union density? The answer lies with the transformation of the labor movement itself—the demise of the old industrial, business unionism and the growing strength of New Labor with its orientation to the service sector, to immigrant and vulnerable workers, and its invention of novel organizing strategies. In New Labor, sociologists have found a new public.

Counterframes and Allegories of Evil: Characterizations of Labor by Gilded Age Elites

Isaac, L. — 2008-10-21

Social movement scholars have increasingly focused on the importance of the cultural-symbolic dimensions of collective contention. Conceptual and empirical studies of mobilization (and countermobilization) employing a framing perspective have become a growth industry. In this article, the author expands our purview of the symbolic-representational repertoire employed in collective contention and conceptually distinguishes between counterframing, counternarrating, and counterimagining as strategic forms of symbolic characterization employed by oppositions against social movements. The author illustrates these ideas by focusing on the countercontention against labor during the Gilded Age. All three symbolic countering strategies—framing, narrating, and imaging— were employed by business and cultural elites against labor as it was becoming a national-level movement during the last several decades of the 19th century. However, extended narratives (e.g., novels and partisan quasi-histories) and pictorial art produced an intelligibility distinct from, if not unrelated to, frames because they have the capacity to feature (a) movement or active presentation over time; (b) detailed characterization of actors; and (c) collective representation in allegorical-political terms that specified the evils of important emergent categories, like the transformation of "the good worker" into "the bad worker." The author concludes that students of the labor movement (and social movements more generally) would benefit by augmenting analyses of frames to include allegorical-political uses of narrative and pictorial art forms as well.

Contingent Autonomy: Technology, Bureaucracy, and Relative Power in the Labor Process

Choi, S., Leiter, J., Tomaskovic-Devey, D. — 2008-10-21

The authors argue that autonomy in the labor process results from the contingent interaction of worker power and organizational practices. Focusing on the "core jobs" (i.e., most central to the production process) in 618 randomly sampled workplaces in Australia, the authors find that the influences of technology and bureaucratization on autonomy are conditioned by the relative power (skill and unionization) of employees. As the relative power of workers increases, both the technical organization of work and bureaucratization are less likely to undermine job autonomy. The findings underline the importance of local power relations for understanding the impact of organizational structures on workers and help resolve deep ambiguities in the literature on autonomy and the labor process.

Global Labor Solidarity Attempts and the Lessons Learned

Nissen, B. — 2008-10-21

This review essay uses recent books by Kate Bronfenbrenner and Gay W. Seidman to examine what types of transnational labor activism are most effective in defending the interests of workers. A number of themes are explored, including cultural distrust between unionists and activists in the Global South and Global North, the tension between reliance on international pressure and the need to build local organization, problems with global enforcement of labor standards, and above all, the important role of the state in enforcing worker rights and standards. Some conclusions are drawn, and the need for additional research is noted.

Shifts in the Employment Conditions of Mexican Migrant Men and Women: The Effect of U.S. Immigration Policy

Donato, K. M., Wakabayashi, C., Hakimzadeh, S., Armenta, A. — 2008-10-21

Prior studies suggest that the passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986 signaled deterioration in the labor market conditions faced by Mexican migrant men. In this article, the authors examine whether and how labor market conditions changed for migrant women after 1986, and the extent to which these shifts were comparable to those experienced by men. Using data about household heads and their spouses from the Mexican Migration Project, they examine sex differences in five employment conditions: hourly wages, hours worked, and the likelihoods of receiving wages in cash and paying federal and Social Security taxes. The authors find significant gender differences in the post-1986 period, especially after 1993 when most avenues to legal visas disappeared. These findings document negative policy impacts on the employment conditions of Mexican migrant men and women, and they suggest particularly precarious employment conditions for women since 1994.

Book Review: Du Bry, T. (2007). Immigrants, Settlers, and Laborers: The Socioeconomic Transformation of a Farming Community. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing. 254pp. $65.00 (cloth)

Kandel, W. A. — 2008-10-21

Book Review: Bonacich, E., & Wilson, J. B. (2008). Getting the Goods: Ports, Labor and the Logistics Revolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 273 pp. $29.95 (paper)

Vidal, M. — 2008-10-21

Book Review: Odih, P. (2007). Gender and Work in Capitalist Economies. London: Open University Press (McGraw Hill). 223 pp. $55.95 (paper)

Deitch, C. — 2008-10-21

Book Review: Thomas, K. (Ed.). (2008). Diversity Resistance in Organizations. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum. 353 pp. $39.95 (paper)

Parks-Yancy, R. — 2008-10-21

Book Review: Lynch, C. (2007). Juki Girls, Good Girls: Gender and Cultural Politics in Sri Lanka's Global Garment Industry. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press. 281 pp. $19.95 (paperback)

Zaman, K. — 2008-10-21

Book Review: Constable, N. (2007). Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Migrant Workers (2nd ed.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 268 pp. $19.95 (paper)

Chiu, C. C. H. — 2008-10-21