SOSC 300 K

1. SOSC 300 K Segmented Labor Market

2. Major Issues • Topic 4: Segmented Labor Market in a Nation: “Dual Labor Market” (Samuel Bowles and Richard Edwards’ research on 20th. Century U. S. economy) • Sexual and racial/ethnic segregated labor market • Topic 5: discussion of labor market will be extended in the framework of global economy—International division of labor • Theories of international division of labor: dependency theory and the world-system paradigm • The International Division of Labor from W. W. II to the late 1970s., the New International Division of Labor from the 1980s (esp. economic ties between Taiwan and Hong Kong of the “four tigers” and the emerging economy of mainland China)

3. Dual Labor Market (1) • Labor markets are divided into separate or distinct markets--Primary labor market (also called “internal labor market”) vs. secondary labor market • The demanders and suppliers of labor in one market do not compete with demanders and suppliers in other markets • Workers in primary labor market are shielded from competition from other workers—unionization, job ladders, seniority-based pay and promotion, bureaucratic control; • Workers from secondary labor market are prevented from competing for certain jobs—they could not access to the “internal labor market” of the primary sector (such as their lower educational background, or discrimination in job hiring that mostly affected the opportunities of women or minority groups)

4. Independent Primary Market Subordinate Primary Market Secondary Market Dual Labor Market (2) Good pay, bureaucratic rules, job ladder, high work autonomy and labor skills, “industrial citizenship” Job security Routinized work, low work autonomy, skill level: medium Vulnerable to be laid off Low skills, no union, poorly paid, no job ladder, no skill accumulated dead-end job No job security at all

5. Dual Labor Market (3) • The Independent Primary Market: include those bureaucratically organized jobs that offer stable employment with considerable job security, labor unions, clearly defined career paths, long job ladders, and relatively high pay--it contains mainly the jobs of craft, technical, professional, and lower-level supervisory workers • Job ladders: the institutional arrangement that link together a series of related jobs, in which a worker over the years climbs from one job to another and gains access to job higher on the ladder only by first succeeding in the lower job • Such as bookkeepers, technicians, scientists, engineers, lower-level supervisors and managers, commercial artists, and craft-workers such as electricians, telephone linemen, machinists, hair stylists, and skilled ironworkers

6. Dual Labor Market (4) • The Subordinate Primary Market: include the jobs of the traditional, unionized, industrial working class: auto workers, truckers and railroad workers, underground coal miners, steelworkers, dockworkers, etc. • Contents of Work: more repetitive , routinized, and often subject to machine pacing. Compared with the jobs in the independent primary sector, the required skills in the subordinate primary sector is lower and could be learned rather quickly. No work autonomy. • Pay: lower than the independent primary market but is higher than the secondary market • Security of Work: as long as the firms are growing, job security is guaranteed • Unionized, but are vulnerable to layoffs (layoffs: firms’ temporary or permanent dismissal of workers in order to reduce their workforces because of a shortage of customers)

7. Dual Labor Market (5) • The Secondary Market: most remaining workers from the former two sectors • They are highly diverse, unified only in that it is the preserve of workers who have few protections from worker rights and elaborate employer-imposed ways of organizing work • Blue-collar workers in nonunion factories; non-union janitors, waitress, guards, retail sales clerks, typists, file clerks, and recordkeepers; seasonal or migrant farm workers; and most employees of small businesses • Despotic control, no job security, no unionization, no job ladder, be poorly paid. Neither schooling nor seniority is rewarded

8. Dual Labor Market (6) • Why would some people still work in the secondary labor market? • Who were working in the secondary labor market? • In the U. S., most workers in the secondary market are women and minority.

9. Dual Labor Market (7) • The effects of discrimination that lead to the underrepresentation of women and minority in the primary labor markets • Discrimination has occurred most frequently in hiring for primary jobs, or in admission to schools, apprenticeship programs, or other institutions that qualify workers for primary jobs •  Sex segregation and racial segregation in labor market

10. Indexes of Occupational Sex and Race Segregation, 1900-2000 Padavic and Reskin (2002: 73)

11. 3. Supervisors and proprietors, sales occupations 4. Truck drivers 5. Janitors and cleaners 6. Carpenters 7. Cooks 8. Computer systems and analysts and scientist 9. Labor 10. supervisors, production occupations. 1 Managers and administrators 2 2. Supervisors and proprietors, sales occupation 4. Occupational-level Sex Segregation (Top 10 occupations for men and women in the U. S. today) • Secretaries • 3. Cashiers • 5. Registered nurses • 6. Elementary school teachers • 7. Nursing aides • 8. Bookkeepers, accounting and auditing clerks • 9. Waitress • 10. receptionists Based on Padavic and Reskin (2002: 60)

12. A commodity chain for athletic shoes (P. McMichael, 2000: xxxv) Distribution North America, Europe, etc. Tissue Paper (Indonesia) Shoe Box (U. S.) Boxed Shoes (Indonesia) Rainforest Trees (Indonesia) Shoes (Indonesia) Ethylene Vinyl Acetate Foam (S. Korea) Synthetic Rubber (Taiwan) Tanned Leather (S. Korea) Polyurethane Air Sac (U. S.) Cowhide (U. S.) Petroleum (Saudi Arabia) Benzene (Taiwan) Coal (Taiwan)

13. A commodity chain for athletic shoes • The U. S.-based athletic shoe industry: • The initial labor is related to the symbolic side of the shoe design and marketing in the U. S. • The labor of producing the synthetic materials (dyeing, cutting, and stitching, assembling, packing and transporting) is conducted by unskilled and predominant female workers in South Korea, Taiwan, China, Indonesia and Philippines • Companies like Nike subcontract with such labor forces through local firms in the regional production sites • A shoe that costs Nike $ 20 on export from South Korea may cost only $ 14 if made in Indonesia or China • A $ 150 Nike trainer sold in the U. S. and Europe, was assembled by some 120,000 Indonesian contract workers earning less than $ 3 a day (the legal minimum wage in Indonesia) • Cited from Philip McMichael, Development and Social Change, p. XXXV.