SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

CHAPTER 6

WORK AND LEISURE

AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION: Established form of social activity through which individual and societal survival are realized

 Work Definition: Exertion of strength or faculties; physical or intellectual effort directed to an end; industrial activity; toil; employment; sometimes, specifically, physically labor. Leisure Definition: is a period of time spent out of work and essential domestic activity. It is also the period of recreational and discretionary time before or after compulsory activities such as eating and sleeping, going to work or running a business, attending school and doing homework, household chores, and day-to-day stress.

WORK is important:
1. Economic reasons 2. Shapes workers patterns of social interaction 3. Affect sense of identity and self esteem

LEISURE
1. Is a natural cultural institution 2. Affects work or vice versa

WORK
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Occupational Profile of the Workforce Shift of the US workforce in the 19th-20th century 1850 farmers= 64% of the labor force in the US With acceleration of industrialization= increase of workers in the manufacturing

Traditional Farming

 Early 20th century number of blue collar workers surpassed the number of farm workers 1910- 14.2million manual workers (40%) and 11.5 million farm workers(30%) 1986 blue collar workers 30.3 million (28.5%) 1988 farming decline to 2.5% about 3 million workers

(blue collar) Manual Workers

 Service Sector employment in trade (including sales and finance) 55% of the workforce comprised of highly educated professional, technical, and managerial workers
(white collar) Professionals

 Technical advancement in agricultural science and technology Example: reapers, threshers, combines, new seeds, fertilizers, herbicides Genetic engineering in agriculture

 Inventions, discoveries, and innovations have given rise to thousands of new kinds of jobs Example: pilots, air traffic controller, radio announcer, assembly line worker, auto mechanic, computer programmer, laboratory technician, and genetic scientist. Other jobs have been eliminated Dictionary of occupational titles Third edition (1965) listed 21,741jobs, 6,432 of which were not contained in the second edition (1949). Fourth edition (1977) listed 2,100 jobs not included in the 1965 edition. However, 3,500 jobs listed in the 1965 edition had disappeared.

LOCUS, CONTENT, AND PROCESS

LOCUS farm and workshop gave to the factory, then later all yielded ground to office and laboratory CONTENT from hand operated tools to machines Three kinds of manipulations 1. Power by which the activity in question is carried out. Example: animal and human physical power to inanimate source 2. Control exercised over the work process. Example: assembly line, computer assisted manufacturing, remote sensing devices 3. Intellectual analysis and decision making pertaining to work goals, means or processes. Example: computer based programs and procedures have been developed to assist in product and system design commonly used for medical diagnosis, financial, industrial and military decision making

TIME

REGULAR DAILY SCHEDULE by E.P. Thompson Artisanal work was executed on task orientation basis one worked as long as hard as it took to get the required job done time orientation basis (overtime aside) one works a fixed number of hours per day whether or not one has enough work to do or has finished one s assigned work

Frederick Winslow Taylor

He is the pioneer of industrial engineering Promoted the philosophy of work known as scientific management Divided work into microtask, each of which was to be carried out in a prescribed way at a prescribed pace by a carefully chosen and trained worker Objective is to eliminate waste of time

The Modern Business Firm

From a small, single-unit, informally run, family owned and managed firms 1840 new technologies of communication and transportation such as railroad, telegraph, steamship, and cable, began to make possible unprecedented increase in the speed of distribution Emergence of a new form of business enterprise = large scale, multi-unit, horizontally and vertically integrated, professionally managed, hierarchically organized firm

UNIONS
A trade union (or labor union, labour union) is an organization of workers who have banded together to achieve common goals in key areas, such as working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labor contracts with employers. This may include the negotiation of wages, work rules, complaint procedures, rules governing hiring, firing and promotion of workers, benefits, workplace safety and policies. The agreements negotiated by the union leaders are binding on the rank and file members and the employer. Originating in Europe, Labour unions became popular in many countries during the Industrial Revolution, when the lack of skill necessary to perform the jobs shifted employment bargaining power almost completely to the employers' side, causing many workers to be mistreated and underpaid.

Demonstrators surrounded by soldiers during the Lawrence textile strike in 1912.

UNIONS

Influence on organizational context of work exercised by the industrial revolution was the rise of unions Factors 1. Physical conditions at the workplace were often grim and dangerous 2. Intensification of the division of labor at the assembly line increased the tedium of work 3. The breakdown of relatively personal relations between the preindustrial boss and his workers

 UNIONS institutional response by workers aimed at redressing the imbalance of power between management and labor in industry and at achieving concrete improvements in the work situations Started in Great Britain and on European continent and later in the United States According to Heilbroner unionization was labors response to the problems of technology and large scale organization

WORK WEEK
A central objective pursued by unions was shortening the work week Length of work week in manufacturing industries in the United States decrease from about 67 hours in 1860 to about 42 hours in 1950 and has remained roughly constant since then

RECENT ISSUES: 1. Technological Unemployment fewer workers due to machines, computer and robots 2. Deskilling skills built into new technologies mean that workers no longer have to exercise some skills that they were previously using, and that such skills as they may have to exercise with the new technology are in some sense lower ones

3. The Decline of Unions

Unionization in America workforce reached in its high point of about 33% in 1954 and had fallen to 16.4% in 1989 With revolutions in communications and transportation technology and the ability to quickly install mechanized production facilities almost anywhere in the world, the global factory companies owned by other countries Taking advantage of low overseas wage rates, Unions are only for blue collar workers

4. Health and Safety Risk of disabling agents- rate

was 2.4% per 100 workers per year in 1980 Industrial chemicals and human made materials carcinogenic 17,000 americans die each year from cancer caused by that exposure Occupational Safety and Health Act was passed in Congress in 1970 to assure as far as possible every working man and woman in the nation safe and healthy working conditions to preserve our human resources

 Leading cause of occupational injuries in the contemporary workplaces is repetitive motion, typically at high speed. Include = carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, arthritis, and sprains Carpal Tunnel Syndromemeat packers, poultry workers and pianist

Work Aspirations and Expectations

Worker has aright to meaningful work, not just kind of job During the mass immigration into the US in the late 19th to early 20th century and during the years of Great Depression, workers were satisfied to find any kind of work that would keep food on the table

All work and no play

LEISURE

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE The Creation of Leisure In medieval Europe over 100 saints and feast days were recognized With the influence of Puritanism, in 1761 the Bank of England still closed on 47 bank holidays Recreation was inextricably interwoven with community life, religious festivals, family life, and work, particularly seasonal agricultural activities

The Industrial Revolution and Leisure

In the very early years of the industrial age, factory workers, mostly fresh off the farm, didn t quite have the 9-5 grind beat into their souls yet. They got paid by the piece, and when they had enough money to pay for the necessities, they simply didn t work. They even invented a new holiday, Saint Monday, which was usually observed after a late Sunday night at the tavern. Employers wanted factories running full tilt all the time. So manufacturers had to figure out how to get workers to actually work full days and full weeks. Incentives and increased pay didn t entice people. Given the choice of earning more or working less provided that the base pay was enough to cover expenses most people then chose time over money. They chose to honor Saint Monday. So employers started paying less, as little as possible even, in order to force workers to put in more hours just to make ends meet.

The decline of the traditional custom of taking Monday as a holiday (St. Monday or Absenteeism Monday) was fueled by the regular synchronized work patterns The factory owners keep production systems going for extended periods = increases the work week Factory workers in Europe worked a 70 to 80 hours a week In the early phase of industrial revolution in Britain 1750-1825 capitalist entrepreneurs linked up with puritanical clergy to discredit traditional recreation of the 17th and 18th century

The commercialization of Leisure and The importance of Leisure to Industrial Society

As industrialization and urbanization grew in th19th century, leisure began to be culturally rehabilitated Entrepreneurs began to recognize that profits could be made by producing after work leisure experiences Music hall shows, moving pictures, professional sports, mass circulation newspapers Mass entertainment sector was facilitated by the development in the late 19th century of urban public transport systems shopping leisure time is now the designated time for perusal, purchase and consumption of the nonessential goods and services

Contemporary issues: Technologization of Leisure

Technology has played an increasing important direct role in leisure activity. Example: DVD, MP3, PSP 1983 survey of 1,000 person of American public leisure is technology incentive. Most popular leisure activity: 1. Watching television 2. Reading newspaper 3. Listening to music at home 4. Talking on the phone Leisure time activity enhances sociability or promotes personal development rather than merely affording relaxation or recuperation from tedious or exhausting work

TELEVISION

After sleep and work, watching television is the primary activity the americans devote the most time each day By mid 1980s almost every american home had one or more television = over 7 hours/day Viewer s life cycle stage who tend to watch more TV: children and elderly

Television and Human Behavior

Experiment is done in a Canadian town Notel introduced TV After two years of introduction: Notel adults older than 56 evidenced significant decline in both the number of community activities attended and sport activities Notel children TV slows down the reading skills offering a less demanding alternative to the often difficult activity of decoding involved in learning to read leading a child to become a print dropout . Lower in creativity scores on standardized test

LEISURE AT RISK
The increased leisure time promised by the historical decrease in the average manufacturing work week has not full materialized 1981, of every 1,000 Americans with full time nonagricultural jobs, 192 worked 49 or more hours per week By 1989, 235 of every thousand did Executive, administrative, and managerial 33.1% Professional specialty 29.4% Sales 33.9% Personal computers, modems, multifunctional telephones, and fax machines enable work to be done away from the office

TECHNOLOGY, WORK, AND LEISURE IN THE FUTURE Unemployment associated with technological advances, the neglect of worker retaining, and the relative scarcity of meaningful work in society that affirms it as central are factors promoting the grounding of self-esteem, personal identity, and the hope of meaningful everyday life on the quality of leisure activities.

ASSIGNMENT
What is/are your dream job? What is/are your work aspirations and expectations? Discuss this kind of work (nature of the job, qualifications, duties and responsibilities, work week, and brief history), the technologies involved, and the hazards of this work. What do you think is the most popular leisure activity in 2010? How does Science and Technology affect this leisure activity? What do you think is/are the effect/s of this activity to the Society (positive and negative effects)?