Search

Recent publication of a seminal paper analyzing variation in upward and downward mobility rates should alert social scientists to the possibilities for quantitative research in this intricate field. Like most trail-blazing papers, the analysis is subject to evaluation and a critical analysis at this point may stimulate further profitable research. The comments on the cover five problems. Although it is said that the upward and downward mobility rates used in the paper now under discussion classify farmers as manual workers, this rule is not easily followed. The top panel groups those nations in which the original data, reported farm sons and fathers separately from urban workers. Four studies did not separate farm from urban workers, but placed farmers in a low prestige category. It was decided to use all available nations by including farmers and grouping them with non farm workers. However it is difficult to use the same data and compute mobility rates identical to those obtained especially broken out in the original data. The efforts to reconstruct the identical data resulted in six different upward and six different downward rates.

This research paper has considered the impact of bureaucratization on the resocialization programs of the rehabilitation institution. Various types of rehabilitation institutions differ in structure, staff functions, major roles, techniques employed, and the attitude of the public toward their inmates. Both the mental hospital and the prison have the objective of modifying the behavior of inmates to the end that they will become capable of performing roles consistent with the norms of total society. To achieve this, both of these rehabilitation institutions must instill in the inmate an identification with the total social order and must reorient his attitudes into constructive form. Both encounter the handicaps of inadequate facilities, lack of qualified personnel, and insufficient operating budgets. Obvious solutions are to recruit new staff people trained and motivated to emphasize rehabilitation objectives over pure custody, to restrict the size of inmate populations in order to minimize conditions conducive to formalistic impersonality, and to design physical facilities affording a social environment favorable to rehabilitation. However, this paper addresses itself to the top administrator unable to adopt these solutions. It is suggested that a conscious attempt to utilize informal groups be integrated with a restructuring of formal relationships and a program for remotivating the lower level staff.

This paper analyzes the relationship between intelligence and occupation and, secondly, relates occupation to various aspects of migration. The relationship between occupation and test intelligence has been the subject of considerable investigation. There tends to be a hierarchy of occupational structure which is closely related to test intelligence, whether the classification is based on the subject's parental occupation or on his own occupation. The material for the investigation consists of the Ohio State University Intelligence Test scores for about 5,000 boys and girls who were high school seniors in 116 Missouri communities in 1939-41. There seems to be a distinct tendency for the brighter boys and girls in rural areas and small towns of Missouri, to find their occupational levels in the higher prestige occupations, especially the professional groups, while those who perform more poorly on tests are more likely to become manual worker and farmers with somewhat lower rankings on the prestige scale.

In the analysis of the role of trade unions in wage determination, British economists in the last decade or so have concentrated their efforts on the part played by unions in wage inflation. This paper is addressed to a somewhat different question: by how much have trade unions in Britain raised the pay of unionized manual workers relative to the pay of non-unionized manual workers? The derived estimates pertain not to a single occupation or industry, but are an economy-wide average and so, no doubt, conceal some important differences within particular sectors. Nevertheless an examination of the British experience affords a valuable opportunity to consider whether the institutional setting of collective bargaining acts as a neutral factor in determining the influence of unions on relative wages. Many observers have drawn attention to the existence in the high employment postwar British economy of two systems of industrial relations; in its Report, the Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers' Associations (1968) presents a cogent, if rather strong, summary description of the characterization of the two systems. On the one hand, there are those industries where average hourly earnings (net of overtime pay) do not differ substantially from the wage rates negotiated between representatives of the employers and of the unions at the industry level. On the other hand, there are those industries (the large engineering sector being the standard example) in which actual hourly earnings are considerably in excess of the industry-wide wage rate agreements and it is in these industries that, as far as the pay of manual workers is concerned, bargaining at the plant or firm level takes on paramount importance. These differences in the industrial relations systems may imply corresponding differences in the opportunities available to unions to secure an hourly earnings differential for their members vis--vis non-union workers. To investigate this possibility, a... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows the pervasive nature of the bias both by substantive topic investigated and by population method in the study of blue-collar workers. The data for this paper are from a study of the social and political characteristics of members of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) union. A sample of 226 members of the UAW local were randomly selected and mailed questionnaires. A total of 26.5 per cent returned the instruments after the first mailing. Since past research has shown that those returning differ significantly from those who do not, a second mailing was made to the 166 not responding to the first mailing. Twenty-seven per cent responded to the second mailing. The total percentage of the sample responding to both mailing was 46.5. The data obtained by the questionnaire may be classified into two major types: the personal and political characteristics of the respondents, and their attitude toward the union's participation in political affairs. Specific measures of personal and political characteristics include political party preference, political preferences of family of orientation presidential candidate voted for in 1960, attitude toward the Federal government, attitude toward the United Nations, political activities such as writing letters to Congressmen, frequency of talking politics, job satisfaction, and estimation of potential for occupational mobility.

This article discusses a study on social grading by manual workers. This paper reports a small research project in East London in England wherein the sample consisted mainly of manual workers. Personal interviews were used rather than written questionnaires. After they had graded occupations, people were asked the reasons for their decisions. The small research project described here was an attempt to find out whether manual workers chosen at random from electoral registers. This East London inquiry finds a considerable measure of dissensus amongst the manual workers in its sample. The respondents are divided into two groups. The deviants grade occupations according to their social contribution. Manual workers are on the whole ranked above non-manual. The deviants are influenced by their political attitudes. In conclusion, it was on a very small scale, and a much larger sample is plainly required. It was made in East London, and the residents in it may not be at all representative of manual workers in general. The validity of the findings can only be tested by a full-scale inquiry. A full-scale inquiry into the views of a cross-section of the population using verbal interviews could reveal the measure of dissensus consensus on the status of occupations, and beyond that, lay the foundations for a study of an important aspect of political ideology in contemporary Britain.

This paper is based on a sample of 1491 Canadian manual workers from three different industries-printing, automobile, and oil. These industries were selected to represent three basic types of sociotechnical systems that have been identified in recent literature-craft, mass and continuous process production systems. The main hypothesis is that worker integration in the organization differs by type of socio--technical system-being highest is the continuous process system, represented by the oil industry and lowest in the mass production system, represented by the automobile industry. Integration is investigated in five areas: (1) relationship with fellow workers, (2) relationship with first line supervisors, (3) labor-management relations, (4) status structure of the organization, and (5) evaluation of the company. The outstanding finding is that the oil worker is much more integrated regarding the above five areas of the organizational system than are auto workers. Printers fall in between, being closer to oil workers than to auto workers. The implications of worker integration in the organization for receptivity toward industrial change and alienation from the job are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on various studies conducted by Purdue University's Industrial Relations Committee. Roy R. Nasstrom of the Department of Education conducted a study of teacher associations and unions. Researcher John F. Baum of the Krannert Graduate School of Industrial Administration conducted a study on absenteeism among blue-collar workers in the automobile industry. Researcher James R. Chelius of the Krannert Graduate School of Industrial Administration studied the impact of occupational safety risks on the structure of wages. Researcher L.F. Dunn of the Krannert Graduate School of Industrial Administration investigated manpower problems in the rural southern U.S.

The article discusses issues related to subjective powerlessness in the U.S. The paper focuses on changes since 1952 in citizen efficacy or feelings of control over government for various sub-groups in the U.S. population such as blacks, blue collar workers, Southerners, Jews, young and old people. As with most issues in the study of social change, there is widespread disagreement on trends in citizen efficacy for industrial societies such as the U.S. Most theory predicts trends in objective powerlessness, rather than subjective powerlessness, although it is possible that trends in objective powerlessness do not match trends in subjective powerlessness. Within the U.S. at each point of observation, powerlessness does not vary much by stratum, except when education and race are used as indicators. And within the white population, some of the differences are heavily explained by educational differentials. It therefore seems fair to conclude that white subordinate interest groups are not oriented toward government as a result of what would seem to be objective powerlessness but more on the basis of their educational achievement.

Recent controversy about embourgeoisement seems to have paid scant attention to the possibility that there are also influences within some occupations in the manual work sector liable to increase working class consciousness. To help in the study of such influences, the present article proposes the well-established concept of proletarianisation and applies it to the manual work occupation of cooking. For sociologist Karl Marx, the concept of proletarianisation expressed his that part at least of the "petit bourgeoisie" would sink into the working class. He was thinking particularly of groups on the fringe of the class of owners: tradespeople, small-holding peasants and the like. Proletarianisation was denoted both by structural influences and a growing realization of where class interest really lay, leading to the gradual emergence of working class consciousness. However, the present article wishes to use the concept to refer, not to any movement between the middle and the working class but rather to mark a trend within the working class stratum itself.

This paper presents the first findings of a survey carried out in Melbourne, Australia. It attempts to test hypotheses based on the embourgeoisement thesis, and its variations, in a social system with a strong equalitarian ideology and compulsory arbitration for all sections of the work force. It assesses the economic differences between white collar and blue collar workers and also the difference between these groups and a middle class group. It also compares the Australian situation with America and Britain. It finds a significant difference between blue collar and white collar income rates, total income medians and career income medians, as against the apparent near parity of the situation in Britain and America. These differences are not mitigated by wives' earnings or income from other sources. There is an almost complete dichotomy between these groups and the middle class group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the interrelationship of occupational selectivity patterns among city, suburban and fringe areas of major metropolitan centers. The analysis reported in the paper is based on the occupational distributions of employed white male non-farm workers within the 76 metropolitan areas that had populations of 300,000 or more. In order to ascertain the occupational selectivity patterns of city, sub-urban and fringe resident populations, Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSAs) were divided into zones or sub-areas as follows, the central city of an SMSA is identified as the city, the part of the urbanized area outside the central city is identified as the suburb and the area outside the urbanized area but within the SMSA is referred to as the fringe. Occupational selectivity refers to the differential residential distributions of persons in the major occupation classes. it was found that metropolitan areas with central cities in which the higher status white collar occupations were under-represented and the lower status white collar occupations usually were over-represented tended to have suburban areas in which the higher status white collar occupations were over represented and lower-status blue collar occupations were under-represented.

The pur pose of this paper is two-fold : first an attempt is mode to dejine work and leisure in operational terms. Second, using the new définitions of work and leisure, several problems in économies are re-examined and an attempt is mode to illustrate how the new définition may give us new insights into old and current problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the factors used to decide the weekly wages of manual workers, including earnings from output-based individual incentive schemes, share of earnings from output-based group incentive earnings, and overtime pay. The authors note a lack of systematic exploration of the proportional significance of each factor in total earnings. The authors consider what combination of parts of a pay packet would minimize productivity drift. Productivity drift is defined as the percentage increase in rate of earnings not paralleled by an equal proportional increase in productivity. The design procedure presented has been derived from a complex open system model to explain movements of earnings within manufacturing organizations.

School deviants were compared to school leaders with respect to school attitudes and three types of achievement: reading, writing, and mathematics. Findings supported the notion that those who conform best to the non-academic or behavioral expectations of the school do appreciably better academically than do those who deviate. The two groups were observed to differ with respect to school attitudes. The strength of the relationship was observed to shift when occupational status controls were introduced. "Blue-collar" deviants were found to be less hostile towards the school than their "white-collar" counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article a profile of the Italian blue-collar worker is presented based on the results of the comparative study and of other research recently undertaken in Italy. The profile will not focus so much on the objective conditions of the Italian blue-collar worker as on his attitudes, feelings, and opinions. The focus will constitute a self-portrait of the Italian blue-collar worker. From this point of view, such impacts of industrialization as the destruction of old trades and the creation of new skills, the rise of new rules governing behavior in the plant and union, and the immediate effects of increasing urbanization will be of secondary interest. Instead, the focus will be on the worker's response to the industrial institutional pattern. The profile of the Italian blue-collar worker presented here is not exhaustive due to space limitations. However, the aspects the author has examined are among the most important. These aspects are family occupational tradition, occupational background before becoming an industrial manufacture worker, responses to the industrial condition, attitudes toward present occupation, and feelings of satisfaction for the tasks required by present job. In examining Italian economic development, there are at least two different types of industrial workers, those in the industrial North, and those in the new industrial islands in the traditional South.

The article chronicles industrial relations in the Great Britain between January to April 1969. During the first quarter of 1969 the average total register of unemployed in Great Britain showed a fall compared with the first quarter of 1968. On a seasonally adjusted basis unemployment in the first quarter of 1969 averaged 479 thousand as compared with 510 thousands for the corresponding period of 1968. Since August 1968 unemployment had been on a downward trend and this continued until February. In March the trend was reversed when the fall in wholly unemployed amounted to 17,000 fewer than the estimated normal seasonal fall at that time of the year. In percentage terms the average wholly unemployed in Great Britain showed a 0' 1 fall over the average figure for the last quarter of 1968. The Index of basic weekly rates of wages for manual workers in Great Britain continued to rise in the first quarter of 1969. This rise was smaller than in the last quarter of 1968 when the December figure showed the effects of the new engineering agreement coining into operation in that month. The rise was small in comparison with that of the first quarter of 1968 when the January figure showed a steep increase over the December 1967 figures.

This article presents the author's observation on some elements of a sociological theory of wages. The key to an understanding of the role of sociological forces in wage determination lies, I believe, in an appreciation of the nature of on-the-job training and its significance in the development of job skills. My own research suggests that for blue-collar workers it occurs within informal social groups and may be understood in terms of what sociologists call socialization, that is, the adaptation of the individual to the norms and role patterns of the work group. The moral character of custom permits the work group to punish violations through the imposition of sanctions which the moral code of the larger society proscribes and which the workers themselves would normally adjure as illegal and unethical. American trade union organizations are grounded on the shop level. They thus encompass within them the informal social groups in whose domain custom lies. In both the craft and the industrial case, the forces driving toward some kind of national organization, and, hence, requiring a reconciliation between conflicting customs, are economic in character. An alternative approach is to examine the relationship between the customary wage structure and the competitive pressures generated by the economic system. A tendency for workers and management to import a customary wage structure into new plants from other work situations would also work for uniformity.

The article focuses on the characteristics of the "lower-blue-collar" or "lower-lower" (LL) class. The data is drawn from the findings of a comprehensive study of social class on the San Francisco Peninsula. The present paper also contributes to the descriptive knowledge of the LL class. Its main purpose, however, is to suggest theory to account for some of the characteristics of that class. It shall be concerned only with those findings with respect to which the lower-blue-collar stratum differs, to a statistically significant degree, from all other strata. In contrast to lower-class persons, middle-class persons are more likely to be required by their roles to relate to others either as superordinates, as colleagues, or as independent operators. The task of the LL is to evolve a way of life that will reduce his insecurity and enhance his power in ways that do not depend on achievement in the universalistic sector and on command of a rich and sophisticated variety of perspectives. He can do this by forging a network of relationships, with people similarly circumstanced, that is in some ways like a mutual insurance scheme.

This study provides evidence that wages in the public sector tend to be higher than in the private sector for most blue-collar jobs and lower level white-collar jobs, but salaries are generally lower in the public sector for managerial and professional occupations. The authors argue that these differentials, many of which are accentuated by differences in fringe benefits and job security, can be explained in large part by a combination of two factors: the discretion that public employers must exercise in implementing the prevailing wage rule adopted by most cities and larger government units, and the nature of the political forces that affect governmental wage decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which explores the link between wages and internal and external modes of skill acquisition for blue-collar workers. The employer in this study was the Madison, Wisconsin plant of the Gisholt Machine Company, Incorporated. The main source of data used in the study was a questionnaire data supplied by the company's employees. The impact of pre-employment training and related experience on wages were estimated. The estimation results were compared with the wage effects of on-the-job training and internal mobility after employment. The internal labor market practices of job promotion and training in the firm made greater contributions to blue-collar earnings than skill or knowledge acquired by workers before joining the firm.

The article presents various abstracts related to social change, employment and administration. The first one is "Comparative Theories of Social Change." It is a report on a symposium on comparative social change, organized by the Foundation for Research on Human Behavior and financed by the Agency for International Development. The next one is "Job Enlargement," by Paul A. Stewart, which is a case study of the Maytag Company's experience with job enlargement in blue-collar and managerial positions. "The United States Overseas Executive: His Orientations and Career Patterns," by Richard F. Gonazalez and Anant R. Negandi, is the another abstract which presents a study that was undertaken to characterize the overseas executive's orientation, career pattern, social background, military service, mobility and education in the United States. Some other abstracts are "The Faculty Promotion Process: An Empirical Analysis of the Administration," by Fred Luthans; "Managerial Skill and Knowledge," by Kenneth McLennan and "Empirical Sociology in Poland," edited by Jan Szczepanski.

This study compared the perceptions of need satisfaction and importance for blue-collar workers in the USA and Mexico. Organizational and technological differences were controlled to isolate culture as the independent variable. Porter's need questionnaire was used to tap employees' attitudes. The data indicate that there were significant differences in nearly every need item score between the two countries. Mexican workers were more satisfied than their counterparts in the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on permanent employment of Japanese blue-collar workers conducted in 1965-1966 in Japanese firms. The essence of a permanent employment system is present in any industrial society. All enterprises attempt to reduce employee turnover and its attendant costs, especially if investment in specific training of individuals is significant. Workers also have economic and psychological stakes in their employment. Labor market arrangements must guarantee some degree of employment tenure if they are successfully to motivate employees. The Japanese labor market can best be understood if its similarities to the labor markets of other industrialized nations are examined along with its distinctive characteristics. Few social practices in postwar Japan have so caught the attention of American social scientists, as has the practice of permanent employment. Permanent employment generally means that an employee enters a large firm after school graduation receives in-company training and remains an employee in the same company until the retirement age of fifty-five. It is a pattern limited primarily to male employees.

The article presents a study on the impact of unionism on relative wages of blue-collar workers for different ages and levels of educational attainment in the U.S. The study shows that labor unions benefit less educated employees more than more educated employees and tend to provide higher wage effects for young and old employees than for middle-aged workers. Meanwhile, labor unions appear to have the greatest relative wage effect when African American union members are in their early forties. These findings suggests that unions increase the rate of wages of their members by 34.2 percent over their nonunion counterparts.

The article presents an overview of various industrial and labor researches. Robert McKersie of the Graduate School of Business is continuing his research on minority employment patterns, with focus on the effect of geographical location. The Conservation Project's series of regional and metropolitan studies is set to appear in various publications, with its new studies on blue-collar and white-collar labor markets. Members of the Faculty of the Harvard Business School under the direction of the Division of Research has carried a research on Management Policy and Decision Analysis, which aims to examine the approaches of mathematical and behavioral science decision analysis in resolving policy problems at top levels of management.

The article presents and tests a model to determine any spillover effect of production-worker or blue-collar wages on nonproduction-worker or white-collar salaries. The authors seek to determine whether unionization and concentration have the same significant effect on the interindustry wage structure of non-production workers with regard to production workers. The increasing numerical superiority of white-collar workers over blue-collar workers in the labor force underlines the significance of this problem in labor market analysis.

In this article, the Israeli industrial relations system is examined, with special focus upon the nature of labor relations at the plant level. Conditions in Israel are of particular interest, due both to the very "mixed" nature of that country's economic system, and to the example it provides for other nations endeavoring to industrialize rapidly in the context of the practice of political democracy. The author traces several sources of difficulty, including the shortage of management personnel, the problems created by and for Histadrut by virtue of its scope and power, the ambiguous role of the foreman in the plant, and the ineffectiveness of vertical channels of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the external factors influencing labor organizations in underdeveloped countries. A historical background of the external influences is provided. It is noted that the major types of external forces include international labor organizations, national labor organizations, intergovernmental agencies and governments. The objectives of the external forces seeking to influence include propagation of a model, the infusion of a suitable ideological orientation and the creation of technically proficient organizations.

The article presents a synthesis of correlation studies of job satisfaction in the U.S. Although there is a positive relationship between income and job satisfaction, there apparently is a stronger association between satisfaction with income and job satisfaction. Employees who report satisfaction with their housing situation are more likely to report job satisfaction. Meanwhile, there is little variation among the reports of job satisfaction at different levels of education. Satisfaction appear to be higher for employees in professional, farm and skilled blue-collar occupational categories than for workers in the unskilled category.

Who are the in-home shoppers? This article locks at door-to-door selling from the customer side, and presents answers that differ from other recently reported work. It also examples personality characteristics of women who buy from door-to-door sales representatives versus those who do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article cautions that German health insurance legal reform should proceed deliberately and only after resolution of the issue of sick pay for blue collar workers. The author recommends a position paper from the Labor and Social Ministry of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, on health insurance reform and the financial status of provincial health insurers.

In this article, authors' wish to argue that the individual's attitude towards his work and the problems he faces in redundancy are structured to a great extent by the relationships that he experiences at his workplace and in his worklife. They found that the response to redundancy and the subsequent jobs search of their sample of redundant workers could be most usefully understood in terms of the groupings formed on the basis of the technological or organizational system operating in a particular firm and, more generally, in a industry. Entry was obtained to a aircraft firm located in the Midlands which was due to close down at the end of 1970. A systematic, one in three, sample of male manual workers and weekly staff was drawn. Respondents were interviewed in the firm during November 1970 and re-interviewed in their homes approximately six months later. The total sample was 124, which reduced to 112 at the second interview.

Discusses results of a study describing work conditions in the U.S. and their impact on blue collar workers. Emergence of worker discontent; Principal sources of worker discontent; Job satisfaction surveys.

The article focuses on defining the function of mass media as a proposal for changing societies and developing nations. It says that mass media should take account on how their audience feel on what function the media should fulfill. It states that the determination of institutional function is geography, political organization, and culture and the rationale for function is the result of man's philosophy that developed in a given society. It adds that Q method was conducted in order to know the perception of the newspaper management of the function of the newspaper in the society the same of differ from the perception of the consumers, such as businesspeople, blue-collar workers, and politicians.

This article focuses on a detailed compilation of the data on income trends among the manual and white-collar employees from 1890, made by sociologist Robert K. Burns. This article speculates the causes of the equalization he discovers as well as venturing predictions about future trends. Findings reported in this article show neither equality of income nor an inversion of the historical pattern. The white-collar worker typically begins with a higher income than do skilled workers and this difference is maintained through to middle age. The chances are that he will move into a still higher occupational rank at this point in his career. It appears likely that a minority are unsuccessful in their mobility aims. These persons may well face serious losses of income both in absolute terms to the manual workers.

The hypothesis that working class respondents are especially antagonistic toward the black and student movements is tested with a sample of white Los Angeles residents (N = 477). In support of the hypothesis, working class persons and those with less than a high school education (in contrast to those higher in the occupational and educational hierarchies) are more likely to: (a) express punitive attitudes toward student demonstrators, (b) oppose granting students more power, and (c) feel blacks are pushing too hard for things they don't deserve. To locate rationales that would explain these relationships, intervening and specification variables were introduced in the analysis. These variables are: respect for authority, belief in the American Dream, belief that the needs of the working man are neglected, and perceived powerlessness. Substantial support for these explanations of blue collar anger is found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pervasive use of the alienation framework in interpretative sociological works has generated a need for empirical studies of alienation it self. Empirical measures of powerlessness and normlessness are developed for political and economic areas, following the leads provided by Seeman's conceptual analysis. The alienation scales developed in the present study are combined with Srole's anomie scale and Seeman's status-orientation scale for factor analyses. The findings provide empirical support for Seeman's argument for the conceptual independence of alternative meanings of alienation, but do not support the sociological works hypothesizing significant relationships between mobility commitments and alienation. A high degree of similarity is found in the dimensional structure of alienation for samples of manual and non-manual workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]