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
  economyInternational 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 workersunionization, job
  ladders, seniority-based pay and promotion,
  bureaucratic control
• Workers from secondary labor market are prevented
  from competing for certain jobsthey 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
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
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.