Body Work, Employment Relations and the Labour Process

1
Body Work, Employment Relations and the Labour
Process

• Rachel Cohen
• University of Warwick, Department of Sociology
• ESRC Body Work Seminar Series
• 19th January 2008

2
Introduction

• ? PhD research into hairstylists in different
  employment relations (self-employed,
  sub-contracting, mobile, commission-based, hourly
  paid). Attempt to generalise from the labour
  process in hairstyling.
• ? Body work became analytically useful as it
  pointed to specific labour process constraints
  that went beyond hairstyling.
• ? I argued that in hairstyling these constraints
  inefficiencies for capital ? reproduction of
  non-standard employment relations.
• ? This paper attempt to make a similar
  argument across the range of body work
  occupations.

3
Outline

• ? Who is a body worker?
• ? Labour process constraints
• Labour/capital ratio
• Standardisation
• Spatio-temporal organisation
• ? Employment relations
• ? Conclusion

4
Who is a body worker?
Initial preference 1. But since much body work
is with unconscious, immobile, or inarticulate
bodies, or bodies going between life and death
the lines between 1 and 2 are blurred ?
analytically 2 most useful for me. Arguments for
moving to 3 mostly cultural (i.e. dirty work)
or technical.
5
body workersmain occupation data, from Spring
2005 LFS, weighted with pwt03
Note as these data come from the Labour Force
Survey only classified (and legal) occupations
are listed (i.e. sex workers are not included).
Anyone who does body work as their second job
is also omitted. More detailed occupational
groups described on handout.
6
Labour/capital ratio

• ? Working on more than one body simultaneously
  is difficult. This means there is usually a
  one-to-one relationship between worker and body.
  Or many-to-one if more than one worker works on
  each body.
• ? Efficiency gains are hard to realise
  difficult to increase production without
  proportionate increase in labour.
• ? Most body work industries are labour
  intensive.
• ? To the extent that gaps are created in the
  body-work process (i.e. the period while a client
  is under the dryer), workers can work on more
  than one body (one-to-many), but temporal
  unpredictability (discussed later) makes it
  difficult to plan or use these gaps effectively.
• ? Note where services include body work as a
  variable (rather than constant) product (i.e.
  residential care homes), a lower ratio of
  worker/body is possible, because body work is
  done serially.

7
Bodies in the labour process

• ? Body
• As materials of production
• As process of production
• ? Bodies as variable small, large, old, young,
  male, female, bitten nails, short,
  large-breasted, pale-skinned, curly-haired,
  allergic, impaired, asleep,
• ? Mindful bodies as more variable variation in
  capacity and desire of bodies to communicate
  needs desires pain joy history
• ? Variable materials and process of production
  diminishes capitals ability to standardise and
  reorganise production process.

8
Standardising bodies

• ? Bounding body work ? decreasing variability.
• ? By body part
• Many body workers deal exclusively with one part
  of the body hair, nails, feet, back And offer
  limited services within this.
• ? By selecting bodies
• Most body workers deal exclusively (or almost
  exclusively) with one type of body old bodies
  (residential care), young bodies (child-care),
  ill bodies (GPs), male bodies (sex-work),
  afro-Caribbean bodies (afro-Caribbean
  hairstylists), dead bodies (undertakers)
• ? By constraining mindful bodies
• With physical constraints (i.e. dentists
  chairs) drugs or norms and protocols
• ? By instituting temporal-spatial controls
• Delimiting appointment time, duration, or place.
  Note capacity to do this is dependent on demand
  outstripping supply (as with accredited
  professionals).

9
Limits to standardisation

• ? Temporal standardisation usually involves
  standardising up or decreased efficiency
• ? Overall variability in bodies and minds
  continues ? workers retain autonomy (vis-à-vis
  employer/manager)
• ? to classify raw materials (bodies and bodily
  features)
• ? to deal with unpredictability of the labour
  process
• ? Labour substitutability limited by
  intersubjectivity of body work ? development of
  relationships between bodies and body workers ?
  resistance to labour replacement ? increase
  workers power vis-à-vis employer/manager.
• ? Worker autonomy constraint on reorganisation
  of the labour force.
• ? Worker autonomy mediated by power of body
  vis-à-vis body worker (physical strength gender
  ethnicity cultural class location) and by the
  employment relations which structurally define
  the relationship of the worker to the body worked
  on (more later).

10
Spatio-temporal organisation

• ? Body work requires co-presence ? produces
  strict spatio-temporal parameters work must
  occur where and when the bodies are available to
  be worked on.
• In contrast to anytime anywhere work service
  work (wherein virtual presence can substitute
  for real presence)
• Similar to agriculture plumbing (which have
  constrained spatio-temporal parameters)

11
Bodies as spatially-temporally unpredictable

• Bodies and their needs do not work on mechanical
  time (whether demands are for toileting or a
  makeover). Some demands are cyclical (seasonal
  or daily) many are less predictable.
• Contrary bodies
• Consciousness mobility contrariness (i.e.
  salon clients) ? unpredictability
• Needy bodies
• Temporal urgency of work on bodies at risk
• Temporal urgency of demands for aesthetic
  body work
• Absent or unready bodies
• Since body work involves sequential one-to-one
  relations, the maintenance of a constant
  work-pace requires bodies to be ready at the
  place and time that workers finish work on their
  previous body. Absent a ready body, workers have
  baggy time, time at work, not working
  unproductive labour.

12
Trainable bodies

• ? Unconsciousness and/or immobility
  trainability bodies available when/where
  workers want to work on them.
• Corpses
• Hairdressing-clients in a residential home
• Patients confined to bed-rest
• Note immobile bodies may require worker
  mobility
• ? Bodies which are spatially constrained
  (prisoners)
• ? Desperate bodies ? needy (and so temporally
  unpredictable) but with increased willingness to
  queue and/or fit in with workers
  temporal/spatial requirements

13
Characteristics of body work, by occupationmain
job, data from Spring 2005 LFS, weighted by pwt03
14
Employment relations a solution to structural
constraints

• ? Very high rates of self-employment without
  employees (i.e. sub-contracting or
  sole-owner-practitioner business) unless the
  sector is nationalised (protective
  services/health)
• ? Self-employment without employees transfer
  costs of dealing with unpredictability to workers
  (rather than employers). Time at work, not
  working (baggy time) may not be understood as a
  cost in the same way. Therefore a solution
  to structural constraints.
• ? However exacerbates workers autonomy ? further
  constraining future reorganisation.

15
Employment relations a solution to structural
constraints

• ? The same occupations that have high rates of
  self-employment without employees have high
  levels of working at home OR from home.
• ? Where body work takes place in homes or other
  personal environments the one-to-one
  relationship is spatially imposed even where
  temporal gaps emerge (which in other environments
  could be used to work on additional bodies) ?
  exacerbates the problem of baggy time.
• ? Those occupations with high levels of home- or
  mobile-working also have lower average weekly
  hours of work.

16
Standard employment relations and needy bodies

• Occupations that deal with the most needy
  bodies (protective services and healthcare) have
  very high rates of Saturday and Sunday work.
  (Exception healthcare professionals ? issue of
  power vis-à-vis employers and clients in
  negotiating temporal arrangements).
• Total hours and employment relations of these
  (largely public sector) occupations are
  relatively standard. Possibly public
  recognition of the neediness of these bodies ?
  requirement workers be available, whether or not
  there is work the production of baggy time is
  inevitable, an inescapable cost, but one borne as
  a social (not economic) good.
• Note intensification ? all bodies being slightly
  worse (or more slowly) tended during rushes and
  adequately during slow times baggy time
  disappears, but care for bodies suffers.

17
Borderline body work

• Undertakers/mortuary assts demographic and job
  characteristics are very close to non-body
  workers (where they vary are less marginal).
• However undertakers hours are more variable than
  non-body workers
• The bodies they work on are exceptionally
  trainable. But local death rates (and therefore
  demand), remain temporally unpredictable (or at
  least variable).

18
Employment relations defining the relationship
of body to body worker
19
Employment relations defining the relationship
of body to body worker?

• The more direct the relationship between body
  and body worker, the more the latter depends upon
  the former.
• In hairstyling this has various consequences
• ? Incentive to build good relationship with
  client (to encourage return custom)
• ? Willingness to do extra-work favours or
  perform work for clients outside formal
  work-place/hours
• ? Attempts to maintain control over the
  temporality of work (to fit in extra clients, or
  give a client time)
• ? Efforts to train clients
• ? Decreased intra-workplace cooperation in body
  work activities.
• ? How far do these consequences hold across body
  work occupations?

20
Conclusions

• Body work labour process constraints
• ? one-to-one (or many-to-one) worker/client ratio
  ? high labour/capital ratio ? difficulties in
  increasing efficiency
• variety of mindful bodies ? standardisation
  difficult ? high labour process autonomy
• requirement for client co-presence ?
  spatio-temporal unpredictability (except where
  clients are trainable) ? baggy time
• Focus on labour process constraints
• Enables body work to be compared with other forms
  of work, its specificity highlighted.
• Provides a framework to internally compare types
  of body work

21
Conclusions

• Employment relations
• ?Non-standard employment relations are (in part)
  a product of labour process constraints and are
  common in body work occupations that are not in
  the public sector.
• Variation in employment relations
• ? Affect the relationship between worker and body
  worked on. Further investigation of this is an
  essential part of body work studies.

22
Conclusions

• Other issues
• ?Is there a relationship between the hidden or
  dirty nature of much body work, its devaluing
  and/or feminising and the unpredictability and
  labour intensity of the work?
• ? Does a focus on labour process constraints
  necessarily involve the construction of an
  objective body (I think it has here!).
• ? How many definitions of body work are
  sustainable? Must we share one for it to become a
  conceptual referent?