ECON 330 WORKERS AND THE ECONOMY UNIT 2 SUMMARY (Reading and Content) ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY.
Unit 2: Workers and the Economy
Textbook Readings: Ch 2 – 4 Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global
Economy
Introduction:
- Workers are diverse: Men, women, different skin colors/backgrounds.
- What distinguishes workers from nonworkers?
1.) Working for money; most cases this is a wage or salary, but contract work is
increasing with self- employment. Their choices of clients are limited and thus we
may call the people asking the contractors to do work “principals”. This makes
the contractors agents working under orders from principals.
Principals-agent relations point to factor
2.) power. Self-employed workers are seemingly independent from
supervisors and bosses. However, the orders are usually specific enough that
there is little to no room for contractors to make independent decisions.
- Need for work forces contractors to keep principals happy.
- In summary, workers have no power but are subjected to power of employers or
principals (wage vs contractors respectively).
- Workers building a trade union or worker’s party may be able to gather enough
power to rival the employer.
- Money and power are not isolated from one another, as having money gives you
power, so working for money means you are subject to the power of those with
money.
- Important to note that what distinguishes workers from nonworkers is the
conditions under which one workers and not whether one works. Examples:
- Farmers, craft producers, and mom-and-pop shop owners work as hard as any
other workers, but they do it on their own accounts. You could say they are
working people, but they do not belong to the same social class as workers do.
They are sometimes called “middle class” or “petty bourgeoisie” because they
own their small businesses and do not hire any workers other than occasional
helpers.
- Lawyers and doctors may also own their own businesses and join the ranks of
the petty bourgeoisie. Many are on payrolls of law firms or hospitals. What
distinguishes them from workers is they enjoy a large amount of autonomy at
work, so they get to make decisions about how they get their work done. Their
skills may be of high enough quality or specific enough that replacing them is
difficult, giving them more bargaining power than workers.
- CEOs are technically salaried staff and members of the “professional middle
class” or workers. But, they have decision-making power over their work and the
work of others, and they belong to a small executive group making decisions and
executing them. Whether they are salaried or not, anyone belonging to this group
of decision makers can be counted as members of the capitalist class. M