scholarly journals The Working Class in the Service Sector: Outlining the Issue and Reviewing Current Sociological Discourse

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 78-96
Author(s):  
Tatyana Gavrilyuk
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Emotional Labor ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
Class Consciousness ◽  
Service Research ◽  
Service Workers ◽  
Consumer Sovereignty ◽  
Sociological Discourse ◽  
Interactive Service

This study focuses on reviewing and analyzing the current sociological discourse devoted to the problems of routine service labor. The article reveals such aspects as the specifics of interactive service work, methods for assessing the size and composition of the service portion of the working class, how the updated properties of labor relations influence the traditional methods used by researchers to conceptualize them, the specific qualities of class consciousness inherent to the service sphere. It has been established that in foreign discourse of sociology of labor, research in the service sphere is currently at the forefront. The focus is on such problems as the structure of the new post-industrial working class, the inclusion of the client into the traditional worker/employer dyad as a third element that reconfigures the stable structures of labor relations, the increased importance of “emotional labor”, physicality and the so-called “soft qualities” of workers, the ideology of consumer sovereignty and the problems that it generates, the precarization of labor that leads to the deprivation of interactive service workers, the class consciousness and resistance practices of routine services employees. In domestic science, this issue is considered mainly from the standpoint of economics and management. In Russian sociology, service research has not been fully updated, there is no theoretical foundation, and the concept of service workers as part of the working class has not yet taken form. The majority of Russian authors rely on the structural and functional paradigm in the study of the service sphere, which does not correlate with the problems relevant to international sociology and the methods of their analysis.

scholarly journals No Choice but to Be Essential: Expanding Dimensions of Precarity During COVID-19

2021 ◽  
pp. 073112142110054
Author(s):  
Lola Loustaunau ◽  
Lina Stepick ◽  
Ellen Scott ◽  
Larissa Petrucci ◽  
Miriam Henifin
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Emotional Labor ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Bodily Integrity ◽  
Service Workers ◽  
Core Components ◽  
Fear And Anxiety ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Conditions Of Work

Under COVID-19, low-wage service sector workers found themselves as essential workers vulnerable to intensified precarity. Based on in-depth interviews with a sample of 52 low-wage service workers interviewed first in Summer 2019 and then in the last two weeks of April 2020, we argue that COVID-19 has created new and heightened dimensions of precarity for low-wage workers. They experience (1) moments of what we call precarious stability, in which an increase in hours and predictable schedules is accompanied by unpredictability in the tasks workers are assigned, (2) increased threats to bodily integrity, and (3) experiences of fear and anxiety as background conditions of work and intensified emotional labor. The impacts of COVID-19 on workers’ lives warrant an expanded conceptualization of precarity that captures the dynamic and shifting nature of precarious stability and must incorporate workers’ limited control over their bodily integrity and emotions as core components of precarious working conditions.

The Strange Radicalism of Thomas Carnduff and St John Ervine

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Connal Parr
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
First World War ◽  
Class Consciousness ◽  
World War ◽  
Abbey Theatre ◽  
Unpublished Work ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

St John Ervine and Thomas Carnduff were born in working-class Protestant parts of Belfast in the 1880s, though Ervine would escape to an eventually prosperous existence in England. Orangeism, the politics of early twentieth-century Ireland, the militancy of the age—and the involvement of these writers in it—along with Ervine’s journey from ardent Fabian to reactionary Unionist, via his pivotal experiences managing the Abbey Theatre and losing a leg in the First World War, are all discussed. Carnduff’s own tumultuous life is reflected through his complicated Orange affiliation, gut class-consciousness, poetry, unpublished work, contempt for the local (and gentrified) Ulster artistic scene, and veneration of socially conscious United Irishman James Hope. It concludes with an assessment of their respective legacies and continuing import.

Uprootedness and Working-Class Consciousness

1963 ◽  
Vol 68 (6) ◽  
pp. 682-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. Leggett
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Class Consciousness

Low-Wage Women’s Experiences of Workplace Incivilities

2021 ◽  
pp. 193672442110147
Author(s):  
Katherine Tindell ◽  
Irene Padavic
Keyword(s):  
Customer Service ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Food Service ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Income Loss ◽  
Service Workers ◽  
Bank Teller ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Service Representative ◽  
Research And Policy

Workplace incivility, also called bullying, mobbing, and harassment, is pervasive and takes a high toll on employees. This study draws on 18 in-depth interviews with women in the precarious, low-wage, service sector in jobs such as customer service representative, retail sales, food service, pharmacy technician, and bank teller. Women service workers are a particularly vulnerable group, and yet most research on workplace problems of this type focus on professional women’s experience. We find that in this sample, most incivilities came from supervisors, followed by customers and then coworkers. Among supervisors, women were the most common perpetrators, while customer and coworker perpetrators were largely men. The type of incivility varied depending on role: Disparagement was common on the part of supervisors and customers, while coworkers were far more likely to engage in sexual harassment, which was virtually nonexistent among supervisors. Consequences for targets of these incivilities included anxiety, which most had experienced, and income loss. We offer suggestions for future research and policy.

Shock Troops and Shock Absorbers: IT Support and Emotional Labor in the Rationalizing University

2021 ◽  
pp. 089124162110176
Author(s):  
J. Lotus Seeley
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Labor ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Organizational Level ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Service Workers ◽  
Help Desk ◽  
Shock Absorbers ◽  
It Support ◽  
New Policies ◽  
The University

Drawing on 200 hours of observation at The Help Desk, an IT Support (ITS) unit at a medical school, and interviews with 30 ITS workers from across the university, this article shows how organizational-level IT rationalization was affected at the microlevel through ITS workers’ extensive emotional labor and involvement in meaning-making projects. Successful implementation required ITS workers to function as shock troops, introducing and enforcing new policies, and shock absorbers, encouraging compliance and insulating administrators from discontent about those changes. This article contributes to inhabited institutions theories of organizational change by demonstrating the importance of service workers’ interactive and emotional labor to the coupling of institutional myth, organizational policy, and the interactions and practices of constituent members.

Late Twentieth-Century Psychoanalytic Interpretations of Sects and Cults: Weston La Bare, Norman Cohn, & E. P. Thompson

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-46
Author(s):  
Stephen Kent
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Native American ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Class Consciousness ◽  
Freudian Psychoanalysis ◽  
Ghost Dance ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Religious Sects ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Before the diminished influence of classical psychoanalysis in the late twentieth century, several now-classic studies of sectarian religions contained Freudian psychoanalytic perspectives on religious sects or cults. These studies included Weston La Barre’s analyses of both serpent handlers and the Native American Ghost Dance; Norman Cohn’s panoramic examination of medieval European sectarian apocalyptic movements; and E. P. Thompson’s groundbreaking examination of Methodism within the formation of English working-class consciousness. Regardless of the problems that are endemic to the application of Freudian psychoanalysis to history, the sheer (although sometimes flawed) erudition of these three authors suggests that classical psychoanalysis had an important interpretive role to play in the study of some sectarian and cultic groups.

Workers, Citizens and the Argentine Nation: Party Politics and the Working Class in Rosario, 1912–3

1999 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 589-616
Author(s):  
MATTHEW B. KARUSH
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Class Consciousness ◽  
Port City ◽  
Electoral Democracy

The electoral democracy created by the Sáenz Peña Law of 1912 opened up dramatic new possibilities for working-class political identity. In the important port city of Rosario, the Radical politician Ricardo Caballero crafted a political discourse that combined an explicit defence of working-class interests with a nostalgic depiction of the country's rural past. By linking class consciousness with images drawn from the popular culture of the ‘gauchesque,’ Caballerismo constructed a distinctively working-class version of Argentine nationalism and citizenship.

The Coachmen of Nineteenth-Century Paris: Service Workers and Class Consciousness

1995 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 183
Author(s):  
Christopher E. Guthrie ◽  
Nicholas Papayanis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Class Consciousness ◽  
Service Workers

scholarly journals The Effect of Occupational Safety, Work Skills, And Employability on Stress and Implications on The Productivity of Employment Construction Service Workers

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Nurhani ◽  
Wibowo ◽  
Budi Santoso
Keyword(s):  
Direct Effect ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Occupational Safety ◽  
Work Productivity ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Survey Method ◽  
Service Research ◽  
Work Skills ◽  
Service Workers ◽  
Safety Work

This study aims to analyze the effect of occupational safety, work skills, and employability on stress and its implications on the labor productivity of construction service workers in Jabodetabek. This researcher uses a quantitative approach with a survey method. The sample used in this study are 303 permanent workforce in the construction service sector of  structure work ( formwork, putting ironn and casting ) who have a minimum of high school education equivalent that determines proportionate random sampling. The research data were obtained from distributing questionnaires and analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis supported by descriptive statistical analysis. The results of this study indicate occupational safety, work skills, employability and stress have a direct effect on work productivity; occupational safety, work skills and employability have a direct effect on stress; occupational safety, work skills and employability have a indirect effect on work productivity with stress mediation. Therefore, improvements in occupational safety, work skills, employability, and stress can increase work productivity. The novelty of this study is in the form of a research model of the effect of occupational safety, work skills, and employability on work productivity with stress mediation developed from previous relevant studies with construction service research locations in Jabodetabek, 2019.

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