The Relationship between Increasing Consumerism and the Casualization of Labor - Essay Example

? The relationship between increasing consumerism and the casualization of labor Number: The relationship between increasing consumerism and the casualization of labor Casualization refers to the spreading out of bad conditions of work such as job insecurity, irregular employment, low wages and the absence of standard employment benefits. Casualization also refers to a condition where more and more human resources are employed in casual jobs following a prominent kind of employment. Casual jobs are viewed in the general sense as jobs without benefits and rights, and are largely perceived as capitalist development that has been outmoded by the advancement of cooperative employment relations and industrial citizenship. In most places, casual jobs workers undergo an enormous deficit in their benefits and rights compared to workers in ordinary permanent jobs. Casual workers are more susceptible to bad practices like summary firing, variation in hours and timetables, subjective treatment and underpayment. Moreover, casual workers are prone to deficits in areas of skill development and promotion. Casual work is viewed as bad since it exerts downward pressure on wages and conditions, in addition to attracting more workers into the net. Direct hire and outsourcing directly and overtly threaten substitution of permanent workers by casual employees. Causal jobs also form the basis of precariousness and susceptibility of individuals and families. In the recent past, a valuable exploration body in both academic and activist arenas emerged. The body confronts the increase of provisional, elastic and/or precarious employment in the modern society. The body of research derives its theoretical framework from ethnographic and sociological studies. The body also forms the basis of critique surrounding the aspect of precarity and the use of English language. Several scholarly articles have been published with the same view in mind. These are such as the ephemera: theory and politics in organizations by Dowling et al. where the debate highlights the aspect of precarious and flexible employees as the new form of the political issue; complete with their own forms of shared organization and modes of expression. For illustration, Chainworkers groups operating out of Milan assembled the youth who had little political knowledge to take part in work strikes of graphic and fashion parades everywhere. Nevertheless, the issue of contingency and precarity remained a severe issue that it stretched from hypothetical and political outset to the new media sectors. In a more general scope, precarity may be understood as the root of political incapacity, economic exploitation and opportunities to be seized. The emergence of precarious working conditions signifies disappearance of stable jobs, provision of welfare, emergence of debts, as well as, adequate housing. Moreover, the available time for creating and cultivating personal relations also become part of the precarity. In the founding of elastic labor market in the 1980s, life was proclaimed as an asset put to work, resulting in the emergence of social pay that would recompense political subjects for their useful input in relation to general social prosperity. Further series of debate with regards to non-citizen migrants as precarious workers emerged, as well as the gendered nature of precarious work (Guy, 2011). Other scholars also studied on politics of the effective division of labour of female migrant workforce. This led to a view of precarity as an experience of embodied capitalism (Neilson & Rossiter, 2008, p 56). A study of the world of art by production economist was bewildered by the gap between their earnings or performance outputs and that of their fellows in service occupations. Baumol held that performing arts were prone to cost disease that censures the cost per live concert to increase at a faster rate than that of a typically manufactured product. The arts could either join the productive subdivision by imitating the profitable culture industry in its adjustment to productivity enhancing technologies, or match the type of social services that make a communal good under intense hand of bureaucratic supervision (Baumol W. & William, 1966). Bauman rightly notes that modern capital placed work, which he referred to as ‘paid employment’ in a central position. Work occupied a central position, connecting together personal motivation of the worker, the means whereby a network of social associations and friendships was grown, and the manner in which the entire system was kept operating efficiently. Work as a means of paid employment has undergone several radical modifications over the years, and the notion of a lifelong job, profession and trade with security have become part of history. Employment has become casualized, insecure, part time and worst insecure to both men and women. Its place has been taken by retraining, multiple career and early retirement (layoffs). This is rarely the foundation for individual motivation; let alone the cultivating of steady societies and livable localities. The level of capital things has been changing with what is occurring with the wage labor, where the fluidity of finance and capital flows, location of production units in worldwide discrete sites are made possible by communication information technologies (CITs). Technology science is seen as the social change harbinger as opposed to struggles with regards to who dominates over production or the ongoing rationality of the organization (Waterman, 2001, p 205). Bauman views this as the new presence of consumer freedom, as opposed to the absence of work. Technology science has in various respects, taken over from work as the social key player. Bauman further notes that consumer freedom may point the way to a resolution of the antagonism involving reality doctrine and pleasure. Producers of goods and services may stick with reality as a regulation principle, though they depend on consumers not doing so. On the part of the consumer, pursuit of happiness is the point. Consumer system necessitates for credit card happy shoppers, as well as a sense in which customers are bound to shop. The reason is that consumers are pressured by the need to keep up with other shoppers and show their style of up to date-ness and social robustness. Consumers are also pressured by the merchandizing business entities that define the good life through persistent promotions and travel great technological walks to voice the choices of consumers. The combination of social management and emblematic competition forms a system of seduction. The impact of this fresh social type is that the capitalism system is secured. In areas where intricate and costly types of control and regulation were needed to keep order, seduction does the same job painlessly (Browning, 2000, p 227). Global capital still confronts labor globally. The swiftness of change in a waged work in its virtual increase or decrease, its nature, as well as, the separation by labor market necessitates the thinking of a labor movement from the local level to the universal level. The chief element in the modern revolution of the global capitalist economy and waged work are the forefront roles played by information and knowledge. Information technology and computerized equipment in production and as product, global capital is linked to a reduction in the total demand for labor. It is also related to the change in the management of the labor process from machine operator to the technician, from economies of scale production to the narrow scope for niche markets. Global capital also relates to shift from production to service provision, decentralization of production while financial control remain centralized and networking links between central managers. This is partly viewed as fresh polarization within national labor forces between skills and information (Fox & Cloward, 2000, p 418). This polarization may advocate for a new type of class-like alliance at local and international levels, though not a fundamental likelihood. The twofold reason imposed here fails to permit the division within men and women categories amongst the categorized and for the increasing substantiation that class uniqueness is crossed by others. There has been an increase in the global spread of creative industries strategies as a recipe for growth. The expansive development of knowledge driven business divisions that rely on intellectual capital and the abstract turn toward the pragmatism of culture has also increased. The change has rapidly given rise to widespread skepticism among workers who are not used to the attention. Apparently, the strategies and policies are usually regarded as a professional practice, molded to spin value and bring the most holdouts to the currents of marketization to swim across the creative class (Michael & Negri, 2006, p 53). There is an aspect of desperation in the move toward a creative economy. For illustration, managers struggling to gain a competitive merit in world markets are easily sold on any proof that creative activity in and of itself can yield value for a region. There is the proven capacity of resourceful districts to heighten realty prices in select towns. Similarly, there is the optimism that occupations in a resourceful economy will not be relocated elsewhere when offshore has become a way of life. Creative jobs do not comprise cost effective organizational supports unlike those in high skill production divisions. It is worth noting that creative industries strategies represent a change of capital owners’ mentality. It is assumed that creative jobs are not deficient in satisfaction. On the contrary, it is held that self immersion and mental challenges bring about surplus pleasure and satisfaction on the lives of creatives. However, evidence on knowledge and creative industry workplace reveals that job satisfaction for such workers comes at a high cost. They work for long hours in quest for a satisfying end, and dispensability in trade for flexibility. The continual contingency of employment stipulates for unskilled laborers and immigrants mainly held by women working on a part time basis or reduced wages in periods dominated by the family wage. Owners of capital have reaped lavish earnings from casualization of labor, outsourcing and other modes of exploitation. This has led to the formation of a multi-class precariat that is associated with insecurity across people’s lives (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009, p 63). The issue of bad jobs results from institutional economists who hold that the labor market is in industrial societies comprises of primary segment and secondary segment. The primary segment comprises of good jobs whilst the secondary segment comprises of bad jobs. Bad jobs also include dependent, externalized and non standard employment. The fundamental concern on non standard work arrangements is that such jobs are not fit for workers. The flexibility nature of contingent work enables employers to lower the cost of labor during slack times. In addition, workers in contingent jobs have to struggle with health insurance and pension, and inadequate protection from unions and employment laws. It is through primary work/standard employment that most employees earn a living and that the government shields employees from exploitation and hazardous working environment. Bad jobs are associated with poor quality work as they depart from standard employment in several aspects. One is that contingent jobs lack an employer. Self employed individuals, free-lancers, specialists and independent contractors bear the perils of their own work and employment. Secondly, casual workers are weakly attached to their lawful employer in terms of managerial control. Additionally, some employers do not control how contingent workers operate. For instance, independent contractors manage and control their own work. Non standard workers cannot assume that their employment will continue. Work quality is a basic dimension of stratification in manufacturing societies and disparities in employment. In the recent past, sociologists highlighted variation in prestige of employment as an essential dimension in determining job quality. More recently, attention on the quality of work has shifted to stress more on the difficulty of the task and the physical demand. However, it is workers who eventually judge the quality of work they engage in for various reasons. Low earnings and lack of pension benefits and health insurance are the most cited signs of bad jobs. Employers who do not offer health insurance and pension impose sizeable suffering on workers and their families. The reason is that such merits are basically obtained through employment. The quality of work today is stained resulting from work life association with managerial responses to upheavals against work. Government and corporate managers interpreted workers alienation from the job following unsatisfying tasks as a system wide objection against factory centered conditions (Kalleberg, Barbara, & Hudson, 2000, p 260). The increase in global consumerism has a direct relationship with casualization of labour. In the modern world, entry into high stakes jobs requires one to ignore their safety. In such circumstances, only the sprightly and the confident will prevail, reflecting a form of social Darwinism. Once the agile are in, some of them succeed while others exist neither as employers nor as workers in an environment of uncertainty without knowing their next source of income. This results in a cycle where famine and feast become part of people’s lives. The heightened needs of desperate workers seem like the survivor test in a movie where general alertness, skills and timing to the main opportunities help the hero to fend off their risks. In order to obtain a standard employment, one has to prove that he/she has all it takes to seize the opportunity indeed. In the low wage kind of jobs, a different kind of dividing line exists. Chances of climbing up the ladder are so minimal and chances of being absorbed into the dead-end job further strains the labor market, which is already shaken. High turnover rates and stagnating wage levels are the typical elements of a formal service economy, and discontinuous employment is progressively more becoming the norm (Sandrine & Alena 2007). Casualization of labour is propelled by; consumerism, market deregulation and neoliberal labor transformation continues to push the escalating labor force into temporary contracts. Immigrant workers; mostly from developing economies play a pivotal role in essential markets in the informal economy, although they occupy contingent employment positions. Without the services of contingent laborers, the entire machinery of services would come to a standstill. Contingent workers’ rights and working conditions are down looked by off-the-books employment and although autonomy is valued (Kalleberg, 2011). Most contingency workers in mature economies face harsh conditions and their ability to evade capitalist discipline, state scrutiny and migration statuses determines their pay. The relocation of capital to less expensive locations in various part of the globe is not a clear gateway to ease consumerism. Taking hazardous industrial operations to less controlled regions increases a burden of corporations, which have to deal with a tainted brand back home as a result of global trade. In a similar manner, the labor bargaining power is repositioned and asserts itself in various ways. For instance, China is popularly recognized for permitting domestic and international investors to utilize its workforce exceptionally at low labor costs (Chan & Ngai, 2010, p 9). The high need for Chinese to meet their daily needs in such a densely populated country prompted majority of the workers to comply with absolute exploitation. A common held view is that workers strikes were infrequent, and when they did, they merely asked for a bowl of rice rather than institutional changes (Lee, nd, p 2). However, the Chinese government has put in place new labor laws that give assurance to workers on the right to sign contracts without fixed termination dates, after ten years of employment. This shows that employers can be made responsible if campaigners efficiently with public concern on precarity in mind. Sovereign minded brain laborers are easiest to estrange, in spite of them sharing the mindset of elites. For illustration, the academic professionals are easy to radicalize whenever their thought processes are prone to routinization. Academic profession was once an occupation with security, but it is currently saturated with contingency and part time contracts. In the United States, for instance, approximately seventy five percent of the academic staffs have become casualized, leaving behind a minority in the tenure system to exercise the freedom of a free society. The deprefessionalization has triggered an emergent labor movement that may transform the workplace of it, in case the movement can fruitfully draw large numbers of the standard and tenured workers (Kalleberg, Barbara & Hudson, 2000, p 264; Ross, 2008). In conclusion, the backdrop for the popular work ethic was the great depression, which resulted in widespread proliferation of precarity whose product was the collapse of capitalist control. The contemporary precarity is largely influenced by exercise of capitalist control. Modern capitalism and social Darwinist succeeds by aggressively disorganizing and restructuring employment and other aspects of socio-economic life. The result of this capitalist destabilization is to create desperation and instability in order to gain from vulnerability of masses of people. Capitalists view this inadequacy as a plus because it creates the potential to push labor outside of dogmatic organizations like the governments through the precariat tendency. Producers of goods and services want to produce at cost efficient levels and to maximize their returns. For instance, change in production from mass production to “niche” production proves this point. Firms moving their production to china in order to profit from the cheaply available labor and further exploiting workers reinforces this view. Therefore, there is a direct relationship between consumerism and casualization of labour. Bibliography Baumol, W. & William, B. (1966) Performing Arts – The Economic Dilemma: A Study of Problems Common to Theatre, Opera, Music, and Dance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Browning, G. (2000) Understanding Contemporary Society: Theories of the Present. NY: Sage. Chan, J. & Ngai, P. (2010) ‘Suicide as Protest for the New Generation of Chinese Migrant Workers: Foxconn, Global Capital, and the State.’ The Asia?Pacific Journal, 37(1): 2?10. Fox, F.P & Cloward, R.A. (2000) Power Repertoires and Globalization. Politics and Society 28: 413?430. Guy, S. (2011) The Precariat: the New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury Academic.  Kalleberg, A. L (2011) Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious ? 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