> Date sent: Tue, 31 Dec 1996 15:17:25 -0800 (PST) > Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Doug Henwood) > To: Multiple recipients of list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: [PEN-L:8012] Re: contingent work > At 2:17 PM 12/31/96, James Michael Craven wrote: > > >Let them do surveys of workers and determine the percentage of > >workers who feel and understand the reality of capitalism: contract > >or no contract, their terms and conditions of employment depend > >essentially on the profit appetites of capital and the vicissitudes > >of capitalism; that no contract has been made that can't be broken, > >especially when those breaking the contract have unlimited resources > >to ward off litigation, the potential litigants have no resources to > >pursue litigation and further the laws were written by and for the > >interests of those most likely to break labor contracts; that 10,000 > >workers may lose their jobs before the boss's snot-nosed kid loses > >his Corvette; that thousands of workers can lose their jobs due to > >gross mismanagement while the mismanagers bail out with golden > >parachutes and go on to mismanage another company with thousands more > >workers losing their jobs; that the formalistic equations and derived > >statistics from the likes of the BLS are crafted and carried out to > >disguise the ugly imperatives, realities and consequences associated > >with the vicissitudes of capitalism; etc... > > You know, some of this is true. I'd be very interested, though, in just > what kinds of responses you got to this kind of survey. I'd bet that very > few workers see things like you do. Now there are a whole lot of > complicated reasons why this is the case, but the fact is that most U.S. > workers have no systematic objections to capitalism at any kind of > worked-out or articulated level. There's potential for that, for sure, or > I'd have given up long ago, but it's just that - potential. > > >Further, you may have respect for BLS (whatever that means or on > >whatver basis you grant respect); I personally do not--I am not > >talking about particular individuals who work for BLS. Even an > >examination of their methodologies in terms of who is or is not > >counted in the labor force or who is or is not counted as unemployed > >shows where they are coming from--although they are essentially > >servants. > > And how do we know who isn't in the labor force and why? By reading the > output of the BLS carefully. The same with broader definitions of > unemployment. Ditto the work of the Census Bureau. I don't see how you can > do serious economic or social analysis without it. Sure, it needs to be > looked at critically. But self-indulgent sounding off is no substitute for > that critical analysis. > > >That is my point and I stand by it. If disagreeing with your holiness > >entials "attitude-copping" then I plead guilty. > > I'm not holy. I'm wholly secular. > > Doug > > -- > > Doug Henwood > Left Business Observer > 250 W 85 St > New York NY 10024-3217 > USA > +1-212-874-4020 voice > +1-212-874-3137 fax > email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > web: <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html> > Response: I regard your opinion--which which I may disagree on a particular point (I agree with a whole lot of what you write on pen-l and LBO)-- as that--your opinion. I do not regard your opinion as "self- indulgent sounding off." Let us take the concept of "labor-force participation rate." A person can be said to be "participating in the labor force" either by working or looking for work. If you ask the person looking for work are you participating in the labor force--officially you are--most would say they are not. When we see the official stats on labor-force participation rates for women, we note the rate has increased from 31.4 percent in 1950 to 57.8 percent in 1992. When we see the official unemnployment rate decreasing (which could be due to increases in discouraged workers, part-time workers who really are looking for full-time employment etc) we see effects on the labor- force participation rate on married women for example. When the official unemnployment rate increases, with the same stats, one group says that the additional-worker-effect kicks in with the result that higher labor force participation rates for married women result when previously unemployed wives are forced to supplement family incomes. The discouraged-worker effect advocates claim that the higher unemployment rates lead to lower labor-force participation rates as women who might otherwise look for work beocme discouraged and don't bother. The statistical studies seem to show that the discouraged worker effect is stronger than the additional worker effect and therefore there tends to be an inverse relationship between unemployment rates and labor-force participation rates. Of course the statistical work is further complicated by bogus definitions and categories--and therefore stats--on unemployment in the first place. True, the levels of sophistication and scopes and effects of the media and central capitalism have done a good job in preventing many people from seeing the relationships between their conditions of life, their destroyed hopes and dreams, their status as disposable objects on the one hand and the inner logic, core imperatives, vicissitudes and trajectories of cpaitalism on the other hand. But it does not follow from that that because they might not see that capitalism could not survive as a system without workers being progressively marginalized, commodified and treated as disposable objects and sterile "factors", they are therefore satisfied with their lot or "happy" about being marginalized, commodified, "contingent" tools. We seldom see the real views of wokers expressed in "official surveys" or even polls as the sampling pools, framing of the questions, conceptual angles, parameters of inquiry are designed to suppress the most penetrating and dangerous of those views. The old joke is that a "conservative" is a liberal that has been mugged and a "liberal" is a conservative that has been downsized (or rightsized or whatever the latest buzzword--power of vocabulary). Of course this is the challenge for us all. None of us--nether you nor me--can really know in the abstract or from official statistics what workers know and feel; this is especially true in America where expressing certain thoughts can be dangerous for your health, career and circumstances of life. Those who are academics like myself need to go beyond those "official stats", outside of our potential ivory towers and do concrete work and pose conrete and penetrating questions and be prepared to learn and not just teach and preach. I personally do not know in the abstract what workers think or don't think about capitalism; that would be too presumptuous. Also, workers in any society rarely constitute some homogenous abstract mass about which generalizations about all or even many can be meaningfully made. This is especially true in the West were workers are highly stratified and divided on so many issues. That was my point however poorly articulated. Happy holidays. Jim Craven *------------------------------------------------------------------* * James Craven * "Reason is a narrow system swollen * * Dept of Economics * into an ideology. * * Clark College * * * 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. * With time and power it has become a * * Vancouver, Wa. 98663 * dogma, devoid of direction and * * (360) 992-2283 * disguised as disinterested inquiry. * * [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * * * Like most religions, reason presents* * * itself as the solution to the * * * problems it has created." * * * * * * (John Ralston Saul in "Voltaire's * * * Bastards") * * MY EMPLOYER HAS NO ASSOCIATION WITH MY PRIVATE/PROTECTED OPINION *
