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Service Work (service + work)
Selected Abstracts,I Can't Put a Smiley Face On': Working-Class Masculinity, Emotional Labour and Service Work in the ,New Economy'GENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 3 2009Darren Nixon The growth of the ,service economy' has coincided with the large-scale detachment from the labour market of low-skilled men. Yet little research has explored exactly what it is about service work that is leading such men to drop out of the labour market during periods of sustained service sector employment growth. Based on interviews with 35 unemployed low-skilled men, this article explores the men's attitudes to entry-level service work and suggests that such work requires skills, dispositions and demeanours that are antithetical to the masculine working-class habitus. This antipathy is manifest in a reluctance to engage in emotional labour and appear deferential in the service encounter and in the rejection of many forms of low-skilled service work as a future source of employment. [source] Inside the Locker Room: Male Homosociability in the Advertising IndustryGENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 3 2009Michele Rene Gregory The use of the term homosociability by male employers and employees has been a key issue in the construction and maintenance of the gendered labour market, especially in senior-level jobs. Male homosociability encompasses the formal old boys' networks and informal clubs or meetings, as well as humour and banter, referred to metaphorically in this article as the locker room. This article examines the locker room and its resulting forms of socializing, socialization, communication and rituals found in the advertising industry. To gain a clearer understanding of how the locker room constructs workplace opportunities, this article draws upon qualitative research and analysis and examines major service occupations in the advertising industry and the executives who inhabit them. Studying the relationship between the locker room and the production process provides additional perspectives on service work in the corporate sector, occupations and gender inequality. [source] The uses and abuses of time: globalization and time arbitrage in India's outsourcing industriesGLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 1 2009SHEHZAD NADEEM Abstract Globalization has undoubtedly altered our conceptions and experience of time. It has sped up the pace of life and some scholars even suggest that a new temporal order is supplanting ,natural' and pre-existing cycles and rhythms. Yet time is not dissolved in the global circuits of capital. Rather, globalization has brought about a complex mixture of temporal orientations; the workplaces of ,new economy', for example, are traversed by novel and retrograde modes of work pace, rhythm and time-discipline. In this article, I explore the temporal implications of the outsourcing of information technology-based service work to India. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with workers, managers and executives in the Indian IT and Business Processing Outsourcing industries, I address the following questions: (1) How are corporations using time arbitrage to reap the full benefits of a globally dispersed labour pool? (2) What impacts are these temporal changes having on the health and social lives of Indian workers? For corporations, time arbitrage means increased efficiency and cost-savings. But for workers, it results in long hours, an intense work pace, and temporal displacement. Night-shift employees, such as call centre workers, are particularly vulnerable to such displacement, as manifested in health and safety problems and social alienation. Globalization therefore does not entail the loosening of temporal chains, but their reconfiguration: a combination both rigid and flexible that binds even as it liberates. [source] Practices of global capital: gaps, cracks and ironies in transnational call centres in IndiaGLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 4 2004Kiran Mirchandani Recent theorists have focused on how capitalism is continually under construction, and how heterogeneous groups of workers play active roles in relation to transnational corporate processes. Accordingly, I trace three practices that constitute transnational call centre work ,scripting, synchronicity and locational masking , and examine how Indian workers negotiate these practices. I argue that the transnationalization of voice-to-voice service work provides the opportunity for Indian workers to construct ,Americans' and situate their own jobs within global labour markets. Drawing on interviews with call centre workers, managers and trainers in India, I explore the ways in which analyses of the practices of globalization provides an insight on workers' attempts to enhance their quality of life vis-à-vis transnational capitalism. [source] ,McJobs', ,good jobs' and skills: job-seekers' attitudes to low-skilled service workHUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 2 2005Colin Lindsay This article focuses on unemployed job-seekers' attitudes towards entry-level jobs in three areas of the service sector , retail, hospitality and call-centre work. The article examines whether job-seekers are reluctant to pursue these opportunities, and provides an analysis of the motives of those ruling out service work. A range of potential barriers is discussed, including the extent to which job-seekers perceive the service economy as offering only so-called ,McJobs', low-skilled, low-paid jobs with few opportunities for development. However, the article also focuses on perceived skills mismatches, with some job-seekers arguably over-qualified for entry-level service jobs, while others consider themselves to lack the necessary ,soft' skills. The analysis is based on interviews with 220 unemployed people in Glasgow. The article concludes that policy action may be required to encourage job seekers to consider a broader range of vacancies and to provide tailored training in partnership with service employers. On the demand side, service employers must address the need for entry-level positions that offer realistic salaries, decent work conditions and opportunities for progression and development. [source] Invisible work, unseen hazards: The health of women immigrant household service workers in SpainAMERICAN JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL MEDICINE, Issue 4 2010Emily Q. Ahonen PhD Abstract Background Household service work has been largely absent from occupational health studies. We examine the occupational hazards and health effects identified by immigrant women household service workers. Methods Exploratory, descriptive study of 46 documented and undocumented immigrant women in household services in Spain, using a phenomenological approach. Data were collected between September 2006 and May 2007 through focus groups and semi-structured individual interviews. Data were separated for analysis by documentation status and sorted using a mixed-generation process. In a second phase of analysis, data on psychosocial hazards were organized using the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire as a guide. Results Informants reported a number of environmental, ergonomic and psychosocial hazards and corresponding health effects. Psychosocial hazards were especially strongly present in data. Data on reported hazards were similar by documentation status and varied by several emerging categories: whether participants were primarily cleaners or carers and whether they lived in or outside of the homes of their employers. Documentation status was relevant in terms of empowerment and bargaining, but did not appear to influence work tasks or exposure to hazards directly. Conclusions Female immigrant household service workers are exposed to a variety of health hazards that could be acted upon by improved legislation, enforcement, and preventive workplace measures, which are discussed. Am. J. Ind. Med. 53:405,416, 2010. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Are You in This Country?ANTIPODE, Issue 2 2010How "Local" Social Relations Can Limit the "Globalisation" of Customer Services Supply Chains Abstract:, The relocation of thousands of call centre and back office jobs from the UK to subcontractors in India in the early 2000s led to extensive speculation that the "globalisation" and "jobs flight" of service work was underway. Yet as this article illustrates some call centre customer services do not easily transfer to different local, social and cultural contexts. Call centre operations are embedded in local social relations and taken for granted skills that are difficult to reproduce outside of the locality which has produced them. Nevertheless the spatial dispersal of work can be as much a political process as it is an economic one. This article, which follows the journey of 1000 call centre jobs from the UK to India, illuminates how subcontracting service work "offshore" can facilitate a transformation of the employment relation and an escape from a difficult to discipline labour force. [source] Cleaners' Organizing in Britain from the 1970s: A Personal AccountANTIPODE, Issue 3 2006Sheila Rowbotham In the early 1970s the Women's Liberation Movement in Britain set out to unionize night cleaners. A long and intensive campaign resulted in two strikes and a greater awareness in the trade union movement about this neglected group of workers. But though the publicity generated by newspaper articles, meetings, and the making of two documentary films on cleaners focused attention on their conditions, organization proved very difficult. This was compounded by the economic and political climate from the late 1970s and the impact of privatization, which contributed to the growth in inequality in British society. This article outlines a disregarded history of attempts to organize cleaners, a history which is gaining a new-found relevance in the wake of the "Justice for Janitors" campaign in the US and the awareness that low-paid service work plays a key part in the global economy. [source] | ||||||||||