EQUALITY AND THE DIVISION OF LABOR
Sirianni, Carmen
Equality and justice are central to the idea of democratic socialism, yet their relationship to the organization of work and the division of labor has always been problematic. For...
...Social democrats, until recently, have ignored the issue of applying the principle of equality to the process of labor...
...I n addition to a complete sharing of tasks and active self-management wherever appropriate, two broad strategies hold particular promise for achieving relative equality within the division of labor...
...Although he later abandoned the imagery of "hunting in the morning, fishing in the afternoon, and rearing cattle in the evening," he never relinquished the idea that the fullest development of human talents requires diverse and flexible opportunities for work and learning, and that modern industry makes "variations of labor and fluency of functions" possible, if not inevitable— thereby eliminating the schism between mental and manual labor, and democratizing the process of production...
...I am following here the classifications of Robert Althauser and Arne Kalleberg, "Firms, Occupations, and the Structure of Labor Markets: A Conceptual Analysis," in Sociological Perspectives and Labor Markets, Ivar Berg, ed...
...Over the past few decades, both blue- and white-collar workers, and even many professionals, have become dissatisfied with the structure of available work, and demands for different and expanded kinds of career and educational opportunities have escalated...
...Others have been freed to pursue artistic and athletic avocations...
...Organizational benefits have included higher output, workers' added enthusiasm, greater diversity of skills, and increased ability to respond to special projects and peak demands...
...The labor market cannot be abolished...
...Older workers have been able to retire gradually, without losing professional ties and productive functions all at once...
...Further, new technological developments threaten to displace masses of workers from their jobs and to alter fundamentally the very contours of labor markets and divisions of labor...
...See Richard Moore and Elizabeth Marsis, "Telecommuting: Sweatshop at Home Sweet Home...
...But without active state or federal administration, relatively equal opportunities in the social division of labor would be impossible...
...The range of state policies and administrative mechanisms is broad and potentially flexible...
...For Marx, transforming the process of production was a requirement for a classless society...
...The divisions this open labor market entails will not necessarily be reflected, as they are today, in terms of income, benefits, and security, but perhaps in terms of how opportunities are associated with various positions...
...In These Times, April 18,1984, pp...
...Not all engineers need engineering degrees, if shop-floor experience and in-house training programs enable them to perform engineering tasks adequately...
...for the role of structural divisions of labor has clearly reproduced inequalities in education and reinforced class subcultures...
...33-82...
...Some workers undoubtedly would put a higher priority on having the time and security to devote themselves, for instance, to the saxophone, and so would prefer a workplace that provides the space for rehearsal and performance...
...The massive entry of women into the labor force and the challenges of feminism have further shaken our conceptions of how equity is to be effected in career and opportunity structures...
...A national incomes policy could establish proportionally higher wages for those in routine or low-opportunity jobs, which could be taken as monetary compensation or traded for time off, thus encouraging that such jobs be structured on a part-time basis...
...q 478...
...chap...
...The second strategy is the development of government policies facilitating free labor-market choices...
...It is shared by Harry Braverman, Rudolf Bahro, Michael Albert and Robin Hahne], and by other proponents of democratic collectives and workers' councils: Simply stated, this model holds that the production process must be reorganized in ways that will give all workers in every workplace the full range of knowledge and skills, enabling them to function in and control "the entire production process...
...Thus mental and manual tasks should be shared by the entire work force in every work unit...
...And what are the rights of latecomers to a profession vs...
...Without a perspective on how the division of labor can be transformed in an egalitarian and democratic manner, the labor movement will remain on the defensive amidst the profound changes that are now occurring...
...Opportunities that are circumscribed by scarce time and resources will always be relatively scarce...
...4, for interesting union initiatives...
...Flexible work options could also create sticky problems for the labor movement in the short term...
...Maureen McCarthy and Gail Rosenberg, Work Sharing: Case Studies (Kalamazoo: Upjohn Institute, 1981...
...There is now a highly visible gap between the system's capacity to educate people for intellectually demanding jobs—and its (lagging) ability to offer workers opportunities to use and develop their skills...
...All are products of social conflict and regulation...
...Let me elaborate a bit...
...See Stanley Nollen, New Work Schedules in Practice (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1982...
...Gretl Meier, Job Sharing (Kalamazoo: Upjohn Institute, 1979...
...Equality could never be administered directly, through mandated assignments, work brigades, or universally established limits on the work week...
...We now find ourselves challenged to articulate a theory of justice and equality of opportunity that can practically, and radically, apply to the social divisions of labor...
...New York: Academic Press, 1981), pp...
...What, for instance, are the rules regulating access to opportunity for part-time vs...
...Second, a relatively open labor market, with complex social divisions of labor, inevitably reflects some degree of what economists call "segmentation...
...What are the rights of those who enter a profession or organization in more unusual ways...
...Such options can facilitate transitions to other, more challenging jobs, or enable people to maintain varied work roles with adequate growth possibilities...
...Diversification and flexibility would in turn require greater openness (both vertically and horizontally) in the structure of work opportunities and labor markets...
...And it can only be achieved, if at all, through free and flexible choices in an open 477 labor market, democratically regulated and complemented by flexible state policies and administrative mechanisms...
...And any theory defining equality of opportunities, in its full complexity, must begin by recognizing that Marx's utopian premises of a society beyond scarcity and conflict will have to be abandoned...
...Thus job opportunities have been democratized...
...Increasing the openness of labor markets and the differentiation of career lines poses, of course, many problems and leads to many conflicts.' These would require continual negotiation of the organizational rules governing mobility and achievement, since what appears as an equitable rule to some may appear to others as an unfair restriction of opportunity...
...They also can distract from the goal of shortening the work week for all without loss in pay...
...12-13...
...2) a formulation of principles of equity that can be applied to the processes that generate— and now constrain—workers' opportunities...
...see also Kenneth Spenner, Luther Otto, and Vaughn Call, Career Lines and Careers (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1982...
...This would include flexible work-time options and a variety of other arrangements that would make a total sharing of tasks impossible...
...Distinct opportunities associated with particular positions will inevitably exist within a complex social division of labor...
...6. " See Nollen, New Work Schedules in Practice, espec...
...The number of part-time work options affording career growth and progressive learning should be expanded—in the context of "flexible life scheduling," as Fred Best has called it.' This can take the form of job sharing, voluntarily reduced work time, banking and borrowing of earned time off, as well as sabbaticals...
...Only further research and experimentation could indicate which are the most promising...
...Parttime options with genuine career opportunities are also important if we are to break the domination of the "masculine model of work,"' and if we are to limit the capacity of organizations to consume people's time and rigidly structure their lives...
...There should be guarantees and specific rights for flexible job and training options to suit individual needs at different stages of the life cycle that can compensate for some of the disadvantages incurred by previous labor-market and educational choices...
...Career lines can be restructured to increase the differentiation in both the number and timing of job transitions, thus increasing the number and typical age spread of entry and exit portals...
...First, a free 474 society that institutionalizes a broad range of work options requires a free labor market— subject, of course, to some democratic regulation...
...Some production units will always provide opportunities that are far more conducive to learning, creativity, and career development than others...
...Not all teachers, for instance, need to work full-time or be certified through college degrees...
...But none of these problems have proved intractable...
...Such tensions are unlikely to disappear...
...Notes ' See Carmen Sirianni, "Production and Power in a Classless Society: A Critical Analysis of the Utopian Dimensions of Marxist Theory," Socialist Review, September— October 1981, pp...
...481-502...
...This does not, however, provide an adequate conception of ways in which divisions of labor might be restructured in order to achieve equality of work opportunities and flexibility of work options...
...Some competitive project grants could be assigned preferentially to certain categories, such as late entrants into a career or parttimers...
...full-time workers...
...Similarly, some production-line workers might rather spend a few days a week working at a child-care center than learn engineering skills...
...Mobility itself, it should be added, can be redefined to emphasize horizontal, rather than primarily vertical, movement...
...Thus we can 475 guard against the formation of a permanent class doing society's routine, hard, or dirty work...
...Advocates of industrial democracy also have generally failed to link this matter to their concern with the structural class divisions of labor and have tended to confine themselves to the more immediate tasks of reorganizing the workplace...
...As Durkheim argued, the division of labor is the product of social regula476 tion—and so are liberty and justice...
...Waiting on tables part-time, for instance, may not be very oppressive if income and benefits are adequate, and if this, for instance, allows a person interested in dramatic work to pursue an acting career, or periodically to teach drama in a local elementary school...
...They have used flexible work options to continue learning on and off the job and to obtain access to scarce and better positions...
...For a brief discussion of these, see Fred Best, Work Sharing (Kalamazoo: Upjohn Institute, 1981), pp...
...This will require: (1) an outline of new structural features of work careers and labor markets that make it possible to break down the old rigid class divisions...
...Liberal conceptions defining equality of opportunity will also remain inadequate as long as they fail to stress that the rules regulating the divisions of labor and labor markets are socially established and therefore open to modification...
...Many workers fear that these new work options could make them more vulnerable to managerial and corporate power in the workplace and the labor market...
...It would also be necessary to take advantage of new technological opportunities, for instance, those provided in the telecommunications field, for which the Productive Integrity Model provides a particularly restrictive framework.' Similarly, there are many conceivable technological and organizational constraints that might limit the applicability of sharing...
...The federal government might mandate such options for all who would choose them, as in the Federal Employees Part-Time Career Employment Act of 1978, or Section 709 of the Professional Education Act of 1976, which required part-time hospital residency options where federal funds were involved...
...Local governments might designate a certain quota of part-time positions (for instance, in elementary schoolteaching for artists, carpenters, and others with valuable skills...
...Organizations and enterprises, on the other hand, have experienced added procedural complexity and sometimes additional cost, as well as problems with accountability and supervision...
...Central to the approach I am proposing is a democratic regulation that will permit a flexible variety of work time and career options and the democratic determination of the parameters of relative advantage and disadvantage that accompany career paths...
...but they can be mitigated, as ways are found to facilitate security and predictability for diverse work choices and situations...
...The Yugoslav system of workers' self-management, while a noteworthy step toward democratization, has aimed to extend and perfect, not transform, the old divisions of labor...
...No single organizational (or enterprise) approach could conceivable achieve equality and justice...
...Thus alternative forms of security would replace those now achieved through what Weber called "social closure"—such as professional and craft exclusion...
...Before attempting some answers, we must recognize two fundamental points...
...They could be used to institutionalize the inferior status of women, and they might make union organizing more difficult...
...Parents have become able to devote more time to family and children, in more equitable ways, both within the home and with regard to job opportunities...
...but this need not result in the systematic segregation of workers who move in and out of these positions...
...those hired to replace them...
...The first is the general restructuring of career lines and labor markets so as to permit diverse and flexible job combinations and career paths over the course of a life, including part-time work that affords the possibility of career growth and mobility...
...Internal labor markets include any cluster of jobs that have three basic structural features: (a) a job ladder, with (b) entry only at the bottom, and (c) movement up the ladder associated with progressive development of knowledge or skill...
...Given the constraints of space and the plurality and variation of workers' needs in the face of scarce time and resources, individuals and organizations would undoubtedly desire a good deal of flexibility...
...None are adequate as they stand, but they are quite suggestive...
...To grasp the structural reforms that might provide equal opportunities for creative work, continuous learning, and career development, we must recognize the limits of one ideal, and model, that claims to overcome the class divisions of labor...
...31 ff...
...First, however, we must recognize that even the best structural reforms cannot by them473 selves ensure equality, and that no principle of equity will remain unproblematic or uncontested...
...This would be little more than an extension of some of the principles already at work in some public agencies (such as NEH) for those who have limited or no access to various kinds of opportunities...
...If some doctors cannot pursue flexible work options and life scheduling with some predictability and security, they will have a greater interest in restricting professional opportunities in medicine for others, even if it means working 60 hours a week...
...This is a more difficult problem for us than it was for Marx, who aimed ultimately to reduce work time as much as possible...
...These guiding principles, while often reiterated, have seldom been probed systematically...
...The very meaning of the concept of equal opportunity can no longer be taken for granted in advanced industrial democracies...
...10 Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1984), chap...
...This ideal of a total sharing of tasks is valuable for many workplaces and, under more favorable conditions, we might expect it to be more viable than it has been so far in democratic collectives...
...Teachers of art and carpentry might be part-time artists and carpenters, certified directly by the schools that hire them, and move in and out of part-time teaching jobs at various points in their work lives...
...There are, so far, no unambiguous criteria for determining, and eliminating, all forms of division that would be unacceptable in an egalitarian culture—although a society with wide educational opportunities would undoubtedly find strong segmentation undesirable and difficult to legitimize...
...Some positions require greater professionalization than others, especially when cost-rational criteria are applied.' And, to speak of motivation, aspiration, and preference, not every shipping clerk, for instance, aspires to share in high-level production and administration tasks...
...119-49...
...Flexible options have also helped stimulate worker participation and "multiskilling," and are particularly appropriate for the more flexible technologies upon which competitiveness increasingly relies.' Part-time schedules and other flexible options are especially important when redesigning routine jobs that cannot be entirely restructured or included in internal labor markets (see Note 7) with adequate learning and career opportunities...
...nor can all jobs be so redesigned as to eliminate the possibility of cumulative advantages or disadvantages in opportunity...
...those of long-time, more single-minded workers...
...For instance, labor-market boards, like those in Sweden, could be established on local and national levels to furnish easily accessible information (including alternative work options), retraining, and placement, thus enhancing variety and predictability of choice...
...Carmen Sirianni, "Participation, Opportunity and Equality: Toward a Pluralist Organizational Model," in Frank Fischer and Carmen Sirianni, eds., Critical Studies in Organization and Bureaucracy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), pp...
...In short, an egalitarian transformation of the division of labor— including the sexual division of labor upon which I have not focused—requires a diversification of the cultural meanings of careers and the institutional mechanisms to sustain them...
...Second, the Productive Integrity Model does not permit adequate flexibility in the arrangement of work...
...Where, then, shall we find egalitarian solutions, if not in the most direct sharing of tasks...
...There would be many issues of contention, and they would have to be settled democratically, both within and outside the work place...
...Several locals of the Service Employees International Union in Santa Clara County, California, and Seattle, Washington, have established minimal quotas of part-time career positions in their contracts...
...Permanent part-time work and job sharing might increase insecurity and threaten benefits, erode labor standards, and downgrade occupational status...
...Successful union bargaining around more flexible options, however, shows that none of these problems are insurmountable...
...Here I completely agree with Michael Walzer, although I think that it is too hasty to conclude that the "class of hard workers" could not be eliminated without state coercion"—too hasty, that is, without more thorough exploration of the kinds of diverse and flexible work options, career lines, labor-market structures, and state policies of the kind outlined here...
...And some version of the Swedish system of equity subsidies, now used for the limited purpose of encouraging balanced male/female training and hiring for specific occupations on federally funded development projects, could serve wider aims...
...The values of equity and individuality will remain in permanent tension...
...There is nothing "natural" about particular forms of division of labor, career lines, and labor markets...
...Even a complete sharing of tasks within, for example, retail stores, restaurants, warehouses, hotels, and garbage-collection services would hardly provide the range of opportunities for creative work, progressive learning, and career development that is available in such workplaces as universities, medical complexes, research laboratories, or architectural firms...
...Individuals have gained greater control over time and balance in their lives...
...Secondary labor markets lack job ladders, development of skill or knowledge, significant investment in training by either employee or employer, limited entry requirements, and options for firm-specific tenure...
...Therefore it would be necessary to provide greater flexibility than can be achieved by the Productive Integrity Model, in order to respond to changing family, friendship, and workmate relations, and to people's shifting occupational and avocational interests...
...9 A number of public sabbatical proposals were made in the 1970s in Congress, at the state level, by the vicechair of the Civil Service Commission under Carter, and by various academics...
...Without a broad range of alternative work time and career commitments, a genuine egalitarian transformation of the division of labor would be impossible...
...Recent developments, however, have made it more urgent to formulate a theory of equal opportunity in production...
...A national sabbatical program could be established—extending the principle of social security, with individual accounts financed through payroll taxes—giving workers various options for time off or withdrawal of funds.' Income-tax policies could be redesigned to make voluntary time/income tradeoffs more advantageous to the individual...
...8 See Carmen Sirianni and Michele Eayrs, "Work, Time, Equality," Telos, forthcoming...
...A new vision is needed to respond creatively to this crisis, and a politics for the self-management of time is as necessary as a politics for the control of technology...
...This would facilitate moving away from strictly internal labor markets, with entry only at the bottom of the ladder and, also, from secondary labor markets that are highly vulnerable, insecure, and provide few opportunities for career progression.' Between these two poles there are various ways of structuring mobility and regulating competition so that workers can have access to opportunity and flexible work arrangements without excluding other groups or narrowly defining the routes of access...
...Opportunities would tend to be restricted to those in the better jobs, who are willing and able to work full-time (and often much more) to protect their privileged positions, thus limiting the opportunities of those in positions of limited mobility and skill...
...Equality in the division of labor— indeed a very complex goal to achieve—can only be relative, incomplete, problematic, and conflicting...
...2 Such technologies, needless to say, have the potential to degrade as well as enrich work, depending on the powers defining how they are introduced...
...Tax incentives can be granted to firms introducing desirable work and training options...
...In his early writings, he spoke of abolishing specialization, so that each individual can pursue various kinds of work and avocations...
...What are the rights of returnees from sabbaticals and leaves vs...
...I have called it the Productive Integrity Model...
...In general, insiders tend to protect their opportunities through restrictive rules—and outsiders struggle to gain access...
...74-84...
...First of all, relatively equal opportunities across the social divisions of labor cannot be achieved by a total sharing of tasks within particular units, since the amounts and kinds of routine and of creative work will vary substantially among different units...
...Fred Best, Flexible Life Scheduling (New York: Praeger, 1980...
...Such work arrangements and options have proved feasible in many occupations, including professions requiring long-term commitment, intense public contact, and supervisory functions...
...Essential to this process of democratic regulation, as I said earlier, are state policies and regulations that will facilitate diverse labormarket choices.These must be designed to enhance flexibility and security and to provide compensatory opportunities for people who have previously suffered educational and workplace disadvantages...
...Instructive, in this context, is the recent experience of relatively educated people who have left democratic work collectives because of the very limited opportunities they provide...
...6 Ann Harriman, The Work/Leisure Tradeoff (New York: Praeger, 1982), pp...
Vol. 32 • September 1985 • No. 4
