Political Science 399: The Politics of Work

Instructor: Prof. Gordon Lafer (Glafer@oregon/ 346-2786)

Fall 2002 Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6:00-7:20 pm. ESL Room 105. CRN: 14782

Office Hours: Tues & Thurs, 12 noon -2:00 pm, 1675 Agate St.

Week 1: Introduction

Tuesday, Oct 1 Introduction and Overview of Class.

Thursday, Oct 3 The Meaning of Work

Karl Marx, selections from The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,

in Robert Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 70-81.

Harry Braverman,

Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century,

chapter 1, “Labor and Labor Power,” pp. 31-50.

Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.

Introduction, "Getting Ready," pp. 1-10. Ch. 2, "Scrubbing in Maine," pp. 51-121.

Optional Reading: Bertell Ollman, Alienation: Marx's conception of man in capitalist society.

Part II, "Marx's conception of human nature," pp. 73-126. Part III, "The Theory of Alienation," pp. 131-165.

Week 2: The Battle for Control of the Workplace

Tuesday, Oct 8 Political Control of the Workplace

Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.

Ch. 3, "Selling in Minnesota," pp. 121-192. "Evaluation," pp. 193-221.

Optional Reading:

Marc Linder and Ingrid Nygaard, Void Where Prohibited: Rest Breaks and the Right to Urinate on Company Time.

Optional Reading: Richard Edwards,

“Individual Traits and Organizational Incentives: What Makes a ‘Good’ Worker?”

Journal of Human Resources 11, no. 1 (1976), pp. 51-58.

Optional Reading: Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis,

“Contested Exchange: New Microfoundations for the Political Economy of Capitalism,”

Politics and Society 18, no. 2 (1990).

Thursday, Oct 10 The Origins of Modern Management: Where do Corporations Come From?

Alfred D. Chandler,

The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business.

Ch. 3, “The Railroads: the First Modern Business Enterprises, 1850s-1860s”

Optional Reading: Selections from Glen Porter, The Rise of Big Business, 1860-1910.

Week 3: The Origins of the Labor Market and the Rise of Scientific Management

Tuesday, Oct 15 Where Does Work Come From? The Creation of Wage Labor

Karl Polanyi,

The Great Transformation: The political and Economic Origins of Our Time.

Ch. 6, “The Self-Regulating market and the Fictitious Commodities: Labor, Land, and Money, pp. 68-76; Ch. 7, "Speenhamland, 1795,” pp. 77-85, Ch. 8, “Antecedents and Consequences,” pp. 86-102.

Optional Reading: Polanyi, ch. 14, “Market and Man,” pp. 163-177.

Thursday, Oct 17 Technology, Surveillance and Control: How Does Management Rule the Workplace?

Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management, pp. 13-16, 30-60, 64-74, 86-97, 133-35

Linda Fuller and Vicki Smith, “Consumers’ Reports: Management by Customers in a Changing Economy,”

in Macdonald and Sirianni, Working in the Service Society, pp. 74-90.

Optional Reading: Robert Howard, Brave New Workplace, pp. 1-11, 15-24, 109-118, 119-138.

Week 4: Emotional Labor: Gender, Youth and the Control of Workers’ Personalities

Tuesday, Oct 22 Gender at Work: Emotional Labor

Arlie Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, pp. 3-9, 24-30, 89-136, 185-198.

Optional Reading:

Lynn Chancer, Sadomasochism in Everyday Life: The Dynamics of Power and Powerlessness.

“Introduction,” and Ch. 4, “Employment Chains of Command: Sadomasochism and the Workplace.”

Optional Reading: No Justice, No Piece!: A Working Girl's Guide to Labor Organizing in the Sex Industry.

Thursday, Oct 24 Young People at Work

Stuart Tannock, Youth at Work. Ch 1, “Dead Ends,” and Ch 2, “On the Front Lines of the Service Sector.”

Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal,

ch. 3, “Behind the Counter,” pp. 59-90.

Optional Reading: Robin Leidner, Fast Food, Fast Talk: Service Work and the Routinization of Everyday Life.

Ch. 3, "Over the Counter: McDonald's," pp. 44-85.

Week 5: Gender and Race in the Global Labor Market

Tuesday, Oct 29 Gender, Race and Labor Market Segmentation

Grace Chang, Disposable Domestics: Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy.

Ch 2, “Undocumented Latinas: The New Employable Mother.”

Ch 4, “Global Exchange: The World Bank, ‘Welfare Reform,’ and the Trade in Migrant Women.”

Raymond Franklin, Shadows of Race and Class,

ch. 4, “Economics of Dominant-Subordinate Relations,” pp. 69-88.

Optional Reading: Richard Edwards,

Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century.

Ch. 9, "Labor Redivided, Part I: Segmented Labor Markets."

Ch. 10, "Labor Redivided, Part II: The Fractions of the Working Class."

Thursday, Oct 31 The Creation of the Globalized Labor Market

Jefferson Cowie, Capital Moves: RCA’s Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor.

Ch 5, “Moving Toward a Shutdown: Bloomington, 1969-1978,” pp. 127-151,

ch. 6, “The Double Struggle: Ciudad Juarez, 1978-1998,” pp. 152-179.

David Gordon, “Class Struggle and the Stages of Urban Development,” in Perry and Watkins, ed.,

The Rise of the Sunbelt Cities, pp. 55-82.

Optional Reading: Cowie, ch. 7, “The Distances In Between,” pp. 180-201.

Optional Reading: Noam Chomsky, Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order,

ch. 4, “Market Democracy in a Neoliberal Order: Doctrines and Reality,” pp. 91-120.

Video: clip from Michael Moore’s TV Nation, in Renosa, Mexico.

Week 6: Organizing Unions

Tuesday, Nov 5 What Is a Union?

Fred Ross, Conquering Goliath: Cesar Chavez at the Beginning. Chapters 1-5, 10, 12, 13.

Thursday, Nov 7 Midterm Papers Due.

Video: Bread & Roses.

Week 7: Professional Workers/ The Battle Over Public Policy

Tuesday, Nov 12 White Collar Blues

Jill Andresky Fraser, White Collar Sweatshop, Chapters 2, 3, 7, 9.

Thursday, Nov 14 The Battle Over Public Policy: Business Lobbies’ Strategies to Shape Workplace Regulations

Michael Zweig, The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret.

Ch 1, “The Class Structure of the United States, pp. 9-37.

Kim McQuaid, Uneasy Partners: Big Business in American Politics, 1945-1990.

Ch. 7, “The Time of Troubles Begins: From Lyndon Johnson to Gerald Ford, pp. 125-151.

Ch. 8, “Corporate Resurgence from Carter to Reagan,” pp. 151-171.

William Greider, Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy.

Ch. 15, “Citizen GE,” pp. 331-355.

Optional Reading: McQuaid, ch. 9, “The Reagan Revolution and Afterward,” pp. 172-185.

Optional Reading: Michael Moore,

Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American. Pp. 5-17, 43-55, 108-126, 221-228.

Video: Clip from William Grieder’s PBS documentary The Betrayal of Democracy.

Week 8: Public Policy and Economic Struggles

Tuesday, Nov 19 Public Policy and Economic Interests

Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 1492-Present. Chapters 4 and 5.

Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.

Ch. 6, “The Constitution as an Economic Document,” pp. 152-188.

Fred Block, Revising State Theory: Essays in Politics and Postindustrialism.

Ch. 3, “The Ruling Class Does not Rule: Notes on the Marxist Theory of the State,” pp. 51-68.

Michael Moore, Stupid White Men, ch. 1, “A Very American Coup,” pp. 1-28.

Thursday, Nov 21 The Struggle over Labor Law

Lance Compa,

Unfair Advantage:

Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards.

Section I, “Summary,” pp. 6-16.

Selections from Section V, “Case Studies of Violations of Workers’ Freedom of Association,” pp. 71-170.

Kim McQuaid, Uneasy Partners: Big Business in American Politics, 1945-1990.

Ch. 1, “Defining Postwar Normalcy: The Fight Over Labor Law,” pp. 18-35.

Roy Adams, “Choice or Voice?

Rethinking American Labor Policy in Light of the International Human Rights Consensus,”

Employee Rights and Employment Policy Journal 5 (2): 521-548, 2001.

Virginia L. duRivage, et. al., “Making Labor Law Work for Part-Time and Contingent Workers,”

in Barker and Christensen, eds., Contingent Work, pp. 263-280.

Video: Food Lion: Your Company and the Union

Week 9: Welfare and Work

Tuesday, Nov 26 The World of Welfare

Selections from Mimi Abramovitz, Under Attack, Fighting Back.

Optional Reading: Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Regulating the Poor, pp. 3-41, 320-330, 341-348.

Optional Reading: Gordon Lafer, The Job Training Charade. Ch. 6, “Job Training After Welfare Reform:
Training for Discipline,” pp. 190-209.

Thursday, Nov 28 Thanksgiving Vacation

Week 10: Student Activism and Worker Activism

Tuesday, Dec 3 The Political Economy of Higher Education

Liza Featherstone, Students Against Sweatshops.

Optional Reading: Geoffry White, ed., Campus Inc: Corporate Power in the Ivory Tower.

Lawrence Soley, “The Tricks of Academe,” pp. 29-35.

Leonard Minsky, “Dead Souls: The Aftermath of Bayh-Dole,” pp. 95-105.

Optional Reading: David Noble, Digital Diploma Mills.

Optional Reading: Randy Martin, ed., Chalk Lines: The Politics of Work in the Managed University.

Gary Rhoades and Sheila Slaughter,

“Academic Capitalism, Managed Professionals, and Supply-Side Higher Education,” pp. 33-68.

Thursday, Dec 4 Union Organizing and Strikes

Rick Fantasia, Cultures of Solidarity: Consciousness, Action and Contemporary American Workers.

Ch. 4, “Union Organizing and Collective Interaction: ‘Like a Thief in the Night,’” pp. 121-179.

Ch. 5, “The Strike as Emergent Culture: Community and Collective Action,” pp. 180-225.

Video: Victory at Mercy

Video: One Day Longer/ The Frontier Strike

Tuesday, Dec 10 Final Exam

Political Science 399: The Politics of Work

Instructor: Prof. Gordon Lafer (Glafer@oregon/ 346-2786)

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6:00-7:20 pm. ESL Room 105. CRN: 14782

Office Hours: Tues & Thurs, 12 noon -2:00 pm, 1675 Agate St.

Course Requirements

1) Class Participation. 15%.

2) Reaction Papers.

Out of all the weeks of the class, each person has to choose four class sessions, and write a 1-2 page "reaction paper," stating

what they think about the readings for that day. Reaction papers must be emailed to me by noon on the day of the class in question.

Reaction papers are ungraded, but they are required. 15% of the grade.

3) Midterm paper.

I will provide 3-4 questions, and each person will have 1 week to choose one of the questions and write a 5-7 page paper.

I will provide a list of relevant readings for each question, but no independent research is required.

Midterm papers are due on Thursday, Nov. 7. 25%.

4) Final Exam. In-class exam December 10, covering the entire quarter. 45%.