Hidden World Of Work Essay

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Nowadays work became one of the defining characteristics of a person. Work might influence one’s perception of the world, health, social ties, and emotional state (Vallas, Finlay and Wharton 2009: 5-7). As a result, work is not only a means through which a person earns income, but also a mechanism of bringing a person into society. There are virtually thousand types of work such as teachers, plumbers, cashiers, scholars, engineers, doctors, astronauts, poets, janitors and so on, each of which has its specific duties and tasks which provide a value to society. This variation in work leads to complexity of organizing labor. Hence, when entering job market one signs a contract that outlines both employee and employer duties, which covers formal side of work (ibid., 104). Nevertheless, in reality the way work should be done and the actual way of how work is done can differ significantly. This means that there exists hidden world of work. Hidden world of work can be understood as the one which is not seen to …show more content…

According to Hamper (1986: 39-40), the assembly – line occupation is monotonic and largely repetitive, meaning that the assembly – line work is designed to perform the same short task cycles over time. Furthermore, blue – collar occupations can be characterized by the lack of control over the pace of work from the employee side. In particular, assembly – line workers claimed that since they cannot set the pace of their own work, the pace dictated by the assembly – line diminished the quality of output they produced (Walker and Guest 1952: 51-60). As a result, blue – collar occupations can be identified as the type of work which is characterized by physical labor paid in an hourly basis, which is often monotonic and repetitive. In addition, blue – collar workers have no control over setting the pace of their own

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