Ex.23. Reading.
(1) In many countries (like the United States, Australia or Canada), a white-collar worker is a person who performs professional, managerial, or administrative work. Typically, white-collar work is performed in an office or cubicle. Other types of work are those of a blue-collar worker,whose job requires manual labour and a pink-collar worker, whose labour isrelated to customer interaction, entertainment, sales, or other service oriented work. Many occupations blend blue, white and/or pink (service) industry categorizations.
(2) The term refers to the white dress shirts of male office workers common through most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Western countries, as opposed to the blue overalls worn by many manual.
(3) The term "white collar" is credited to Upton Sinclair, an American writer, in relation to contemporary clerical, administrative and management workers during the 1930s, though references to "easy work and a white collar" appear as early as 1911.
(4) Formerly a minority in the agrarian and early industrial societies, white-collar workers have become a majority in industrialized countries due to modernization and outsourcing of manufacturing jobs.
(5) The blue-collar and white-collar descriptors as it pertains to work dress may no longer be an accurate descriptor as office attire has broadened beyond a white shirt and tie. Employees in office environments may wear a variety of colours, may dress business casual or wear casual clothes altogether. In addition work tasks have blurred. "White-collar" employees may perform "blue-collar" tasks (or vice versa). An example would be a restaurant manager who may wear more formal clothing yet still assist with cooking food or taking customers' orders or a construction worker who also performs desk work.
(6) In the US, a blue-collar worker is a working class person who performs manual labour. Blue-collar work may involve skilled or unskilled manufacturing, mining, sanitation, custodian work, oil field, construction, mechanical, maintenance, technical installation and many other types of physical work. Often something is physically being built or maintained.
(7) In contrast, the white-collar worker typically performs work in an office environment and may involve sitting at a computer or desk. A third type of work is a service worker (pink collar) whose labour is related to customer interaction, entertainment, sales or other service oriented work. Many occupations blend blue, white and/or pink (service) industry categorizations.
(8) Blue-collar work is often paid hourly wage-labour, although some professionals may bepaid by the project or salaried. There is a wide range of pay scales for such work depending upon field of specialty and experience.
(9) Industrial and manual workers often wear durable canvas or cotton clothing that may besoiled during the course of their work. Navy and light blue colours conceal potential dirt or grease on the worker's clothing, helping him or her to appear cleaner. For the same reason,
blue is a popular colour for boiler suits which protect a worker's clothing. Some blue collar workers have uniforms with the name of the business and/or the individual's nameembroidered or printed on it.
Historically the popularity of the colour blue among manual labourers contrasts with the popularity of white dress shirts worn by people in office environments. The blue collar/white collar colour scheme has socio-economic class connotations. However, this distinction hasbecome blurred with the increasing importance of skilled labour, and the relative increase in low-paying white-collar jobs.
(10) The term blue collar was first used in reference to trade jobs in 1924, in an Alden, Iowa newspaper. It was second used for people wearing shirts that had a blue collar on a non-blue shirt; the mystery still exists.
A higher level academic education is often not required for many blue-collar jobs. However, certain fields may require specialized training, licensing or certification as well as a high school diploma or GED.
(11) With the information revolution Western nations have moved towards a service and white collar economy. Many manufacturing jobs have been offshored to developing nations which pay their workers lower wages. This offshoring has pushed formerly agrarian nations to industrialized economies and concurrently decreased the number of blue-collar jobs in developed countries.
(12) At the time when blue collar was coined, most blue-collar workers weren‘t required to wear any particular uniform or shirt colour to work. While office workers could wear white-collared shirts without much fear of soiling them, and could also afford to launder their shirts regularly, manual labourers preferred darker colours. The German immigrant and frontier salesman Levi Strauss began to make denim in the 1870s, and the fabric quickly became popular with coal miners and other rugged Westerners. (Blue jeans wouldn‘t become a middle-class institution until The Wild One, Rebel without a Cause, and the student
protesters of the 1960s.) Chambray shirts, coveralls, boiler suits, and clothes made of dungaree also tend to come in blue, and these have been popular with manual labourers since the early 20th century. Office workers, for their part, moved away from wearing white in the 1960s. By 1970 about 80 per cent of the shirts sold by Arrow, the country‘s largest shirt manufacturer, were coloured.
(13) While the terms white-collar and blue-collar seem to derive from the actual colour of workers‘ clothes, there are some more recent spin-off phrases that lack any non-figurative meaning. In the late 1970s, the writer and social critic Louise Kappe Howe popularized pink collar workers as a term for those women consigned to work as nurses, secretaries andelementary school teachers. Meanwhile the environmental movement gave rise to ― green-collar workers ‖ (who work in conservation and sustainability), and the1980s yielded a classof ― gold-collar workers ‖ (who work in specialized fields like law, engineering, and finance, or, according to a different definition, in the service industry). As the population ages, we may see more ― grey-collar workers ‖ (who work into their 60s). And the latest entrants are the ― no-collar workers ‖— tech-industry professionals who eschew collars altogether.
(14) Pink-collar occupations include: maid / domestic worker / governess; waitress/hostess; massage therapist / midwife; hotel housekeeper / chambermaid; retail workers; food preparation workers / counter attendants; vehicle cleaners; meter maid / parking lot attendant; florist;
/ perfumer; flight attendant / stewardess; nurse / wet nurse; nutritionist / dietician; preschool teacher; social worker; rehabilitation specialist/consultant/counsellor; camp counsellor / non-profit volunteer coordinator; dental hygienist; personal stylist / fashion stylist; buyer; personal shopper; casino host; car attendant / washroom attendant; valet; museum docents / tour guide; dressmaker; library assistant; librarian.
Historically, women were responsible for the running of a household. Their financial security was often dependent upon a male patriarch. Widowed or divorced women struggled to support themselves and their children.
Women began to develop more opportunities when they moved into the paid workplace, formerly of the male domain. In the 20th century women aimed to be treated like the equals of their male counterparts. In 1920 American women won the right to vote, marking a turning point in their roles in life.
Many single women travelled to cities like New York where they found work in factories and sweatshops, working for low pay operating sewing machines, sorting feathers, rolling tobacco and so on.
(15) These factories were dirty, noisy, dark and dangerous. Workers frequently breathed dangerous fumes and worked with flammable materials. Women lost fingers and hands in accidents because in order to save money they were required to clean and adjust the machines while they were running. Unfortunately, most women who worked in the factories did not earn enough money to live on and lived in poverty.
(16) Throughout the 20th century certain women helped change women's roles in America. Emily Balch, Jane Addams, and Lillian Wald are among the most notable. They created settlement houses and launched missions in crowded, unsanitary neighbourhoods where immigrants lived. Balch, Addams, and Wald offered social services to the women and children often inviting them into their homes and classrooms.
(17) Women took on leadership roles starting in the church. Women became involved with the church activities, a few went on to become president of the societies. The women who joined these societies worked with their members some of whom were full-time teachers, nurses, missionaries, and social workers to accomplish their leadership tasks and make a difference. The Association for the Sociology of Religion was the first to elect a woman president in 1938.
(18) Knowledge workers are workers whose main capital is knowledge. Typical examplesmay include software engineers, doctors, architects, engineers, scientists, public accountants, lawyers, and teachers, because they "think for a living".
(19) Knowledge workers are employees who have a deep background in education and experience and are considered people who "think for a living." They include software developers,doctors, lawyers, inventors, teachers, nurses, financial analysts and architects. As businesses increase their dependence on information technology, the number of fields in which knowledge workers must operate has expanded dramatically.
(20) Even though they sometimes are called "gold collars", because of their high salaries, as well as because of their relative independence in controlling the process of their own
work, current research shows that they are also more prone to burnout, and very close normative control from organizations they work for, unlike regular workers.
(21) Reinhardt et al.'s (2011) review of current literature shows that the roles of knowledge workers across the workforce are incredibly diverse. In two empirical studies they have "proposed a new way of classifying the roles of knowledge workers and the knowledge actions they perform during their daily work." The typology of knowledge worker roles
suggested by them are "controller, helper, learner, linker, networker, organizer, retriever, sharer, solver, and tracker."
Task 1. Discuss how white-collar worker, blue-collar worker and pink-collar worker s differ.(para.1)
Task 2. Explain what manual labour is. (para.1) Task 3. Do gold-collar workers (para.13) work in:
a) conservation and sustainability;
b) specialized fields like law, engineering, and finance, or, according to a different definition, in the service industry;
c) tech-industry?
Task 4. Who are grey-collar workers? (para.13) Task 5. What does the author tell about ―knowledge workers‖? (para.18-19)
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