Skills,control, and the mass professions

Since members of the mass professions are employed mainly by large organisations in the public sector, they are increasingly ‘managed’. What is happening to their skills, their control over their own work, and their professionalism, are matters of concern as revealed by recent disputes. These are precisely questions at the heart of the labour process debate relaunched by Braverman. The insights generated by this stream of writing, already profitably applied beyond blue collar work to clerical occupations may be extended to embrace elements of the service class. There the notion of indetermination goes beyond the notion of discretion. Changes in public ideology have effects analogous to those arising from technological innovation in manufacturing. Yet professionals, whilst attending to technological aspects of their work, typically ignore the wider social issues. In this respect they are vulnerable to deskilling and erosion of control over their work.     

Career Change for Those Over 40: Critical Issues and Insights

This article discusses the recent phenomenon of older career changers and highlights some of the strengths and proactive strategies for such people. Issues include dealing realistically with negative perceptions and stressing advantages of the mature career changer.     

Public transit wage rates: Pre-Reagan and Reagan-Bush eras

This paper examines the earnings of public transit bus drivers for both the pre-Reagan and Reagan-Bush eras using Current Population Survey data. The findings show that union drivers were consistently paid a significant wage premium over nonunion drivers, a premium which also exceeded that for unionized private nontransport operatives — suggesting that special institutional features of the public transit industry have collectively conferred market power on unionized public transit workers. During the Reagan years, the earnings of public transit drivers, union and nonunion alike, rose relative to those of private and public nontransport operatives in spite of federally-spearheaded cost containment policies. In 1990, these earnings fell relative to those of private and public nontransport operatives, suggesting that the effects of these policies may be beginning to be felt. Helpful comments were provided by Don Bellante and an anonymous referee     

The dependence of voter shares under a two-vote system

In an electoral system where each voter is allowed to select up to two candidates in a double-seat constituency, the combination of votes forms a special kind of contingency table. The usual hypothesis of complete independence of the voter shares for the candidates is of interest, but it is shown to be almost unattainable. The correlation coefficient of the voter shares is constructed. It is shown to be equivalent to Pearson's phi coefficient. The limitations of the coefficient are discussed. It is found that the use of conditional probabilities gives a better understanding of the dependence of the voter shares under the system considered.