INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL ISSUES IN THE HISTORY OF MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY Michelle Gilruth The Social Issue of Unions There are many social issues that have affected manufacturing over the years. Many of these issues led to the formation of unions. Before unions, unskilled workers did not fair well. They received half the pay of skilled workers like craftsmen, artisans, and mechanics. Many people moved to cities to work in industry and about 40 percent of those workers were low-wage earners.1 As industry grew, women, children, and poor immigrants found themselves the main targets for work in factories.
Do you agree with the view that, in terms of employment opportunities, women did not gain ‘any significant advantage from their wartime experience’? Many women, especially shorthand typists and munitions workers, earned for more than before the war and gained greater economic independence. Many women worked away from home were they experienced a sense of liberation from their restricted home lives. Trade unions initially opposed the dilution of labour but eventually recruited many more women. 350,000 women were in unions in 1914, but 600,000 by 1918.
The number of employed married women has been growing dramatically in industrialized countries. Divorce has become more and more common. In the United States, statistics indicate that about half the marriages that took place during the 1970's are likely to end in divorce (pg. 73). 2.
Ann Crittenden’s “The Mommy Tax” claims the ideal worker is one who is free to focus solely on his job. This is a problem for women, who ponder the idea of having children and for those who already have children. Because a woman has the capability of having a child, she already poses a threat to an ideal worker. Crittenden also presents a study that focuses on the gender difference in time taken off from work. Former women University of Michigan Law students were found to have taken an average of 3.3 months of leave plus 10.1 months of part-time work during their first 15 years.
The Depression hit women, like other minority groups in American society, similarly harsh because of that payrolls of many communities and private companies were open only to males. The main role of women during the Great Depression was that of the homemaker. Some women had gone through college level education and, like their male counterparts, were having a difficult time of finding employment. Those with families had the task of keeping their family together, as the traditional view of motherhood role, when the principle moneymaker of the family was out of work. However, some women joined the work force and would do jobs that men previously had held.
The top management of the company were stakeholders in the company, making them virtually irreproachable. Employees who worked directly for the top management such as assistants, secretaries, and receptionists tended to be almost exclusively younger attractive women. The company was a service related industry with many branch offices, so the bulk of the company resided at locations other than the main office where she worked. She then detailed her work environment including the interaction with co-workers, both peer and superiors. When she began working for the company everybody was nice and supportive of her, but she noticed a high employee turnover amongst those working for top management.
(5)Earning power has been and is much more a cultural goal for men than for women (though this workplace gender preference does seem to be changing). (6)Entrepreneurial women in fields such as private-practice psychotherapist will, on the average, choose to charge less and thus make less than their male counterparts. African-Americans have often chosen workplace occupations with dreadful unemployment rates such as musicians, artists, actors, basketball players (there are thousands attempting to fit in a few hundred slots), etc. This is rapidly changing now, for many new black lawyers, engineers and business majors are emerging from schools. Great!
Everyday more Americans are loosing their jobs due to outsourcing. I am not just speaking of blue-collar Americans who work hard with their hands, but I am referring as well to our technical support and our white-collar engineers and software designers. Furthermore, the majority of workers who have lost their jobs due to outsourcing to foreign countries have had to accept pay cuts therefore America’s economy will go downward. “Outsourcing is hitting skilled jobs that were once thought “safe” across a far wider swath of white-collar America” (Kathleen Madigan & Michael Mandel, 2003, para. 2).
Within this region there are clear economical and educational factors that force women out of their homes seeking job opportunities that result in being lured into the sex trafficking business. Within the hemisphere, it is one of the more impoverished regions; over 70% of the region’s population lives below the poverty line. Women, in particular, face enormous challenges, as they increasingly assume sole responsibility for families. From 1988 to 1999 in Costa Rica, the percentage of women as head of the house rose from 19.3% to 27.9%. During the same time period in Honduras, the number of women increased from 27.9% to 30.3%.
According to Denise Cormier currently women hold over fifty 50 percent of management and professional positions. Unfortunately, these highly educated and capable women are leaving positions of power and prestige in growing numbers. Studies have shown the financial benefits of women leaders in corporations versus all male leadership are still ostracized in the boardroom. Equally disturbing is the thought that women were leaving to pursue a family, so, one must wonder if there were exodus of men would the same belief be assumed (Cormier, 2007)? Cormier further determine thorough the interview of forty female from senior management positions to Chief Operating Officers from a variety of industries to determine what was causing the exodus.