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Different Types of Labor Markets and Jobs |
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Type of Firm |
Type of Labor-Power Market |
Control System |
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Core Large Firms with some market power, ability to plan ahead. |
Independent Primary: Professional & Technical Salaried/Staff & Control/Line employees. "White collar" (new) middle class jobs. |
Bureaucratic Control Mental Labor; workers treated as assets. Workers given "responsible autonomy." Job ladders, some job security, a lot of benefits, and promotion from within. Rule by law, as opposed to arbitrary decisions by supervisors. |
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Subordinate Primary: Production workers, often unionized by an industrial union (or competing with a union). "Blue collar middle class jobs"
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Technical Control. Direct control, often based on machine-pacing. Largely manual labor, Deskilling stressed, though not as much as for secondary workers. Often paid a wage premium to motivate work or (more likely) because of union. The union contract represents a form of bureaucratic control. |
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Periphery :Small, competitive firms with little ability to plan ahead. |
Craft , Highly Skilled, usually unionized by a craft union.More "blue collar middle class jobs" |
Craft Control ,Management shares control of work process with workers. Mental & manual labor combined. |
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Secondary: High Turnover, Low Skills. Little job security or chance for advancement. Dead-end jobs. "The working poor." |
Simple Control ,Direct control. some technical control; manual labor, heavily deskilled. Workers treated like interchangeable parts. |
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By James Devine, Loyola Marymount University
September 10, 1999
To see a text version of this table, click
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