Hilda Scattergood

Ethnicity and career aspirations in contemporary Britain.

This article examines the career aspirations of 376 fifth‐formers in three Rochdale comprehensive schools in December 1989. The analysis demonstrates that the relationships between various types of...

Continuities and change in skilled work : a comparison of five paper manufacturing plants in the UK, Australia and the USA.

This paper involves an examination of skilled manual work in the modern paper industry. The data were collected at five mills in three countries the UK, Australia and the USA. The questions were formulated in order to probe four theories of skilled work. The results suggest that the distinction between skilled and nonskilled work is a fundamental feature of occupational differentiation in all five plants. They also reveal that there are intra-skilled conflicts over relative pay and demarcation lines and that these are affected by the wider socio-political environment.

Gender relations, technology and employment change in the contemporary textile industry.

This paper examines employment patterns in the British textile industry over the last twenty years. In particular it focuses on a dramatic structural shift in the balance of male and female employees within textiles. From the onset of the Industrial Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century until the 1960s, around two-thirds of textile employees were female. Over the last twenty years textile manufacture has become increasingly the domain of male employees. The research reported was located in Rochdale, one of the six localities which were researched as part of the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative. Rochdale has long been a major centre for textile production. The data are based upon a survey of textile plants undertaken in 1986 and 1987. The analysis revealed that employment in these textile plants had become increasingly male during the period between 1980 and 1986. These changes were more pronounced in larger establishments and within the minority of plants that had introduced advanced machinery. A further analysis of 987 work histories collected in 1986 revealed that women were far less likely to enter textiles in the 1980s than at any time since the advent of industrialization. A major reason for this lies in the increasing adoption of full-time shift work by plants in the town. Most part-time employment has been eliminated from textile mills as they seek to run advanced equipment continuously. The growth of flexible patterns of employment in the burgeoning service sector has interacted with these developments in textiles. Women still seek paid employment in Rochdale but no longer in the textile industry.

The dialectics of ethnic incorporation and exclusion: Employment trajectories of Asian migrants in Rochdale

Abstract This article presents findings from the ESRCs Social Change and Economic Life Research Initiative project undertaken in Rochdale. It provides an integrated analysis of the situation of Asian migrants in the town by combining longitudinal data taken from a survey of adult work histories with parallel data from interviews conducted with local employers and local trades unions. The article demonstrates that inward migration has been a general feature of Rochdales social structure since the inception of factory production in the mid‐nineteenth century. Successive waves of migrants have been attracted to the town by the presence of large numbers of jobs in textiles. Asian migration into Rochdale in the 1950s and 1960s followed this historic pattern. However, between 1971 and 1984 textile employment fell from 16,000 to 3,400 in the town. The article examines the articulation of Asian migrants with employment in textiles in the town and the effects of this massive employment decline. The results make ...

Technical change and the division of labour in Rochdale and Aberdeen : evidence from the social change and economic life initiative.

This article examines the effects of technical change upon the division of labour in Rochdale and Aberdeen. It is based upon interviews undertaken as part of the ESRCs Social Change and Economic Life Research Initiative. The results reveal that there was little difference between establishments in the two localities within broadly matched industrial sectors. There was little evidence in the research to support the deskilling thesis. There was more evidence of a skilling of the workforce, but this was by no means universal. In particular, there was overwhelming evidence that machine maintenance skills were increasing as a result of computerization. There were also widespread increases in skill amongst clerical workers as a result of the introduction of wordprocessors and other computer-