Larry J. Griffin

Class, Occupation, and Inequality in Job Rewards

This paper argues that within an economic system class and occupation are conceptually distinct positions. Class refers to control by some positions over others in a production system, and occupation refers to the functional differentiation of positions in a technical division of labor. The effects of measures of class and occupation on both economic and noneconomic rewards are analyzed using data obtained from two national samples of individuals. Class and occupation are found to have independent effects on both types of job rewards, and the commonly used measures of occupational position (Duncans socioeconomic index [SEI], complexity/skill requirements of the occupation) do not adequately explain inequalities in job rewards associated with occupation. The implications of this analysis for the study of positional inequality in general are indicated.

Schooling and Socioeconomic Attainments: High School and College Influences

The socioeconomic consequences of qualitative variations in educational experiences are evaluated for a sample of young adult males who were first surveyed in 1955 as high school sophomores and followed up in 1970. Models of institutional influence and of within-school processes are developed for both secondary and postsecondary education to integrate and refine the literatures on school effects and returns to schooling. Rather impressive occupational status and earnings differentials are associated with gross school-to-school differences and with qualitative differences in educational experiences within institutions. Secondary school characteristics and experiences weigh particularly upon the market outcomes of youth who terminated formal schooling at high school graduation. We suggest that the traditional use for quantitative indices of schooling (years of school completed or certification levels) in assessing the market consequences of investments in education needs to be supplemented by information on qualitative variations in educational experiences. Additionally, the likelihood that school experiences may have quite different implications for selected target populations deserves further consideration. The simplistic assumption implicit in much of the school-effects literature that institutional effects are homogeneous may actually mask quite important consequences for certain students.

Positional Sources of Inequality in Job Satisfaction

Differences in job satisfaction constitute an important form of social inequality. In this paper, we conceptualize and assess that portion of the variation injob satisfaction that is generated by differential positions in the social and technical division of labor. We further attempt to explain these inequalities on the basis of the job rewards and work values that are associated with these social positions. Our results suggest, in particular, that jobs in the working class are less satisfying because incumbents of working class jobs obtain less financial and intrinsic job rewards than do members of other classes. Our analyses are based on data from the 1972-73 Quality of Employ ment Survey.

“Provided Only that their Voice was Strong” Insurgency and Organization of American Labor from NRA to Taft-Hartley

Students of the labor movement have been fascinated with the years between 1933 and 1946 for the impact they had on the experiences of workers in subsequent years, and because they redefined the possibilities for concerted working class action. In this article we present quantitative historical analyses to address the following issues: (1) In what ways did the various modes of worker action stimulate mass unionization efforts? (2) Under what conditions was strike activity enhanced or dissipated by existing levels of organization? and (3) How do rare events—such as sitdown strikes—sustain more normal expressions of working class action?

The “Unmaking” of a Movement?

The sad particulars about the “House of Labor” in the America of the 1980s are well known: Labor quiescence predominates, and the trade union movement, demoralized and disorganized, has rapidly lost momentum. The number of union members began to decline in 1979 and continued to do so for another decade, representing the greatest sustained loss of unionists since the 1920s. Unions have since lost between 4 1/2 and 5 1/2 million members. The rate of decline of “union density” (i.e., union membership as a percentage of the nonfarm labor force), already visible since 1954, began to steepen around 1979: It averaged about 0.4% per year for the period 1954–1978 but between 1% and 1.25% annually since 1979, more than double the previous rate.1 In the 1950s, unions won about two-thirds of the National Labor Relations Board certification elections held; in the 1960s, almost 60%. Since the late 1970s, however, unions have been winning only about 45% of NLRB certification elections, and during the Reagan years number of such elections declined by about 50% (Moody, 1987). Finally, labor’s strike activity, too, is much lower today than it was even two decades ago, with production time lost to strikes during the mid-1980s reaching an historic low.

On Estimating the Economic Value of Schooling and Experience

This paper attempts to demonstrate two things. First, sociologists interested in the processes governing income attainment and inequality should consider incorporating into socioeconomic achievement models indicators of work experience that correspond to the following life-cycle events: schooling, initialfull- time entry into the labor market, and assumption of current job. The findings presented here suggest that two types of postschooling market experience substantially enhance earnings. Experience acquired during the formal schooling process, however, is of little economic value, a hypothesis underlying both a segment of Mincers formulation of human capital theory and the conventional techniques employed to estimate postschooling work experience from other variables (e.g., age and schooling). Second, extreme caution must be taken in the conceptualization and measurement of work experience and its specification in earnings models. Conceptual and measurement strategies deemed theoretically incorrect yield estimates of the earnings returns to experience and schooling which are seriously biased.