On Wed, 22 Jul 2009, Doug Henwood wrote:
>> It involves, well, a shift away from fixed full-time employment and
>> toward a labor force retained on temporary and flexible terms: a labor
>> force whose stability, strength, and magnitude continue to wane in
>> ratio to the increase in constant capital
>
> This is widely believed, but not really borne out by the U.S. economic
> stats. Part-time employment was 12% of the total in 1960, 14% in 1970,
> 17% in 1980, 17% in 1990, and 16% in 2000. It's risen sharply in this
> recession, to 19% of the total. but there was just no long-term uptrend
> going into this recession. Temp employment was 1% of the total in 1990,
> 2% in 2000, and is back at 1% now.
But in the short term, i.e., this Great Recession, there has been a couple of records set as far as "people working part-time for economic reasons," no? Which I think it what a lot of people intuitively mean by the causalization of work even if it's not technically temporary work.
Also there's our incredible punitive unemployment system which only pays you benefits if you were in your last job for a year. This often forces people into a causalization hell until (if) they scrabble back up into a decent job. The FT except attached below gives the amazing stat that nowadays 50% of all unemployed people in the US aren't eligible for any unemployment because of this, which kind of floored me.
Granted, none of this backs the classic Fordism argument, which is a long term tremd argument, and which you pretty effectively demolish. But perhaps if the argument were modified, to say "downturns are getting progressively nastier for workers because there's a larger layer of people getting causalized on top of the people getting fired" -- might it then hold a little water? People certainly are terrified when times get bad and these scrabblers at the lock are part of what terrifies us.
Michael
============
[If you click on the first graphic, they have a graph of the recent rapid uptick in the involuntarily part-time. I think you have to be a subscriber, though.]
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/90dfed26-7233-11de-ba94-00144feabdc0.html#
Sterling Taylor is a "free agent" -- doing construction jobs as and when they come up, a few days here, a few weeks there. Back in the housing boom, it was a full-time job. "I remember times about two years ago you could go and apply for an ad, you get the job just like that, no questions or nothing asked, you're in, he says wistfully. "Now? Shoot, it's ridiculous. It just ain't happening."
These days the 42-year-old only scrapes together around two days of work a week. He is part of a vast group of people who are not captured by the unemployment rate. In statistician-speak, he works "part-time for economic reasons" -- he works fewer than 34 hours a week because he cannot find anyone to pay him for more.
In the past year the number of people in Mr Taylor's position has more than doubled from 4.4m to 9m, or 5.8 per cent of the labour market -- the highest since records began. These are not just casual workers and freelancers; many big companies have also cut hours to reduce costs. As a result, the nation famed for its long-hours culture now works an average 33 hours a week, the lowest on record.
<snip>
Unlike their European peers, many Americans losing their jobs discovered they had no way to replace their lost incomes. State unemployment benefits, which pay around a third of your salary, generally require you to have worked full-time in your last job for at least a year. More than half the unemployed have turned out to be ineligible for them, Mr Gutrick included.
<end excerpts>