Work: A Political Economy Perspective

From Peasant Class to Working Class

The Unique Characteristics of Labor

Text box 1.1¿Are animals a part of the working class? Do fish resist?

Text box 1.2¿The interweaving of slavery and capitalism: cotton and seafood

Notes

2: Inequality at Work: Skills, Wages and Productivity

Income Inequality: The Rich and the Rest of Us

Critical Analysis: Human Capital Theory

Political Economy Critiques of Human Capital Theory

Text box 2.1¿Does my name make me less employable?

Notes

3: Gender at Work: Caring Labor

Identifying Care Work in the Economy

Who Performs Housework Around the Globe?

Bargaining and Power in the Household

Care Work: Paid and Unpaid, Inside and Outside the Home

Devaluation Thesis and Gender Bias

Care Work and Social, Emotional Skills

Household Labor and Social Reproduction: Past, Present and Future

Text box 3.1¿Emotional and aesthetic labor in the call center

Notes

4: Managerial Strategies: Low Road vs. High Road and Off-Road

Major Themes Defining Work Under Capitalism

Low-Road Workplace Strategies

From Low-Road to High-Road Strategies

Off-Road: The Rise of Precarious Work

Notes

5: Beyond Managerial Strategies: Worker Cooperatives

Origins of the Cooperative Movement

Worker Participation Versus Worker Control

Political Structure of the Workplace

Worker Control of the Firm Versus Worker Control of the Economy: Mondragon

Cooperative Work in Solidarity and Community Economies

Note

6: Technology, Automation and Skills: Restructuring the Workplace

The Technology Debate

Early Industrial Conflict Over Machine Production

Political Economy Approaches to Technological Change

Technology, Skills, Tasks and the Transformation of Work

Automation and Robots in the Workplace

Text box 6.1¿European Parliament Report on the Social and Economic Impact of Robots

Note

7: Conclusion: Future Worlds of Work

Notes

References

Index