[PEN-L:6774] Re: Re: Re: una preguntita

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Devine wrote:

>Doug writes:
>>Most studies of turnover/instability/tenure I've seen for the U.S. show no
>>significant increase from the 1970s. I know this is counterintuitive, and
>>it pisses people off when I say it sometimes, but it seems to be true. What
>>may have happened is that some instability has crept up the social ladder,
>>making middle managers vulnerable to the instability that blue/pink collar
>>workers have long known, which attracts more attention than in the past.
>>Also, behind the flattish average tenure figures, men are falling but women
>>are rising.
>
>This disaggregation is crucial: I read what's happening as the gradual end
>(and sometimes rapid demise) of the primary labor market jobs, which
>offered some job security, and the spread of secondary labor market type
>jobs, which don't. Because middle-aged white males hogged the primary-type
>jobs that existed in the core and unionized sectors of the US economy, they
>(or rather, people of their demographic category) are the ones who have
>suffered the most from increased instability of job tenure. Women and
>"minorities" traditionally had secondary-type jobs and typically had little
>in the way of security. Thus, there's been a convergence of job experience
>between the old insiders and the old outsiders in the labor-power market.

This exaggerates the security of the old days, and treats rising female
tenure as a secondary consideration to falling male, which you don't mean
to do, do you?

Doug