Blacksacademy
Sociology
* robots
Subject: Aspects of Society
Title : Unemployment
Unemployment statisticsThe British Record
According to British government statistics recent trends in unemployment are as follows:
1948 – 1966 UK average below 2% of the workforce
1960s Increasing slowly
1975-78 Uemployment rises above 6%
1979-80 Fell to 4.8%
1982 Doubled to 9.5%
1985/86 Peaked at 11.8%
1987-90 Fell to 5.8% by 1990
1992 Another peak at 10.8%
1993- Falling slowly
However, official statistics must be treated with caution. In Britain sociologists generally agree that nineteen changes in the ways in which official statistics were measured between 1979 and 1987 under the Conservative Thatcher regime mean that the unemployment figures are underestimated. Additionally, people who would like to work but who would not be able to claim benefits do not tend to register. Training schemes reduce the apparent numbers of unemployed. In 1985 official statistics placed the number unemployed at 3.3 million, whereas a TUC estimate placed the number at 4.5 million.
Full document available from Blacksacademy
Subject: Aspects of Society
Title : Conflict and Cooperation at Work
PerspectivesThe functionalist ideal of consensus and cooperation
Functionalist sociologists, such as Talcott Parsons, Kingsley Davies and Wilbert E Moore, claim that workers and management have shared interests. Parsons, for example, claims that “the whole occupational sphere is dominated by a single fundamental goal. That of ‘success’.” This is said to create a value consensus.
Conflict damages the interests of both parties. According to V.L. Allen, as a result, “it must be possible to envisage a completely strike-free economy as a permanent state.”
Marxist perspectives
Marxists argue that workers and employers have fundamentally differing interests because of the bourgeois exploitation of labour. According to Craig Littler and Graeme Salaman employers seek to maximise profits by extending control and consequently deskilling labour as much as possible. However, management must cooperate with labour to an extent, since workers need to be sufficiently motivated to be productive.
Full document available from Blacksacademy
