1. Employment in the Service Sector
SOCI 302 Spring 2012
Instructor: Deniz Yükseker
Koç University

2. Breakdown of employment by sector in Turkey
SECTORAL EMPLOYMENT OF MEN AND WOMEN
2009 MEN WOMEN TOTAL
agricult 53% 47% 100%
manufac 79% 21% 100%
Construc 97% 3% 100%
Services 76% 24% 100%
       
GENDER BREAKDOWN OF SECTORAL EMPOYMENT
2009 MEN WOMEN  
agricult 18% 42%  
manufac 21% 15%  
Construc 8% 1%  
Services 53% 43%  
Total 100% 100%  

3. What is service work? Intangible
Customer participates in its production
Face to face or voice to voice relations
 interactive service work

4. Interactive service work
emotional labor
“emotional proletariat” versus white collar work
“inhabiting a job”

5. Three trends in service sector jobs
Supervision of the production of a service (labor process and management control)
Stratification in the service labor force
Workers’ responses to the above: building autonomy and dignity at work

6. Labor process and management control in the service sector
Triangular relation between managers, workers and customers
(as opposed to the diad of manager and worker in industrial jobs)
Which two will team up against the other?

7. Management methods of “directing workers”
Production-like approach (routinization through technology)
Scripts
Reliance on technology
Empowerment approach  routinization through transformation
Importance of recruiting right people
Training
Motivation
Giving information and responsibility

8. What are the downsides of these two managerial methods of labor control?
production-line method: deskilling, lack of motivation, workers like automatons
Empowerment method: more invasion of personal and psychic life of workers
Arlie Hochschield’s concept of emotional labor

9. Stratification in service labor force
Large number of low-skilled, low-paying jobs
Small number of high-skilled, highly paid jobs

10. Arlie Hochshield: “Feeling management”
From The Managed Heart (1983) Hochshield’s arguments are based on her study of flight attendants in the US in the 1970s Airlines compete for passangers. They sell tickets, but they also sell a service  Competition based on the quality of the service

11. What kind of service does a flight attendant offer?
It involves emotional labor and a certain self-presentation of the worker
Emotional labor has dimensions such as
Surface acting
Deep acting

12. “Emotion management”
It appears at every stage of the employment relationship
Selection of employees
Certain looks and physical appearance
Training of employees
Emphasis on smiles
“Living room analogy”

13. Case study: Labor in the luxury hotel industry in the US
Rachel Sherman’s Class Acts Ethnography at two San Francisco luxury hotels: participant observation and interviews Royal Court Hotel and Luxury Garden Hotel

14. Two types of management
Royal Court: flexible informality Luxury Garden: hierarchal professionalism The managerial “regimes” are distinguished in terms of organization of work,, organizational identity and authority relations See tables 2 and 3 in Chapter 2

15. What are the consequences of different management regimes in terms of the quality of services rendered?

16. “Games” workers play
Visible and semivisible workers play games of “skill” and “control” Tipped workers play “money” games

17. What are the differences between games service workers play in the luxury hotels and piecerate workers play in manufacturing? The added role of the customer