| This dissertation investigates the production, reproduction and consequences of "work relations"---the relationships (to place, others, and capital) that individual workers enter into in order to do their work. It focuses on hairstyling because workers in this industry are involved in a peculiarly diverse set of work relations (they are employees on a straight wage or on commission; self-employed with, or without, employees; franchisees, peripatetic and home-workers; sub-contractors; and trainees) while carrying out essentially the same occupational tasks (they cut, perm, dye, trim, shampoo, or otherwise style hair). Analysis of this industry/occupation therefore enables the comparative analysis of work relations while effectively controlling for industrial and occupational/task differences. Primary research was carried out in a city in the north of England ("Northerncity"). A self-completion mail survey was taken to every salon or barbershop. The response rate was 40% (N=132). In addition, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 70 stylists and trainees in a sample of 52 salons and barbershops in Northerncity. Supplemental analysis of the Quarterly Labor Force Survey is used for a broader geographic and temporal perspective. The dissertation provides evidence that: (1) Work relations are structurally rooted. The concentration of particular, and particularly diverse, work relations in a sector is the product of specific obstacles that the labor process in that sector poses for capitalist (re)organization. (2) Work relations are consequential for most aspects of the labor process or for how workers act, interact and understand their work. Separate chapters describe the effects of work relations on the production and reproduction of workplace social relations; on workers' relations with clients and their deployment of emotional labor; on the temporality of work (hours, schedule and the flexibility or predictability of these); and on the separation (or not) of work from home life. (3) Work relations produce particular tensions and contradictions that themselves limit future workplace (re)organization and action, and therefore the production or reproduction of work relations themselves. (4) "Non-standard" work relations are not simply liberating. Rather they have mixed influences on workers' control over their working lives, ability to exercise real flexibility, and on forms of alienation. |
