Page 5 - Lessonnote_ Change and Development in Industrial Society

• Nowadays, the importance of the jobber has come down, and both management and
unions play a role in recruiting their own people. Many workers also expect that they can

pass their jobs to their children.
• Many factories employ badli workers who substitute for regular permanent workers who
are on leave.
• Many of these badli workers have actually worked for many years for the same company
but are not given the same status and security. This is what is called contract work in the
organised sector.
Employment opportunities have two important components:
a) Job in an organisation
b) Self- employment

Contractor system
• The contractor system is most visible in the hiring of casual labour for work on
construction sites, brickyards and so on.
• The contractor goes to villages and asks if people want work. He will loan them some
money. This loan includes the cost of transport of the workside. The loaned money is
treated as an advance wage and the worker works without wages until the loan is repaid.
• In the past, agricultural labourers were tied to their landlord by debt.
• Now, however, by moving to casual industrial work, while they are still in debt, they are
not bound by other social obligations to the contractor.

• In that sense, they are freer in an industrial society. They can break the contract and find
another employer. Sometimes, whole families migrate and the children help their parents.

How is work carried out?
• In India, there is a whole range of work settings from large companies where work is
automated to small home-based production.
• The basic task of a manager is to control workers and get more work out of them.

• There are two main ways of making workers produce more.
✓ One is to extend the working hours.
✓ The other is to increase the amount that is produced within a given time period.
• Machinery helps to increase production, but it also creates the danger that eventually
machines will replace workers.
• Both Marx and Mahatma Gandhi saw mechanisation as a danger to employment.
Taylorism
Another way of increasing output is by organising work. An American called Frederick

Winslow Taylor invented a new system in the 1890s, which he called ‘Scientific
Management’. It is also known as Taylorism or industrial engineering.
Under his system, all work was broken down into its smallest repetitive elements, and
divided between workers. Workers were timed with the help of stopwatches and had to
fulfil a certain target every day.