The Role of Work - The assembly line, trade unions and the changing nature of the workforce

The nature and role of work changed enormously during the economic boom after 1945. The ways in which the US presented itself from a domestic standpoint was very different after the second world war, and below are a number of reasons as to why:

Deindustrialization

In 1945, over 50% of US workers were employed in heavy industry (e.g., mining, steel production, car manufacturing). Known as blue-collar workers, they were unskilled or semi-skilled, with limited education. These jobs were traditionally held for life, and a high level of education was viewed as unnecessary. However, from the 1960s onwards, the number of industrial jobs declined because of automation (work done by machines) and competition from cheaper foreign goods.

This lowered demand for unskilled or semi-skilled workers in the US. This forced wages down, made these jobs less attractive, and ultimately caused large-scale job losses. Before, entire communities (e.g., cities such as Detroit) were dependent on just a few large-scale industrial plants. When these plants closed, people found it very difficult to get new jobs, and many social problems emerged.

The car industry, for example, suffered under competition from highly efficient (and therefore cheaper) Japanese car makers such as Toyota, Honda, and Nissan. By 1980, Japanese companies had 25% of the car market in the US. It took until the late 1980s and early 1990s for US manufacturers to match the cost-effectiveness and engineering standards of Japanese companies. US consumers benefited from this competition through lower prices, but the struggle to cut costs in US companies resulted in the permanent loss of thousands of jobs.

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The Service Economy

By 1956, a significant majority of US workers were employed in the services sector (e.g., working in banks, shops, schools, hospitals, corporations). These workers had to be skilled and educated. They were called white-collar workers because they wore suits to work and had higher status than blue-collar workers. White-collar workers were not always better paid, though, especially those in entry-level positions in companies.

The increase in white-collar jobs came from the increasing numbers of people attending higher education, the growing demand for skilled labor, and the decline in the number of low-skilled jobs in farming and heavy industry. White-collar workers would make up 75% of the US workforce by the 1980s.

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The Role of Women

There was a significant change in the gender makeup of the workforce in the US in the decades after 1945. In 1950, 34% of the total workforce were women. These women were confined to largely low-paying jobs in services and professions, such as teachers, secretaries, or nurses. As access to education expanded and traditional familial and gender roles broke down in the 1960s and 1970s, the number of women in the workforce rose to 43% in 1970. Women were now moving into higher professions and better-paying jobs.

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Decline of Agriculture

Farmers were one section of society that did not gain from the post-war boom. The growing population required more food to be produced. Farmers invested in productivity, but this led to overproduction, and farms became big businesses. Between 1945 and 1960, the price of food fell, cutting farm incomes by 25%. Small family farms found it increasingly difficult to compete: more and more farmers left the land to live in urban areas. As a result, the number of people employed in the farming sector fell from 7.9 million in 1947 to 3.3 million people in 1980. By 1980, 75% of Americans lived in urban areas, and most of the farmland in the US was owned by large corporations that farmed it using machines.

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Economic Impact of Changes in Work - Good to know!

• People were better educated (the number of college graduates in the economy doubled between 1958 and 1977) and, therefore, able to change jobs more easily. The workforce could be easily redeployed as the economy changed. The idea of a "job for life" ended, and most people would have several different careers during their working lives.
• Since people had transferable skills, they could change locations to pursue work. This was evident in the move to the suburbs from the cities and the migration to the Sun Belt states.
• As the number of workers employed in traditional manufacturing industries declined, union membership dropped. Service workers often had individual contracts and different pay and conditions from their co-workers, making collective bargaining (union deals that apply to all workers) less attractive. Even in industrial workplaces, employers faced low-wage foreign competitors. They began to seek greater flexibility in their employment policies. They used temporary and part-time employees and put less emphasis on the pay and benefit plans that had been designed to cultivate long-term relationships with employees. Employers also fought union demands and strikes more aggressively and were backed by politicians on the right (e.g., Ronald Reagan) who were no longer afraid of union power. Union membership fell from 35% of the workforce in 1954 to 11% in 1991.

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