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Empirically, we could not find an enterprise which would allow sr to sink to its "natural" level prior to employing sales and clerical labor. Even in cases where this labor is provided exclusively by the capi- talist, we are still unable to determine the effect of such efforts on the body of realized surplus-value. Thus, meas- ures of productivity for office workers are limited to how fast or accurately they do their work without knowing the effect of that work on the realization of surplus-value. The inability of the capitalist to calculate the con- tribution of unproductive circulation workers raises the spectre that they make no contribution at all. The capital- ist theoretically knows the total surplus value produced and recognizes that the employment of unproductive circulation -—-Ev 84 workers represents a deduction from that mass of surplus- value (3 - vu). S/he could also calculate the amount of surplus-value realized at a given time (sr). We can fairly expect that whatever the difference between s and 5:, it is too large to suit the capitalist. If the return to the cap- italist is maximised at Sr = s - vu then there exists the temptation to reduce vu in the hope that sr will approach 3 as vu approaches zero. To the extent that s - vu is not realized (Sr<:s - vu), we would anticipate further dissatis- faction for the capitalist. There then exists the possibil- ity that gr would not suffer, and may be increased, by a reduction in Vu' The problem again is that the effect of vu on sr is incalculable. The capitalist hopes that investments in Vu increase Sr by n, where n:>vu results in a positive return to the capitalist. This is the situation assumed by Marx. However, we have been seeing that it is possible that vu increases sr by an amount exactly equal to itself at which point the capitalist breaks even, or that Vu exceeds n resulting in a loss to the capitalist. The uncertain contribution of unproductive circulation workers, and more specifically clerical workers, results in a capitalist/worker relationship fundamentally different from that experienced by productive workers. The wages of productive workers, which the capitalist would of course like to minimize, can still increase concomitantly with increases in productivity. Returning to formulation (1) c+v P p: 85 it is apparent that if a rise in vp is equalled or super- seded by a rise in s, then the rate of profit will not fall. Both capitalist and worker can calculate the relationship between productivity, wages and surplus-value. Ceteris paribus, we would expect some form of balance to be main- tained among these variables through either formal or in- formal negotiations. For the unproductive circulation worker, the rela- tionship between wages, surplus-value and productivity is turbid. As such, the drive of the capitalist to minimize wages is for these workers, not relative to productivity but absolute. As the number of unproductive circulation workers grew with increases in overall productivity, their wages declined relative to those of productive workers. For the skilled and semi-skilled production workers, high productivity has meant lower relative numbers at higher wages. For clerical workers, this increased productivity of production workers has resulted in greater numbers of lower wages. It should not be inferred from the above discus- sion that individual workers or managers consciously calcu- late or think in these terms. The different positions of productive and unproductive labor in relation to surplus value act rather as a structural constraint on their ef- forts to improve their wages. Unproductive workers,' whether unionized or not, are not involved in the creation of surplus value and therefore cannot effectively look to 86 the size of that value as a standard for determining their wages. For the same reason, unproductive workers are less likely than productive workers to win demands through a strike. Their work is ancillary to the main productive activity of the manufacturing enterprise. As such, the bargaining position of these workers is not as strong as that of productive labor. It seems an appropriate time to re-emphasize that there is nothing natural or necessary about the relation- ships we have been discussing. Not all unproductive work- ers have been proletarianized in this century. Nor have feminization and rationalization proceeded in the same way and with the same effect in all clerical occupations. Wages in the real world do not rise or fall in response to the preachments of econometricians but as a function of the actions of real people interacting in the context of a humanly created social structure. In capitalism, wage trends are the outcome of struggle between capitalist and worker as each fights to protect and assert their own inter- ests. The erosion of clerical wages can be traced to pol- icies followed by capital, in opposition to labor, to bring about this erosion. The feminization of the clerical labor force, as well as the mechanization and rationalization of the clerical labor process, are such conscious policies and lay at the heart of the decline in clerical wages. I sug- gest that to understand why these processes occurred, and why they affected wages in this way, it is necessary to 87 consider the unproductive character of clerical positions. I am not posing an iron law of wages but rather an explan- ation of how structure affects the likely direction and effectiveness of human action. In this chapter, I have presented a theoretical analysis of the different wage experiences of clerical and production workers in capitalist develOpment. I have sug- gested that because they perform unproductive labor, cler- ical workers have been less able than productive workers to resist reduced wages due to feminization and rationaliza- tion. In the following pages I will trace the development of the clerical labor force in the context of this theor- etical framework. The planks of this framework, however, should not be thought of as a set of answers to which history must be forced to conform. Rather, I conceive of them as a set of exploratory questions which serve to organ- ize and focus our attention on several central issues. In the next chapter I will consider the causes and patterns of the growth of clerical positions. This is followed by a discussion of clerical wages and then two chapters examining the feminization and rationalization of clerical work. Throughout, I will be emphasizing the dif- ferences between the development of the clerical and produc- tive labor forces. The final chapter will be a review and analysis of these differences. Chapter IV THE GROWTH OF THE CLERICAL LABOR FORCE The Classified Index of Industries and Occupations of the 1970 Census lists some 1700 occupations under the category ”clerical and kindred workers." Clerical work is generally thought of as being synonomous with office work. Whereas the great majority of clerical workers are employed in offices, the Census clerical category also includes a number of occupations pursued elsewhere. Some numerically significant examples of non-office clerical occupations are mail carriers and postal clerks, stock clerks, shipping and receiving clerks, telephone operators, cashiers and bank tellers. The Census Bureau also includes within the cleri- cal category such seemingly inappropriate occupations as meter readers for utilities, vehicle dispatchers, and teacher's aides. The commonality which joins these dispar- ate occupations within a single category is their involve- ment with the preparation, transmission and recording of information, communication and material goods. Following the classificatory scheme of the Diction- ary of Occupational Titles (U.S. Employment Service, 1965), we can divide the clerical category into five subcategories: l) stenography, typing, filing and related occupa- tions involved with "making, classifying, and filing 88 89 records including written communications"; 2) computing and account recording occupations con- cerned with "computing, classifying and recording numerical data to keep sets of financial records complete"; 3) material and production recording occupations in- volved with "receiving, storing, issuing, shipping, requisitioning, and accounting for stores of mate- rial or material in use"; 4) information and message distribution occupations involving the "distribution of information and mes- sages by mail, telephone, telegraph, and in person"; and 5) miscellaneous clerical occupations including workers not elsewhere classified and those whose positions involve public contact such as "examining and adjusting claims and records, collecting and tracing accounts and quoting prices." Clearly, this or any other system of occupational classifi- cation will not be so precise as to avoid questions of judgement as to the best classification for at least some occupations. It is in this grey area that problems arise for the researcher; especially the researcher interested in changes in the occupational structure over time. The major problem for historical occupational re- search is not the classifications within a single census but the comparability between the classification schemes 90 of two or more censes. Of the eleven censes considered in this thesis, no two are directly comparable. Some obvious differences over the past hundred years are in the minimum age included and the geographical territory enumerated. More subtle changes have occurred in the census definition of a worker. However, the most enduring problems arise from changes in the occupational classifications. In some cases adjustment can be made through a time consuming pro- cess of reshuffling. However, in many instances data are permanently lost through these reclassifications. In this chapter I will be tracing the growth of clerical occupations since 1870. To accomplish this one would ideally begin with the 1970 classification of cler- ical and kindred workers and trace it back through prior censes. As one who has attempted this simple-sounding feat I can assure you that the garden path quickly becomes a thorny maze. For example, the teacher's aides mentioned above are now counted as clerical workers but appear in no earlier census. The opposite problem exists with baggage- men who were excluded from the clerical category for the first time in 1970 and classified as service workers. We can deal with the baggagemen problem in one of three ways: include them as clerical workers in the 1970 total, sub- tract their numbers from all previous clerical totals, or accept the census classification of a given year as an ac- curate reflection of the occupations considered clerical in that period. Each of these courses is feasible, the 91 latter two probably being more acceptable. However, not all occupations can be dealt with in this manner. The case of bookkeepers and accountants is an exam- ple of a more stubborn problem of historical occupational research. Since 1950 accountants have been classified as professional workers, and bookkeepers as clerical workers. Prior to 1950 accountants were included in the clerical category. This would be no different than the problem of baggagemen if accountants were always enumerated separ- ately. However, in censes through 1900 they were always listed in combination with bookkeepers. Thus, accountants can't merely be subtracted from earlier census counts of clerical workers since it is impossible to determine how many of the accountant and bookkeeper category were accoun- tants. Thus, we must resign ourselves to accepting the clerical category as it was defined in a given census or attempt to estimate the numbers engaged in certain occupa- tions as they are classified in later censes. The former approach has great philosophical appeal, being linked to the fascinating question of how occupations are perceived and classified in an historical period. However, this ap- proach can claim no superiority for accuracy since data from censes prior to 1910 cannot be considered as anything other than estimates. Since little would be sacrificed in the way of accuracy, I believe that our concern with the changing number of clerical workers is probably best served by seeking estimates in more or less consistent classifications. 92 Several writers have tried to estimate the occupa- tional evolution of the labor force from the late nine- teenth century (Edwards, 1943; Hooks, 1947; Kaplan and Casey, 1958). Each of these writers had access to the or- iginal census records as well as corrections for under and overcounts. I consider their data to be superior to com- pilations taken from the published tables of the decennial censes. It is problematic however, that there is little comparability among these studies. Written in different years, they each employ somewhat different classifications, resulting in problems not unlike those we began with. How- ever, the general correspondence of figures for overlap- ping years permits cautious comparisons between other years. Table 4.1 traces the growth of the clerical labor force over the past century. Most significant is the tre- mendous rate of this growth over a sustained period of time.‘ The clerical labor force has grown steadily as a per- centage of the total labor force with the rate of that growth seeming to follow standard business cycles. Since single year employment figures are not available for most of the period considered, a close analysis of the movement of the clerical labor force in relation to other factors is impossible. Thus, the growth of this labor force will be explained in terms of long range developments in the U.S. economy. Like the flora and fauna of an area, occupations can be studied in and of themselves or as a reflection of their Table 4.1: The Growth of the Clerical Labor Force, 18N%4970 total clerical clerical % increase from year labor labor as a % previous decade force force of total total clerical 1870 12,924,951 96,572 .7 -- -- 1880 17,392,099 195,208 1.1 35 102 1890 23,318,183 538,778 2.3 34 176 1900 29,030,038 857,939 3.0 24 59 1910 37,291,483 1,968,853 5.3 28 129 1920 42,205,745 3,359,305 8.0 13 71 1930 48,685,590 4,299,329 8.8 15 28 1940 51,742,023 4,940,687 9.5 6 15 1950 58,998,943 7,180,578 12.2 14 45 1960 67,990,073 9,431,106 13.9 15 31 1970 79,801,605 14,208,432 17.8 17 51 Source: Alba M. Edwards, "Comparative Occupational Statis- tics for the United States, 1870-1940." U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940; David L. Kaplan and M. CIaire Casey, "Occupational Trends in the United States, 1900-1950." U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, WOrking Paper, Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Nine- teenth Census of the United States: 1970. No. 5, 1958; Ups. Population I, l,T§Ble 221; Janet M. Hooks, "WOmen's Occupations TErough Seven Decades." U.S. Department of Labor, Woman's Bureau, Bulletin # 218, 1947. Notes: Figures for the clerical labor force for the years 1870-1890 were arrived at by adding to Edwards' figure for the clerical category her estimate of the number of tele- graph messengers and Hooks' estimates of the number of tele- phone and telegraph operators and mail carriers. 1900-1950 figures are from Kaplan and Casey, less baggagemen and at- tendants in physician's and dentist's offices. 1960-1970 figures are based on the 1970 classification for workers 16 years and over. 93 94 environment. The growth of clerical occupations over the past century engendered important changes in the work and market situations of clerical workers. However, this growth also signaled important changes in the economic environment which shapes the occupational structure. Be- tween 1870 and 1920 the clerical labor force increased forty times, compared with a threefold increase in the total labor force. This tremendous rate of growth can only be explained by changes in the nature of capitalism over this fifty year period. The Civil War marked a turning point in the development of American capitalism. The last third of the nineteenth century saw the ascendance of in- dustry as the mainstay of the U.S. economy. This ascen- dance was accompanied, and perhaps even accomplished, by movement toward big industrial enterprises. Centraliza- tion of assets during this period was greater than any other time in U.S. economic history with the exception of the past decade (Dowd, 1974: 66). Centralization, and the birth of the large industrial corporation, came about in this period as a result of both technological and social factors. Most conventional analyses of this period attribute the concentration and centralization of capital to the exigencies of technological development (Lenski & Lenski, 1974; Rosenberg, 1972). Proponents of this view hold that innovations in the production and distribution of goods required large sums of capital. No longer could the 95 individual capitalist afford to purchase the means of production. The joint stock company thus became an in- creasingly important form of industrial organization. The tremendous productive capacity of these new organizations, along with improvements in transportation and communica- tion, resulted in expansion into new markets and the merger movement of the 1880's and '90's. The technological thesis is not without merit. Cer- tainly technology played an important role in shaping the particular experience of the United States as a capitalist nation. However, it is important to understand the place of technology in the overall theoretical framework of this thesis. Bourgeois social scientists tend to treat technol- ogy as an independent variable which alters social relation- ships. Most Marxists would agree that technology affects social relationships but argue, in turn, that social rela- tionships affect technology. The development and adoption of some technologies, the neglect and abandonment of others, are decisions which reflect the social relations of a par- ticular system of production. Those who own or control the means of production are in a position to decide the fate of potential innovations based upon their perceptions of the effect of that innovation. Those seen as potentially en- hancing their class position will be encouraged and adopted. Others will be set aside. I Some concrete examples might help to underscore the importance of the distinction being drawn. The technological 96 determinists would argue that the development of an accur- ate ship's clock facilitated 17th century commerce between Britain and the East. A Marxist would note that the British government offered a reward of 20,000 pounds to the inven— tor of a successful clock. This inducement reflects the social relations of the period, especially the ascendance of the commercial class in Britain. The completion of the transcontinental railroad in the United States provides an additional example of the relationship between technology and social relations. The meeting of east and west at Promontory Point was more a demonstration of human will than technological advance. The achievement was made pos- sible by a good deal of human labor in combination with private and governmental capital. The railroad did not awaken in the capitalist the idea of national markets but, rather, the desire for expansion spawned the commitment necessary for the transcontinental railroad to become a reality. I am taking the view that technological development is shaped by the productive relations of a period. The transformation of capitalism in the late 19th century was a logical outgrowth of the interaction between the forces and relations of production. Competition between producers begets technological innovations to reduce the costs of production. Firms shrink in number but grow in productive capacity. By the 1870's, the combined productive capacity of firms in a number of industries outstripped effective 97 consumer demand. This oversupply created a downward pres- sure on prices which seriously eroded the rate of profit. The gentlemen's agreements, mergers and trusts which char- acterized this period were efforts to counter the tendency toward falling profits. By limiting price competition and moving toward monopoly control of markets, producers could defy the laws of supply and demand. Clearly, this inter- pretation of 19th century economic history gives pre- eminence to social rather than technological forces. To understand the relationship between the emergence of the large corporation and the growth of the clerical labor force it is important to recognize that enterprises did not merely grow but were transformed in the growth pro- cess. If this were not the case, then the growth of the clerical labor force would have been proportionate to the growth of productive labor. Instead, this period saw a proliferation of clerical labor out of all proportion to that of the rest of the labor force. This can only be explained by changes in the organization of the industrial enterprise. Just as no one individual could supply the necessary capital to meet the needs of larger enterprises, neither could one individual manage these enterprises. The national corporation of the late 19th century was of sufficient scale to economically assume functions previously performed by independent contractors. Locally based commercial middle- men were replaced by sales or marketing departments. 98 Similarly, engineering and accounting departments were at- tached to the once simple production firm. Each of these departments had its own chief officer and managerial staff, and their activities were coordinated by a central manage- ment. The growth and departmentalization of the corpora- tion, and the resultant emergence of hierarchically arranged managerial strata, contributed to the proliferation of cler- ical positions. The national or modern corporation had new needs for communication, both internally and externally. Internally, the division of labor among management necessitated the establishment of networks of communication. What once took place in the head of an individual boss or entrepreneur now involved communication among a group of people. This commun- ication, both among and within departments, was formalized and generally passed along in written form. Externally, expansion into distant markets resulted in a rationaliza- tion or depersonalization of transactions. As with commun- ication inside the corporation, communication among pro- ducers, distributors and consumers took written form. The verbal agreement, a possible basis for transactions in local markets, is not a viable mode of conducting business for strangers of opposed interest interacting across a continent. Besides, prior to 1900 and for some time after, the postal service was a more efficient means of traversing distances than either the telegraph or telephone. Thus, written com- munication became the established means of conducting busi- ness for the national corporation. 99 The new emphasis on written communication set the stage for the growth of a new labor force charged with facilitating inter- and intra-organizational correspon- dence. Stenographers and typists, the core of this new labor force, increased from almost zero in 1870 to over 600,000 in 1920. Table 4.2 shows rates of increase for this group compared with the total clerical category. In line with our earlier discussion of the relation between technology and the social relations of production, I re- ject the tautological explanation which points to the develoPment of the typewriter as the "cause" of the prolif- eration of typists and stenographers (Bliven, 1954; Books, 1947). Rather, the development of the typewriter and the astounding growth of the typist and stenographer group result from the reorganization of the owner-managed enter- prise into the national corporation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Of course, the growth of this group had ramifications for the rest of the clerical category. Messengers, mail carriers, file clerks, and other occupa- tions also expanded in response to the rapidly growing mole hill of paperwork. No sooner than written communication was estab- lished as the basis of corporate correspondence, it was challenged by a new form of technology. Bell's telephone was patented in 1876 and American Telephone and Telegraph came into existence two years later amidst a flood of litigation. By 1890, AT&T was structured in much the same Table 4.2: The Growth of the Typist and Stenographer Category, 1870-1920. (1) (2) (3) total typists & (2) as a Year clerical stenographers % of (1) 1870 96,572 1541 .2 1880 195,208 5,0002 2.6 1890 538,778 33,418 6.2 1900 857,939 112,364 13.1 1910 1,968,853 316,693 16.1 1920 3,359,305 615,154 18.3 Source: Alba M. Edwards, "Comparative Occupational Statistics of the United States, 1870-1940." U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Six- teenth Census of the United States: 1940; Table—4.2 above. 1 Notes: Since the typewriter was not developed until 1874 this figure is for stenographers only. 2Estimate based upon rates of increase between other decades. 100 101 way as it is today. The telephone permitted much greater versatility than was possible with the telegraph. In ser- vice since 1840, the telegraph reached its peak usage in the decade between 1890 and 1900. After that time, the telephone steadily encroached upon the telegraph's posi- tion as the mainstay of rapid communication in the United States. The develOpment of the telephone brought with it a new and numerically significant clerical occupational group-~telephone operators. Between 1900 and 1920 tele- phone operators increased tenfold, from nineteen to one hundred ninety thousand workers (Table 4.3). The develop- ment of telephone service made inroads into other cate- gories of clerical work. Prior to 1900, telephone and telegraph operators were not enumerated separately but in 1900 there were over twice as many telegraph as telephone Operators. By 1910 this ratio had reversed itself; tele- phone operators had become almost double the number of telegraphers, beginning a trend that has continued through the present time. Other clerical occupations adversely affected by the advancement of telephone service were vari- ous categories of messengers whose numbers increased little between 1900 and 1920 and decreased after that time. For all of its advantage of speed, the telephone never replaced written communication as the basic form of capitalist interaction. Adversity is the basic social relationship of capitalism: adversity between capitalist Table 4.3: The Growth of the Telegraph and Telephone Operator Category, 1870-1920. total as a Z of total clerical Year clerical telegraph telephone telegraph telephone 1870 96,572 7,061 7.3 1880 195,208 19,459 10.0 1890 538,778 43,860 8.1 1900 857,939 44,101 19,158 7.4 2.2 1911) 1,968,853 55,263 97,893 7.8 5.0 1920 3,359,305 62,753 190,160 7.5 5.7 Source: Janet M. Hooks, "WOmen's Occupations Through Seven Decades." U.S. Department of Labor, WOman's Bureau, Bulletin # 218, 1947, Table 118; Table 4.3 above. 102 103 and worker, adversity between seller and buyer, adversity among hierarchically stratified employees. In such a system the written agreement, the legally binding contract, be- comes‘the primary basis for transaction. Security is to be found in the ability of the state to enforce documented agreements. As such, the paperwork of capitalism--packing slips and invoices, bills and receipts, paychecks and con- tracts--could not be replaced by the telephone. In fact, the occurrence of telephone conversations would come to be docu- mented and their contents confirmed through correspondence. The culmination of all of these written transactions is the company books through which the circulation of capi- tal is monitored. Employees charged with the keeping of the books have traditionally been at the pinnacle of the office hierarchy. The development of the corporate form of business enterprise created needs for both new bookkeeping procedures and new personnel. As a legal entity, the corporate books were a matter of public concern. As such, bookkeeping moved beyond the idiosyncratic systems established by individual owners for their own purposes to more standardized forms. The development of double entry bookkeeping is at- tributed to the 15th century Italian monk Paciolo. It is no accident that this system should have been born in this time and place since Italy was then the commercial center of rapidly growing east-west trade. This alone would ex-' plain the necessity for record keeping of some sort but not for this new system of checks and balances bookkeeping. 104 Paciolo's system was an outgrowth of the means of financing trading ventures; they were joint stock companies employing the combined capitals of a number of speculators. Double entry‘bookkeeping is a child of mistrust; providing a check on possible fraud or abuse of that collective capital by any of the partners or agents. Given these beginnings it shouldn't be surprising that interest in double entry bookkeeping re-emerged in the capitalist nations of the late nineteenth century. The great increase in business activity resulted in an overall increased concern for record keeping. However, the struc- ture of the modern corporation dictated the form of those records. The joint stock company and the separation of ownership from management necessitated a means by which stockholders could monitor the use of their capital by man- agement. The system which developed was for stockholder elected directors to be charged with overseeing the mainten- ance of a complete set of books subject to inspection by independent auditors (Littleton, 1933: 307). Thus double entry bookkeeping was widely adopted as a means by which the capitalist class could maintain control over its repre- sentatives. Double entry bookkeeping is first and foremost de- signed to detect errors, either inadvertent or larcenous (Eldridge, 1931: 45-6). Embezzlement, or other forms of misappropriation, would have been extremely hard to accom— plish in the small firm of the owner/manager. Few, if any 105 employees had access to funds, and supervision was suffic- iently close to dissuade those employees from all but the most petty thefts. The national corporation, however, be- ing geographically diffuse and with separate budgetary units, provided its personnel with far more Opportunities to demonstrate fiscal initiative. Bookkeepers, accountants and auditors become the stockholder's first line of defense against the siphoning of corporate funds. The emergence of double entry bookkeeping in the late nineteenth century was not solely a function of efforts to control thievery. It also arose out of technical accounting problems concomitant with the growth of the corporate form of organization. These problems were related to the accur- ate determination of profits for the purpose of declaring and apportioning dividends to stockholders. Distinctions needed to be maintained between capital and profits which were heretofore unnecessary. This problem was exacerbated by the tremendous increase in the size of fixed capitals under the control of a single board of directors, necessi- tating precise information as to costs, depreciation and income. Bookkeeping became the basis for managerial deci- sion-making as well as the basis by which the corporation's stockholders controlled management. According to Edwards' census estimates, bookkeepers and accountants comprised the largest of the clerical occu- pational categories through the turn of the century (Table 4.4). In spite of the fact that their numbers roughly Table 4.4: The Growth of the Bookkeeper and Accountant Category, 1870-1920. (1) (2) (3) total bookkeepers (2) as a Year clerical & accountants % of (l) 1870 96,572 38,7761 40.2 1880 195,208 74,9191 38.4 1890 538,778 159,374 29.6 1900 857,939 254,880 29.7 1910 1,968,853 486,700 24.7 1920 3,359,305 734,688 21.9 Source: Alba M. Edwards, "Comparative Occu— pational Statistics of the United States, 1870-1940." U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940; Table 4.4 above. Notes: 1Estimated by Edwards. 106 107 doubled over each census decade, their growth was generally smaller than that of the clerical category as a whole. This slower rate of growth for bookkeepers and accountants needn't be explained beyond pointing to the extremely rapid increase in the numbers of clerical communication workers during this period. However, it is likely that the highly skilled book- keeper function was, even at this early date, beginning to be broken down so that functions previously handled by book- keepers were now performed by workers designated simply as clerks. I would like, at this point, to present data on the development of those clerical occupations involved with the storage and distribution of material goods. However, avail- able data for these workers are so sketchy that to present them in tabular form would give unfounded legitimacy to the estimates. The only data available for the early period are those of Edwards for "packers and shippers." These estimates indicate that this category of workers grew in proportion to the total clerical labor force between the years 1880 and 1910. Recent censes show that the proportion of packers and shippers to the total clerical category has declined since 1910. This decline is not surprising in light of our earlier discussion of productive and unproduc- tive labor. The great majority of these workers are pro- ductive in that they are performing tasks which would be a necessary part of the production process within any mode of production. We would expect that this group would have 108 experienced increased productivity per worker but a decrease in overall numbers. It is unfortunate that better data for this group are not available so as to permit and analysis of the different patterns of development of productive and unpro- ductive clerical labor. To a large extent, the growth pattern of the clerical labor force in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen- turies was a harbinger of subsequent developments. The cler- ical labor force continued to grow at a rate two to three times that of the total labor force. This rate of growth slowed considerably in the 1920's and 30's but picked up again following WOrld War II. This latter period, especially the 1960's resembled the turn of the century both with re- gard to the high degree of economic concentration and the significant reorganization of economic activity. This re- organization took the form of a proliferation of service producing institutions, both private and governmental, pro~ viding information, ideas, technical expertise, financial support or managerial psychotherapy. All of these services, be they independent or adjunct to established production firms, are paper intensive and hence clerical intensive. Much as in the 1880's and 90's, the new business forms result- ed in a boom of communications technology and workers. Since 1920, we find that the stenographer, typist and secretary category grew at an extremely rapid pace. The de- mand for these workers appears to be almost insatiable. Bookkeepers too continued to grow at a rate somewhat faster 109 than the clerical category as a whole. In early censes, cashiers were included in the bookkeeping category, but their growth as a result of the development of self-service shopping has warranted a separate listing in more recent censes. Two other occupational categories demonstrating rapid rates of growth are office machine operators and bank tellers. The former group reflects the continued con- centration of capital in ever larger agglomerates; the lat- ter, the geographical diffusion of these new giants exempli- fied by the incredible proliferation of branch banks in recent years. Telephone operators, still a numerically important part of the clerical group, have not grown as fast as the total clerical category. Rationalization and mechanization throughout this century have limited the growth of this group compared with the increase in telephone usage (Best, 1933). This is of particular interest once we recognize that many telephone operators are productive labor, that is, they produce a surplus for their employer. This productive group is comprised of those operators employed by the tele- phone company and involved in facilitating rather than merely monitoring telephone communication. The increased productivity and fewer number of these workers follows the pattern of other productive workers. Atypical, however, are the depressed wages of these employees which showed little gain until the late 1960's. 110 In this chapter I have traced the growth of the clerical labor force since 1870, with emphasis upon develop- ment in the early part of this period. The growth of this labor force is a given: a fact not predicted from theory. Explanations for this growth are thus post hoc. However, I have attempted to formulate a post hoc explanation which moves beyond technological determinism to see social actors organizing and reorganizing basic institutional structures within the confines of even more basic structures. This perspective is of paramount importance in our consideration of clerical wages in the next chapter. Chapter V CLERICAL WAGES, 1890-1970 Robert Burns (1954: 265) writes that "strong forces operating in the economy over a period of years have weak- ened the former preferred economic position of salaried employees, DESPITE the tremendous growth of the volume of white-collar work during this period." (emphasis mine) I would argue that the erosion of the clerical wage advan- tage did not occur DESPITE but BECAUSE of the tremendous growth of this group. Within capitalism, wage levels re- flect power differences among groups of workers vis a vis the capitalist and, as Mills (1956) perspicaciously ob- serves, numbers alone do not constitute power. In fact, increasing numbers probably weakened clerical labor by creating the necessity for their wages and labor to be con- trolled as had been the case for productive factory labor. Whereas no theory of wage determination will be developed in this chapter, several implicit assumptions about wages are drawn from earlier theoretical work. The orthodox economic theory that wages are determined by the marginal product of labor is rejected (cf. Clark, 1931:, Gordon, 1972; Hunt and Sherman, 1975; Marshall, 1962). This and other economic theories which purport to calculate 111 112 a "natural" level for wages have repeatedly been attacked for shrouding capitalist exploitation in the cloak of science. The denials of their proponents do not alter the fact that such wage theories are determinist models which deny the role of human actors. Rather than viewing wage levels as a calculable function of a natural economic law, I, following Marx (1967) and Veblen (1934), see them as a function of the bargaining power of parties of opposed interest. Neither Marx nor Veblen presents a theory of wages per se but rather a theory of power relations among people or classes in capitalism. Thus, given the lower limit of subsistence and the upper limit of some amount of surplus-value, wages will vary depending upon the relative power of worker and capitalist in each specific situation. In this chapter I trace the wage history of clerical labor in the United States from the late nineteenth century. If it was necessary to advise caution in approaching the growth figures of the previous chapter, then nothing less than total trepidation should suffice for wage data. Apart from the problem of scarcity of usable data, problems of comparability arise from the use of numerous different methods of collecting and calculating average wages or earn- ings. This problem is compounded when attempts are made to adjust the average wage by the cost of living to determine "real wages." Depending upon which combination of wage and cost figures is used, conclusions can vary radically. While I recognize these problems, I believe that the data I will 113 present are sufficiently reliable to illustrate important trends in clerical wages. The most widely accepted wage series covering the turn of the century is that of Paul Douglas (1930).1 Douglas' data span the period 1890-1926 and are the first wage data to permit comparisons between clerical and other occupational groups (Table 5.1). The figures presented by Douglas are average annual earnings of employed workers. This average is calculated by dividing total annual payroll expenditures by an average of the number of employees cov- ered by that payroll. The data were attained from the Census of Manufacturers with state and industry data used as a basis for interpolating intermediate years. Unfortun- ately, Douglas' data for clerical workers include super- visors and lower level managers (Column 1). Thus, as he himself recognizes, his overall figures for clerical em- ployees overstate the actual clerical earnings for this period. Douglas (360) states that data for clerks in rail- road companies collected by the Interstate Commerce Com- mission represents a truer approximation of exclusively clerical wages. I accept these data as a base as well as Douglas' estimate based upon statewide data from New York and Ohio that the railroad figures probably understate 1For a critique of the Douglas series see Albert Rees, Real Wages in Manufacturin , 1890-1914. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961. Table 5.1: The Relative Economic Position of Clerical Employees and Wage Earners in Manufacturing, 1890-1926. Average Annual Earnings Clerical1 Wage Earners Year Manufacturing Clerical Manufacturing (3) as a Economic & Steam R.R.s Adjusted? & Steam R.R.s s of (2) Condition 1) (2) (3) 1890 $ 848 $ 600 $ 439 73.2 prosperity 1891 882 627 442 70.5 Minor recession 1892 885 627 446 71.1 recovery 1893 923 654 420 64.2 market collapse 1894 928 663 386 58.2 1895 941 671 416 62.0 mostly 1896 954 680 406 59.7 depressed 1897 970 689 408 59.2 years 1898 1010 716 412 57.5 1899 1004 716 426 59.5 1900 1011 716 435 60.8 1901 1009 716 456 63.7 . 1902 1025 734 473 64.4 PIOSPerltY 1903 1037 734 486 66.2 1904 1056 752 477 63.4 1905 1076 770 494 64.2 1906 1074 761 506 66.5 1907 1091 779 522 67.0 panic 1908 1111 788 475 60.3 depression 1909 1136 806 518 64.3 1910 1156 824 558 67.7 1911 1213 860 537 62.4 1912 1209 860 550 64.0 semi-stagnation 1913 1236 877 578 65.9 1914 1257 895 580 64.8 1915 1267 904 568 62.8 1916 1359 967 651 67.3 war 1917 1477 1056 774 73.3 prosperity 1918 1697 1209 980 81.1 1919 1914 1361 1158 85.1 1920 2160 1540 1358 88.2 1921 2134 1522 1180 77.5 sharp recession 1922 2067 1468 1149 78.3 1923 2126 1513 1254 82.9 prosperity 1924 2196 1567 1240 79.1 recession 1925 2239 1594 1280 80.3 1926 2310 1647 1309 79.5 rec°very Source: Paul H. Douglas, Real wages in the United States, 1890-1926. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930. Notes: 1Counted among clerical workers were a number of supervisors. and lower level executives (Douglas, p. 362). 2These figures are derived from the average annual earnings of clerks in railroad offices in 1914 to which 8% is added based on Douglas' comparative estimate of railroad to all clerks. The estimates for other years were arrived at by applying the relative dollar earnings of column (1) (1914 = 100) to the $895 earnings shown in column (2). 114 115 clerical salaries by 8%. Using 1914 as a base year2 , I took the reported annual earnings for railroad clerks ($829) and added 8% to arrive at an overall estimate for that year of $895. To this figure I applied Douglas' relative salary index for clerical employees to attain estimates for preced- ing and subsequent years (Column 2). Whereas the actual num- bers presented are no more than estimates there is rela- tively widespread consensus that Douglas' data are the best available (Lescohier, 1935; Woytinsky, 1953). I believe that my use of these data is consistent with Douglas' own estimates for clerical earnings in this period. Beginning with 1890 the average annual earnings of wage earners in manufacturing was 73.2% that for clerical workers. These data show a correspondence between periods of economic prosperity and declines in the wage advantage of clerical over production workers. Since 1890 was the cul— mination of a decade of sustained prosperity, it is reason- able to guess that the ratio of productive labor to clerical earnings had reached its historic peak. Not until the war- time boom of 1917 would this ratio be superseded. I would therefore suggest that the losses of clerical workers were more dramatic than the overall six percent difference shown for 1890 and 1926. Rather, by considering the range of fluctuation of the productive to clerical earnings ratio 2Between 1915 and 1921 the Interstate Commerce Com- mission used a different method for calculating the earnings of railroad clerks. Thus, figures for this period are not strictly comparable to those of earlier and later years. 116 for the first and last decades examined, the losses of clerical workers were more on the order of 15 to 20 per- centage points. As stated above, the wages of clerical workers de- clined relative to those of productive workers in years of prosperity and improved in years of recession. The most significant periods of decline were the early 1900's and the wartime prosperity years of 1914-17. In the former period of 1900-06, manufacturing production increased 56.1%, compared with a 29% increase in manufacturing workers. The difference is accounted for by a 20% increase in output per worker. In the wartime period production increased 38.2% with a rise in employment of 30.1%. In this period output per worker rose 13.8% (WOytinsky, 1953: Table 2). As was suggested in my earlier theoretical discussion, production workers are able to trade productivity increases for higher wages in times of economic expansion. The lesser ability of unproductive clerical workers to strike this bargain accounts for the decretion of their economic advantage over production workers in these periods. Not only did clerical worker's wages decline in per- iods of prosperity relative to those of production workers, but their wages declined relative to prices as well. Cler- ical wages adjusted by the cost of living (real wages) drop- ped 16% between 1898 and 1907 and 22% between 1915 and 1920 (Douglas, 1930: Table 134). Real annual earnings for wage earners in manufacturing increased 1% in the former period 117 and 14% in the latter (Douglas, 1930: Table 88). For the period 1900 to 1926 manufacturing workers experienced an average gain in real income of 7%. For the same period clerical workers experienced a 4% loss (Douglas, 1930: 397). Good data covering the depression and war years are extremely hard to come by. Perhaps the most serious at- tempt at compiling clerical salary data for this period is Ruth M. Corn's (1948) unpublished masters thesis upon which Burns based his later article. Corn's data cover the per- iod 1929 to 1947 and are derived largely from indices com- piled by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (see Table 5.2). Unfortunately, clerical workers are combined with professional workers in this series resulting in stated average earnings well above actual clerical earnings (Col- umn 1). To adjust for this difference, I calculated the average annual earnings of clerical workers from the 1933, 1935, 1937 and 1939 censes of manuractures. I found that for these four years clerical earnings averaged 84.2% and ranged from 82.9 to 86.6% of Corn's estimates, inclusive of professional workers. I used the 84.2% average to ad- just Corn's data for the remainder of the period she con- siders (Column 2). For the overall period 1929 to 1947 earnings of clerical workers increased 47% compared with a 77% increase for productive wage earners. As in the previous period dis- cussed, clerical workers improved their economic position relative to production workers in years of recession or 118 depression but lost ground in years of prosperity such as the early 1940's when the economy was spurred by war pro- duction. In 1942 wage workers' earnings surpassed those of clerical workers for the first time. Coming up through the most recent decades we will see a continuation of wage patterns established earlier in the century. Data for this period are taken from the "Annual Labor Force Reports" (Series P-60) of the Current Population Survey compiled by the Bureau of the Census. This series is based upon household rather than establishment surveys and thus presents problems of comparability with earlier figures. The household survey focusses on the worker, whereas estab- lishment surveys focus on the job. In the former approach workers holding two jobs would be classified by the position which occupied most hours whereas in the latter they would be double counted. In addition, household data include a number of workers not reflected in payrolls such as unpaid workers who work fifteen or more hours per week. Self- employed persons, private household workers, and those per- sons with jobs but not at work and not paid during the sur- vey week. Because of these differences in the method of data collection and the tendency of household respondents to overstate their occupations while understating their in- comes, the wage figures of the Current Population Survey are somewhat lower than those of the Census of Manufactures or Bureau of Labor Statistics (U.S. Department of Labor, 1968). Table 5.2: The Relative Economic Position of Clerical Employees and wage Earners, 1929-1947. Average Annual Earningsl (333323? (Eunical Wage C” asaa Eamrmuc‘4 Adjusted:3 Earners % of (2) Condition Year (1) (2) (3) 1929 $1820 $1532 $1404 91.6 1930 1820 1532 1339 87.4 1931 1768 1489 1248 83.8 deep depression 1932 1612 1357 1053 77.6 1933 1534 1292 1001 77.5 1934 1547 1303 1066 81.8 1935 1599 1346 1118 83.1} recovery 1936 1651 1390 1196 86.0 1937 1703 1434 1287 89.7 "boonW 1938 1703 1434 1248 87.0 recession 1939 1716 1445 1300 90.0 1940 1755 1478 1339 90.6 1941 1833 1543 1482 96.0 1942 1937 1631 1716 105.2 war prosperity 1943 2132 1795 1963 109.4 1944 2249 1894 2119 111.9 1945 2340 1970 2132 108.2 1946 2509 2113 2230 105.5 recession 1947 2678 2255 2483 110.1 recovery’ ' Source: Ruth M. Corn, "The Relative Economic Position of Clerical Workers, 1929-1947." (Unpublished Masters Thesis), Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 1948. Notes: 1Average weekly earnings presented by Corn times fifty-two. 2Includes professional workers as school teachers, government employees, and agents in insurance and financial companies. 384.9% of column (1) to adjust for inclusion of pro- fessional and non-clerical employees (see text). 4Douglas Dowd, The Twisted Dream. Cambridge: Winthrop, 1977, Table 4-1, p. 92. 119 120 Comparing estimates of clerical earnings based on the Corn series discussed above with the Current Population Survey we find, as expected, that the latter figures are lower than those attained from establishment data. In this case the disparity is exacerbated because I simply multi- plied Corn's weekly averages by 52, which does not take in- to account periods of unemployment as would an actual annual average. However, the figures are sufficiently in accord to permit joining the two series at 1947/48. More problematic is the disparity in wage earners' income in the two series. The expectation that the Current Population Survey data would run lower than Corn's establishment data is not realized because the census series is limited to semi-skilled operatives whereas Corn includes skilled craftspersons in her wage earner category. Thus, these data are not comparable and should be only loosely accepted as indicative of actual wage trends. These problems aside, we can see that for the period 1947 to 1970 the wages of operatives continued to move be- yond those of clerical workers (Table 5.3). As in the earlier series, clerical workers lost ground in years of economic expansion, recovering only part of these losses in years of recession. The most dramatic relative losses in clerical wages came in the extended boom period of the 1960's. Between 1962 and 1968 operatives' wages increased 39%, compared with only a 23% increase in clerical wages. With the economic slowdown setting in at the end of the Table 5.3: The Relative Economic Position of Clerical Employees and Wage Earners, 1948-1970. Median Income1 than (2)au:a Iazxrndc Clerical Earners % of (1) Condition2 Year (1) (2) 1948 $2347 $2395 102.0 prosperity 1949 2466 2325 94.3 recession 1950 2453 2521 102.8 1951 2628 2730 103.9 } expansion 1952 2718 2890 106.3 1953 2997 3098 103.4 . 1954 2982 3034 101.7 re°9831°n 1955 3115 3288 105.6 . 1956 3268 3508 107.3 pr°sPerlty 1957 3375 3617 107.2 . 1958 3545 3583 101.1 re°9531°n 1959 3693 3754 101.7 1960 3730 3926 105.3 . . 1961 3798 4044 106.5 “aid receSSL°n 1962 3912 4205 107.5 1963 4025 4389 109.0 1964 4191 4471 106.7 1965 4261 4612 108.2 expansion 1966 4341 4857 111.9 1967 4711 5458 115.9 1968 4802 5843 121.7 1969 5361 6313 117.8 slowdown and 1970 5726 6627 115.7 inflation Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Current Po ulation Surve , (Series P-60), Nos. 5, 6, 7, 9, II, 14, 16, I9, 23, 27, 50, 33, 35, 37, 39, 41, 43, 47, 51, 53, 60, 66, 75, 80. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1 Notes: These data are collected in household surveys in contrast to series for earlier years based upon establish- ment of payroll surveys. 2Douglas Dowd, The Twisted Dream. Cambridge: Winthrop, 1977, Table 4-1, p. 92. 122 decade, clerical workers begin to recover some of the losses incurred during the boom years. The same pattern can be seen in virtually all of the recession years of this period: 1948, 1953-54, and 1957-58. The 1960 slowdown stands as the single, although undramatic, exception. It bears repeating that wages are not determined by mysterious forces or natural laws. They are a function of the interaction between employer and employee or the capital- ist and wage earning classes. Saying that wage levels are "caused" by supply and demand or worker productivity ob- scures the human relationships at the root of this or any other economic system. Wage levels are "caused" by what the employer pays the wage laborer. This is a simple tau- tology. In capitalism the final determination of the wage level will reflect the struggle between the employer's attempts to minimize wages relative to the total value pro- duced, and the employee's efforts to maximize this ratio. This is obvious but not tautological. Neither is it uni- versal, for like the wage itself, this relationship is spe- cific to particular forms of economic organization. Only by accepting this relationship of adversity as given, can one speak of supply and demand, productivity or invest- ments in human capital as determining wage levels. What they determine is the probability that one or the other side will prevail to its own best advantage in wage negoti- ations. Thus, human intentionality is not overcome by sup- ply and demand, but the likelihood that this intent will be realized is affected. 123 Most conventional analyses point to "the law of sup- ply and demand" as the nemesis of the clerical wage earner (Burns, 1954: Corn, 1948: Douglas, 1930). Increasing edu- cational opportunities and the opening of clerical positions to women are seen as having expanded the available supply of clerical labor faster than the growth of demand. Earlier, we accepted the basic logic of this position while arguing that the development of public education at the secondary level and the recruitment of women into clerical occupations were conscious policies aimed at increasing the available pool of clerical labor. At this point the usefulness of the supply and demand model for explaining the direction of cler— ical wages needs to be examined. We can begin by arguing, as does the conventional model, that education and feminization, be they the result of serrendipity or conscious policy, did increase the pool of potential clerical workers. Furthermore, it is reasonable enough to expect, given capitalist relations or production, that this expanded pool would have a depressive effect on clerical wages. However, at the point that clerical wages equal or fall below those of semi-skilled production workers I would expect that those competing for the once more desir- able clerical positions would begin to compete for factory positions. Thus, there should be a leveling effect which would act as a check on the continual increase of the cleri- cal pool and the continual decline of clerical wages.3 3Thn3pudokmtis:naxgnimaitxuznoteaqflaflmxlbylhihurSkxfliey and Thomas Gavett , "Analysis of Occupational Wage Differences . " mnthly Labor Review, Vol. 94, No. 6, (June), 1971. 124 Of course, the sex segregation of occupations and the super exploitation of women prevent the actual formation of such a fluid labor pool but this point is well beyond the scope of supply and demand explanations. By virtue of its own logic, we would expect a supply and demand theory to posit a point of equilibration rather than positing ever increasing sup- ply despite ever decreasing wages. Whereas increasing sup- ply and decreasing wages has occurred, this phenomenon is not readily explicable by supply and demand theory. The effect of worker productivity on the wage history of clerical workers is much more salient than supply and de- mand. Focussing on productivity permits us not only to ex- plain the long term wage losses of clerical relative to pro- duction workers but also why these losses are most likely to occur in periods of economic boom and recede in periods of economic bust (Figure 5.1). In periods of economic expan- sion, investments in capital equipment, and production sched- ules at or close to capacity create conditions conducive to increased worker productivity. In a Faustian bargain, pro- duction workers accede to productivity increases in exchange for higher wages. Clerical workers, on the other hand, have been offered no such deals. Conventional analyses often point to low clerical productivity as an explanation for sinking wages. The implication, of course, is that if clerical employees would work harder and faster, their wages would increase. This position ignores the absurdity of measuring the Figure 5.1: The Movement of the Wage to Clerical Worker's Earnings Index in Relation to the Productivity of Capital, 1890-1970. l ' . 1 if 3133c of wage 'o 1 rice 3 T I Eworkir'l earai’goile f , '1 {Real 386.. pri’ata,donect}chproducfi -——-.- .0- 1.”-.. . e or nit of ca ital in at L'! 1:; n ,—.],9; '1 W L' I 1 I 3. 2.1-Lcjfl‘wQ}i.f:_f- 191 t 135) igju 1M 1' lRelative index of wage earner's incomes as a percentage of clerical worker's earnings (1967 - 100). 2Adapted from Historical Statistics of the United States, Series W 1-11, 1976, p. 948, (1967 - 100). 125 126 productivity of unproductive labor. Increases in output per worker of clerical employees has a meaning fundamen- tally different from increasing the output of productive employees. Productive workers, by virtue of their posi- tion, have been able to use productivity increases as a bargaining point in wage negotiations. Unproductive cler- ical employees have not. Although data are not available, I believe it is fair to say that output per clerical worker has increased over the course of this century. These in- creases, however, have not been matched by concomitant in- creases in wages, thus belying the assumption that what has been true for the factory worker is true for the office worker. Over the course of the past 100 years clerical wages have declined relative to the wages of productive workers, and they have declined most precipitously in periods of economic expansion. Production, at least in the more ad- vanced sectors of the economy, has become an increasingly capital intensive process with relatively fewer workers receiving greater real wages. Office work, although increas- ingly mechanized, remains labor intensive with wages repre- senting a deduction from revenues. Thus, the capitalist struggles to maintain wages at the lowest possible level. As we will see in the next chapter, the feminization of the clerical labor force is a central factor in the decretion of clerical wages. A 1970 comparison of clerical and pro- duction workers, controlling for sex, shows that male 127 clerical workers earn 15% more than male factory workers and female clerical workers earn 20% more than female factory workers. However, due to the uneven sex composi- tion of these occupations and wage discrimination against women, the total figures for both sexes show production workers outearning clerical workers by 16%. Chapter VI FEMINIZATION OF THE: CLERICAL LABOR FORCE The picture of the nineteenth century countinghouse pieced together by a number of students of clerical history is a picture without women (Benet, 1972; Davies, 1974: Lockwood, 1958: Mills, 1956). In 1970 women comprised be- tween two and three percent of the clerical labor force, compared with fifteen percent of the labor force as a whole. Of those women who were counted among the clerical labor force, about half were listed as clerks in government of- fices where women first gained entrance during the Civil War. Thus, in 1870 women accounted for only slightly over one percent of clerical workers in private industry. One hundred years later, the 1970 Census showed that women ac- counted for close to three-fourth of the total clerical labor force and 90% of all office workers. In this section we shall explore the transition from the "blackcoated worker" of the nineteenth century to the "white-bloused employee" who has emerged as the core of the modern office. In a 1910 report to the Senate on the history of the female labor force in the United States, Helen Sumner (1911) writes that women in clerical occupations "have infringed upon man's traditional domain." As in other occupations 128 129 male clerical workers must have recognized the threat posed by women to their wages and job security. Throughout the nineteenth century males in a wide variety of trades and industries has struggled against the employment of women. As early as 1820 tailors considering emigration to the United States were warned that ”their trade is much injured by the employment of women and boys who work from twenty-five to fifty percent cheaper than men" (Lebergott, 1964: 68). In 1819 journeymen tailors in New York went on strike to pre- vent their master tailors from employing women, and some years later master tailors of Cincinnati, Louisville and St. Louis complained that journeymen refused to work for estab- lishments employing women (Andrews and Bliss, 1911). This opposition of working men to the employment of women was not a case of misogyny but rather a reflection of their job and wage insecurity. A labor newspaper wrote in 1835, "(A)ny project which introduces females into employment belonging to the male operative necessarily ruins his occupation and forces him to resort to some other mode of procuring a sub- sistence. The prices given to females are gener- ally one-fourth of what men receive--and thus a destructive competition commences between the male and the female which must inevitably end in the impoverishment of both."(Sumner, 1911: 28-9) Beyond recognizing the effects of female employment, labor groups believed that they understood the cause of the prob- lem and called upon workers to resist. An 1835 statement in the Philadelphia Trades Union reads, "Oppose with all your mind and with all your strength for it (female employment) will prove 130 our ruin. We must strive to obtain sufficient re— muneration for our labor to keep the wives and daughters and sisters of our people at home. . . Avoid by every means the bringing of female labor into competition with ours. That cormorant capi- tal will have every man, woman and child to toil; but let us exert our faculties to oppose its de- signs, and the altars of freedom may yet stand!" (Andrews and Bliss, 1911: 47) In general, male opposition took the form of resis- ting the introduction of women into predominantly male occu— pations and industries while encouraging women already en- trenched in positions to organize and strive for equal pay. For male workers, equal pay for women was believed to be the best protection of their own jobs and wages. The resistance of male clerical workers to the intro- duction of women to the office in the last decades of the nineteenth century was somewhat attenuated by the transfor- mation of the capitalist enterprise at this time. The emer- gence of the corporate form of organization resulted in the growth of the office, which included a tremendous prolifer- ation of clerical and managerial personnel. Many of these new management positions were filled by senior clerks, permitting advancement of more junior clerks in the newly expanded of- fice hierarchy. Both growth in the number of available posi- tions and the imposition of a rigid status hierarchy which served to separate male and female clerical workers eased the friction which had accompanied the introduction of women into other occupations. The restriction of women to the more rou- tine office tasks and their supervision by men assured male clerical workers that women posed no threat to their posi— tions. 131 Because feminization of the clerical labor force did occur with relatively little male resistence, there is a tendency on the part of some writers to dismiss this resis- tance totally (Benet, 1972; Davies, 1974). There are, how- ever, recorded instances of male dissent. For example, the employment of women was among the grievances which led tO the telegraphers strike of 1903 (U.S. Department of Labor, 1907). Such oppostion was in most cases short-lived. Cler- ical Operations were at this time more expendable than those performed by productive labor, Often allowing companies tO outwit striking employees. The telegraphers mentioned above are properly considered productive workers, however, even they were unsuccessful in achieving their demands. Perhaps the most notable result Of the telegraphers strike was that the telephone achieved an even firmer grip on the American communications system. Women did become telegraphers in increasing numbers but the telegraph was fast becoming an anachronism. There is little documentation Of the scope and inten- sity Of male clerical opposition to female employment. How- ever, to the extent that male workers did attempt to limit the introduction Of women into clerical positions, their efforts, like those Of Sisyphus, were doomed to monumental failure. Table 6.1 traces the feminization of clerical occupations over the past one hundred years. Clearly, femin- ization proceeded steadily over the century, with the great- est increases in female employment occurring in those periods 132 where clerical occupations showed the greatest increase rela- tive to the total labor force. The feminization of the overall clerical category should not lead us to overlook variation among the individual occupations of which it is comprised. Table 6.2 shows the degree of feminization Of occupations classified as clerical in the 1970 census. It should be noted that a number of non- Office clerical occupations such as postal clerk or meter reader are still predominantly male. These male dominated, non-Office positions tend to be among the most highly paid Of the clerical category. Court stenographer and real es- tate appraiser are examples Of such occupations. Although women clearly dominate the office, this dominance is limited to numerical superiority. Males comprise a majority of cler- ical supervisors and, though not classified as clerical workers, the majority of office managers are male as well. Table 6.2 shows that in addition to losing the battle to restrict the employment of women in clerical occupations, male workers were unsuccessful in their attempts to attain equal pay for those women employed in such positions. Two patterns are evident from the table: in any given occupation women earn less than men and women are concentrated in the lower paying clerical occupations. Of the eleven clerical occupations for which the female median income exceeds $5,000 per year, nine are made up of over fifty percent' males. Thus, as in the labor force as a whole, female cleri- cal workers with the highest earnings are in predominantly male occupations. Table 6.1: Growth and Feminization Of the Clerical Labor Force, 1870-1970. Chadcal asa:% Eamfle lkmaheas afihpkamd Cleaned a.%<flfall Year Workers Persons Workers Clerical Workers 1870 90,852 .7 2,195 2.4 1880 185,830 1.1 8,010 4.3 1890 491,887 2.1 82,899 16.9 1900 769,564 2.6 203,789 26.5 1910 1,885,028 5.1 677,310 35.9 1920 3,311,350 8.0 1,601,139 48.4 1930 4,274,078 9.0 2,223,415 52.0 1940 4,847,197 9.1 2,549,302 52.6 1950 7,632,000 12.8 4,597,000 60.2 1960 9,783,000 14.7 6,629,000 67.8 1970 13,714,000 17.4 10,233,000 74.6 Source: Evelyn Nakano Glenn and Roslyn Feldberg, "Structural Change and Proletarianization: The Case Of Clerical WOrk." New York City, 1976. Unpublished paper presented at the meetings of the American Sociological Association, 133 134 The wage gap between male and female clerical workers goes a long way toward explaining the feminization Of cleri- cal occupations. However, that women earn cheaper wages is not the only reason that clerical work has come to be under- stood as woman's work. If the lure Of cheap wages alone were sufficient basis for the employment Of women than we would expect that women would predominate in virtually all occupations. To more completely understand the feminization Of clerical work, we need to look more closely at the situ- ation Of women and the capitalist enterprise prior to the turn of the century when women were first recruited in large numbers into clerical positions. The federal government became the first major employer Of women as clerical workers during the Civil War. Due to reductions in the available male labor force, Secretary of State Elias Spinner first hired women to work as trimmers of treasury notes. Over time, women assumed clerical positions 1 Commenting upon this experiment in in other departments. 1869 Spinner declared, "(S)some Of the females are doing more and better work for $900 per annum than many male clerks who were paid twice that amount." (Sumner, 1911: 240) It would thereafter not take long for private industry to recognize the advantages of hiring women for clerical posi- tions and over the next decades their rates Of employment multiplied rapidly. 1Through 1868, female clerical employment in the fed- eral government was limited to the Library of Congress and the Departments of Treasury, Post Office and War. Table 6.2: Percent Female,and Male and Female Median Incomes for Clerical Occupations, 1970 Secretaries Receptionists Telephone Operators Typists Stenographers Calculating machine operator Teacher Aides, except school monitors Keypunch Operators Bookkeeping & billing machine Operators Bank Tellers Cashiers Billing Clerks Bookkeepers File Clerks Library attendants & assistants Clerical assistants. social welfare Enumerators & Interviewers Not specified clerical workers Proofreaders Payroll & timekeeping clerks Office machine Operators, n.e.c. Counter clerks, except food Statistical clerks Duplicating machine Operators Tabulating machine operators Clerical supervisors n.e.c. Mail handlers, except post office Estimators & investigators,n.e.c. Ticket station & express agents Collectors, bill & account Postal clerks weighers Telegraph Operators Computer a peripheral equipment Insurance adjustors, examiners & investigators Stock clerks & storekeepers Expeditors and production controllers Messengers including telegraph & office boys Dispatchers & starters, vehicle Shipping 8 receiving clerks Mail carriers, post office Real estate appraisers Meter readers, utilities Percent Female Employment 97.6 94.8 94.5 94.2 93.8 91.3 90.2 89.9 89.5 86.2 83.9 82.4 82.1 82.0 78.7 77.8 77.7 75.4 75.2 68.8 68.4 67.0 64.4 57.3 49.6 43.0 43.0 39.0 36.7 36.2 30.8 30.4 29.5 29.3 26.7 23.2 22.8 20.0 Male Median Income 7536 4281 6469 6025 10512 6305 1769 7454 6302 5749 3154 6880 7401 4952 1546 4606 8348 7834 5317 7956 5270 6343 10865 4937 9859 8676 6471 8354 6979 8132 7482 9198 6288 8736 3029 8454 6427 8113 10765 6679 Female Median Income 4803 3376 4241 4042 5246 4713 1672 4597 4312 4179 2431 4340 4477 3430 2058 3843 1440 4110 5202 2938 4887 4125 5263 6995 3311 4662 6194 4043 5721 3823 5258 5287 5232 4232 5297 2110 3885 3977 4717 6075 4572 Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Census of the Population: 1970, Final Report PC(2)-7A, Occupational Characteristics. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. 135 136 In an 1888 survey conducted by the Commissioner of Labor employers were asked why they hired women to fill var- ious positions (U.S. Department Of Labor, 1889). Common responses with regard to clerical workers included "better adapted," "more easily controlled," "more easily procured," and "cheaper." Each of these responses required some fur- ther explication as they lay at the heart of the feminiza- tion process. Most significant, I believe, is the state- ment that women are better adapted to clerical occupations. That women in the 1880's would be considered better adapted tO clerical work indicates that the nature Of these posi- tions was at that time changing. Otherwise, it would be unreasonable to posit that women are better adapted to work traditionally performed by males. For certain, the wide- spread adoption Of the typewriter in the 1880's and '90's had much to do with the acceptance Of women as clerical workers (Davies,1974; Hooks, 1947). However, this was not the only, and perhaps not even the major reason for cleri- cal feminization. The development and adoption Of the typewriter during this period reflects changes in the organ- ization Of the capitalist enterprise which, independent Of the typewriter, might have led to the employment Of women as clerical workers. Whereas I have been using the term feminization loosely to refer to the increased employment of women, the real significance of this concept is that it refers not only tO numerical changes but also to changes in the 137 expectations surrounding a position. Clerical work has not only become an increasingly female occupation but the very nature Of that work has been changed in the process. A 1935 article about the feminization Of office work contends that what bosses expect of their Office employees is "something as much like the vanished wife of his father's generation as could be arranged-- someone tO balance his check book, buy his rail- road tickets, check his baggage, get him seats in the fourth row, take his daughter to the dentist, listen to his side of the story, give him a courageous look when things are blackest, and generally know all, understand all--but not forgive all because forgiveness would be quite unthinkable.” (Fortune, 1935b: 55) It is this set Of expectations for an "Office wife" more than a certain ratio Of female to male employees that is the es- sence of feminization. In the middle of the nineteenth cen- tury males were considered to possess qualities which best suited them for clerical positions. By the early twentieth century it was "female qualities" which were being sought. For example, Fortune (1935b: 55) reports, "women in their quality of women and by virtue of some Of their most womanly traits are capable Of making the Office a more pleasant, peaceful and homelike place." It is little wonder that women took over the Office when we consider that they offered all of the above at about half the cost of male workers. Emotional dependence on female clerical workers was not limited to their male employers. The telephone company found that the public responded favorably to female tele- phone Operators and in the twenty year period between 1880 138 and 1900 gradually replaced its once all male staff of oper- ators with a virtually all female crew. Fortune (1935a: 92) writes, "(T)here was something romantic, that caught the public fancy, about these unseen maidens whose voices directed the traffic Of socialized conver- sation with great mechanical dexterity and a quan- tum of personal delight. Men would call up the telephone girls just to hear them speak. And if they liked the sound, Often enough they were likely tO follow up with little gifts. . . Not only as telephone Operators but as secretaries, recep- tionists, counter clerks, and other positions stressing in- teraction with the public, women have been employed by com- panies who have found it profitable to pander to the sexual fantasies of their customers. However, this preference for young and attractive women to staff the front Office is not explicitly sexual.2 Rather, like the carpeting, plants, and pictures on the wall, the attractive receptionist is thought to add to the overall pleasant atmosphere of the Office, thus, enhancing the image of the firm. In a 1942 study, one employer confirms this sentiment, stating that "because the worker was in full view of the Of- fice visitors, it was just as necessary for her tO be attractive as it was for the office tO be attractive.“ (Finkelhor, 1942: 25) A second employer remarked that as soon as he could afford it he had purchased a rug for his front office. He added, 21h some instances sexuality is primary. Elizabeth Ray exposed the practice of U.S. congressmen staffing their Offices with sex partners. Although she received $14, 000 a year as a clerk, she reports "I can't type, I can't file, I can't even answer the phone." (Newsweek, Vol. LXXXIX: 24 (June 13), 1977) 139 "(W)hy should I be less interested in the physical appearance Of a young girl I put into that Office?" (Finkelhor, 1942: 25) These newly developed emotional expectations for cler- ical workers were undoubtedly more central than finger dex- terity in leading employers to respond that women are better adapted to clerical work. Furthermore, it is not surprising that these expectations arose at a time when the rational- ized corporate organization was replacing the family firm as the predominant form Of capitalist enterprise. The em- ployment Of women and the special demands made of them was seemingly an attempt tO maintain supportive elements of the family firm in the midst of corporate indifference. This special relationship between employers and their office employees contributed to the perception that female Office workers are more easily controlled. The loyalty of a number of female secretaries, typists and stenographers to their individual bosses resulted in a compliant clerical labor force in the service of capital. Thus, in what was probably the usual instance where clerical employees felt no particular allegiance to the firm, they were responsive nonetheless to the demands of the firm as represented by their bosses' needs. This explanation for the perception that women were more easily controlled than their male counterparts is not totally satisfying since male office workers had also devel- oped strong, albeit different, bonds Of loyalty to their employers. In other words, there is little evidence 140 indicating that male office workers were more difficult to control than were women. I suspect that this judgement Of employers was drawn less from their experience at the work- place than from their understanding of the general position of women in the family and society. Davies (1974: 21) writes, "(W)hen the ideology of passive female labor manifested itself in the early twentieth cen- tury, the United States was, by and large, a patriarchal society. Patriarchal relations between men and women, in which men made the decisions and women followed them were carried over into the Office." An additional factor contributing to employers' per- ception that female clerical workers are more easily control- led than men is the belief that women enter the labor force with "reduced expectations." For years, the prevailing wis- dom of social scientists and office managers has held that female clerical workers, assumed to be young, single and anticipating marriage and children, would not place suffi- cient importance on the conditions surrounding their labor to invest time and energy into changing these conditions. These women are thought to perceive their positions as tem- porary, which attenuates many of the degradations attached to their work. Unpleasant work for low wages is considered a cross more easily borne if it is believed that the dis- tance is short. . It is impossible to determine the actual number of women for whom this scenario of a short period of clerical 141 employment terminated upon marriage was accurate.3 However, in the literature Of the early twentieth century it is a theme repeated ad nauseum. In the 1930's it became a popu- lar theme Of movies such as "Grand Hotel." A composite of these "working girl" romances begins with the twenty-one year old daughter of a Pennsylvania miner standing scared and bewildered amidst the bustle of Grand Central Station in New York. After much ado she locates a boarding house for respectable women. Then comes the job search which results in a low level clerical position just when all has seemed hopeless. Our heroine has good skills (although she makes one error due to nervousness on the first day), is well groomed, friendly but businesslike, loyal honest, and in- clined to work overtime. Her co-workers are a group of oversexed floozies who neglect important company business tO flirt or gossip and use the company's telephones for personal calls. Amidst this sea Of gum chewing, loud and overly made up women it seems impossible that the efforts of the quiet but hard working heroine would be recognized. Then, working alone in the office after six she is called into the office Of Mr. Bright, handsome young executive destined to become company president. Bliven (1954: 12) captures the essence of the conclusion, writing, «he called her in and dictated a proposal, building to the climax in which she, her eyes 3Recent figures show that the average woman will spend twenty-five years in the labor force. (U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau, "The Myth and the Reality." Washington, D. C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974.) 142 brimming with tears, asked 'and to whom sir, is this missive to be addressed?'" Perhaps such stories tell us little about the actual exper- iences of most clerical workers at the beginning of this cen- tury. However, they do tell us a lot about those qualities appreciated by employers and how clerical workers were moti- vated to demonstrate those qualities. These stories, like Horatio Alger, are apparent efforts to convince workers that loyalty and hard work pay off in the end. Alger's stories, featuring hard working males, end with the hero achieving fame, fortune and power. The "working girl" stories end with the heroine achieving marriage to a man of fame, for- tune and power. In both cases the message is that workers should continue to work hard in the absence of immediate recognition for in the end they will receive the reward and recognition due them. Alger's stories, however, emphasize that all positions, no matter how menial they appear, are career line positions. The stories addressed to women make no such claim. The way out is not through advancement but marriage. A 1920's study defends the employment of women in the Office and concludes, "(N)Ot all clerical workers need be potential executives. Clerks who will be satisfied to continue as clerks are needed."(NichOls, 1927: 30) Such a position would clearly be unsuitable for an Alger hero and we might expect that males in such a position would be difficult to control. WOmen, however, are taught to strive for a different set Of rewards and thus might continue to 143 perform in the hOpe that some day they might take down in shorthand their own marriage proposal. The ideology which emphasizes that women's careers are secondary to their desire for marriage undoubtedly con- tributes to the control of women in the Office. However, there is a danger of overstating its importance. As of 1970, just over 25% of female clerical workers were single women. Even if we add tO this widowed and divorced women the figure still does not exceed 40%. Clearly, the great majority of female office workers are not presently con- trolled by their dreams Of marriage. Although single women did predominate in the female labor force prior to WOrld War II, married women have always been present in signifi- cant, but too Often overlooked, numbers. The control Of these women, and in reality single women as well, was not accomplished by enticing them with fantasies Of wonderful marriages. Like their male counterparts, female clerical workers are, and always have been, controlled primarily through their dependence upon wages. The additional reasons given by employers for hiring female clerical workers-~that women are more easily pro- cured and cheaper—-are supported by available data. The clerical labor of the late nineteenth century was drawn from a limited supply Of literate persons. The advent of public education increased this supply, and, as public 1 education in the United States was made available to women in the last decades Of the nineteenth century female high 144 school graduates outnumber males (Table 6.3). With the exception of teaching there was little employment Opportun- ity for this group of educated females. Thus, they stood as a readily available, trained, and low cost pOOl of labor. Coming at the time of capital's first great expansion, it shoud be noted that the development Of this new supply of labor was not merely a convenient coincidence. Both the development of public secondary education and the changed norms governing schooling and wage-labor for middle class women were supported if not initiated by capital. That female clerical employees worked for less pay than their male counterparts was as true in the nineteenth century as it is today. Table 6.4, based upon an 1895 survey of the Commissioner Of Labor, compares male and female clerical wages for those firms reporting both male and female workers in the same occupation and rated at the same level Of efficiency. NO conclusion should be drawn from this table as to the overall degree of disparity be- tween female and male clerical wages. These data ignore both occupational segregation and an apparent tendency of employers to rate women as less efficient than males. All that can safely be said is that there existed a general trend for women tO be paid less than men when engaged in the same clerical occupation and rated at the same level of efficiency. In spite of women's disadvantaged income position relative to men, clerical employment apparently represented .am .o .am manna .oaaa .moammo ocmummno acmscu0>oo .m.o u.O.o .soumonanos .cowuwpm moan .mOflumwuoum Hocowumospm mo ummwwo “OOHOOm $71 m.oo mam.ama www.maa oo~.HHm maa.mmm.a omuaaaa m.am mma.~a who.mo ame.oma oa~.oma.H oauaoaa a.am moo.om mao.am mam.aa oaa.amv.a ooaauaama o.nm ~ma.m~ aam.aa Hma.ma aaa.am~.a oauaoaa H.mm amo.ma moo.oH amo.m~ omo.o¢a oauaaoa a.mm oma.a qoo.a ooo.oa ooo.m~m canaoaa annoy mo mamas nsom Hones oao mass» as 060» unmoumm mwumsoouo Hoonom swam cOHumaomOm Hoonom o no mauaw ommHIOFmH .mmumsvmuo Hoonom nmwm mo xmm can Hmnfifiz um.w OHQMB Table 6.4: Average Weekly Earnings for Male and Female Clerical WOrkers Employed by the Same Firm, in the Same Occupation and Rated by Employers at the Same Level of Efficiency, 1895. Male Female Average Average Weekly Weekly Number Earnings Number Earnings Bookkeepers 15 11.40 12 9.50 Bodkkeepers'.Asst. 5 13.60 7 10.21 Clerks 82 10.74 79 7.31 Stenographers & Typists 8 17.42 10 15.21 Talephone Operators 2 12.00 42 6.10 Stockkeepers 2 4.25 2 4.25 Errand.boys & girls 3 4.00 2 4.00 Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Work and Wa es of Men, Women and Children, 1895-96. Eleventh Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1897. 146 147 an attractive alternative to other female employment Oppor- tunities. An 1888 survey of female employment in twenty large cities shows the earnings of clerical workers to be approximately twenty percent greater than that of female labor as a whole (U.S. Department Of Labor, 1889). Of the 5,716 women included in this survey 74 (1.3%) were in cler- 4 The average earnings of these women was ical positions. $355 annually, compared with $295 for the total group. According to Douglas (1930), school teaching, a major source of employment for middle class women, payed only $256 per year in 1890. Thus, in spite of the wage gap be- tween male and female clerical workers, these positions rep- resented a lucrative Opportunity for women relative tO other work available tO them. It may be safely said that in the late nineteenth century the employment of women in clerical positions was considered advantageous by both employers and the women who sought these positions. Over the years, the advantages Of female employment in clerical positions has become more one sided. Employers continue to reap the benefits of an educated but extremely cheap pool Of clerical labor. However, for the women in these occupations the Old advantages have disappeared. Although female clerical wages remain slightly above the median for women workers, they are well below the median 4The number of clerical positions reported in this study is low since its primary focus was on female factory workers. 148 for all workers, and the perquisites Of high prestige, a personal working relationship with their employer, and autonomous mental work have all but vanished. Thus, for today's female worker, clerical positions are more likely to be considered as a sign of failure than Of success as in the nineteenth century. Benet, for example, inter- prets an office worker's statement that she is "just working as a typist" to mean that "the job is just a temporary embarrassment and that her real vocation, soon to be real- ized, lies elsewhere.” (1972: 93) Benet ends her work with a discussion of the effects Of rationalized and mechanized clerical tasks upon those women who perform them. She concludes, "(M)Ost sinister of all, the system of mech- anized office work, with its deadening effect on those who do it, may make it even more dif- ficult for them than ever before to make any further gains,’u (1972: 163) Crozier, however, would find such negativism uncalled for. He writes that the degradations resulting from employment in dead-end clerical positions are attenuated by the fact that it is women who are so employed. "TO be sure, the professions of white-collar employees and minor functionaries are on the whole, considerably devalued compared to their status only fifty years ago. But this devalu- ation of the great mass Of jobs has been accom- panied,we have seen, by a much greater differ- entiation and a change in recruitment. The majority Of white-collar tasks are less inter- esting, less prestigious and bring lower re- muneration, BUT THEY ARE CARRIED OUT BY WOMEN WITH REDUCED ASPIRATIONS. . ." (1971: 197 emphasis mine) 149 This chapter has explored the entrance and eventual predominance of women in clerical occupations. Concom- itant with this influx of women has been a change in the ideology surrounding clerical work and workers. Taken together, these changes comprise what I understand by feminization. It is probably a mistake to consider that the devaluation Of clerical work referred to above by Crozier is the result of feminization. This devaluation, both with regard to wages and the labor process, results from the same changes in the structure of U.S. capitalism, i.e. incorporation, national and international expansion, machine production and state intervention--which brought on feminization. As women increasingly came tO occupy clerical positions, these positions became increasingly devalued. Given the high degree of occupational sex segregation in the U.S. labor force, female clerical workers have had little choice but to accept this devalu- ation. That workers are forced to accept the denigration of low wages and dehumanizing work is in itself a tragedy. However, the suggestion by Crozier and others that this denigration is less painful when visited upon women is additionally tragic. Such sentiments which deny the ex— perience Of female clerical workers are an insidious affront to all workers. Chapter VII RATIONALIZATION OF THE CLERICAL LABOR PROCESS No aspect of U.S. clerical history has been so hotly contested by contentious theoretical perspectives as the meaning of office mechanization and rationalization for the position of clerical employees. In Chapter 2, I presented summary accounts of the respective positions of "post- industrialist" and neo-Marxist theorists regarding changes in the labor process. The former argue that mechanization and rationalization have resulted in an upgrading of the labor force in advanced industrial nations, whereas the latter contend that these processes have been advanced by capital to downgrade once skilled labor and undermine the potential power which accompanied those skills. Whereas the war may continue to rage for some years in reference to labor force as a whole, there should be little doubt that the Marxists have prevailed in the battle over clerical work. The history of clerical labor in the U.S. has been, in Braverman's words, a history of the degradation of labor. My understanding of the transformation of the process has been shaped most notably by the work of Dreyfuss (1938), Braverman (1974), Mills (1956) and Lockwood (1958). From these writers, I draw the distinction between mechanization and rationalization. Mechanization refers to the introduction 150 151 into the office of a wide variety of mechanical devices de- signed to raise the output, decrease the cost, or reduce the errors of clerical labor. Rationalization is a broader con- cept, sometimes inclusive of mechanization, but primarily concerned with the organization of human labor power into a minute division of labor applied to the repetitive perfor- mance of standardized tasks. Lockwood (1958: 72) writes that, "(T)he rationalization of administration in- volves the establishment of standard procedures and the specialization of functions within the office. This does not necessarily involve the mechanization of work. . ." In this chapter I maintain, to the extent that it is possible, an analytical distinction between mechanization and rational- ization. However, to understand the effect of these processes on the clerical work force, I believe it necessary to consider them in combination as they have occurred in history. Thus, in the later pages of this chapter I explore the relation- ship between mechanization, rationalization and the capital- ist relations of production. The clerical worker in the 1870's has been variously described as an "all-around worker" (Glenn and Feldberg, 1976), "part of management" (Lockwood, l958), and a "crafts- man" (Braverman, 1974; Shepard, 1971). The duties of a sin- gle worker might have included such diverse tasks as main- taining the company's books, handling correspondence, super- vising shop workers, advising the boss and representing him on company business. Several authors report instances where 152 clerks were left in charge of a company during an owner's extended absence (Braverman, 1974; Klingender, 1935). Certainly not all nineteenth century clerks performed such broad duties, however, even more routine and closely supervised positions differed in significant ways from the typical position in the modern office. One difference of major importance is that the skills of the nineteenth cen- tury were in most instances specific to a single enterprise. Over a period of years, a worker would "learn the business," its record-keeping procedures, prices, costs, accounts, and personnel. Unlike today, this information was not stored in rows of gray metal boxes but retained in the heads of clerical employees. This represented a double-edged sword for these clerical workers. On the one hand they were not readily replaceable, giving them a measure of job security and bargaining power. On the other hand, their experience in one firm would be of little value to other firms. Thus, the nineteenth century clerical worker often found it diffi- cult to change firms without suffering a loss in wages and status. Although not as specialized along task lines, these workers were much more likely than today's to be spe- cialized along firm or industry lines. This interdependence of boss and clerk frequently resulted in a working relationship much different than that which existed between employers and shop workers. The clerk was included in the business and personal affairs of his employer and, in return for this trust, was bound by a 153 sense of loyalty uncharacteristic of wage labor. The rela- tionship of the nineteenth century employer to his one or several clerks is best characterized as paternalistic (Davies, 1974), growing out of an intense and highly personalized working relationship. Whether the depersonalization of this relationship over the twentieth century is to be con- sidered as an advance or setback is difficult to sort out. More important at this point is the recognition that the change has taken place. Several additional characteristics of the nineteenth century office are significant for understanding the trans- formation the clerical labor process has undergone. The work of the clerical employee, especially that of a head clerk or bookkeeper, was primarily mental labor. As such, it was difficult to supervise or measure in the manner of manual labor. Thus, these workers had a good deal of au- tonomy in determining the procedure and pace of their own labor. This is not meant to imply that these workers could do what they wanted. They usually worked in visual prox- imity to their boss and were charged with doing what he wanted. What I am saying is that the means by which they accomplished his will was not regulated as it would come to be in future years. For example, a bookkeeper might have been obliged to maintain the company's books in a manner determined by his employer but the method of doing calculation, prior to posting, would be the province of the bookkeeper. ‘I 154 In sketching the past there is a danger of drawing in smiles where none existed. Theodore Geiger is quoted as saying "Work as such has never been a pleasure. The romanticists of the old-time craftsmanship hear only the happy songs, not the sighs, of the old craftsmen's shops." (Dreyfuss, 1938: 92) The nineteenth century office was far from paradise and the labor expended within was anything but paradaisical. Hours were long, rules and procedures capricious, and the work strenuous. It is highly unlikely that our hypothetical bookkeeper of the nineteenth century office would, after spending ten or twelve hours adding long columns of figures, express any more satisfaction with his job than would the tabulating machine operator of the 1950's or the peripheral equipment operator of the modern computerized office. The point is not that we have moved from a period of worker contentment to one of worker dis- content. Rather, the historical study of an occupation is undertaken in the hope of understanding the very different bases for both the contentment and discontent experienced by workers past and present. Beginning with the introduction of the typewriter in the 1870's, the business office embarked upon a century of change which would render it unrecognizable from its roots. At least part of the metamorphosis is explicable through tracing the mechanization of a number of clerical functions. However, it bears repeating that machines are not created in a vacuum from whence they shape the social world but, 155 conversely, are the products of that social world. As Mills (1956: 193) writes with reference to the development of the office, "machines did not impel the development, but rather the development demanded the machines, many of which were actually developed espe- cially for tasks already socially created." The typewriter, first and still most ubiquitous of the office machines, has had a profound impact on the busi- ness office. Primary has been its association with the in- troduction of women into clerical positions. Hooks (1947: 74) writes "(T)he impetus to the tremendous growth in the number of women in office work arose from the invention of a practical typewriter.” Hooks is wrong, however, to attri- bute to machines the power and ability to act held only by people. The development and adoption of the typewriter re- flected the growing need for correspondence concomitant with the emergence of the national corporation. In the absence of "the wonderful writing machine" (Bliven, 1954), this need would have been met, as it had been in the past, by a greatly increased number of copyists. I am convinced that capital would have turned to women as a source of copyists just as they did for typists. I am equally cer- tain that women would have responded positively to the call. What remains in doubt is how male clerks would have responded to the widespread employment of women as cleri- cal workers. Davies (1974: 9) writes that, "(T)yping was 'sex-neutral' because it was a new occupation. Since typing had not been identified as a masculine job, women who were employed as typists did not encounter the 156 criticism that they were taking over 'men's work'." Would male clerks, willing to accept women as typists, have acted to bar the introduction of women into the office as copyists? Although it is only speculation, I think such a response would have been highly unlikely. In the first place, the last decades of the nineteenth century was a per- iod of great opportunity for clerical workers. The tremen- dous demand for clerical workers meant that their jobs and wages were basically secure and the replacement of the owner-managed firm by corporate enterprise opened manager- ial positions to a number of male clerks. In such a situ- ation it would seem surprising for males to respond to the employment of women as a threat. In the second place, as early as the 1860's, women had begun to procure employment as copyists, some in offices and some in their homes (Sumner, 1911). I would expect that their numbers would have continued to increase had not the copyist been replaced by the typist. Apart from its association with the employment of women in clerical occupations, the typewriter was important because it established a convincing precedent that invest- ments in office machinery are as salubrious to the conduct of a profitable business as are investments in productive machinery. In an office management text of the 1920's the "1 author lists the following "advantages of using mechan- ical devices: 1Office mechanization, as it proceeded under capital- ism, was obviously not advantageous to the working class. 157 "1. Records can be produced more conveniently, more quickly, more legibly, and with better appearance than in cases where the same work is done by hand. 2. Owing to the fact that the installation of a machine often permits a reduction in the number of employees engaged on a particular type of work, general overhead expenses are reduced and the machine may very likely pay for itself in a short time. 3. The standardization of methods and pro- cesses, which necessarily accompanies the use of a machine, makes it possible to employ less expensive labor. 4. Since most office appliances require an operator more or less specially trained for the work, the adoption of a machine brings about specialization which, in turn, pro- duces more work." (MacDonald, 1927: 122) These benefits to capital came to fruition with the use of the typewriter, thus creating a willing market for further developments. And further developments were soon forthcoming. The Hollerith card sorting machine was devel- oped in response to the need of the Census Bureau to pro- cess the returns of the 1890 Census prior to 1900. This electromechanical device which reads punched cards was the precursor of the business machines and modern computer systems developed in the next half century. Between 1900 and 1930, a wide variety of office machines were developed and marketed including electronic calculators, addressing, checkwriting, tabulating, billing and bookkeeping machines and a number of different types of duplicating devices. Baker (1964: 216) reports that in the 1940's some three thousand machines were exhibited annually with "the"crafts- man' clerk of the early 1900's thus becoming 'as rare as the rolltop desk'." 158 Perhaps the greatest impact upon clerical work will come not from a machine but an instrument, the computer. The UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer), like the Holl- erith machine sixty years earlier, was developed in re- sponse to the tremendous data processing needs of the Cen- sus Bureau. Introduced in 1951, computers, or electronic data processing systems, were quickly developed, marketed and employed in a number of private and governmental offices. Whereas interest in the effect of mechanization on clerical workers was limited to a few social scientists in the first half of the twentieth century, the effect of computer auto- mation has drawn much broader interest. It has been a point of debate whether mechanization and automation have resulted in an upgrading or downgrading of clerical labor. Enthusiasts of the computerized office argue that the instruments will "eliminate office drudgery" while creating a number of high level positions such as designers of computers and components, manufacturing and sales person- nel, programmers, systems analysts and maintenance engineers (Levin, 1956: 195). However, in a study of office automa- tion, Hoos (1961: 123) concludes that "(W)ith the exception of the comparatively small number of persons who attain the rank of programmer, it cannot be stated definitively that automation makes for an upgrading of the clerical work force." Despite the curious wording of her rejection of the upgrad- ing thesis, Hoos' illustrations leave little doubt that she sees downgrading of clerical positions as the predominant 159 result of automation. For example, she writes, "A girl with good eye-hand coordination, finger dexterity, and respect for accurate detail can be trained to become a key-puncher in a few weeks. Knowledge of bookkeeping can be acquired only through years on the job. As operations are pro- grammed for machine processing, bookkeeping skills are no longer needed." (1961: 123) Since mechanization and rationalization have been con- comitant processes in the transformation of clerical work, it is impossible to consider the effects of mechanization independent of rationalization. Although the rationaliza- tion of the clerical office has generally been traced to the scientific management movement of the WOrld War I period, rudiments of this process were developing as early as the 1880's. Benet (1972: 36) writes of the introduction of women into clerical positions that they "did not generally take over jobs previously held by men; the whole structure of office work was adjusted to give them only routine and subservient functions." The application of the principles of scientific management to the office was effective in intensifying this inchoate office hierarchy. Basic to scientific management is the separation of conception from execution. Frederick Winslow Taylor, the accredited founder of scientific management is quoted as saying “all of the planning which under the old system was done by the workmen, as a result of his per- sonal experience, must of necessity under the . new system be done by management in accordance with the laws of science." (Zimbalist, 1975: 51) The very growth of the industrial office is related to 160 this maxim. He writes, l'(A)ll possible brain work should be removed from the shop and centered in the planning and laying out department. . ." (Braverman, 1974: 113). How- ever, the very principles from which the modern office was created were soon to be applied to the office itself. The all-around craft labor of the nineteenth century clerk would be divided and subdivided into a series of standard- ized, routinized, atomized and supervised tasks. As in the overall enterprise, the planning and coordination of work was taken from the producers and relegated to management. The rationalization of the office resulted in two distinct strata of workers. One is made up of a mass of poorly paid women employed in a variety of dead end jobs such as file clerks, typists, secretaries and receptionists. The other is comprised of predominantly male office man- agers, specialists in maximizing clerical output while min- imizing clerical cost (Davies, 1974; Glenn and Feldberg, 1976; Mills, 1956). The authority relations between the managerial and worker strata changed dramatically from those which prevailed between owner and clerk in the nine- teenth century office. Crozier (1971: 17) writes, "(T)he paternalism of former times with all its humiliating by-products, has vanished, but at the same time control has become more severe and the rhythm of work more arduous. We have moved from the discipline of respect to the discipline of efficiency. . ." It is important to add that since the office hierarchy was based upon sexual division, discipline and control were and still are reinforced by the patriarchal relations of the 161 larger society. (Davies, 1974) Crozier overstates the demise of paternalism since the work relations of many people can still be characterized as such. Langer's (1972) research on the telephone company offers an interesting glimpse of the blending of paternalism and scientific man- agement in the modern office. Kanter (1977) uses the term 'patrimony' to describe the relationship between boss and secretary. She describes the secretary's position in feu- dal terms, arguing that this position has not been ration- alized as have others under capitalism. The worker in the rationalized office is most likely to be a machine operator whose labor approximates that of the factory operative. Those who do not operate or attend machines are still likely to be engaged in routinized, machinelike operations. Glenn and Feldberg (1976: 14) com- ment that temperament is perhaps more important than skills for survival in the rationalized office. They quote a typist as saying, "You need a lot of patience. You need to be more or less good-natured, easy going. Some- times the tension gets really bad. Some people look on it as boring. If you go on saying 'Oh God, another day!‘ you wouldn't last too long." Perhaps the most extreme effects of mechanized office work has been visited upon the keypunch operator. The ten- sion reported by the typist is intensified in keypunching. An interviewee in Hoos' study describes keypunch operators as "nervous wrecks." She continues, "If you happen to speak to an operator while she is working she will jump a 162 mile. You can't help being tense. The machine makes you that way. Even though the supervisor does not keep an official production count on our work, she certainly knows how much each of us is turning out by the number of boxes of cards we do" (Hoos, 1961: 67). Notice that in the above quotation the woman states that "(T)he machine makes you that way." Hoos (1961: 68) later attributes to an executive interviewed the following statement: "the machines keep the girls at their desks, punching monotonously and without cease. . ." Throughout the literature is the suggestion that the pace of work in the office is now set by the machine (Glenn and Feldberg, 1976; Mills, 1956). All of these statements reify the machine, attributing to mechanization what is better under- stood as part of the rationalization process. "Scientific management" has as its goal the maximization of worker out— put to be accomplished through the elimination of "ineffi- cient" or "wasteful" worker practices. Tasks are broken down, their components are studied, performance standards are established and output is measured against these stan- dards. The tension experienced by keypunchers is not in- herent in the machine but in the output and accuracy stan- cards established by management. Similarly, keypunch ma- chines do not demand to be operated ceaselessly--this is a demand made by management in the interest of cost efficiency. Leffingwell, an early advocate of office Taylorism, writes in an office management text that "idle machines are idle 163 capital" and instructs that "(T)he office manager who keeps his machines earning money--and they can earn money only when they are busy--is saving, just as cer- tainly as is the factory superintendent who does the same thing.” (Leffingwell and Robinson, 1950: 284) It is not machines which conspire to exact from their operators a pound of flesh, but human managers committed to the maximization of profit. It is the managers and not the machines which determine the pace of work. Office mechani- zation does, however, contribute to the standardization of outputs, thus facilitating its measurement. Job performance for clerical workers, which in the 1870's and 1880's defied definition, had been, in the space of fifty years, opera- tionalized into a series of such quantified measures as words per minute, cards per day, errors per thousand, and calls per hour. Meticulous records of individual job per- formance would be maintained and compared with the ideal standards established by management. Braverman (1974: 309) is without doubt correct in stating that many of the re- ported successes of scientific management were "an effect of close and frightening supervision rather than a miracle of efficiency." Essential is the recognition that it is not machines alone but mechanization in the context of the rationalized capitalist enterprise which has so radically transformed the clerical labor process. Neither machines nor the prin- ciples of rationalization need be the enemies of the worker. It is perversion of these tools, their use as the weapons 164 of capital, which is at fault. As Dreyfuss (1938: 62) writes, within capitalism "all technical progress, instead of benefit- ting every participant in the economy as it could well do, turns out to be a disadvan- tage and burden to them; that all fruits of rationalization benefit the employer, or are consumed in competition." Ideally, technological advance would have served the needs of clerical labor by eliminating dull and routine opera- tions. Instead, technology has been marshalled by capital to create a cheap and easily controlled clerical labor force. The potential for technology to raise the skill level of clerical labor has been passed over in all but corporate public relations releases for the use of technol- ogy to "de-skill" clerical labor. The fragmentation and routinization of the clerical labor process in the context of close supervision and con- trol is a necessity of the social relations of capitalist production and not the social forces of industrialization. This conclusion that the transformation of the clerical labor process is not a function of technological necessity but rather the necessity of capital to maintain control over its growing office labor force is supported by a num- ber of recent studies of the transformation of the labor process under capitalism (Bowles and Gintis, 1975; Marglin, 1974; Palmer, 1975; Stone, 1974). Because it is concerned with the same period in U.S. economic history, Stone's study of the steel industry is particularly instruc- tive for our examination of clerical labor. Prior to 1890, 165 the production of steel was controlled by workers who were both skilled and organized. Increased profits depended upon management's ability to wrest control of the labor process from workers. This was accomplished through the violence of the Homestead Mill lockout and maintained through the institution of rationalized techniques of pro— duction and a hierarchical division of labor. Although less dramatic, the "battle for the office" is just as real as that which occurred in the steel mills of Pennsylvania. The clerk of the nineteenth century of- fice was privy to the inner workings of the enterprise. Control over such employees is essential and was generally maintained from a personal working relationship between boss and clerk. However, both the demise of the owner- manager and the growth of the office that accompanied the rise of the national corporation eroded this old basis of control. Personal control was then replaced by the ex- tremes of impersonal control; universalistic patterns of labor and standards of performance imposed upon the worker from without. Braverman (1974: 307) describes this trans- ition as "the breakup of the arrangement under which each clerk did his or her own work according to tradi- tional methods, independent judgement, and light general supervision, usually on the part of the bookkeeper. WOrk was henceforth to be carried on as prescribed by the office manager, and its methods and time durations were to be verified and controlled by management on the basis of its own studies of each job." 166 Although the transformation of the clerical labor process was in many ways similar to that which occurred in the production of steel, there is no evidence of clerical resistance akin to that of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers. The relative ease with which management captured the office is related to the tremendous growth in the number of clerical positions and the employ- ment of women to perform the most routinized tasks. Senior clerks and bookkeepers, most likely to resist an attack on their skills, were in many instances not expected to them- selves perform more routinized work but to supervise it. They accepted reorganization of the office in exchange for a high place in the newly created office hierarchy. Al- though, in time, the status differences of the office hier- archy would erode into petty symbolic distinctions, there is evidence that the head clerk or office manager of the early 1900's commanded salary and authority commensurate with that of other management positions (Dreyfuss, 1938). It should not be understood that all clerks happily looked back over their shoulders at the degradation of cler- ical labor as they moved into vice presidential offices. Many must have experienced the transformation firsthand. However, unorganized and faced with replacement by an ever increasing reserve of trained female would-be workers, these clerks must have reluctantly accepted their plight. .The women, with few alternatives available to them other than even more routinized factory work, were in little position 167 to protest. Thus, management won control of the clerical labor process without so much as a single shot. And, once in control, they expanded their grasp to include every as- pect of office life from the type of pencils used to the bathroom habits of their employees. This section began with a description of the nine- teenth century clerk as an all around worker; a craftsman whose work involved skill and judgement. A century of office mechanization and rationalization have radically transformed this position. Perhaps typical of today's office worker is Sharon Atkins, a receptionist who reports that "a monkey could do what I do." (Terkel, 1974: 59) Chapter VIII SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Summary This work describes the transformation of clerical work over the past one hundred years. For the purpose of explication I have considered this transformation in terms of four component processes: 1) the increasing number of clerical positions; 2) convergence of clerical and blue- collar incomes; 3) feminization of the clerical labor force; and 4) rationalization of the clerical labor process. In actuality, these processes are so highly interrelated that none can be understood in isolation from the others. I have argued that the relationship among these processes is best understood in the context of Marxian theory. Espe- cially apt is the concept of proletarianization which refers to the historical process by which the wages, status and working conditions of white-collar workers approach those of blue-collar workers. I have taken the view throughout that the growth and proletarianization of the clerical labor force has been the logical outcome of capitalist development in the United States. This conclusion is at odds with the sometimes ex- plicit, sometimes implicit assumption of other writers that changes in the number, sex, wages and work of clerical 168 169 employees is primarily a function of technological inno- vation. To be sure, technology, both in the form of ma- chines and the organization of labor, has had a major impact on the position and labor of clerical workers. How- ever, the application of technological innovation to the office is itself brought on by the exigencies of the capi- talist system of production. It must be considered in the context of capitalism since such technological development could have very different results in a different mode of production. Thus, the proletarianization of clerical work is primarily the result of the social relations of produc- tion; technology being a means by which these social needs are realized. The social forces mandating clerical proletarianiza» tion arose from the drive for profit which is the raison d'etre of the capitalist system. The rise of the national corporation in the last decades of the nineteenth century was motivated by this drive. This new stage of capitalist development resulted in a much increased need for inter— and intra-firm communications as the problems of coordin- ation and control increased geometrically over those of the owner/managed enterprise. The proliferation of clerical workers to meet these needs, however, would come to repre- sent an unacceptable drain on the very surplus-value they were employed to realize. Thus, capital would strive over the next one hundred years to reduce their clerical costs relative to total office output by reducing the salaries 170 of individual clerical workers relative to the wages of production workers. Of course, clerical workers would resist this decretion of their traditional income advan- tage over blue-collar workers, but in the 1940's they were overtaken and have remained behind ever since. I attribute the inability of clerical workers to re- sist capital's assault on their wages to their position as unproductive workers. Unlike production workers, clerical employees have not been able to trade off productivity in- creases for higher wages. The problem of calculating the contribution of unproductive clerical workers to the real- ization of surplus-value leaves no standard around which workers and employers might negotiate wages. It is to be expected that in the absence of knowledge as to the contri- bution of clerical workers, employers would assume the worst and seek to pay the lowest possible wages. Clerical workers, of course, would resist relative declines in their incomes but ultimately their efforts were overcome. Where- as bargaining agents for productive workers have demanded and in many cases received wage increases in exchange for productivity increases, clerical workers have been in no position to command such tribute. Thus, the wages of pro- ductive workers have been more closely tied to the produc- tivity of capital than have those of unproductive clerical workers. The ratio of productive to clerical workers' wages has generally increased with increases in the produc- tivity of capital and declined with decreases in the same. 171 The wage erosion of clerical employees has been accomplished primarily through the feminization of the clerical labor force and the rationalization of the cler- ical labor process. Although when sex is controlled for clerical workers earn slightly more than the median for workers in all occupational categories, the prepon- derance of women in clerical occupations results in the overall clerical median falling well below the median in- come for all workers. Beyond this obvious advantage that women represent a cheap pool of clerical labor, employers in the nineteenth century reported that they hired women because they were more easily procured, better suited to the work and more easily controlled than were men. Male workers, who initially perceived female recruitment as a threat to their jobs and wages, resisted the introduction of women to the office. However, their opposition was at least partially mollified by the development of a hier- archical order in which male workers supervised female employees. The subordinate position of women in the office was reinforced by the patriarchal relations characteristic of the society as a whole. The rationalization of the clerical labor process includes both the mechanization of clerical tasks and the reorganization of human labor as guided by the principles of "scientific management." This process of rationaliza- tion involved breaking down the work of the "all-around clerk" of the nineteenth century into its component tasks, 172 each to be handled by a different worker. This intensifi- cation of the office division of labor has resulted in most modern clerical employees performing a standardized and routinized series of operations under close managerial supervision. Rationalization has "de-skilled" clerical work so that all judgement as to how a task should be per- formed has been taken from the worker and reserved as a prerogative of management. As a result, the clerical labor force has become an easily replaceable, and thus cheap and controllable, pool of workers. I have already stated that I consider Marxian analy- sis to be the best approach for understanding the transforma- tion we have discussed. Marx, himself, was able to predict many of the changes from his theoretical understanding of the logic of capitalist development. Recall that in a passage quoted in its entirety in Chapter 2, he wrote of clerical employees that "the wage tends to fall, even in relation to average labour, with the advance of the capi- talist mode of production. This is due partly to the division of labour in the office imply- ing a one-sided development of the labour capac- ity. . . Secondly, because the necessary training, knowledge of commercial practices, languages, etc., is more and more rapidly, easily, universally and cheaply reproduced with the progress of science and public education. . . The universality of public education enables capitalists to recruit such labourers from classes that formerly had no access to such trades. . . thereby increasing sup- ply, and hence competition.‘ (Marx, 1967: Vol._ III, 644-45) Later writers such as Kautsky, Dreyfuss and Klingender, working in the framework of Marxian analysis, also demonstrated 173 great clarity of vision as to the future condition of cler- ical work and workers. However, these writers were much less clairvoyant regarding the implications of the changes they correctly foresaw. They assumed that proletarianiza- tion would decrease job satisfaction resulting in the devel- opment among clerical workers of "trade union consciousness." The failure of this scenario leaves as an open question the future of clerical employees as a force in U.S. class rela- tions. In concluding this thesis I turn to a brief consid- eration of the failure of the trade union scenario and dis- cuss alternative developments which portend changes in the situation of clerical workers. Implications of Clerical Proletarianization Over the course of this century, Marxists and liberals alike have called for the unionization of clerical workers. For Marxists, the development of a "trade union conscious— ness" among white-collar workers was seen as a precondition for an alliance between them and the traditional working class. From such an alliance it is believed that true class consciousness could develop which would result in revolu- tionary change. For liberals, trade unionism was and is considered an end in itself, a palliative for the declining position of clerical workers. But whether unionism was seen by intellectuals as an intermediate or final step toward solving the problem of clerical workers, the clerical workers themselves have apparently decided that it is no solution at all. 174 There is no disagreement in the literature about the ineffectiveness of trade unions in organizing clerical workers. Probably less than 10 percent of all office workers are presently organized (Oppenheimer, 1975; Raphael, 1974). Nor is there a shortage of explanations for why the rate of clerical unionization is so low. Some have blamed the unions for a lack of effort in approaching clerical 'workers (Blum, 1969; Kornhauser, 1961). These writers cite surveys which show that more white-collar workers report an interest in union representation than have actually been approached by union organizers. Others criticize unions for their tactics when they do approach clerical workers (Bollens, 1947; Blum, 1969; Lubin, 1956). Clerical workers, it is argued, have somewhat different grievances and aspir- ations than do blue-collar workers. They are more likely than production workers to give priority to social rela- tions, their physical environment and status positions. These critics go on to fault the unions for not addressing these issues. The great majority of writers have blamed the cleri- cal workers rather than the unions for this group's low rate of organization. The most prevalent explanations for the low rate of clerical unionization have posed the sup- posed psychological makeup of office employees and/or the preponderance of women in these occupations. The View of the clerk as an obsequious lackey who assumes airs of grandeur predates the proliferation of clerical positions 175 in the late nineteenth century. The pretentiousness attri- buted to clerical workers has long been offered as explan- ation for their failure to unionize (Burns, 1949; Klingender, 1935: Smith, 1949). A management study of white-collar or- ganizing summarizes the reasoning of many of these writers by including the following among a list of so-called white- collar traits which act as a barrier to unionization: "He is proud and thinks that unions are for the man in overalls only. He doesn't want to be pulled down to the level of a production worker. He doesn't want to mingle with production workers in a union any more than he wants to play bridge with the office porter. He doesn't want to join any group if he thinks it will lower his position in the community or among his friends. "The white-collar worker isn't sold on group action. He thinks in terms of 'what's in it for me.‘ He's not class conscious; he doesn't want to be lumped with other workers in a 'movement'. The unions say it's hard to get him out on strike or an a picket line. "He frequently is more interested in beating his fellow worker to a better job than he is in cooper- ating with him to improve their working conditions. He doesn't want to do anything that will hurt his chances for advancement. "He isn't impressed by union attempts to rouse him to war on management. Many of his friends are in the ranks of management and he has hopes of getting there himself." (The New Cure for White Collar Unrest, 1948: 19) As if all this were not enough, many of these writers who fault the psyches of clerical workers also fault their biol- ogy. The concentration of women in clerical occupations is believed to have an adverse effect on organizing efforts. Although they comprise forty percent of the labor force, women make up only one-fifth of union membership and only half of these women describe themselves as active members 176 (Bergquist, 1974). Lack of identification with work, high turnover, aversion to politics and political action and in- ordinate loyalty to bosses are among the more common explan- ations for why women don't support unions. A closer look at the situation of women, however, shows that the fault may not lie in their heads but with their position in the labor force. A number of studies point to structural factors which account for much or all of the sex difference in union mem— bership. In the labor force as a whole, women are concen- trated in occupations (Kornhauser, 1961) and industries (Dewey, 1971) which have low rates of unionization regard- less of sex. Furthermore, they comprise the great majority of part-time workers who, again regardless of sex, have not been successfully organized (Bergquist, 1974). In a study conducted for the National Industrial Conference Board, Curtin (1970) found that "the factor of sex. . .appears to have little bear- ing on whether a unit votes for or against union- ization." (p. 28) In this study management explained its defeats in union elections by standing on its head much of the union ideology about the difficulty of organizing women. One office man- ager states "(W)e experienced for the first time in this election the vulnerability of young female employees. They were easily convinced by union propaganda they heard or saw.“ (p. 29) The search for explanations of why clerical workers have not joined unions assumes that unionization would 177 benefit clerical employees. Among blue-collar workers it is estimated that the wage effect of union membership is approximately fifteen to twenty percent (Lewis, 1963; Rosen, 1969). However, in a study of seventy metropolitan areas conducted in 1960, 1963 and 1967, Hamermesh (1971: 170) found that "the wage effect of unions of clerical workers is quite small, roughly 5 percent." Furthermore, Hamermesh found that when sex is taken into account, in two of the three years studied, the wage ef- fect of female clerical unionism was negative and signif- icantly different from zero. These findings, which need to be checked by repli- cation studies for more recent years, call into question the assumption of union organizers and social scientists that blue- and white-collar unionism are basically the same. A union official writes, "(A)s the office, technical and professional workers become a larger proportion of the firm's work force, they represent a growing labor cost. As competitive pressures require it, management will try to rationalize this work group. . .Blue-collar workers have been through all this, and they found their only protection against the time-study speed-up was their union. White-collar workers are not likely to behave any differently." (Hamermesh, 1971: 159) And yet, Hamermesh's results suggests that unions are not able to offer to white-collar workers the same protection they have given to the blue-collar workers. Throughout this thesis, I have argued that unproductive workers, be 178 they organized or not, cannot exchange productivity in- creases for wage and benefit improvement. As American trade unions have limited their representation of blue- collar workers to wage negotiation tied to productivity increases, it is not surprising that they have been inef- fective in their representation of white-collar workers where this approach is not practicable. The suggestion that unionization might not solve the problems of clerical workers is a particularly unpleas- ant thought if, as is most often the case, it is the only alternative envisioned to further imiseration. We have seen that unorganized clerical workers have not fared too well over the course of this century. Unionization has been the hope of a number of liberals and Marxists for improving the situation of those workers. To challenge the assumed positive effect of office unionism is to put oneself in the position of doomsayer, condemning clerical workers to a destiny of eternal degradation. And yet, as is often the case, a willingness to abandon well beaten paths--to accept for a time the possibility of hopeless- ness-—leads to the discovery of alternative routes. In the case of clerical work, the feminist movement presents a potential basis for mobilizing female office workers which surpasses the present and projected impact of traditional union organizations. As I stated earlier, the belief that women are "easier to control" was among the 179 major reasons for their employment in offices. Presently, 75 percent of all clerical employees are women. This con- centration of women in the office at a time when woman's position in the society as a whole is undergoing change por- tends change in the present hierarchical organization of clerical work. Davies (1974) argues that the sexual divi- sion of labor in the office is reinforced by the patriar- chal social relations of the society as a whole. It fol- lows from this that the feminist struggle against patri- archy threatens the structure of control in the office. Traditional labor unions have learned from a decade of militant feminism that there are a lot of women in the labor force. In their efforts to incorporate these women into their organizations, a number of unions have included in their negotiating packages such "women's issues" as maternity leave and day care. However, labor unions have not embraced feminism as a social philosophy nor are they likely to in the near future become advocates of feminist demands. For one thing, feminists and unions have been pitted against one another in a number of bitter court battles around issues of affirmative action and seniority. Secondly, the unions themselves are male dominated and studies show that over the past thirty years the number of women officials in international unions has declined rather than increased (Dewey, 1971: Raphael, 1974). As such, these unions would be unlikely opponents of patriarchy. They are willing to represent women but their representation would 180 be limited to the paycheck unionism which characterizes their representation of male workers. Cook (1968) argues that today's labor unions are less attentive to the needs of women than were unions at the turn of the century when the WOmen's Trade Union League and the Labor Education Services held important positions in the structure of the labor movement. Although traditional trade union organizations have failed to develop a "feminist consciousness" a number of feminist organizations are arising which incorporate a "trade union consciousness." WOmen Employed (WE) in Chicago, Women Office WOrkers (WOW) in New York, "9 to 5" in Boston, and WOmen Act to Gain Equality (WAGE) in San Francisco are feminist groups pressing issues of concern to female office workers in these cities. The actual mem~ bership of these organizations is small, although this is of less importance than with traditional labor unions. These organizations are structured along the lines of social movements whose active membership is less important than their potential for mobilizing a large constituency around a particular issue. Whereas unions represent their member- ship in private negotiations with management, the new femin~ ist workers organizations have been for and to all women workers in their respective cities through use of the pub- lic media. Given this approach it is difficult to aSsess the accomplishments of these groups, however their potential for igniting mass action is far greater than with the gradualist union approach. 181 Like the unions, the feminist groups are concerned with pocketbook issues of wages and benefits. However, even here their approach is much broader. For example, WE in Chicago has been publicizing data on the wage position of women in the national economy and the results of a study they conducted which describes the extent of sexual inequal- ity in the Loop labor force. In a demonstration covered by TV and other mass media, some three hundred women organized by WE presented affirmative action and equal wage demands to the Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry--an organ- ization of Loop employers (Ms., 1974). Addressing the wage issue in the context of sexual inequality has far greater potential for radical change than does the nickel and dime approach of the unions. Above all else, the feminist approach is an appeal based on moral grounds for the fair treatment of women workers. Such moral indignation has long been absent from labor union proceedings. Although in the 1930's unionism might have been considered a "movement", in the last decades the old sloganeering and organizing songs have been replaced by legalism and economic formulae. In the process, akin to Weber's routinization of charisma, the moral force of union- ism has been lost. It was such a moral force which was at the core of the student, minority and anti-war movements of the 1960's and it is the same force which feminists are now trying to use in their efforts to organize women workers. Moving beyond pocketbook issues, these groups have emphasized human dignity in their appeals to workers. 182 Ellen Cassedy of "9 to 5" reports that "lack of respect and the way employers treat you" are the primary complaints of office workers (Ms., 1974: 21). Using their experience from the earlier days of the feminist movement, leaders of the feminist workers organizations are trying to tap the frustration of female office workers who suffer the indig- nities of being women in patriarchal work settings. Time (1972: 84) reports that secretaries "are rebelling against being viewed as objects of vicarious sexual pleasure (or being called 'dear' or 'honey' by men in the office)." They go on to cite the complaints of a secretary at a Manhattan ad agency whose firm sponsored an office "hot pants party" at which women employees were invited "to show their wares." In the same article it was reported that a group of secretaries supported by N.O.W. were planning a demonstra- tion against Olivetti Corp. to protest a TV ad which depicts a "brainy" typewriter eliminating the errors of dumb typists. The secretary in the commercial is pictured as "a vaccuous sex kitten who finds that she can attract men by becoming 'an Olivetti girl'." More recently, "9 to 5" sponsored a one day demonstration to support the right of secretaries to make coffee for their bosses. These examples show that much of the struggle being waged by feminist workers organizations is an attack at the symbols of women's oppression in the office. Critics will charge that addressing the material conditions of female 183 office workers is more important. 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