No Way To Make A Living » consumer http://nowaytomakealiving.net is a sociological space about work, generating discussion and exchange on what work, paid or unpaid, is like in today’s world Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:23:56 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 The Damage of the Strike http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/692 http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/692#comments Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:29:36 +0000 Lynne Pettinger http://nowaytomakealiving.net/?p=692 Flight attendants are an extraordinarily popular subject of study (Hochschild, 1983; Taylor and Tyler, 2000; Williams, 2003). Research focuses on the emotional labour and body work involved, as Dawn highlighted recently. The customer here is a powerful, but shadowy figure, who extracts and deserves service, and whom the cabin crew must please. These academic concerns are some way from the story of the ongoing British Airways dispute between management and unionised workers over different cost-cutting measures, and the manner through which negotiations are taking place. Given long-standing tensions between BA and its workforce (at least since the Gate Gourmet confrontations), it’s hardly surprising to hear the discussions are strained.

What’s notable about the reporting of the dispute is who is imagined to be damaged by strike action: it is you, my reader and telly watcher, you the imagined, eternal and all-important consumer. You are no longer a shadowy presence; you have had your honeymoon plans destroyed. Whilst the workforce are specified by the fact of their employment for BA, you the consumer are everyman, and you the consumer ought not be disadvantaged by those pesky strikers. There is no hint that you are also a worker.

waiting to fly

Casablanca Airport by John Spooner

The BA dispute — and the political interventions provoked by it — has broader implications for discussions of pay and working conditions than just this case. It influences the landscape in which further discussions and decisions about labour law and labour rights are made, and relates to political sensitivity to the consumer the worker, to the power of management and the privileged status afforded to protecting the brand. The consumer is not the only universal figure in our social life. We are workers, too.

References

  1. Hochschild, A. (1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. London: University of California Press.
  2. Taylor, S. And Tyler, M. (2000) ‘Emotional labour and sexual difference in the airline industry’. Work, Employment and Society. 14:77–95.
  3. Williams C. (2003) ‘Sky service: the demands of emotional labour in the airline industry’. Gender, Work and Organization. 10 (5) 513–550.

John Spooner photographs used under creative commons license

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