Abstract
Despite the industrialisation-by-invitation strategy and the growing economic importance of industrial enterprises in and around Kingston, the growth of manufacturing employment between 1945 and the 1970’s was unspectacular. But manufacturing industries had grown and by the early 1970’s there were many enterprises, ranging from large-scale subsidiaries of multinational enterprises to small petty capitalist ‘informal sector’ concerns and ‘putting-out’ networks of the kind which normally foster capital accumulation.
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Notes
For instance, by Sewell in 1861. Sewell, 1968 edition, op. cit., p. 320. See also, IBRD: The Economic Development of Jamaica, Report of a mission headed by J.C. de Wilde (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1952), inter alia.
PREALC: Employment and Unemployment in Jamaica, Part I (Geneva, ILO, 1972), p. 55.
Evidence of absenteeism by sex is debatable, for the traditional assumption has been questioned. See, for instance, Women’s Bureau: Facts about Women’s Absenteeism and Labour Turnover (Washington DC, US Department of Labor, 1969). The problem is that data suggesting that female absenteeism is no higher than male are not entirely appropriate evidence, since they reflect an ex post situation resulting from ‘discriminatory’ (selective) recruitment and promotion policies. So conceivably the women workers actually employed would have been selected for their relatively low probability of absenteeism and labour turnover.
E. Campbell: “Industrial training methods and techniques”, Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 2, No.1, September 1953, p. 75. In both this and Campbell’s study, ‘sickness’ was the main reason given for absenteeism.
Unfortunately the Survey only covered a small number of establishments and concentrated on current vacancies. Government of Jamaica: The Training Needs Survey (Kingston, Government Printers, 1972).
Harbridge House: The Tradesman Gap in the Sugar Industry (Kingston, Harbridge House,1970).
G. Tidrick: “Some aspects of Jamaican emigration to the United Kingdom, 1953–1962”, Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1, March 1966, pp. 22–39. This paper took a somewhat less pessimistic view of the effects of emigration than some other studies.
Interestingly, in a sample of 26 firms Girling found that only three had any kind of formal training for production line workers. R.K. Girling: “Education, technology and development/underdevelopment: A case study of agro-industry in Jamaica”, Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, May 1974, p. 164.
JIDC-ILO-CIDA: Report on Modular Training Methods (Kingston, JIDC, 1973).
Ibid., p. 139. See also K. Little: African Women in Towns: An Aspect of Africa’s Social Revolution (London, Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 31–3.
For instance, as a male labour aristocracy of the working class consolidated its position during Britain’s Industrial Revolution membership of that aristocracy was associated, inter alia, with an economically inactive wife. E.J. Hobsbawm: “The labour aristocracy in nineteenth century Britain”, in E.J. Hobsbawm: Labouring Men (London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1964).
G. Cumper: “Labour and development in the West Indies: Part II”, Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 11, No.1, 1962, p. 3. More questionable even at that time was Davenport’s assertion that in Jamaica “most of the jobs for wages are for men”,
W. Davenport: “The family system in Jamaica”, Social and Economic Studies, Vol. 10, No.4, 1961, p. 430.
W. Runciman: Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966). On job-breadth, see
J.G. Scoville: “A theory of jobs and training”, Industrial Relations, Vol. 9, No. 1, October 1969, pp. 36–53.
C. Wright-Mills: White Collar (New York, Oxford University Press, 1956).
On the general point, see Runciman, 1966, op. cit., and A. Fox: A Sociology of Work in Industry (London, Collier-Macmillan, 1971), p. 73.
W. Elkan: An Africa Labour Force (Kampala, East Africa Studies No.7, East African Institute of Social Research, 1956); and W. Elkan: Migrants and Proletarians (London, EAISR, 1960).
M. Peil: The Ghanaian Factory Worker: Industrial Man in Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1972). See also, Little, 1973, op. cit., p. 38.
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© 1981 International Labour Organisation
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Standing, G. (1981). Proletarianisation and Sexual Dualism in Manufacturing Industries. In: Unemployment and Female Labour. ILO Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06148-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06148-8_6
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