Work Transfer

The concept of work transfer as an unfair work practice arose at a time of rapid change in work, women's roles, and government responsibility for health care. It is the transfer of responsibilities from paid workers to unpaid volunteers, as defined by Nona Glazer. It is the “redistribution of labor from paid women service workers to unpaid women family members” while remaining the same kind of work. The practice was seen as specific to women's work and family roles, so that the private sphere of the family was being invaded by social forces that treated women unfairly. Glazer's two examples from her studies were home health care and retail sales. In the first, the work of nurses, aides, and hospital service workers (mostly women) was being transferred to home helpers (mostly women) who were being trained to do the work in a cost-saving effort. Retail shopping was a different transfer, from paid employees (sales clerks and floor retail salespeople) to “self service.” Glazer assumed that the transfer process was the same, as shoppers, she felt, were mostly women, and they had to become more educated in styles, value, and care of household goods and accessories.

There are other forms of transfer than from paid to unpaid workers, including transfer back. Also, transfers can take place other than as cost savings and an unwanted burden being transferred. Glazer wrote as a feminist Marxist, viewing the tension between workers and their employers as an inherent conflict. Employers use various tactics [Page 998]to transfer more work to employees without paying them more, commonly described as increasing productivity. Alert workers have more colorful names for these tactics, such as “speedup” for assembly line workers, when the line moves faster and workers are pressured to keep up. In a textile mill, increasing the number of machines to attend is called a “spread-out.” Yet, the employer-worker transfer goes both ways in an ongoing contest for control of the pace of work, the tools used, how the work is done, and the definition of the work itself. Employers, when studied by social scientists, are found not to control these work characteristics in a one-sided relationship. Workers form teams and are capable of presenting their demands informally in controlling work production. Even paying workers more doesn't increase their production when trust is lacking and job insecurity threatens. In Donald Roy's classic study of a machine shop, workers produced more if they felt well paid for each unit produced in a “gravy job.” Otherwise, they would restrict production to the minimum (“goldbricking”).

There are many tactics available to employers today to redefine work so as to avoid paying market wages, reduce or eliminate pensions and benefits, and decrease job security in work.