Page 149 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Social Stratification

Notes sample who follow that occupation. These characteristics were examined in order. Employing
others took precedence over all other characteristics, followed by working on one’s own
account, managerial status, the possession of technical and higher educational qualifications,
and the manual of non-manual nature of the occupation (as defined by OPCS, Classification
of Occupations, 1980). Manual employees were then classified according to whether they had
served a craft apprenticeship, their supervisory status and their employment in a highly
unionized industry group.
• Compared with the other classes, Classes 1, employers, and 3, managers and professional,
are the most ‘closed’, that is, they lose the smallest proportion of their members to other
classes during the course of the year, and Class 5, clerical, is the most open. However, the
differences between classes in the proportions who experience mobility are not large.
Subsequent tables will show that for women the differences between classes in rates of
outflow are much more marked. The largest interclass flows as compared with the quasi-
independence models are from Class 5, clerical, to Class 3, professional and managerial, and
vice versa; from Class 8, lower manual, to Class 7, higher manual; and from Class 6, craft, to
Class 8. In the main, these flows are also the largest in terms of absolute magnitude.
• This flow consists principally of individuals starting up small retail businesses (butchers,
publicans and hairdressers) or working on their own account as painters, builders and
goods vehicle drivers after having been employed in a manual occupation, and those who
give up or are forced to abandon their business and take up employment. Although the self
employed petty bourgeoisie constitute a distinct class, separate from employed workers by
virtue of their different relations to the means of production, these data show that there is
considerable mobility across the divide, and that the inflow into self employment comes
largely from the lower manual class, the one with the least labour market resources. Just
under half of the recruitment to Class 2, the self employed without employees, is from Class
8, lower manual.
• Treating the occupation as a manual one, that is as having conditions of services and
rewards more similar to manual than clerical ones, would have the effect of reducing the
apparent flow across the manual/non-manual line. However, it would still leave the flows
between Classes 5 and 8 as the second and third largest in the table. Furthermore, there is
substantial mobility of sales assistants into mangerial jobs, and the reassignment would also
have the effect of increasing the flow between Class 8, lower manual, and Class 3, professional
and managerial, by about 60 per cent. An alternative tactic would be to assign sales people
to a class of their own, as Heath and Britten (1984) propose, but in relation to its size this new
class would have very high rates of flow between it and the lower manual and professional
and managerial classes. If appears, therefore, that for women the sales occupations do have
a special role, serving to straddle several classes in the occupational structure.
• The rate of movement out of KOS Classes 1, 2 and 3 for part-timers is very high, an that for
Class 7 only slightly lower. As with full-time working women, the numerically small classes
are also those with the highest rates of outward flow. However, part-timers are much more
likely to be working in ‘lower manual’ jobs that full-time working women. In comparison
with full-timers there is little mobility between Classes 5 and 3, mainly because there are so
few part-timers in the managerial occupations of Class 3. The only area where the flow is
significantly greater than expected from the quasi-independence model is the flow from to
higher manaual (Classes 8 to 7). Most of the cell counts are too small make disaggregation
into occupations worthwhile, the exception being that for the flow between Classes 5 and 8,
shown in Table 7.7.

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