Response paper week 9 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Response paper week 9 - Essay Example The call for transparency requires companies to account for their environmental and social impacts (Natrass and Altomore, 1999). The questions addressed in john’s post help to tackle the topic adequately because they cover a lot about the topic. In their book, Green to Gold, Esty and Winston point out that companies can generate lasting value, minimize costs, reduce risks, and increase revenues if they engage in sustainable practices. Sustainability is best achieved by companies that embrace environmental responsibility, care for the triple bottom line, and improve their reputation. Esty and Winston emphasize on companies being responsible with regard to the environment in which they operate, that is, cleanliness and social well being. Natrass, Hawken and Altomore insist on the cyclic principle, that is, how waste can be recycled to avoid environmental pollution. Corporate accountability is well covered by Epstein (2008). I work St. Jude Medical Inc . where the employee of the week is rewarded for exceptional performance as a motivation towards strategy achievement. The company sponsors the best student of the year in the community for further studies. I like the way Soosai has addressed the role of employees who are not in the leadership position in pushing sustainability initiatives. Many constituents have a legitimate stake in company activities calling for a variety of interests and opinions required in developing sustainability strategies. A company’s long term value is largely influenced by the expertise and commitment of the employees. Since subordinates are part of drivers of sustainability performance, leaders can use feedback loops to evaluate and improve corporate strategies. Educated and trained individuals are better sensitized to sustainability issues. I do not agree with the referencing of Lovins and Hawken. In their book, Natural Capitalism, the authors assert that

Human Resources and You Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Human Resources and You - Essay Example The article mentioned that a specialty job within human resources is HR information systems. If this type job has a higher pay scale I would probably pursue this specialization to be able to earn more money. In regards to employee training if I was CEO of a company I would invest in training and development initiatives. Training and development improves the skills and capabilities of the staff. As the CEO I would develop an educational incentive package to help finance college studies of employees. The employees would be eligible for up to $10,000 of educational expenses towards a bachelor’s or master’s degree. â€Å"Training is one of those effective techniques that they would use to prepare their labour force for yet another challenge at the start of each new day† (Behindthelines, 2009). Investing in training is a smart move because it improves the quality and effectiveness of a firm’s most important asset, its human

The Direct Bald On Record Strategy English Language Essay

The Direct Bald On Record Strategy English Language Essay According to Brown and Levinson(1978: 74), bald on record strategy is a direct way of saying things, without any minimisation to the imposition, in a direct, clear, unambiguous and concise way, for example Do X!. Brown and Levinson (1987) claim that the primary reason for bald on record usage may be generally stated as whenever the speaker wants to do FTA with maximum efficiency more than s/he wants to satisfy hearers face, even to any degree, s/he will choose the bald on record strategy. There are different kinds of bald on record usage in different circumstances. This is because the speaker can have different motives for her/his wants to do the FTA with minimum efficiency. The motives fall into two classes; one is where the face threat is not minimised and therefore ignored or irrelevant, and the other is where in doing the FTA baldly on record, the speaker minimises face threats by implication. Brown and Levinson (1978: 100) give an example of bald on record strategy and say that direct imperatives are clear examples of bald on record usage. Imperatives are often softened with hedges or conventional politeness markers, e.g., Please send us the offers. Verb do is used with imperatives, like in Do call us. While what BL call bald on record strategies might simply involve the Gricean maxims, politeness strategies, in contrast, would involve violating the maxims in specific way. Positive politeness The positive politeness is usually seen in groups of friends, or where people of given social situation know each other fairly well. It usually tries to minimize the distance between them by expressing friendliness and solid interest in the hearers need to be expected (minimize FTA). Unlike negative politeness, positive politeness is not necessarily re-dressive of the particular face infringed by the FTA. According to Brown and Levinson (1978: 106), positive politeness is redress directed to the addressees positive face, his/her perennial desire to the his/her wants or actions acquisitions, values resulting from them -should be thought of as desirable. Furthermore, they describe that the redress consists in partially satisfying that desire that ones own wants or some of them are in some respects similar to the addressees wants. BL also note that unlike negative politeness, positive politeness is not necessarily redressive of the particular face want infringe by the FTA. In other words, in positive politeness, the sphere of redress is widened to the appreciation of alters wants in general or to the expression of similarity between egos and alters wants . . . .the linguistic realizations of positive politeness are in many respects simply representative of the normal linguistic behaviour between intimates, where interest and approval of each others personality, presuppositions indicating shared wants and shared knowledge, implicit claims to reciprocity of obligations or to reflexivity of wants, etc. Are routinely exchanged. Perhaps the only feature that distinguishes positive politeness redress from normal everyday intimate language behaviour is an element of exaggeration; this serves as a marker of the face-redress aspect of positive politeness expression by indicating that even S cant with total sincerity say I want your wants he can at least sincerely indicate I want your positive face to be satisfied Brown and Levinson (1978: 106) BL add the element of insincerity in exaggerated expressions of approval or interest is compensating for by the implication that the speaker sincerely wants positive face to be enhanced. This perspective of intimacy is interesting when considering articles in economic journals between authors and audiences are not usually very intimate and if they were, intimacy would be disregard while giving scientific claims. In this sense, it could be expected that not many strategies of positive politeness would be used or rarely used in the articles of economic journals. BL also explain that the association with intimate language usage gives the linguistic of positive politeness its redressive force. They claim that positive politeness utterances are used as kind of metaphorical extensions of intimacy, to imply common ground or sharing of wants to a limited extension of intimacy, and also to imply common ground or sharing of wants to a limited extent even between strangers who perceive themselv es for the purposes of the interaction as somehow similar. This is true when considering economic articles; in fact, sometimes authors and audiences (esoteric) have similar knowledge in general or purpose in common. BL also point out that the positive politeness techniques are usable not only for FTA redress but in general as a kind of accelerator, where S, in using them, indicates he wants to come closer to H or audiences. In addition, BL divide positive politeness into three strategies, namely claiming the common ground, conveying that sender and receiver are co-operators and fulfilling receivers want. 2.3.2.3 Negative Politeness When Brown and Levinson define negative politeness, they say that it is a redressive action addressed to the addressees negative face, that is the addressees wants to have freedom of action unhindered and addressees attention unimpeded. They also point out that negative politeness is the heart of respective behaviour, just as positive politeness is the kernel of familiar and joking behaviour. Negative politeness corresponds to the rituals of avoidance. Where positive politeness is free-ranging, negative politeness is specific and focused; it performs the function of minimizing the particular imposition that the FTA gives unavoidable effects. Furthermore, BL also stress the difference among them, that negative politeness is the kind of politeness used between acquaintances whereas positive politeness is used between closer friends. Negative politeness is the most elaborate and the most conventionalized set of linguistic strategies for FTA redress; it fills the etiquette books although positive politeness also gets some attention. Furthermore, according to BL (1987: 135), the linguistic realization of negative politeness, conventional indirectness, hedges on illocutionary force, polite pessimism, and the emphasis on hearers relative power are very familiar and need no introduction. In addition, BL say that the negative politeness outputs in all forms are used in general for social distancing. Therefore, they are likely to be used whenever a speaker or a sender wants to put a social brake on the course of interaction. There are five main categories as the linguistic realization of negative politeness by BL, namely communicating senders want not to impinge the receiver, not coercing receiver, not presuming/assuming, being (conventionally in) direct and redressing receivers wants. 2.3.2.4 Off Record Brown and Levinsons (1978:216) define off record strategy as a communicative act which is done in such a way that is not possible to attribute one clear communicative intention to the act. In this case, the actor leaves her/himself an out by providing her/himself with a number of defensible interpretations. S/he cannot be held to have committed her/himself to just one particular interpretation of her/his act. In other words, BL claim, the actor leaves it up to the addressee to decide how to interpret the act. Off record utterances are essential in indirect use of language. One says something that is rather general. In this case, the hearer must make some inference to recover what was intended. For example, if somebody says It is hot in here, the hidden meaning of the utterance can be a request to open the window or to switch on the air conditioner. Furthermore, BL (1978: 230-232), list inviting conversational implicatures as one of the main strategies of off record-ness, and its subcategories are giving hints, giving association clues, presupposing, understating, overstating, using tautologies, using contradictions, being ironic, using metaphors, and using rhetorical question. The other main strategy of going off record is being vague or ambiguous, and its subcategories are being ambiguous, being vague, over-generalising, displacing hearer and being incomplete. Politeness In Scientific articles This section aims to present an overview of recent trends in the research of academic writing. One particular area of on-going research is the use of politeness in scientific articles such as economic issues written by economic scholars in academic journal. Myers (1989) discovers that politeness strategies are used explicitly in scientific research article, for instance, to make claims and avoid FTAs. In his study The Pragmatic of Politeness in Scientific Articles, Myers mentions that he adopted politeness strategies proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987) in their book Politeness; Some Universal in language Usage. Brown and Levinson (1987) have developed a theory of politeness to explain the nature of politeness phenomena in language. According to them, it is possible to define generic types of politeness strategies to explain and predict the adoption of politeness in oral or written discourse. As already mentioned in the previous explanation, this theory is based on the work of Goffmann (1967) and it states that people who want to be polite assess the degree of face threat that their discourse will cause in others. BL outline a whole hierarchy of politeness strategies and argue that cultures can be compared in terms of which categories of redress preferred. Most of the claims in the corpus of scientific articles illustrate either positive or negative politeness strategies. But there are instances that illustrate the other choices open to BLs Model of person; doing FTA without redress, baldly; doing it off record; indirectly; and deciding not to do it at all. The Model Person also has a rational faculty for choosing the course of action that will give the highest pay-off with the least loss of face, evaluating three variables; the social distances (D); the relative difference in power between the speaker and hearer (P); and the rank of imposition (R). Myers (1989: 3) in his articles still uses the Brown and Levinson model to help understand the interaction between writers and readers in written text, and particularly in scientific texts, so it meant that these three basic variables are affective to help this study understand the interactions of politeness between writers and readers in written text. In the realm of written communication, the influence of the above factors to politeness has been assessed by Chiappini and Harris 1996; Holtgraves and Yang 1990; and Pilegaard 1997. Although it has been said that specific factors like power, social distance or status influence the adoption of strategies, it is difficult to provide definite conclusions. But it could be said that politeness in written communication such as in economic journal, like others academic field has been generally concluded as a strategy used to create and maintain a friendly atmosphere for relations, to close distance between speakers and hearers and to mitigate the impact of impositions. Greg Myers published his article The Pragmatics of Politeness in Scientific Articles in 1989. By using the model of the politeness principle, Myers (1989) pioneers the application of Brown and Levinsonss (1987) politeness strategies onto written text, and he discovers the existence of politeness in scientific articles. This study attempts to follow what Myers had done in the previous study when he explores and analyzes the research article, by choosing to study economic journals that are quite similar to the corpus in Myerss study. The reason is because an economic journal consists of interactions among economists in which the maintenance of face is crucial. We could see economists building alliances that define what knowledge is as the statement of the individual becomes a fact when it is accepted and used by consensus of the community. In these interactions, certain FTAs are unavoidable and must be redressed with various politeness devices. Moreover, every economist report in the economic issues states a claim, in other words, it makes statement that is to be taken as the articles contribution to knowledge. Most reports, in stating a claim, deny or supersede the claims of others. As stated earlier, this study tries to examine the politeness strategies in the economic text. Myers (1989) investigates the use of politeness in scientific text which closely related with this study. Myers (1983: 3) justifies his reasons for studying politeness strategies in scientific articles. The first reason is scientific article containing the norms of scientific culture, which include the use of passives, nominalization, hedges, and acknowledgement. Secondly, it is because he considers scientific writing as a hard case. If this type of writing contains politeness strategies, then their presence in other genres can be expected. The next reason is that every scientific reports states a claim, an FTA is performed. It would be interesting to see how writers of scientific writing employ politeness strategies to stake a claim. Myers (1983) also discovers that politeness strategies are used explicitly in scientific articles. Below are the strategies employed by the writers/authors co mmonly found in the scientific papers. 2.3.3.1 Positive Politeness and Solidarity In Brown and Levinson (1987), the hierarchy of positive politeness is directed at showing the speaker concerns with hearers concern. Similarly, Myers in his article illustrate the situation: That in scientific writing the range possible references to the readers wants is severely restricted: one cannot for instance, make any remark praising the general talents of a researcher, or remind the readers of a readers past success. But there are positive politeness devices for showing the writer acceptance of the wants of rival researcher, or of the scientific community as whole. (Myers: 1989) In his article, he also points out that the researchers show their solidarity with the community by showing identification with common goals. For instance, when a researcher expresses disappointment, it does not mean that it is a display of personal feelings. Instead, it is an expression of despair for the loss of the opportunity to contribute towards the community. In another example, when an author or a researcher expresses his pleasure or sheer delight, it is not a celebration of personal achievement; it is meant to indicate how glad the author is that the findings fit with the larger goals of the scientific community. Myers (1989) finds that strategic use of pronoun is to stress solidarity, as imposition is made and the use of modifiers to assume common ground, the use of emotional response to indicate solidarity and such unscientific-seeming devices as joking and giving gifts, and also the use of citations are normally used to show solidarity. One way of making criticism while minimizing the FTA is for the writers to use pronoun that include themselves in the criticism. Besides the use of we that means the writers, there is we that means the discipline as a whole. The use of the first person plural pronoun lessens the impact of the claim or criticism made (Myers 1998:7). When an author uses we, it shows solidarity with others, such as research partner(s) or supervisor(s) Joking would seem to be an unlikely politeness strategy in scientific text, and indeed there is not much room for humour in it. But jokes are useful for scientists, linguists, economists or other academic communities, in establishing a sense of shared knowledge or assumptions. This sense can emerge in two features of scientific articles, namely new terms and titles, and they may serve to mitigate the FTA of claim. BL list the giving of gifts as one of their positive politeness strategies. The concerned device in the analysis of writing is the gift of credit, especially in the disposition of citations. It may seem odd that the choice of who to cite and who not to cite could be matter of strategy. One special case of this of giving credit is the acknowledgement of simultaneous, independent claims. Historically, priority disputes have been major causes of tension within the scientific community. Furthermore, authors can show their solidarity with the community more subtly by exhibiting response that assumed shared knowledge. Myers (1989) in his paper finds an indication of emotional response to results, or desire for certain results. In scientific writing such as economic journals, a pattern of citations is used to show solidarity with the scientific community. Authors used this strategy to show the referee or the editorial board that their work is in agreement with the previous studies and it is supported by these studies. Also, by citing the findings of the established members of the academic community, they hoped that their suggestions would be more convincing. Based on the explanations above, those basic concepts of the positives politeness in scientific articles have not changed much compared to the basic concepts proposed by BL, that the communication is framed so that all parties maintain a positive face. Positive politeness is an effort to make up for a threat to the desired self-image or it usually tries to minimize the distance between them by expressing friendliness and solid interest in the hearers need to be respected. Positive politeness devices are used to mitigate both claims and denials of claims.

1880-1890 :: Essays Papers

1880-1890 The decade from 1880-1890 was an interesting time for America, giving rise to great advancement in architecture, inventions and businesses. For instance, such now famous companies as Sears Roebuck Company, DeBeers and Johnson & Johnson opened in this time (Timeline). Also, the Brooklyn Bridge, the largest suspension bridge in the world was set up in 1883 (Museum). This decade saw another milestone for architecture, the skyscraper. The first skyscraper, built in Chicago out of an all-iron frame, was completed in 1885. Some famous inventions included gasoline engines, the Kodak camera and electric lamps (Timeline). Another first was free mail. Towards the end of this decade, free mail was being delivered to all community populations of at least 10,000 (Timeline). Clara Barton, a major humanitarian, was the leader behind the establishment of the American Red Cross during this time (Timeline). In 1886, Americans got their first good look at the Statue of Liberty with its opening dedication in the New York Harbor (Hurley). On a National scale this decade saw various events being played out across the world. For instance in Germany advancements were being made in science and social reform. An example of this would be, Pasteur’s first use of the vaccination principal and the Germany’s establishment of the first known health insurance (Goff). The French in the 1880’s were developing new techniques in architecture and waging wars. That is, towards the end of this decade the Eiffel Tower was just being completed and the French were waging a war with the Chinese (Sino-Chinese War) over trading rights (History). The British were busy responding to anti-foreign riots in Egypt, eventually leading to their invasion and capturing of Cairo (History). Neighboring Belgium was concerned with more peaceful, recreational matters, such as their hosting of the first beauty contest in 1888 (Time). In the 1880’s the movement known as Impressionism was coming to an end. The eight and last Impressionist exhibition was held in Paris during 1886 (Time). Although Impressionism was coming to an end new forms of art arose to take its place. Some famous artists producing during this time include, Van Gogh, Georges Seurat, and Odilon Redon (Georges). Odilon Redon started his own movement known as Symbolism, which strives to give form to ideas and emotions (Odilon). Another painter responsible for creating a new style is Georges Seurat. Seurat was a French painter who popularized and developed his own style called pointillism.

Shifting Experiences of Work and Non-Work Life

Work, Employment & Society http://wes. sagepub. com/ Life after Burberry: shifting experiences of work and non-work life following redundancy Paul Blyton and Jean Jenkins Work Employment Society 2012 26: 26 DOI: 10. 1177/0950017011426306 The online version of this article can be found at: http://wes. sagepub. com/content/26/1/26 Published by: http://www. sagepublications. com On behalf of: British Sociological Association Additional services and information for Work, Employment & Society can be found at: Email Alerts: http://wes. sagepub. com/cgi/alertsSubscriptions: http://wes. sagepub. com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsReprints. nav Permissions: http://www. sagepub. com/journalsPermissions. nav Citations: http://wes. sagepub. com/content/26/1/26. refs. html >> Version of Record – Feb 17, 2012 What is This? Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 Beyond redundancy: article Life after Burberry: shifting experiences o f work and non-work life following redundancy Work, Employment and Society 26(1) 26–41  © The Author(s) 2012Reprints and permission: sagepub. co. uk/journalsPermissions. nav DOI: 10. 1177/0950017011426306 wes. sagepub. com Paul Blyton Cardiff University, UK Jean Jenkins Cardiff University, UK Abstract This article sheds new light on neglected areas of recent ‘work-life’ discussions. Drawing on a study of a largely female workforce made redundant by factory relocation, the majority subsequently finding alternative employment in a variety of work settings, the results illustrate aspects of both positive and negative spillover from work to non-work life.In addition, the findings add to the growing number of studies that highlight the conditions under which part-time working detracts from, rather than contributes to, successful work-life balance. The conclusion discusses the need for a more multi-dimensional approach to work-life issues. Keywords part-time work, po sitive/negative spillover, redundancy, re-employment, work-life balance Introduction Recent discussion of the relationship between work and non-work life – much f it focused on the notion of work-life balance – has tended to give preference to two aspects of that relationship over others. First, there has been a marked tendency to consider the impact of work on non-work life to a much greater extent than vice versa. Second, as Corresponding author: Jean Jenkins, Cardiff University, Aberconway Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU, Wales, UK. Email: [email  protected] ac. uk Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 27 Blyton and JenkinsGuest (2002: 260) has pointed out, there has been an equal tendency to explore ‘work-life conflict’ rather than examine possible positive associations within that relationship. For Guest (2002: 263), this reflects a widely held view that over the past generation the pressure of work has be come a more dominant feature of many people’s lives, as a result of among other things perceived increases in work demands and a widespread expectation to show commitment by working long hours (see, for example, McGovern et al. , 2007; Perlow, 1999).Coupled with the growth in female labour market participation, particularly among women with dependent children, this is seen to increase pressure on non-work activity by reducing the time and/or energy available to fulfil outside responsibilities. Where the possibility for positive ‘spillover’ (Staines, 1980) between work and nonwork life has been examined, this has mainly been undertaken by social psychologists, generally approaching the issue both from an individual perspective and with the non-work focus primarily on the family.Examples include studies that have identified a positive association between an individual’s job satisfaction and their satisfaction with family life (for example, Near et al. , 1987 ). Less attention has been addressed to more aggregate levels of analysis more typically explored by sociologists, such as the influence of the work group or workplace community on life outside work (for a notable exception, see Grzywacz et al. , 2007, and for earlier sociological accounts, see Horobin, 1957; Tunstall, 1962).Yet, despite the attention given to the potential for positive spillover of individual-level factors, even among psychologists the clear direction of travel has been to examine possible conflictual rather than beneficial relationships between aspects of work and non-work life. In their meta-analysis of 190 studies of associations between work and family, for example, Eby et al. (2005) found almost three times the number of studies focusing on the unfavourable effects of one sphere on the other, compared to those considering possible favourable effects.Even more starkly, of all the studies examining the effects of work on family or vice versa, less than one in fi ve of the studies entertained the possibility of the relationship being characterized by both favourable and unfavourable effects. A recent study involving a largely female manufacturing workforce made redundant by factory relocation, most of whom subsequently found alternative employment in a variety of work settings, allows for examination of some of the neglected aspects of the relationship between work and life outside work.In several respects the nature of this study in terms of the workplace and its location – a large clothing manufacturer, Burberry, in the Rhondda Valleys of South Wales – is somewhat distinctive. In earlier times the plant had been one among a cluster of factories in its locality, but the decline of coal and manufacturing meant that it had become the biggest employer for a relatively isolated community in an economically depressed area. Thus, while in operation, the factory exerted a considerable impact on the non-work lives (both in terms of fa mily and community) of its workforce.Indeed, there was a symbiotic relationship between community and workplace in our case that resonates with Cunnison’s (1966) earlier garment factory study. Such windows on the interaction of factory and community are becoming increasingly rare in the context of manufacturing decline in the UK and the changing nature of what a ‘workplace’ has become. The study provides insight into the journey of a redundant manufacturing workforce into new Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 28 Work, Employment and Society 26(1) mployment in the contemporary labour market. In this, there are clear points of reference to be drawn with Bailey et al. ’s (2008) study of redundancy at the MG Rover plant at Longbridge, Birmingham, UK, even though that study dealt with respondents from a quite different demographic and skills base. Manufacturing employment in Britain has typically involved workers employed fulltime and this pattern also prevailed in clothing factories, including our case (see Kersley et al. , 2006: 78; also Phizacklea, 1990: 66).Factory closure and the paucity of good jobs in the immediate locality gave workers limited choice and the subsequent employment experience of many of our female respondents (the majority of whom were over 45 years of age) involved part-time jobs in the service sector. Their responses usefully contribute to discussions (led by Walsh, 2007; Walters, 2005; Warren, 2004, among others) on the extent to which (and conditions under which) part-time working may contribute to (or detract from) a successful work-life balance.It is evident from the present sample that both part-time employment – particularly the lower incomes deriving from that work – and the lack of stability in the hours worked, had a significant negative impact on different aspects of non-work life. What emerges is a picture that highlights the obstacles to positive sp illover in part-time, low wage service sector occupations which fail to offer workers stability and security in terms of contracts, hours or earnings.To explore these issues, the remainder of the article is divided into five sections. First, the context of the study is outlined: the nature of the community and the closure of the factory that was the focus for our enquiry. Second we describe our investigation and our maintained connection with a sample of the workforce made redundant and their trade union representatives. The third and fourth sections trace the changing nature of the relationship between workplace and life outside work: the shift from a largely positive o a more problematic association as employment experiences altered. While the third section examines the association between Burberry and broader features of workers’ lives, the fourth explores work and non-work experiences of workers following the Burberry closure. This fourth section explores, among other thi ngs, the effects of parttime working and unpredictable work hours on the families and social lives of our respondents.The final, fifth section reflects on the findings and underlines the value of work-life enquiries adopting a more context-sensitive and multi-dimensional approach to the interconnections between work, family and community. The context: the locality and the factory This study centres on the experiences of women and men employed by Burberry, until the closure of its manufacturing plant in South Wales in 2007. The Burberry factory studied was located in Treorchy, a former coal-mining town in the Rhondda Valleys.This region saw ‘permanent structural change’ during the last quarter of the 20th century, due to the acute decline of coal mining and steel (Williams, 1998: 87, 121). Regeneration has been a regional government priority but the relative geographical isolation of valley towns like Treorchy presents particular challenges for individuals in travelling for work and also for agencies charged with attracting alternative sources of investment (Bryan et al. , 2003).Founded in 1939, the factory changed ownership more than once, with Burberry being a customer throughout its history and taking full ownership in the late Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 29 Blyton and Jenkins 1980s. At its height, the factory employed 1500 employees and though employment levels had contracted to around 300 by 2007, it remained a key employer in the area. As was the case in Cunnison’s (1966) study, the community outside the workplace entered the factory gates in the form of amilial ties, friendships and long-established associations and over time the plant had acquired a strong local identity as an example of the surviving manufacturing sector and a bastion of ‘jobs in the Valleys’. The factory’s workforce was overwhelmingly female, reflecting the gender profile of the clothing sector gener ally (Winterton and Taplin, 1997b: 10). Low levels of recruitment in latter years had resulted in an ageing workforce, with the majority of workers at the factory being 45 years or older.As part of a ‘buyer-driven’ global value chain (Gereffi, 1994), the British clothing industry has experienced structural change associated with outsourcing and outward processing of production (Jones, 2006: 101). While Burberry had formerly set itself apart from the trend to off-shoring by ‘focussed differentiation and niche marketing’ (Winterton and Taplin, 1997a: 194) of its high value garments as ‘quintessentially British’, in 2006 it joined the ranks of other producers and gave notice of its intention to relocate the Treorchy plant’s production to China in the interests of cheaper labour costs.The shock of the notice of closure was deeply felt in a community with limited prospects of alternative work and within a workplace with a strong social networ k. In his earlier study of garment workers, Lupton (1963: 72–3) comments that factory life was made tolerable by the sociable groupings that evolved within their walls, and that workers’ attachment to the company ‘sprang very largely from [their] emotional attachment to the small group of friends rather than any love for work that had little intrinsic value, or for their employer’.As well as the loss of these sorts of relationships, the Burberry workers also feared the loss to the local community of a factory which had, over its 70-year history, become emblematic of secure employment and was regarded, as one respondent commented, as a ‘guaranteed job †¦ a job for life’. Thus, when Burberry made its announcement, the workforce reacted with outrage and disbelief. A fierce campaign attracted considerable media attention, but the plant closed in March 2007 (for a discussion of the closure campaign, see Blyton and Jenkins, 2009).For the majori ty of our respondents, closure meant the end of their workplace community and the rupture of friendships and associations that had been built up over lifetimes. It also meant entry into a new world of job search or enforced ‘retirement’ in the context of low pay and limited choice. The study Using survey, interview and observational methods, we have examined several aspects of the redundancies, and individuals’ subsequent employment experiences, over a longitudinal research period which had key stages in 2007, 2008 and 2009.The research began in January 2007, and initially concentrated on the workers’ campaign against closure of the plant. Regular interviews were held with full-time and lay union representatives, and shop-floor staff, and a short survey was issued to employees in February 2007, while the plant was still open. A further survey of the effects of redundancy was issued in March 2008 (one year after plant closure) and interviews with union repr esentatives have continued up to the present. In addition, the authors attended various public and trade union meetings and workers’ reunions occurring since the plant closure. Downloaded from wes. sagepub. om at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 30 Work, Employment and Society 26(1) As the initial 2007 survey sought information specifically on employees’ response to the union campaign against closure, it has only a limited contribution to make to this article’s focus on the effects of redundancy. The 2008 survey and interviews conducted in 2009 provided the main sources of information about the effects of redundancy. It was in this phase of the research that the focus was on workers’ employment experiences since redundancy as well as aspects of their previous employment and comparisons were drawn between life ‘before and after Burberry’.The 2008 survey was posted to the homes of 191 former shop-floor staff (all the staff we were able to s ecure home addresses for) and 80 usable replies were received (a response rate of 42%). Reflecting the lower levels of recruitment at the factory in latter years, 70 per cent of the respondents were 45 years or older (74% were married or living with a partner, and 70% had no children living at home). Of the 80 respondents, 71 (89%) were female. The full-time union representative for the largest union in the plant, the GMB,1 estimated the ratio of female to male employment within the factory at 80:20.Employment records could not be obtained to verify this estimate but it was a good reflection of the profile of shop-floor union membership, which stood at around 80 per cent density. In January 2009, the 28 respondents to the 2008 survey who had indicated their willingness to participate in ongoing research were contacted and asked to participate in interviews about their experiences since redundancy. Eleven agreed and semistructured interviews took place, focusing on their experiences while employed at the factory and the way their lives had changed in the two years since the closure.Interviews took place in respondents’ own homes and lasted, on average, one hour and 40 minutes. Two interviewees were male, nine were female. Despite the predominance of female respondents in the survey and interviews, male workers at the plant participated in all phases of the research in rough proportion to their representation at the workplace, and work-life issues for both men and women in the study were negatively impacted by low paid, insecure work in the prevailing labour market environment.In terms of its representativeness and relevance for wider social enquiry, it is acknowledged that this study has many distinct features in terms of workplace and location, but it contributes to the building of generalizations (see Gerring, 2004: 341, 352) in two areas. First, Burberry’s own cost-focused rationale for closure highlights the workings of the garment value chain and the fact that low paid female workers in a mature economy are now ‘too expensive’ to manufacture garments – even those at the high end of the retail market.Thus, what is examined in this case is a particular instance of the ‘new forms of inequality’ (Glucksmann, 2009: 878) which result from an international division of labour where labour is casualized and ‘recommodified’ in the service sector of the global north (see Standing, 2009: 70–78) as manufacturing relocates for cheaper people and more favourable regulatory regimes elsewhere. Second, the respondents’ experiences of job search contribute to analysis and understanding of the contemporary British labour market and the increasing phenomenon of nvoluntary part-time working, particularly among women (Yerkes and Visser, 2006: 253). In this respect, Bailey et al. ’s (2008) study of job search and re-employment of Longbridge workers is a useful comparator for th e present enquiry even though their respondents differed from the Burberry workforce in that 90 per cent were male and were mainly professional, skilled, semi-skilled or technical workers. The Longbridge results indicate that, post-closure: Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 31 Blyton and Jenkins igher earning occupations were more likely to travel for work and were consequently much better placed to cope with job loss; men were more likely to find alternative full-time jobs; redundant workers needed ongoing support and training; women were more likely to be found in part-time employment in the service sector; and those workers moving from manufacturing into public services in education, health and social care (as did the majority of the Burberry respondents) reported the largest decline in salary, which Bailey and colleagues (2008: 54) refer to as a particular indicator of ‘growing labour market polarization and inequality’.In det ailing key factors in successful efforts at re-employment, Bailey et al. ’s findings help to illuminate what was absent from the demographic and skills profile of the Burberry respondents and highlight the factors which limited their prospects for re-employment. It is evident in the Burberry case that low paid, full-time female manufacturing workers classed as unskilled became low paid, part-time service sector workers out of necessity not choice.The majority of workers could not travel for work due to a range of factors, among which low earnings, job insecurity and the close intersection between their work and non-work lives were prime considerations. While it was perhaps the very legacy of poor pay and the marginalization of women’s work as ‘unskilled’ at the Burberry plant which presented the greatest challenges for e-employment, the factory had undoubted compensations: it offered a working week that had fixed boundaries of time and effort, perceived jo b security, norms of employment that followed women’s life patterns and strong sociable groupings, all of which allowed workers to make positive accommodations between their paid and unpaid working lives. In the contemporary ‘low-skilled’ labour market outside the plant, most of these compensations were absent and the combined effects of low hourly rates of pay and unpredictable part-time hours in their changed employment eroded any positive spillover from work.The following sections examine these factors in greater detail. The changing relationship between work and life outside work: Burberry and community integration As the majority of employees and our respondents were female, a key issue in the findings related to the intersection of paid and unpaid work in the lives of women workers. Working near to home in a close-knit workplace had helped women manage the integration of their work and non-work lives in various ways; these were explored in interviews at the time of the closure, in unstructured discussions at public events, and in the interviews conducted in 2009.Five factors in particular were most commented on in relation to ways in which the factory was positively interconnected with the lives of the workers in the community. First, frequent reference was made to the advantages of the workplace’s proximity to their homes: No bus fare to pay, on the doorstep. I could leave the house at 25 to eight and be clocking on at a quarter to. We used to finish at 4. 40 and I’d be home by 4. 45. I could get on with my ironing before tea. I absolutely hated it the day I started, but it was so convenient – you’d finish at 4. 0 and be home at five. Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 32 Work, Employment and Society 26(1) This proximity was also helpful in coping with unforeseen domestic emergencies: We didn’t earn a lot but I had a job where I was near to home. I could cope w ith all the commitments in my private life, if my mother was taken ill [for example]. The second most commonly referred-to factor was the reliability of the company as a source of employment, with relatives able to ‘have a word’ with Personnel to secure employment for other family members.Interviewees referred to relatives made redundant several times from other manufacturing jobs before getting ‘security’ in a job at Burberry. Many had several members of their family working at the factory. It was like a family – when I started work, my mother worked there, her sister worked there, my father’s sister worked there, my own sister worked there and I had two or three cousins there. Out of the 14 houses in my street, 10 of them had Burberry workers living in them.Such was the prevalence of familial ties throughout the plant that one interviewee commented that her husband always referred to his mother by her first name when inside the factory, sayi ng that there was no point in calling her ‘Mam’ because ‘there were so many mothers and children on the shop-floor’. A number of people met their future spouses at the plant and patterns of life-time work within the factory traditionally facilitated exit and re-entry into work, following childbearing.The expectation of a job being available resulted in many women giving up work to have families, in the knowledge – accurate up to the last years – of re-employment at a later date. A third advantage for life outside work was perceived to be the factory’s predictable working hours. Almost all staff (over 95%) at Burberry were employed full-time, with the factory operating Monday to Friday, 7. 45 a. m. to 4. 40 p. m.As one respondent commented after the closure, she ‘really missed the Monday to Friday routine’ – this routine being something else that was seen to compensate for the low wage rates paid at the factory (and a routine absent from many jobs subsequently obtained, as discussed below). Fourth, many references were made to the social aspects of work, with interviewees and survey respondents using terms such as their ‘Burberry family’ and ‘one big family’, where they saw their neighbours every day.Though aspects of the work routines were reported as ‘strict’, the work atmosphere was clearly punctuated by ‘all the laughs’ they had, and the everyday chat. Comments on the latter included: Officially we were supposed to start at 7. 45 but some of us used to go in 15 minutes early for a chat before we started work. Once you’d done your number [piecework target] you could take a break and go upstairs to the toilets for a chat.As in Lupton’s study (1963: 72–3), the workers did not idealize the tensions or the work of factory life at the Burberry plant, which was hard and low paid, particularly for the majority of female workers who earned little more than the national minimum wage. Comments about their ‘Burberry family’ were made alongside derogatory remarks about Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 33 Blyton and Jenkins their former employers. Thus nostalgia for factory life was reserved for memories of events and those friendships and people that had characterized workers’ experience of employment at the plant.There were also more organized social activities such as charity fund-raising events, works trips and parties which were clearly valued (and missed) and, in combination with the informal relations between workers, had contributed significantly to the ongoing contact with others in the community. In addition to these four aspects of positive connection between work and non-work life, respondents identified two further, related attributes of their work that had relevance for life outside the factory.First, several commented on the skills they had acquired at Burberry and the positive feelings that this had given them (‘pride at being a Burberry worker’). Examples of reported skills were numerous, including the interviewees who pointed out ‘hand-sewers’ still working at the plant in 2007, and indicated their level of skill in comments such as ‘we used to prove the methods’ (‘proving a method’ involved transferring a design from planning into full production, something necessary from time to time with difficult garments, and requiring considerable expertise).Several referred to the national awards for excellence won by the factory, to the long hours they had worked beyond their contracts, and being always keen to ‘get the work out’. Closely associated with the pride in their skills, a number of respondents reported an acquired status that reflected responsibilities held within the factory which they felt had been undermined by job loss. The quest to maintain social status and social identity has been recognized in studies of redundancy among men, such as former steel workers (Harris, 1987: 36).From several ex-Burberry respondents came comments that they were shocked to find themselves treated in the job search process as ‘low skilled’ or ‘unskilled’ (as a result of generally lacking certified or accredited qualifications), with their former status within the plant often being replaced by alternative employment in junior-level service sector jobs. One interviewee, for example, who had held supervisory responsibilities at Burberry, commented that her next employer (the retail chain Argos) entrusted her with virtually no responsibility: ‘they didn’t know me or what I’d done’.In their study, Bailey et al. (2008: 50) comment on the crucial influence of the local labour market for re-employment, together with accredited skills, the need for ongoing training support and help with travelling for work. Our findings lead us to agree that the propensity to travel and retrain for work are key determinants of success in job search, and this former supervisor at Burberry was an example of what occurs when low paid, insecure, unpredictable work makes travel too costly.Though she had taken advantage of short-term training courses offered by local employment services, she was unable to gain recognition for the skills she had acquired over 40 years of factory working and had been able to obtain only two temporary jobs since factory closure. She described the consequent effects on her sense of purpose and identity and the negative physical and emotional effects of being a ‘job-seeker’ for the first time in her life in her mid-50s, as ‘devastating’ and the cause of depression.All told, our respondents (even those who said they had grown to enjoy their new employment and were earning more) expressed regret at the loss of the social factors that have been d iscussed in this section, which constituted significant compensations for the comparatively low wage rates at the Burberry plant. After closure, the legacy of years of low pay and particularly the marginalization of women’s work as ‘unskilled’ meant that Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 34Work, Employment and Society 26(1) job search was an activity that prioritized the local labour market. Once workers entered new forms of employment, however, they did so without the supporting structure of the social network and sense of identity that (for them) had defined the experience of being a Burberry worker. The changing relationship between work and life outside work: redundancy, re-employment and social isolation The vast majority of the redundant Burberry workers restricted their job search to their own locality.This choice was partly facilitated by the building of a new Wal-Mart Asda store, along with the availability of care work with the local authority. Data from the local Job Centre Plus confirmed our finding that the majority of Burberry workers prioritized proximity of alternative employment over other factors such as remaining in similar occupations or moving for alternative manufacturing opportunities elsewhere. The context of low pay made relocation financially unrealistic, even if it had been desired. In 2007 the local jobs market was dominated by part-time hours, relatively low earnings and little perceived security.These criteria fall far short of an incentive to move established households and lose the support network of family, community and friends. As well as the risk of not finding better or secure employment elsewhere, workers faced the constraints of the housing market and the low property values characteristic of deindustrialized areas, which effectively trap people in regions of high unemployment (McNulty, 1987: 42). Relocation was therefore an unrealistic option for the majority of our respondents, but this did not prevent it being proposed for consideration during the process of job search.One male interviewee recounted his first visit to a local Job Centre Plus, where he was faced with a question he found outrageous: Do you know the first thing they [Job Centre staff] said to me was, ‘Are you prepared to move? ’ Can you believe that? Why would I want to move away? I said no, I wouldn’t. This reaction was typical of the majority of our respondents. While the plant was still open but under notice of closure, Burberry provided employment consultants to help with job search and vacancies were posted on the factory notice-board.One interviewee described how she and other workers used to ‘have a laugh’ about the jobs being advertised hundreds of miles outside Rhondda, many of which were also part-time at minimum wage rates. Several interviewees commented (during the run-up to closure and in later interviews) that they regarded the posting of such jobs as not only ridiculous but also a cynical ploy to misrepresent their situation, feeling that Burberry could claim it was doing all it could to meet its responsibilities to a workplace community that could find alternative work if only it took up the opportunities the company had researched on their behalf.For workers though, not only relocation but the option of daily commuting was constrained by the precise nature of work available. The costs and difficulties of travel for variable shifts and short daily hours spread over 24 hours and five or seven days of the week were not likely to be sustainable on a low income. All these factors made relocation and travelling for work to different degrees economically impracticable. Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 35 Blyton and Jenkins Table 1.Summary of patterns of work and earnings for former Burberry workers one year after redundancy Respondents Male (n=9) Female (n=71) As % of total respondents 11% 89% Working patterns prior to factory closure, March 2007 No. and proportion employed full-time 9 (100%) 68 (94%) Working patterns following factory closure, March 2008 No. of respondents in paid work 7 46 No. and proportion employed full-time 7 (100%) 19 (41%) No. and proportion in part-time work 0 27 (59%) Proportion of respondents in paid work, 28% 23% eporting an increase in weekly earnings Proportion of respondents in paid work, 71% 56% reporting a fall in weekly earnings All (n=80) 100% 77 (95%) 53 26 (49%) 27 (51%) 24% 59% At the time of our 2008 survey, just over two-thirds of the respondents were in paid work with the remainder divided roughly equally between those who had retired and those still seeking employment. The majority of those in work were in the same job that they found on leaving Burberry, while 15 respondents had had two or more jobs since their redundancy.The areas of paid work entered by our sample were mainly in the manufacturing, home -care or retail sectors; two-thirds of respondents in paid work entered relatively low-skill service sector employment. Table 1 highlights the study’s findings on the nature of re-employment patterns. Just over half of the respondents in paid work were employed part-time, on hours ranging from six to 30 per week (and with a mean and mode of 20 hours).Most (88%) of those with part-time jobs reported that their actual hours varied week by week. Those in care work and retail jobs were especially likely to hold part-time contracts with variable hours. The care contracts, for example, typically began as (effectively) zero-hour contracts with no hours guaranteed until a training period was completed. After that, just 16 hours per week were commonly guaranteed, though workers could be asked to work as many as 30 hours in a week depending on demand.The same was true of retail work, though attaining a 30-hour week was far less common in that sector. For many, their parttime status (ra ther than their hourly rate of pay) was the principal reason why their weekly earnings were lower than they had been at Burberry. In several subsequent interviews, respondents commented that making ends meet while working part-time was only made viable by supplementary state benefits and that part-time employment dominated available opportunities rather than being a chosen option.Both from survey responses and interview comments, it was also clear that many were subject to working time patterns that not only varied from week to week but were also highly unpredictable, in terms of both timing and duration. For those on variablehours contracts, their shifts could be scheduled during the daytime, evening or weekends, and for many their forthcoming weekly schedule was known only at the latter end of the previous week. In interviews, the majority of respondents commented on the difficulties Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 6 Work, Employment and S ociety 26(1) created in their home lives by the variability and unpredictability of their new work commitments. One interviewee, for example, employed full-time as a hotel receptionist in 2008 had had her hours cut to 20 per week when interviewed in 2009, and she received just ? 120. 00 gross weekly pay. Though contractually her employer undertook to issue shift patterns and times one month in advance, in practice working patterns were given to her weekly. Shifts ran from 7 a. m to 3 p. m. , 10 a. m. to 6 p. m. , and 3 p. m. o 11 p. m. , and it was quite normal to have to undertake ‘back-to-back’ shifts finishing at 11 p. m. and starting work again at 7 a. m. She commented that the ‘worst thing’ about the job was the timing and unpredictability of the shift work: You can’t plan anything. I’ve just had to cancel a dentist’s appointment because they’ve called me in for a shift and I can’t make another appointment because I w on’t know what I’m working next week. Without her parents’ help, this interviewee commented that she could not have coped with caring for her daughter.It was family support that allowed her to achieve any sort of balance, however imperfect, between her paid and unpaid working life and the tax-credit state benefit (effectively acting as a subsidy for a low paying employer) was an essential factor allowing her to afford to travel to work and keep her employment. A further example of the negative impact of unpredictable hours concerned another respondent who now worked for the local authority (via their care work agency) and was a married mother of two children.Her employment was typical of work in this sector in that it began (in 2007) as a zero-hour contract, with actual hours of work determined wholly by demand. She received notice of her hours each weekend, for the following week. Her shifts were normally based on notional patterns of 8 a. m. to 10. 30 a. m. an d 4. 30 p. m. to 6 p. m. over a seven-day period, but she never knew exactly how many hours she would be given (or which days she would work) for the week ahead. As a new employee, in common with all new recruits, she was classed as ‘casual’ and therefore had no guaranteed hours of work.The interviewee explained that this meant that she sometimes had four hours’ work for a week, but that this could just as likely be twenty or thirty, depending on what her supervisor assigned. ‘Permanent’ status was necessary to attain guaranteed minimum income equivalent to 16 hours’ work per week. As a ‘casual’, she said that planning her income or any sort of family event was impossible; even knowing her hours one week in advance did not help as ‘they can call you, phone you, any time and ask you to come in’.And as a worker hopeful of allocation to a permanent team and reliant on the support of her line manager, this interviewee did not feel she had the scope to refuse any such request. In January 2010, she had still not been upgraded from casual status and could depend on just three hours’ work a week. Unpredictable work patterns were not the sole preserve of women workers. Men were more likely to obtain full-time work but, anecdotally, were more prone to lay-off or seasonally influenced working patterns.One of our male respondents found a seasonal, 40-hour a week job marginally above the national minimum wage rate after several months of unemployment. With no security of contract or predictability of hours, he worked entirely according to the employer’s demand. In the summer he could work as many as 65 hours a week, reducing to 20 at other periods, and was laid off altogether in Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 37 Blyton and Jenkins the coldest months.Hours of work were notified one week in advance, but were frequently subject to change on the day. He re garded placing his time completely at the employer’s disposal as essential to keep his employment. This interviewee had a history of 30 years of regular employment at Burberry and commented that his new working life was a source of anxiety for the future. Jobs with such variable and unpredictable hours have become common in sectors such as retailing (Backett-Milburn et al. , 2008; Henly et al. 2006; Lambert, 2008; Zeytinoglu et al. , 2004) and care (Henninger and Papouschek, 2008; Rubery et al. , 2005). It is also clear that further variability occurs in ‘real time’ as employees are requested at short notice to stay on, or leave early, to reflect particular work circumstances. For management, this access to variable hours offers a means of deploying labour to shadow fluctuations both in demand and available staff but for the people we were interviewing, this variability and unpredictability had many drawbacks.In particular these disadvantages included: a general uncertainty over their work schedule, making it difficult to plan activities outside work; for some, increased problems of organizing childcare and maintaining a consistent care arrangement; a disruption to domestic routines such as meal times; and a lack of stable income as earnings fluctuated with actual hours worked. In the 2008 survey, questions were also asked about changes in other areas of respondents’ non-work lives since the factory closure. Responses to a question about socializing and friendships since the closure showed a marked deterioration.Almost three in five (58%) indicated that this aspect of their life had got worse, compared to 30 per cent saying it had stayed the same and a minority reporting an improvement. In subsequent interviews, several commented that they saw friends and neighbours much less now that Burberry had closed and female interviewees remained emotional about their changed situation even two years after the closure: I miss the company †¦ I can pick the phone up and speak to people, but it’s not the same. Now, I have no social life. There are no friends passing here nd although people say they will keep in touch, they don’t. A similar picture was evident in relation to community involvement. Over two in five of the survey respondents reported a decline in their community involvement since the factory closure, compared to approximately one in seven who reported an increase (the remainder reporting no change). Both in comments on the survey and in interview comments, several references were made to having ‘less money for going out’, compared to former full-time earnings at Burberry.This was especially the case for part-time workers. Those working part-time were more likely (compared to their counterparts in full-time jobs) to indicate that both their level of friendships and community involvement had deteriorated in the time since the factory closure. From comments in interviews, it was ev ident that reduced involvement with friends and the community were issues related to the break up of the workplace community (which had acted as a conduit to wider community involvement), lack of income and the consequence of more fragmented work patterns.Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 38 Work, Employment and Society 26(1) Conclusion While other responses made by the former Burberry workers indicated that the clothing factory was far from an ideal place to work, the factory nevertheless engendered a strong sense of workplace community which in turn extended to various aspects of workers’ non-work lives. As a consequence, the workplace had a number of positive spillover effects into the non-work lives of its workforce.The frequency of interpersonal contact, access to employment for family members, the sense of pride, skill and status that the work generated and the proximity of work to home: all were seen to create a beneficial effect on the workers’ lives more generally. The way that, for many, these factors later diminished, further underlines what the workers had gained from working at Burberry. Subsequent work, much of it part-time and/or with irregular and unpredictable hours, undermined the stability of contact, interaction and social life that had prevailed hitherto.Widespread reductions in earnings exacerbated this situation with less disposable income to spend on a social life. These insights into work to non-work spillover contribute to the work-life debate in two ways. First, they underline the limitations of couching the discussion, as has been common, in terms of the negative impact of work on non-work life. It was clear among this group of workers that their former work experience at Burberry had generated various positive spillover effects, these only diminishing as they moved to other employment after the factory closed.Second, as was discussed at the head of the article, any attention tha t has been given to positive spillover from work to home has focused largely on the influence of individual work-related variables such as job satisfaction. Aspects of these individual-level factors were certainly present among the ex-Burberry workers: a sense, for example, that the status acquired through responsibilities in the factory also had meaning in the non-work community.Importantly, what the present study underlines are more group level, sociological factors positively affecting areas of non-work life: the importance, for example, of interaction among the workforce, reinforced by chat, gossip and ‘having a laugh’. Further, the way the factory represented a source of family, rather than solely individual, employment and the proximate location of the factory in the Treorchy community further reinforced a sense of community both inside and outside the factory.The study’s findings also contribute to the discussion on the extent to which parttime working can contribute to work-life balance or, put differently, the way part-time work reflects a preference for a particular balance of time between work and non-work (Hakim, 2000). Several authors (for example, Walsh, 2007; Walters, 2005; Warren, 2004) have already pointed to the shortcomings of using part-time work as an indicator of a preference and a strategy for achieving work-life balance – noting in particular that this fails to take into account the heterogeneity of part-time work and that, for ome, working part-time is not a means to achieve work-life balance but rather a source of low pay and poor-quality jobs. The present study further underlines the need for a more differentiated view of part-time working. In our sample, while many working part-time in principle had more time available for non-work activities – even when taking longer travelling times into account – this did not translate into more time for friends or community activity. On the contrary, part -time working was associated with work-life Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013 9 Blyton and Jenkins impoverishment for this group more than work-life balance. For most of those on part-time contracts who had been used to working full-time, part-time work was an undesirable consequence of the kind of paid work available within the local labour market. The lower earnings that the part-time jobs generated and the variability and unpredictability of many working patterns detracted from, rather than contributed to, the quality of workers’ non-work lives. Overall, these findings signal the value of a nuanced approach in discussions around ‘work-life balance’.In focusing on the associations of work to non-work life, this article has identified the ways in which associations may be positive or negative and has indicated that the nature of those associations may vary over time and from one context to another. As a result of tracing t he subsequent employment experiences of the former garment workers in this study, it became clear that there is a continuing need for wider recognition not only of the heterogeneous nature of part-time work, but also the reasons why people are working part-time and the degree to which it is a voluntary, employeedriven choice.It was also clear that variable and unpredictable work patterns may exert a significant deleterious influence on the ability of workers successfully to organize and fully enjoy their lives outside work. Acknowledgements The authors would like to acknowledge and thank the union representatives and former Burberry employees who participated in this research. We would also like to express our gratitude to the editor and three anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. 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In: Taplin IM and Winterton J (eds), Rethinking Global Production: A Comparative Analysis of Restructuring in the Clothing Industry. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1–17. Yerkes M and Visser J (2006) Women’s preferences or delineated policies?The development of p art-time work in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom. In: Boulin J-Y et al. (eds) Decent Working Time: New Trends, New Issues. Geneva: International Labour Office, 235–61. Zeytinoglu IU, Lillevik W, Seaton IMB and Moruz J (2004) Part-time and casual work in retail trade: stress and other factors affecting the workplace. Relations Industrielles 59(3): 516–43. Paul Blyton is Professor of Industrial Relations and Industrial Sociology at Cardiff Business School and Research Associate in the ESRC Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) at Cardiff University.His research interests include employee responses to organizational change, working time and work-life balance. Recent publications include The Sage Handbook of Industrial Relations, co-edited with Nicolas Bacon, Jack Fiorito and Edmund Heery (Sage, 2008); Ways of Living: Work, Community and Lifestyle Choice, co-edited with Betsy Blunsdon, Ken Reed and Ali Dastmal chian (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Reassessing the Employment Relationship, co-edited with Edmund Heery and Peter Turnbull (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and Researching Sustainability, co-edited with Alex Franklin (Earthscan, 2011).Jean Jenkins is a lecturer in HRM at Cardiff Business School. Her research interests include labour conditions and unionization in the global garment sector, working time and union-management partnership. Recent publications include Work: Key Concepts, with Paul Blyton (Sage, 2007). Date submitted January 2010 Date accepted November 2010 Downloaded from wes. sagepub. com at University of Bath on March 21, 2013

Outline of the Final Lab Report Essay

*This template will provide you with the details necessary to begin a quality Final Lab Report. Utilize this template to complete the Week 3 Outline of the Final Lab Report and ensure that you are providing all of the necessary information and proper format for the assignment. Before you begin, please note the following important information: 1. Carefully review the Final Lab Report instructions before you begin this assignment 2. The Final Lab Report should cover all 3 experiments from your Week Two Lab 3. As you plan your final paper, think about how you can combine these laboratories to tell a fact-based story about water quality. For example, consider how your experiments can be linked to issues at water treatment plants or the amount of bottled water people purchase. 4. For further help see the Sample Final Lab Report for an example of a final product on a different topic. 5. You may simply replace the text following the bold terms with the appropriate outline information to complete this assignment. Make sure to pay close attention to the information called for and provide all necessary material. Title Introduction Body Paragraph #1 – Background: All flourishing, healthy and thriving communities all have one thing in common and that is clean water, free of harmful contaminants because our bodies depend on clean, pure water to survive. As maintained in Mishra, S., & Nandeshwar, S. (2013), â€Å"Water is crucial for the well-being of people. Due to industrialization, growing  population , illiteracy the provision of safe drinking water will undergo global indust in near future†(pg. 599, para 5). In view of the fact that many diseases and viruses can be transmitted though water, dirty/contaminated water is extremely hazardous and it negatively impacts our health and the health of all living things. Water quality is influenced naturally with climate changes for instance, and by our actions. Unfortunately we don’t clearly see the immense damages that our negligent behavior is causing. In turn it leads us to falsely assume that water must be resistant to pollution damage and th at we have an everlasting supply of clean, drinkable water at our disposal. This is why we should all try to create awareness on water contamination, educate ourselves and others in our community to recognize and accept the fact that water contamination threatens our health, our lives and consequently our existence. Water quality research is very important to our society because it gives us insight on contamination issues, brings up awareness and allows us to learn preventative measures. As stated in Broderick, K. (2008), â€Å"The importance of process and participation for adaptive management suggests that success can be judged in terms of learning outcomes† (pg. 303, para 1). Our drinking water can be contaminated and we might not even realize it, because of all the contaminants that are transported through water regular evaluation of septic systems should be required in all towns/counties around the country. As stated in Gunnarsdottir, M. J., Gardarsson, S. M., & Andradottir, H. O. (2013), â€Å"Drinking water contamination, leading to waterborne diseases, is a recurrent event worldwide. A recent study established that more than one out of every three water borne outbreaks in affluent nations was caused by sewage contamination in ground water† (pg. 1114, para 2-3). In this study, drinking water was tested and indeed it did show signs of contamination testing positive for norovirus. Therefore demanding periodic septic systems evaluations in every town should be mandated. Body Paragraph # 2 – Objective: How do we know if our drinking water is in fact contaminated? What can we do to prevent our water from harming our family members? These are just a couple of concerns and questions that you may ask yourself. The purpose is to inform society of the importance of having a supply of clean, free of contaminants running water in their community. Additionally, to be able to recognize the significance of raising awareness on water, for  instance to be aware of what helps maintain or improve the quality of water and what environmental and human behaviors puts the quality of our water at risk for contamination. In view of the fact that we depend on water for survival, water pollution is an environmental issue that shouldn’t be looked over. Body Paragraph # 3 – Hypotheses: Hypotheses Experiment #1: Oil hypothesis = the water would probably change consistency, probably thicken up and change color Vinegar hypothesis = the water would probably stay the same color if the vinegar is white but there will be a change in smell Laundry detergent hypothesis = the water will change in consistency and would probably have suds/bubbles, smell and color (if detergent is colored) would also be altered. Hypotheses Experiment #2: When I tried to filtrate the water to remove the contaminants, I am not completely successful because the water is not 100% contaminant free since the water has a rancid smell. Hypotheses Experiment #3: If bottled water is supposed to be free of contaminants, then bottled water should contain significantly less contaminants than tap water because that is why bottled water is sold to the public. Materials and Methods Body Paragraph # 1: Experiment #1: Effects of Groundwater Contamination In order to know if soil is capable of actually removing contaminants from our drinking water I used three ordinary items that one way or another end up dissolving and polluting our water supply they are oil, vinegar and laundry detergent. Aside from using the three pollutants I used a permanent marker for labeling, soil, a funnel, cheesecloths and of course water. First I labeled a total of eight beakers and divided them into two groups of four. I filled four beakers (#1-4) with 100 ml of water then I added to beakers #2-4 with 10 ml, oil, vinegar and detergent, after mixing what I incorporated into the water I watched to see if any physical changes  occurred and smelled the solution. I noted what I observed for each beaker and proceeded with the experiment. Next I lined the funnel with cheesecloth and placed 60 ml of soil in it. I took beaker #5 and poured the contents of beaker #1 into the cheesecloth lined and soil covered funnel and I let it stand for about one minute and obse rved what happened to the water after it was filtered. I performed this same process for the rest of the beakers. Experiment #2: Water Treatment To determine if a filtering method is as effective as it is believe to be. The essential materials that I used in this experiment were potting soil, sand activated charcoal, gravel, alum, funnel, cheesecloth, bleach, and a stopwatch. First I made a solution of 100 ml soil and 200 ml water and this was labeled as the contaminated water of which 10 ml was set aside. I let the solution sit and lined a funnel with cheesecloth and poured some sand, activated charcoal, and gravel. Next I poured in some clean water for a number of four times and this is how I solidified the filter. I poured in some of the contaminated water into the filter after five minutes it was considered as filtered water and a couple of drops of bleach were added to the water as well. Now it was time to make a comparison between the water that I just manually filtered with the 10 ml of contaminated water I had set aside and noted the differences. Experiment #3: Drinking Water Quality In this experiment I tested the water quality of two different types of bottled water and water from the tap. I used Dasani and Fiji brands as my bottled water and water from the tap. Ammonia, chloride, 4 in 1 test strips, phosphate and iron test strips and most importantly a stopwatch. I used all of the test strips I was provided with in the different types of water and recorded my findings. Some of the strips I used tested for ammonia, chloride, phosphate and iron in both bottled and tap waters. Body Paragraph # 1: 0 mg/L ammonia and chloride were found in both bottled and tap water. In the 4 in 1 test strips tap water had a ph of 2, alkalinity 0,2 mg/L, chlorine 40 mg/L, hardness of 0 mg/L, phosphate 0 ppm and iron 0 ppm. Dasani bottled water had a ph level of 1, alkalinity, chlorine and hardness all measured 0 mg/L and phosphate and iron both measured 0 mg/L. Fiji bottled water had a ph of 8, alkalinity measured 10.0 mg/L, chlorine measured 40 mg/L, hardness 120 mg/L, phosphate measured 50 mg/L and iron 0 mg/L. Discussion Body Paragraph #1 – Hypotheses: The hypothesis in experiment #1 was confirmed because after all of my observations the water mixed with the contaminants did react the way I envisioned they would. Changes in smell, color and composition occurred when I mixed water with each of the three contaminants and even after filtration contamination was still present. Disposing of contaminants such as oil should be done so correctly. Hypothesis #2 was confirmed because I predicted correctly when I stated that the water was going to have traces of contamination even if it was filtered. However, I’m going to have to deny hypothesis #3, I was wrong when I thought that bottled water was more likely to be less contaminated then tap water. When bottled water Fiji showed to have more contaminants then tap water with a higher phosphate, ph, alkalinity, hardness and the same amount of chlorine as tap water I knew that my hypotheses was wrong. Body Paragraph # 2 – Context: The billion dollar bottled water industry suggests that bottled water is the best option however in my personal opinion and after performing experiment #3 I don’t think it’s worth it to buy bottled water. Considering that there isn’t much of a a difference between bottled water Dasani and tap water, plus bottled water Fiji even showed to have higher contaminants than tap water. For example, it had phosphate 50 ppm while tap water had 0 ppm. As stated in Potera, C. (2002), â€Å"Over half of Americans drink bottled water spending 240-10,000 times more per gallon for bottled water than they do for tap water, a trend largely fueled by the belief that bottled water is safer and healthier than tap water. Is the cost worth it? Controversial reports from the World Wide Fund for Natrure (WWF) in Gland, Switzerland, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in Washington, DC, say no† (pg. 76, para 1). Body Paragraph #3 – Variables and Future Experiments: In Experiment #1 Effects of Groundwater Contamination the possible factors that could have possibly affected my results would be the timing. For instance, if I had waited a little bit more instead of smelling and observing immediately when I mixed the water with the detergent, oil and vinegar could it have made a difference? I could control this by waiting the ideal time and carefully timing everything with a stopwatch. I can also test this by doing the experiment and waiting at different times, for instance I can wait one minute, three minutes and five minutes. With experiment #1 I was able to recognize that contaminants that seep into the water are capable of causing consequences that can possibly affect our health. In Experiment #2 Water Treatment, the outcome indicated that filtered water isn’t 100% free of contaminants. Perhaps if I extended the filtration process the contaminated water might have been clearer. Some possible factors that might’ve affected the final result would be how contaminated the tap water in my area is and the state of health that I was in. For instance, if I had a cold my sense of smell would not be as potent as they would be if I were cold-free. I could control this in the future by first investigating if my town’s tap water isn’t extremely contaminated. Also, if I was sick I could ask someone else to smell the solution to get more accurate results. In Experiment #3 we were able to determine that bottled water isn’t as safe and healthy as it is perceived to be. The possible factor that could’ve affected the accuracy of the results is the  timing, if I went over/under the time that was indicated to check the strip for the end result. I could control this by being attentive and careful and making use of the stopwatch that was provided. We know that contaminants are present in our water, so we consume it daily. Is it harmful or irrelevant? We can test this by giving groups of people the same water (tap water from their town) for a predetermined amount of time and then evaluate them. Does one group have more energy than the other? Is anyone experiencing any discomfort? dIf so, how could you control for these in the future? You should also propose some new questions that have arisen from your results and what kind of experiment might be proposed to answer these questions. Conclusions Body Paragraph #1: The key point of experiment #1 is that we should be more cautious with the way we discard our food and products because they can be contaminating our drinking water. In experiment #2 the key point is there is a big difference between contaminated and treated water, the filtration process is five steps long and even then contaminants may still be present. In experiment #3 the key point for me was that tap water isn’t as bad and unsafe as it is perceived to be, the bottled water franchise is definitely deceiving. The main message that I would like people to have from this report is that they can make a difference and that by simply changing one of their behaviors and making it more â€Å"greener†, this possibly can make a difference in their water quality. References Broderick, K. (2008). Adaptive Management for Water Quality Improvement in the Great Barrier Reef Catchments: Learning on the Edge. Geographical Research, 46(3), 303-313. doi:10.1111/j.1745-5871.2008.00525.x Gunnarsdottir, M. J., Gardarsson, S. M., & Andradottir, H. O. (2013). Microbial contamination in groundwater supply in a cold climate and coarse soil: case study of norovirus outbreak at Lake Mà ½vatn, Iceland. Hydrology Research, 44(6), 1114-1128. doi:10.2166/nh.2013.076 Mishra, S., & Nandeshwar, S. (2013). A study to assess water source sanitation, water quality and water related practices at household level in rural Madhya Pradesh. National Journal Of Community Medicine, 4(4), 599-602. Potera, C. (2002). The Price of Bottled Water. Environmental Health Perspectives, 110(2), A 76. SCI207.W2.LabReportingForm