Where does labor collide?

The human effort supplied to production, treated as one of the factors of production alongside land and capital, and measured as the quantity of work offered to the market. In this meaning labor is a chosen input: a person decides how many hours to offer at a given wage, and the labor supplied is summed across people into hours worked and participation rates. Mincer's 1962 Labor force participation of married women modelled that choice, treating the decision to work as an allocation of time between market work and other uses. The referent is a priced input to production, counted in hours and workers, and it is not the bodily process of giving birth, an organized movement, or a pattern of social specialization.[1]

Unit

An input of human work in production, in hours worked or workers employed

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Counted as hours worked, labor force participation rates, and quantities of labor input in production and the national accounts

The physiological process of giving birth: the sequence of uterine contractions and cervical change by which a fetus is expelled from the uterus, unfolding through recognised stages from onset to delivery. Here labor is something the body undergoes rather than something a person supplies, and its progress is followed clinically through time. Friedman's 1954 The graphic analysis of labor plotted cervical dilation against elapsed time to describe the normal course of the stages and give a curve against which slow progress could be judged. The referent is an event in the body, timed in hours and tracked by dilation and contractions, unrelated to a market input, a union movement, or a division of tasks.[2]

Unit

The bodily process of giving birth, in its onset, stages, and duration

Recovery means

The uterus involutes and the body recovers over the postpartum period after delivery

Measured by

Assessed clinically by cervical dilation, the frequency and strength of contractions, and the fetus's progress through the stages of labor

Workers acting collectively through unions and the wider labor movement: the organizations and institutions through which employees bargain, represent their interests, and exercise voice at work. In this meaning labor names a collective actor, not a quantity of hours or a bodily event, and it is studied as a party to the employment relationship. Freeman and Medoff's 1984 What do unions do? argued that unions work through two faces, a monopoly face that raises wages and a collective voice face that channels discontent into negotiation, and weighed their effects on pay, productivity, and turnover. The referent is organized workers and their institutions, tracked by membership and bargaining coverage, and it shares only the word with a market input, a birth, or a pattern of specialization.[3]

Unit

The organized movement of workers, in unions, members, and collective action

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Tracked by union membership and density, collective bargaining coverage, strikes, and the reach of labor organizations

The way tasks and roles are split and specialized across a society, and the interdependence that specialization creates: the division of labor. In this classical meaning labor is neither a priced input nor a bodily event nor a movement, but a structural pattern of who does what, and the social bond that follows from it. Durkheim's The division of labor in society, first published in 1893, treated the growing division of labor as the source of a new, organic solidarity in modern societies, binding people together through their mutual dependence rather than their likeness. The referent is a structural feature of a society, described through occupational specialization and its effects on social cohesion, and it is distinct from the supply of hours, the process of birth, and the union movement.[4]

Unit

The specialization of work across roles, described qualitatively and by occupational structure

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Described by the specialization of tasks and roles and the interdependence it creates, studied through occupational structure and theories of social solidarity