Remodelling Class to Make Sense of Service Employment: Evidence for Britain and Germany

Abstract

This paper presents a novel class schema that aims at responding to the analytical challenge of an increasingly tertiarized, skill-intensive and feminized employment structure. For this matter, the traditional vertical class criterion distinguishing between more or less advantageous employment relationships is complemented by a horizontal criterion. The horizontal criterion’s purpose is to separate occupations according to four basically different work logics: a interpersonal service logic, a technical work logic, an organizational work logic, and an independent work logic. By combining the hierarchical criterion of employment advantage with the horizontal criterion of different work logic, we obtain a 17-class schema that can be collapsed into 8 classes. Based on analysis of individual-level data for Britain and Germany, we argue that the schema constitutes a useful shortcut for three different sets of individuals’ socio-economic characteristics: (i) work income and promotion prospects, (ii) firm size and sector employment, (iii) party support and trade union membership.