Militancy

The other category of benefits to employers from the existence of the secondary labour market and a surplus population to inhabit it is in the prevention or defusing of working class militancy. For example, by maintaining a sharp disparity in the job security and economic rewards accorded primary and secondary workers, employers encourage the development of an elitist consciousness among the more privileged primary workers.31 This status consciousness can be manipulated to disrupt working class solidarity around common grievances. For instance, capitalist political elites can count on certain segments of the labour movement, termed the "aristocracy of labour", to support pro-business policies and legislation.

As well, the existence of an impoverished stratum of unorganized workers, often forced to accept work regardless of the pay or conditions, exerts a constant pressure on organized primary workers and serves as a powerful object lesson during times of collective bargaining. It Is a factor which restrains militancy and holds down wage settlements.32 For their part. employers enhance this short-range antagonism between the two strata of the working class in potent "divide and rule" tactics. Marxist sociologist Charles Anderson states:

The unskilled and powerless surplus, often desperate to the point of starvation, has been brutally utilized as an Instrument to undercut organized labour.33

For example. we may point to the practice of employers in Canada of using highly vulnerable secondary workers as "scab" labour to undercut the position of unionized workers or workers attempting to organize into a union. This is particularly effective where members of minority groups are employed in situations where striking workers are largely of another group, e.g. anglo-Canadians. This practice superimposes a dimension of ethnic hostility on what is fundamentally a class issue, thereby deflecting grievances and passions which would otherwise be directed toward employers into ethnic conflict. According to Anderson, tactics like this are often effective, and:

organized labor have up to now largely reacted precisely as capital has intended--with mutual recrimination and hostility, narrowmindedness and selfishness of purpose.34

In view of the considerable restraining influence which the divided labour market exercises on working class militancy, Anderson concludes that "a meeting and understanding of unorganized surplus and organized labour would be a serious blow to capital".35 Therefore, employers have a powerful vested interest in preserving the separation.