Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2009

Marius Hancu filted:

I often find myself in possession of a survey that needs filling out and I can't
figure out which category my job falls into...is programming a "professional",
"technical" or "clerical" position?...

I think the categories were chosen before anybody was making a living as a
"knowledge worker"....r

And it sure seems that most of them are unskilled workers.

UK teachers would be astonished to earn half the salary of a doctor.
Putting it simply, a full-time GP would expect to earn more than £100k,
whereas a classroom teacher can't pass £30k without taking on extra
responsibilities, and no more than aboug £35k without entering
"management".  A head teacher (=US principal) can earn between £30k and
£75k under normal circumstances, depending on the size of the school.

Nearly all UK teachers belong to trades unions, but that's because the
unions provide free insurance for actions taken during their working
hours (e.g. an accident to a child).  There's no requirement for them to
join a union, but I've never heard of one who didn't.  Teachers must
have either a BEd or a first degree followed by a one-year Post Graduate
Certificate in Education.  There are other routes, but they're rarely
used and still rely on a first degree.

Yes, I was quite surprised on moving from the US to Europe to discover
that here public sector employees are both unionised and well-
compensated.  I can't quite get my head around a trades union that
represents, say, a bunch of government lawyers....  On the other hand,
sometimes I can see the need for one, too.

Stephanie
in Brussels

But in England, general practice lawyers, called solicitors, belong to a
trade(s) union, The Law Society, and likewise doctors belong to The
British Medical Association.  While these bodies corporate do not claim
to be unions, they act as such, and de facto may be considered to be
such.

The point is that membership of a body that represents the practitioners
in a field and effectively controls who may work in the field, and by
what qualifications, and which participates in fee/wage/compensation
negotiations and recompense scale setting, is indistinguishable from
membership of a trades union.

Traditionally, here, their pensions compensate for their compensation.

Happy 2009, especially to those of you who haven't met it yet. Advance
notice: so far, it's not at all bad.

Interesting.  

There are various systems for categorising people in the UK, but none
of them relate to whether or not pay scales are negotiated by a union,
and in any case there's a lot of overlap between those organisations
calling themselves "unions" and those which are associations or
professional bodies or what have you.  Doctors' pay scales are
negotiated with the British Medical Association, for instance.  

One of the UK scales, the NS-SEC (National Statistics Socio-Economic
Classifications), which is used for the UK's ten-year census, looks
like this (I think this is the current version) :

1. Higher managerial and professional occupations

1.1 Employers and managers in larger organisations (e.g. company
directors, senior company managers, senior civil servants, senior
officers in police and armed forces.)

1.2 Higher professionals (e.g. doctors, lawyers, clergy, teachers and
social workers.)

2. Lower Managerial and professional occupations (e.g. nurses and
midwives, journalists, actors, musicians, prison officers, lower ranks
of police and armed forces.)

3. Intermediate occupations (e.g. clerks, secretaries, driving
instructors, telephone fitters.)

4. Small Employers and own account workers (e.g. publicans, farmers,
taxi drivers, window cleaners, painters and decorators.)

5. Lower supervisory, craft and related occupations (e.g. printers,
plumbers, television engineers, train drivers, butchers.)

6. Semi-routine occupations (e.g. shop assistants, hairdressers, bus
drivers, cooks.)

7. Routine occupations (e.g. couriers, labourers, waiters and refuse
collectors.)

8. Plus an eighth category to cover those who have never had paid work
and the long term unemployed.

You'll see from this why I was surprised to see teachers in the US
being considered "non-professional".  

A different but similar scale, the "ABC1" scale, is used by
advertisers and market researchers in the UK:

GROUP A -
Professional Workers (lawyers, doctors etc.), Scientists, Managers of
large scale organisations.

GROUP B -
Shopkeepers, Farmers, Teachers, White-Collar workers.

GROUP C -
1. Skilled Manual (i.e. hand) workers - high grade e.g. Master
Builders, Carpenters, Shop Assistants, Nurses.

2. Skilled Manual - low grade e.g. electricians, plumbers.

GROUP D -
Semi-Skilled Manual e.g. bus drivers, lorry drivers, fitters.

GROUP E -
Unskilled Manual e.g. general labourers, barmen, porters.

This concludes that teachers' formal attempts a century ago to
become a profession was (in the long run) a failure.   The mark
of professionalism in the 19th century was monopoly powers
conferred by the state in return for the guarantee of professional
standards of performance.   Physicians won these professional
privileges by controlling who may call himself "a doctor" (e.g.
via state-wide medical control boards examining candidates).
Teachers attempted approx. 1900 to follow suit, i.e. claim all teaching
posts (e.g. stopping school boards from hiring unemployed and
unqualified 18-year-olds) and require that all candidate teachers
get credentials from official teacher training colleges, guaranteeing
in turn that the current teacher could define the necessary standards
of knowledge and police their deployment in the classroom.

This might have worked when there were no more than half a
dozen other professions (e.g. law, medicine, serving as a
minister of religion) but was obviously attenuated the more
occupations (e.g. accountants, airline pilots, bank managers,
storekeepers) asserted they too were professionals . . .