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Labour and Capital

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Submitted By ajanthi
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Labour is the term which refers to the population that trades it’s time for the wages and salary necessary to support itself. Labor is who participate in production by their mental and physical effort are laborers in the economic sense. Workers provide their time and skills to the employers in exchange for remuneration. Moreover, labour means all workers who do not exercise any substantive control over how their work is organized or performed.
On the other hand, capital is a form of asset that will yield its owner a return. Capitalists support themselves by drawing income from various types of investments they have purchased with their capital in the form of money or property. These investments may include businesses operated by capitalists or by managers hired to run the business for capitalists. These people have important decision making authority.
According to Fudge and Tucker, employment is the only one type of relationship through which work can be accomplished. Employment is an exchange of value between workers and employers. The interests of both parties converge where workers accept managerial authority and agreeing to comply with managerial rules and direction (Godard, 2011). As a result of this employment causes cooperation between labour and capital, because both benefit from a profitable business. In contrast, the conflict occurs where employers only worry about profits and workers are concerned about wages.
4. How has the organization of work changed over time, and why?
Organization of work changed when the employers were started to take additional control over the process and pace of work in order to increase profitability. In the past cottage industry, workers had control over their production. Later on, merchants sought additional control over production by limiting the ability of small producers to access raw materials and sell finished products. This indicated the creation of the putting-out system, whereby a merchant supplied raw materials to independent producers and paid them for their labour, often by the piece. This was the starting point of industrial revolution. For instance, family based textile business was one of the employment society transitioned from the guilds of the mercantile era to the industrial revolution and profit imperative of capitalism at work in the employment relationship. The employer started to reorganize work to increase profitability.

Then, factory system is the introduction of power and technological change. Employers gained additional power over the workers and they used this power to increase productivity.

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