"What people fulfil will depend on their talent, their application and their good fortune... the UK will be a genuinely 'classless' society' (John major, 1992) From the statement made by John Major I will give an explanation of what my understanding

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Critical Perspectives on Human Resourcing

HR 1001

Assignment 1


For my assignment I have been asked to produce an essay on the following statement:

“What people fulfil will depend on their talent, their application and their good fortune… the UK will be a genuinely ‘classless’ society’ (John major, 1992)

From the statement made by John Major I will give an explanation of what my understanding is of sociological theories and give evidence, and also explain to what extent the UK is a genuinely ‘classless’ society.  I will mention the implications for the world of work.

Social Class is where the population is divided up depending on the nature of the population groups. The four groups are: -

  1. Upper class
  2. Middle Class
  3. Working Class
  4. Underclass

Upper Class is the very top where you have the ability to access anything and you have more power and respect over things than the rest. People like the rich, entrepreneurs, and landowners.  A typical occupation to fall in this category is a surgeon, top doctor, top management, higher professionals, company directors etc. High educational achievements are expected from the upper class family, due to their lack of dominant culture.  

Westergaard and Resler argue that the maintenance of inequalities of wealth is due to the power of the ruling class. Haralambos & Holborn (2000) Which basically summarises the points that have been stated in the previous paragraph, that the upper class have far more opportunities available to them than any other class.  

Middle class covers a whole range of people in different areas. This could be from a teacher to a journalist.   You also tend to get a good education if you have come from a family who belongs in this class.  Many suggest that non – manual workers enjoy a large number of advantages in employment over the manual workers, they tend to have better job security, shorter working hours, longer holidays, more able to get promotion, fringe benefits etc.  In this class the people are more likely to afford private health care as well as the upper class, this means they have the advantage to get treated quicker and not go on a long waiting list.  It also said that your life expectancy is a lot longer than others because of the good life that people have being in the class.  People are more likely to own their own house and purchase more luxury items such as a car, computer etc.

Working Class is regarded to as the manual workers.  This could be a secretary; sales, skilled craft workers etc.  A lot of people tend to fall into this category, where a lot spend more on disposable income.  It’s where they have very few opportunities to gain any promotion and their wage is unlikely to increase.  Also working class students are more likely to fail or get low grades in their studies because the class that they are born into prevents them from entering higher education.  In this class their life expectancy is rather low, they die young and are more likely to suffer from poor health because they have to go on waiting lists to get the treatment that they need.  The homes that they live in are more likely to be a council house or even rented, because they cannot afford to buy.  The children from this group are not likely to stay on at school after the age of 16, or to enter into higher education and try and achieve some qualifications, because their parents may not afford the fee’s that are expected from your parents.

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Under Class people are described of having various characteristics, these being poor, homeless, OAP’s single parents etc.  Divorce is likely to occur in this class because there is very little stability and security in the young relationships, crime is another occurrence as people feel the need to increase the amount of their possessions and they would do this by stealing from others, or it could be because they cannot find the money to pay for goods themselves so they turn to crime to solve their problems.  Giddens argues that women and ethnic minorities are particularly likely to be found ...

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