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The degradation of work and the end of the skilled emotion worker at aer lingus: is it all trolley dollies now?

Curley, Caitriona
; 
Royle, Tony
Repository DOI
Publication Date
2013-02-01
Keywords
airline industry, emotional labour, employment relations, identity, work intensification, labor process, service work, consequences, exploration, expression, industry, heart, job
Type
Article
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Citation
Curley, Caitriona; Royle, Tony (2013). The degradation of work and the end of the skilled emotion worker at aer lingus: is it all trolley dollies now?. Work, employment and society 27 (1), 105-121
Abstract
The article focuses on emotional labour and self-identity at the Irish-owned Aer Lingus airline from 1998 to 2008. It has been suggested that emotional labour is likely to be an increasingly important feature of frontline service jobs. However, in this case management has reduced the level of emotional labour requirement while work organization, recruitment policy and training have changed to focus on sales and lower labour costs, intensifying workloads and reducing cabin crew autonomy. Although some may suggest that a reduction in emotional labour requirement would be a positive outcome for employees, this is not how it has been perceived by some cabin crew. Long-serving cabin crew in particular see these changes as an attack on their professionalism and a challenge to their identity as skilled emotion workers.
Funder
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Publisher DOI
10.1177/0950017012460317
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Ireland
cbn
Collections
Externally hosted open access publications with University of Galway authors (2)