DO STATUS DIFFERENCES AMONG WORKERS MAKE A DIFFERENCE DURING ECONOMICCRISES - THE CASE OF DEPRESSION HAMILTON

Using data from the 1931 Census and interviews with Hamilton, Ontario retirees who worked for pay during the Great Depression, the author ex amines claims that economic crises undermine, strengthen, or need not affect traditional status hierarchies; because, respectively, they sub stitute ''cheaper'' low-status workers for others; privilege high-stat us workers; or differentially affect industries and occupations where workers of different status are segregated. The most remarkable result was that there were no such strong and consistent results for any of occupational status, age, gender and ethnicity on all types of depriva tion. However, there was evidence for some status differences on some types of deprivation. Thus, when occupation was controlled in the cens us data, the most common pattern was for women to work more than men o nly when they in fact earned less. This suggests the ''substitution'' of the cheaper labour of women for that of men, and therefore the unde rmining of the privileges of men. On the other hand, in the interview data, the younger one was and the later one attempted to obtain full-t ime, paid work, the more difficulty one had finding it, and the lower one's wages were. This suggests that some age privileges were strength ened during the Depression. Nevertheless, there was also much industri al and occupational segregation, by age and ethnicity as well as gende r, and this may partly explain why most status differences were neithe r undermined nor strengthened. The author also found few status differ ences in workers' responses to the crisis, and therefore little eviden ce for either the homogenization/left-radicalization process associate d with the undermining hypothesis or the differentiation/conservatizin g of high-status workers and radicalization of low-status workers asso ciated with the strengthening claim.