Employment/industrial sector classification for libcom.org
Jul 30 2006
Right so we're going to have a lot of material on the site organised by industrial sector. We wanted to come up with 5-8 main areas which everyone would fit it. We had a discussion on the old boards, and have revised that somewhat. So this is for any further comments/suggestions.
Everyone after this is finalised is encouraged to choose their sector in their profile, to help networking by industry (see here for example: http://libcom.org/profile/profile_sector/public+service+and+third+sector )
The old ones suggested were:
* Public sector (Inc. privatised/contracted)
* Voluntary/3rd sector
* Agriculture/manufacturing/construction
* Retail/leisure/entertainment
* Transport
* Media/Communication
* Unemployed/unpaid homeworkers/claimants
The new ones currently in are:
unemployed, student, manufacturing and agriculture, media/leisure/entertainment, public sector, retail and services, transport and communication, voluntary sector
but there are a couple of gaps. I mean maybe energy workers could be combined with manufacturing, or maybe it'd be best combined with communication and transport? And should retail be with services (like financial, insurance, etc)? I mean I suppose it's useful because it makes it an entirely useless sector, so workers within it have that in common...
Jul 30 2006
#2
J
Glad you started this thread as I was gonna post under the "profiles" bit in libcommunity - this seems a more appropriate place. (Though you may still wanna look at that thread - there may be one or two comments aimed at you! Heh! 
)
Er...I just found it an inappropriate list for my needs..I mean I had to say I was in "communications" which implies I have a dull job working for BT or summat instead of the cool stuff I do. You have to have a category for "self-employed" IMO. I guess it COULD also come under your public service category - but this would need to be differentiated IMO from public sector - there is less security for contract workers than employed and less so even for peeps in my kinda position. So I guess I feel you will need all three cats.
Also - at opp ends of the economic spectrum:
- What about the professionals eg law, medicine, accounts
- What about the NEETS (horrid term but useful)- just student, worker or unemployed is obv. inadequate - prefer your old cat. that included carers etc. A NEET cat could include carers, the sick, those not entitled to benefits at the mo - asylum seekers here temp not getting anything -how would they fit in??? And if we really wanna be equal ops we will need a retired cat.
Just some thoughts - no criticisms - can just see an awful lot of peeps at the mo who "fall through the cracks".
Hope this is useful
Love
LW X
Jul 30 2006
#3
I'd add Education and change Voluntary sector to 'Third Sector'
Jul 30 2006
#4
Hi
Quote:
And maybe we should rename public sector to "public service" to stress that includes privatised/contracted workers like freelance health workers, contract hospital cleaners, outsourced housing workers, etc.?
I don't think it's going to work out John.. Private sector health care workers are no more in "public service" than self employed plumbers.
Love
LR
Jul 30 2006
#5
We want it to ideally boil down to one or two words per sector so we've got tags we can apply across the site as well as in the profiles. I think it should also reflect the sort of content we normally get on the site as well, and allow massive sectors to have their own area (health and education at least)
I've had a go at it trying to take into account what's been said so far on this thread:
* Agriculture
* Claimants & Unpaid
* Construction & Housing
* Education
* Health
* Manufacturing & Energy
* Public Administration & Third Sector
* Retail and Services
* Transport and Communications
We might need to have an "other" sector so people can write their own in, which we can then split into new sectors if we need to.
edit: this was catch, need to sign out of this libcom account eventually.
Jul 30 2006
#6
libcom wrote:
* Agriculture
* Claimants & Unpaid
* Construction & Housing
* Education
* Health
* Manufacturing & Energy
* Public Administration & Third Sector
* Retail and Services
* Transport and Communications
Ok yeah some good points from people.
So this way, we put both students and workers in Education? That's pretty good I suppose. Here are you putting civil servants and local government workers in Public Administration?
And where are you putting Media and Leisure people here? In retail and services?
Catch I'm not sure how your "housing and construction" workers fit together, seeing as many housing workers will be council and privatised council workers? and splitting them from other council workers would seem silly?
Lone Wolf, some good points but you do have to draw a line somewhere in terms of having a small number of categories. You could have different unemployed categories for the disabled, asylum seekers, rejected asylum seekers, illegal immigrants, job-seekers, work-refusers, pensioners but then they're not useful.
Your other example, law and accounts would fit in retail + services, and doctors in Health or Public Service, depending on whether we use mine or catch's. We didn't put "self-employed" because it's not an industry, it's a type of employment. And then we'd end up with a million categories again.
I think we're getting somewhere though... We could split 3rd sector and call public admin all other public service - and include housing workers in that? I think we're best leaving construction workers with manufacturers... or if we wanna keep to 2 words max each, have "Agriculture & manufacturing", "Construction & energy" - esp. as there's the crossover between electrical workers + builders...
Jul 30 2006
#7
John. wrote:
So this way, we put both students and workers in Education? That's pretty good I suppose.
Yeah I think so - I reckon stuff about patients would go in health often as well.
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Here are you putting civil servants and local government workers in Public Administration?
Yeah.
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And where are you putting Media and Leisure people here? In retail and services?
Media - communications. Leisure - retail and services.
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Catch I'm not sure how your "housing and construction" workers fit together, seeing as many housing workers will be council and privatised council workers? and splitting them from other council workers would seem silly?
Yeah fair enough - see below.
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Lone Wolf, some good points but you do have to draw a line somewhere in terms of having a small number of categories. You could have different unemployed categories for the disabled, asylum seekers, rejected asylum seekers, illegal immigrants, job-seekers, work-refusers, pensioners but then they're not useful.
It's difficult to fit everyone in, but there's free-tagging alongside this - so we can easily have a tag for "pensioners" even if it's not in the drop down lists.
Quote:
"Agriculture & manufacturing", "Construction & energy" - esp. as there's the crossover between electrical workers + builders...
I think that's the best so far. Construction & energy would also include massive civil engineering projects which could be a bit of both.
Jul 30 2006
#8
libcom wrote:
John. wrote:
So this way, we put both students and workers in Education? That's pretty good I suppose.
Yeah I think so - I reckon stuff about patients would go in health often as well.
yup totally
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Here are you putting civil servants and local government workers in Public Administration?Yeah.
ok I think we could make that clearer.
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And where are you putting Media and Leisure people here? In retail and services?Media - communications. Leisure - retail and services.
Hmmm I think media people have more in common with say financial service workers then communications ones. Communications I think means postal, telephone, radio transmissions workers really.
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Catch I'm not sure how your "housing and construction" workers fit together, seeing as many housing workers will be council and privatised council workers? and splitting them from other council workers would seem silly?Yeah fair enough - see below.
cool
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Lone Wolf, some good points but you do have to draw a line somewhere in terms of having a small number of categories. You could have different unemployed categories for the disabled, asylum seekers, rejected asylum seekers, illegal immigrants, job-seekers, work-refusers, pensioners but then they're not useful.It's difficult to fit everyone in, but there's free-tagging alongside this - so we can easily have a tag for "pensioners" even if it's not in the drop down lists.
Yeah this is important to stress. These are just over-arching mega-categories, there are an infinite number of potential sub-categories
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"Agriculture & manufacturing", "Construction & energy" - esp. as there's the crossover between electrical workers + builders...I think that's the best so far. Construction & energy would also include massive civil engineering projects which could be a bit of both.
cool - we're nearly there I think!
Jul 30 2006
#9
another go, added media and technology as a category, because I don't think we've got IT in there really (outside manufacturing) and media's big enough for it's own area.
* Agriculture & Manufacturing
* Claimants & Unpaid
* Construction & Energy
* Communications & Transport
* Education
* Health
* Media & Technology
* Public Services
* Third Sector
* Retail and Services
Just need to have explanations of each one somewhere so it's obvious what's included.
I don't like having the word services in there twice, it's confusing. Other than that I think it's coming together.
Jul 30 2006
#10
libcom wrote:
another go:* Agriculture & Manufacturing
* Claimants & Unpaid
* Construction & Energy
* Communications & Transport
* Education
* Health
* Public Services
* Third Sector
* Retail and ServicesJust need to have explanations of each one somewhere so it's obvious what's included.
Yeah we can add a link to the help box under the field.
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I don't like having the word services in there twice, it's confusing. Other than that I think it's coming together.
Yeah. Hmmm maybe "public service"? 
Small but it makes a difference!
Jul 30 2006
#11
I put that in then edited it out Yeah that works.
* Agriculture & Manufacturing
* Claimants & Unpaid
* Construction & Energy
* Communications & Transport
* Education
* Health
* Media & Technology
* Public Service & Third Sector
* Retail and Services
Pretty happy with that, put public service and third sector back in together because I reckon we should keep it to nine, and I think we need a media/tech category, and because public/third sector are merging a lot anyway.
Maybe try it for a month but keep this thread open for potential revisions?
Jul 30 2006
#12
libcom wrote:
I put that in then edited it out* Agriculture & Manufacturing
* Claimants & Unpaid
* Construction & Energy
* Communications & Transport
* Education
* Health
* Media & Technology
* Public Service & Third Sector
* Retail and ServicesPretty happy with that, put public service and third sector back in together because I reckon we should keep it to nine, and I think we need a media/tech category, and because public/third sector are merging a lot anyway.
Maybe try it for a month but keep this thread open for potential revisions?
I think that is the best lot of industrial categorisation I have ever seen. Also means we can put general science news in the Tech section, which is important cos ultimately workers in it can have a say in what they do...
Teamwork eh?
Edit - we could say "Education and study" or something to imply workers *and* students?
Jul 30 2006
#13
The construction and energy category; I don't see much real relation between the two. Electricians/plumbers work with energy, but it's not the same industry as working in a power station, dam or on pylons - or the same skills. and the rest of the building trades have nowt to do with energy.
Jul 30 2006
#14
fair enough with construction and energy. I tried it again with construction and manufacture, energy and primary industries (i.e. ore mining, logging and stuff which is related to coal/oil). Added fisheries to agriculture, and medicine to health so they're all two word descriptions.
* Agriculture & Fisheries
* Claimants & Unpaid
* Communications & Transport
* Construction & Manufacture
* Education & Learning
* Energy & Primary industries
* Health & Medicine
* Media & Technology
* Public Service & Third Sector
* Retail & Services
Jul 30 2006
#15
Similarly, there's little real relation between agriculture and manufacturing - even geographically, generally. Assuming you're devising categories of particular industries for networking purposes, it may be better to look at where there are overlaps in terms of skills, location and relationship in struggle. Ditto 'communications and transport' - what practical industrial links do a bus driver and a telephone engineer have? The manual workers seem to be lumped together just cos they're manual. Sorry to be critical, but I'm not sure what the underlying logic of these categorisations are.
Jul 31 2006
#16
Construction and manufacturing is better. Transport and energy might be a more appropriate category - especially in coming years with fuel shortages. I guess some categories will have to be fairly loose - who is closest to an oil rig worker - could be maritime, construction or energy, depending on their skill?
Jul 31 2006
#17
Ret Marut wrote:
Construction and manufacturing is better. Transport and energy might be a more appropriate category - especially in coming years with fuel shortages. I guess some categories will have to be fairly loose - who is closest to an oil rig worker - could be maritime, construction or energy, depending on their skill?
here's another go:
* Agriculture & Fisheries
* Claimants & Unpaid
* Construction & Manufacture
* Education & Learning
* Energy & Transport
* Health & Medicine
* Communications, Media & Technology
* Public Service & Third Sector
* Retail & Services
I think John's thinking about posties and train drivers more than telephone engineers and bus drivers - moving things around.
Energy and Transport makes sense though - so I stuck communications in with media and technology, since they're all related now (telephone engineers deal with the distribution of media content, media content suppliers buy up communications networks (AOL/Time Warner).
I don't think we can do much more without breaking double figures, and there's still plenty of scope to divide further using tags (and recombine with tags as well).
Jul 31 2006
#18
libcom wrote:
* Agriculture & Fisheries
* Claimants & Unpaid
* Construction & Manufacture
* Education & Learning
* Energy & Transport
* Health & Medicine
* Communications, Media & Technology
* Public Service & Third Sector
* Retail & Services
So where does the afore-mentioned self employed plummer go?
Jul 31 2006
#19
Pilchardman wrote:
So where does the afore-mentioned self employed plummer go?
is it a service? - Retail & Services
Jul 31 2006
#20
or maybe construction...
It's never going to be perfect, and like we said - it's easy to make an entire category for self-employed plumbers alongside these as well.
Jul 31 2006
#21
Ret, part of my thinking at least was breaking them down into sections which would have similar amounts of content on the site. Agriculture and fisheries will have just about none. I'm not sure we have ever had any news or content about fisheries, and we have hardly anything on agriculture, so having a whole section for it seems kinda pointless. Especially as in this country only a few hundred thousand people work in them.
I think communications are still best off with transport, as it seems postal workers/Parcelforce van drivers etc. might have more in common with transport workers than journalists + technicians… But then I see the point with relation to say TV/radio/internet workers. Could we make it "Post, Transport & Energy" maybe? But then that's sounding clunkier…
Jul 31 2006
#22
How about if we killed agriculture and added food into the retail section?
Jul 31 2006
#23
* Claimants & Unpaid
* Construction & Manufacture
* Communications, Energy & Transport
* Education & Learning
* Food, Retail & Services
* Health & Medicine
* Media & Technology
* Public Service & Third Sector
that way food production is brought into the same sector as the supermarkets, which also provide a lot of stuff under services. Put communicatons, energy and transport back together again. And it brings it down to eight.
Jul 31 2006
#24
libcom wrote:
that way food production is brought into the same sector as the supermarkets, which also provide a lot of stuff under services. Put communicatons, energy and transport back together again. And it brings it down to eight.
Good call. I reckon we can wait for more comments and then try to set this up by the end of the day
Jul 31 2006
#25
Yeah, go for it as is.
BTW, that wasn't you posting as "libcom," and then agreeing with yourself, was it John.?
Jul 31 2006
#26
no it was me again (catch)
But then I could be John pretending to be catch so I can agree with myself.
Aug 1 2006
#27
bump.
Aug 1 2006
#28
Aug 1 2006
#29
catch wrote:
bump.
I say we go with this, start a new thread maybe in forums with fuller descriptions and examples of jobs in those sectors, provide a link to that from the profile editing page, and say if you think your job doesn't fit anywhere please ask on that thread.
That sound cool? We can have a proper page in /notes or something later on; we should have a similar page describing exactly how we define our regions as well.
Aug 1 2006
#30
Yep - you fancy making news industrial categories as well?
I mean to add, in the profile form there will be a link to more info.
And maybe we should rename public sector to "public service" to stress that includes privatised/contracted workers like freelance health workers, contract hospital cleaners, outsourced housing workers, etc.?