South Africa is a state and states are made up of functional parts.

Functional parts need to be

integrated so that the state can function well and provide welfare for its citizens. This merely
means a country has diverse social mechanisms and for the country to be socially democratic
these mechanisms (functional parts) need to be in order. This paper explores the labour
market as a social mechanism. Barker (2007:62) asserts that “In the secondary segment, ‘bad’
jobs produce ‘bad workers’ while in the internal or primary market ‘good’ jobs make ‘good’
workers”. This is mainly because and due to the apartheid regime that the country attested to
and the development of social concepts. This historical event resulted in disparities within the
labour market which caused segmentation, evidently within social categories in terms of race,
educational levels, geographical locations and age, and the notion of concepts plays a role in
defining social meanings. This essay will critically explore Barker’s (2007:62) claim by
initially outlining the important concepts contained in his statement. It will highlight the
notion of concepts and their role in defining the labour markets. It will explore the South
African labour market in relation to its historical state and then briefly on its current state to
measure the effects on social categories. This text will then prove that the segmentation of
labour market is a historical and real phenomenon.

The labour market is a social mechanism that is a utility in the specialisation of labour
demand and supply, simply meaning, it’s an abstracted and metaphysical platform where
labour is supplied to and demanded by employers. Labour markets are not homogeneous
mechanism but they differ in their features, size and activities. Well aware of the basic behind
the labour market, Barker (2007:62) makes a claim of a segmented labour market. It is
important to rephrase his statement, claiming, “In the secondary segment “bad” jobs produce
bad workers while in the internal or primary market good jobs make good workers”. The
cardinal feature revealed about the labour market in the statement is that it is segmented into,
initially, two sectors being the primary and secondary sector. The primary sector is defined as
the economically active sector and characterised by high earnings, skills development
initiatives, exceptional working conditions, employment stability and unionisation. The
primary sector within itself is inclusive of the internal environment which can be divided to
be sub-sectors according to professions (medicine, law, engineering and so forth). The
secondary segment is defined as the less economically valuable labour segment. It is informal
and disorganized and labour intensive. It is characterised by lack of employment stability,
poor conditions of employment and little prospect of promotion (Barker, 2007:62).
It is clear that a segmentation within the labour market exists because are contradictory
towards one another in terms of characteristics.

The next step is to identify and define clearly Barker’s ideas when the statement makes a
distinction between work and a job, and uncover how exactly do bad jobs produce bad
workers and how good jobs produce good workers, offer a difference between a good worker
and a bad worker, and finally offer a distinction between a good job and a bad job. Work can
be defined as any form of activity that requires contemplation and manual action without any
intension of to produce a useable good but rather for mental exercise. In addition Standing
(1999:4) defines work as “rounded activity combining a creative, conceptual and analytical
thinking and the usage of manual aptitude”. It is clear that work or good work involves,
greatly, mental activity. It is conclusive to articulate, according to Barker’s statement, that a
good worker is an employee who engages in employment that requires creativeness and
mental processing while a “bad worker” is an employee who is denied the opportunity to use
creativity and initiative in the workplace.

It is then vital to distinguish between a good job and a bad job by initially defining the term
job. A job can merely be defined as work done for the intension of receiving income. In
addition (Tilly, 1998:25) defines a job by asserting that “It centres on a relation to an
employer in which the employee cedes limited control over his/her time and effort on
condition that the employer pays a specified remuneration and respect known limits to that
control”. Tilly’s (1998) definition concludes that a job is initially engaged on to accrue some
form of income. The definition does not mention specifically the type of effort the employee
puts, meaning it could be more or less a mental or physical effort. The logic of doing any
activity or task is that any physical effort is contemplated beforehand; therefore some form of
mental activity is present in whatever activity engages on. It is plausible to articulate and
conclude that a good job is the form of job that enables the worker to utilize mental effort
more than physical effort and most importantly receive a good remuneration.

A conclusive definition of a good worker has been established and it correlates exceptionally
with the offered (established) definition of a good job. A bad job can be defined as a form of
employment that deprives its workers the human development need, which is to employ some
form of creative thinking to any activity and inflation defence remuneration.

The distinction between what is considered a good job and a bad job is clear in reference to
Barker’s statement. This presents a well founded distinction between what Barker (2007)
claims as ‘good jobs’ and ‘bad jobs’. It is now vital to link the segments of the labour market
with work and jobs. It is evident that bad jobs produce bad workers in the secondary segment,
initially, because there are low remunerations and they do not promote mental engagement
within the workplace but rather labour intensity. The primary segment is organized, it offers
high remuneration packages, and it is inclusive of skills development initiatives and attached
to it is the perception that it mentally challenging. The internal sector consists of the various
professions. These professions enable workers to be specialists and be promoted within their
fields or sectors. This means their skills become elevated, they become more educated and
attain higher incomes. This enables them to become good workers while their counterparts
are deprived analytical, creative, conceptual contribution and a sound income. The disparities
that exist amongst the segments are clearly visible to be ignored. It is evident that the
segmentation of labour market is formed by abstracted ideas. The notion of concepts needs to
be highlighted to understand these abstracted ideas.

The secondary and primary segments are abstracted ideas that do not have tangible existence
(Barker, 2007), This means the two segments cannot be felt by human senses. The primary
segment is merely characterised by highly skilled and educated labour who engage on
mentally challenging tasks. The secondary segment is characterised by low skill labour and
labour intensive jobs. This shows clearly the difference between the characteristics of the
work being done. This shows the instance where the idea of segmentation was derived, the
idea of segmentation was derived through analysis of the labour market characteristics. It has
been proved that in actual fact every work is done through the integration of mental
contemplation and manual activity. A cleaner, for example, who cleans is actually much
valuable an employee similar to a lawyer. It becomes visible that the work being done is not
the actual determinant of which sector it belongs to but the concept of the work. This simply
means that it is not the work being done that is actually informal nor formal but the