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Contradictions of work-related attitudes and behaviour: an interpretation* JAMES w. RINEHART / University of Western Ontario Les ttudes d’attitudes montrent que les travailleurs manuels sont satisfaits ou indifftrents B leurs emplois. Par ailleurs les observations des comportements des travailleurs indiquent un mtcontente- ment et une rtsistance vis-A-vis le travail. Une structure conceptuelle est dtveloppt5e pour interprtter cette contradiction. Les travailleurs tvaluent leurs occupations en termes des alternatives limitkes qui leur sont disponibles, et ainsi la rtponse “satisfait” doit &re interpret6 dans ce contexte. Ceci rtduit l’ampleur de la disparitt entre l’attitude et la conduite, mais ne l’tlimine pas. La contradiction restante vient de la conjoncture de la position subordonnte des travailleurs B l’endroit du travail et de leur adherence aux valeurs dominantes qui justifient l’autoritt et la production capitalistes. La ntcessitt d’accumuler un capital oblige les employeurs de dtvaloriser la main-d’oeuvre et de priver les travailleurs de leur contrale du dtroulement du travail. En essayant de travailler avec un dtgrt le plus grand possible de stcuritt, de facilitt et d’autonomie, les travailleurs sont forcts de rtsister B la dtvaluation du processus du travail. Une telle rtsistance se dtroule malgrt et en contradiction avec les convictions et les valeurs des travailleurs eux-m2mes. Attitude studies show that manual workers are satisfied with or indifferent to their jobs, but observa- tions of workers’ actions indicate a dissatisfaction with and resistance to work. A conceptual framework is developed to interpret this discrepancy. Workers evaluate jobs in terms of the limited alternatives open to them; hence, ‘satisfied’ responses are minimal and qualified. This reduces the magnitude of the attitude - behaviour disparity but does not explain it. The remaining discrepancy stems from the conjuncture of workers’ subordinate position at the workplace and their adherence to dominant values which justify capitalist authority and production. The necessity to accumulate capital obliges employers to cheapen labour and divest workers of their control over the work pro- cess. Workers, in their attempt to work with the greatest possible degree of security, ease, and autonomy, are compelled to resist the debasement of the labour process. Such resistance occurs despite and in contradiction to workers’ own beliefs and values. Are manual workers discontented with their jobs, or is the idea of alienated labour merely a creation of embittered intellectuals? Years of discussion and research have yielded no unequi- vocal answers to this question, and the nature of the relationship between workers and their jobs remains a contentious issue. One basis of the controversy can be located in the two distinct methods employed to generate data on the working class. The sanguine view of the world of work is derived mainly from attitude surveys, which depict jobs as tolerable and wage-earners as contented. In contrast, behavioural analysis is more likely to furnish evidence of industrial conflict and disenchantment with work. In this paper I shall evaluate these two approaches to * I am grateful to Peter Archibald, James Curtis, and Richard Henshel for carefully reading an earlier version of this paper. Rev. canad. SOC. & Anth./Canad. Rev. SOC. & Anth. 15(1) 1978

Contradictions of work-related attitudes and behaviour: an interpretation

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Contradictions of work-related attitudes and behaviour: an interpretation* JAMES w. RINEHART / University of Western Ontario

Les ttudes d’attitudes montrent que les travailleurs manuels sont satisfaits ou indifftrents B leurs emplois. Par ailleurs les observations des comportements des travailleurs indiquent un mtcontente- ment et une rtsistance vis-A-vis le travail. Une structure conceptuelle est dtveloppt5e pour interprtter cette contradiction. Les travailleurs tvaluent leurs occupations en termes des alternatives limitkes qui leur sont disponibles, et ainsi la rtponse “satisfait” doit &re interpret6 dans ce contexte. Ceci rtduit l’ampleur de la disparitt entre l’attitude et la conduite, mais ne l’tlimine pas. La contradiction restante vient de la conjoncture de la position subordonnte des travailleurs B l’endroit du travail et de leur adherence aux valeurs dominantes qui justifient l’autoritt et la production capitalistes. La ntcessitt d’accumuler un capital oblige les employeurs de dtvaloriser la main-d’oeuvre et de priver les travailleurs de leur contrale du dtroulement du travail. En essayant de travailler avec un dtgrt le plus grand possible de stcuritt, de facilitt et d’autonomie, les travailleurs sont forcts de rtsister B la dtvaluation du processus du travail. Une telle rtsistance se dtroule malgrt et en contradiction avec les convictions et les valeurs des travailleurs eux-m2mes.

Attitude studies show that manual workers are satisfied with or indifferent to their jobs, but observa- tions of workers’ actions indicate a dissatisfaction with and resistance to work. A conceptual framework is developed to interpret this discrepancy. Workers evaluate jobs in terms of the limited alternatives open to them; hence, ‘satisfied’ responses are minimal and qualified. This reduces the magnitude of the attitude - behaviour disparity but does not explain it. The remaining discrepancy stems from the conjuncture of workers’ subordinate position at the workplace and their adherence to dominant values which justify capitalist authority and production. The necessity to accumulate capital obliges employers to cheapen labour and divest workers of their control over the work pro- cess. Workers, in their attempt to work with the greatest possible degree of security, ease, and autonomy, are compelled to resist the debasement of the labour process. Such resistance occurs despite and in contradiction to workers’ own beliefs and values.

Are manual workers discontented with their jobs, or is the idea of alienated labour merely a creation of embittered intellectuals? Years of discussion and research have yielded no unequi- vocal answers to this question, and the nature of the relationship between workers and their jobs remains a contentious issue. One basis of the controversy can be located in the two distinct

methods employed to generate data on the working class. The sanguine view of the world of work is derived mainly from attitude surveys, which depict jobs as tolerable and wage-earners as contented. In contrast, behavioural analysis is more likely to furnish evidence of industrial conflict and disenchantment with work. In this paper I shall evaluate these two approaches to

* I am grateful to Peter Archibald, James Curtis, and Richard Henshel for carefully reading an earlier version of this paper.

Rev. canad. SOC. & Anth./Canad. Rev. SOC. & Anth. 15(1) 1978

2 / James W. Rinehart

the study of work and provide a conceptual framework to interpret and reconcile their divergent images.

THE HAPPY WORKER THESIS

In the 1950s, Harvey Swados (1957) assailed, fatally it seemed, the ‘myth of the happy worker.’ Two decades later, the myth is still alive, albeit somewhat shaken and perhaps a little more mature, for it has had to survive a frontal assault from the ‘discovery’ of what has come to be known as the ‘blue collar blues.’ The ‘myth’ continues to receive life-sustaining in- fusions from survey analyses which use forced- choice questions to elicit workers’ evaluations of their jobs. What these surveys show is that although there are various degrees of satisfac- tion expressed by diverse occupational groups in industrial societies, substantial proportions of all groups state they are satisfied with their jobs (Blamer, 1960; Burstein et al., 1975; Form, 1973; Kahn, 1972; Loubser and Fullan, 1969).

There is a more sophisticated version of this thesis. It views work not as an attractive and fulfilling activity, but one that is treated indif- ferently by workers, who exchange gratification in work for satisfactions off the job. An early survey of manual workers undertaken by Dubin (1956), for example, revealed that work is not a central life interest. What happens on the job is much less important to wage-earners than what occurs outside of work.

Faunce (1968) interprets survey evidence as demonstrating that both blue collar and low- level white collar workers are ‘alienated’ from work in the sense that their low status in work organizations prohibits the maintenance of a positive level of self-esteem, resulting in an absence of personal commitment to work and work organizations. Having defined alienation in terms of status and self-esteem, which Faunce assumes are of paramount importance to people, he then argues that individuals can insu- late themselves from the demeaning impact of low-status jobs by seeking out other spheres of life in which to maintain a favourable self- image.

A roughly similar view of work attitudes has

been advanced in the influential three-volume study by Goldthorpe and his associates (1969). These authors maintain that workers are instru- mentally oriented to work. Wage-earners are interested solely in the amount of income they receive from the job; they are indifferent to the nature of work itself - the kind of skill and ini- tiative it involves, the amount of responsibility and control it affords, and so on.

The authors find support for their position in responses to questionnaire items and in the fact that workers of the sample once held jobs which they regarded as more intrinsically satisfying than their present jobs; yet, they sacrificed the gratifying work for better pay. A concern for consumption standards ‘constituted the motiva- tion for these men to take, and to retain, work of a particularly unrewarding and stressful kind which offered high pay in compensation for its inherent deprivations” (Goldthorpe et al., 1969: 182). The authors (1969: 64) claim that the dilemma of the working class is one of ‘having to choose between work which offers variety, scope for initiative and relative autonomy, and work which, for any skill level, affords the highest going rate of economic return.’

THE TRANSFORMATION OF WORK

What is a t issue is not thefact that workers state they are satisfied with their jobs or that they are willing t o sacrifice ‘enjoyment’ in work for higher wages, but the interpretation of these data. To evaluate the meaning of these results, several points must be considered: the content of the work process, the degree of variation in the intrinsic characteristics of jobs, and the sub- stance of workplace authority relations. The explanatory relevance of these properties of industrial organizations becomes clear only through an examination of a series of develop- ments in the labour process which preceded the current organization of work. By locating work patterns in an historical perspective, one can discern a continual debasement of labour, which involves the progressive dilution of labour skills and the erosion of workers’ control over the labour process. In this section I shall attempt to explain why labour degradation is

1 Instrumental orientations to work are organically linked with “privatized” interests. The workers of this study were described as devoted homebodies, deeply involved with their immediate families, with whom they spent the major portion of their time away from work and around whom their strong consumer desires revolved.

Contradictions of work-related attitudes and behaviour / 3

integral to capitalist production and then go on to show in broad strokes how this process actually unfolded in Canadian society.

The ‘driving force’ of capitalist development is the necessity to accumulate capital. Capital is accumulated through the extraction of surplus value, which is the difference between the value (of commodities) produced by workers and the cost of maintaining these workers (wages). The working day continues beyond the point neces- sary to maintain workers, and it is during this unpaid time that a surplus is produced. The surplus is appropriated by the capitalist and some part of it is used (invested) to extract still more surplus value (see Marx, 1970; 1974a).

Capitalist accumulation takes place within a competitive context which compels individual employers to extract more and more surplus value in order to expand the enterprise or simply remain in business. Marx wrote: ‘The develop- ment of capitalist production makes it constant- ly necessary to keep increasing the amount of capital laid out in a given industrial undertak- ing, and competition makes the imminent laws of capitalist production to be felt by each indi- vidual capitalist, as external coercive laws. It compels him to keep constantly extending his capital, in order to preserve it, but extend it he cannot, except by means of progressive accumu- lation’ (1974a: 555) .2

In order to expand surplus value and amass capital it is necessary to increase the productive-

ness of labour. Only through such an increase ‘can the value of labor power be made to sink, and the portion of the working day necessary for the reproduction of that value be shortened’ (Marx, 1974a: 299). There are three basic ways of raising labour productivity: intensification of work (speed-up); application of progressively advanced machinery; rationalization of the social organization of the work process. The application of these techniques of surplus-value expansion underlies the massive changes in the labour process which have taken place over the past 130 years.

In the middle of the nineteenth century Can- ada was undergoing a transformation from a petit bourgeois society of small, independent producers to an industrial society in which growing numbers of people were dispossessed of the instruments of production and brought as wage-earners under the domination of capita1.l The capitalist production unit most characteris- tic of the initial phase of industrialization was the manufactory - a workshop where previously independent craftsmen were brought together and their activities coordinated by an employer.‘

In the manufactory several techniques of in- creasing labour productivity were introduced. First, the division of labour was extended. While the technical basis of manufactories was handicraft labour, the work of artisans, who once bore responsibility for the production of

2 The external, systemic compulsion to accumulate capital finds its complement in the motivations of capitalists, which are fueled by desires to pursue privileged lifestyles and by the definition of such lifestyles as symbolic of suc- cess (see Sweezy, 1956). It is also important to note that the development of various degrees of monopoly does not obviate the necessity for extracting ever greater amounts of surplus value. As multiple, competitive enterprises were superseded by oligopolies, international competition was heightened (Sweezy, 1956). Today, domestic price competition has been either replaced or supplemented by new forms of rivalry, including most notably those that can be subsumed under the ‘sales effort’ (Baran and Sweezy, 1966). 3 Despite the presence at this time of a ruling class of large landowners, mercantile capitalists, and government officials, and a sizeable group of landless, dependent labourers (see Teeple, 1972). the numerical dominance and economic centrality of small independent producers justify the use of the labelpetit bourgeois. Johnson (1974) differentiates between a ‘toiler society’ of the pre-1850 era and an ‘independent commodity producer society’ of the period 1850-80. Despite their differences, both types of society were dominated numerically by independent producers - mainly artisans and farmers. Both groups were able to control the flow and purposes of work, and the self-sufficiency of the latter required the use of a broad range of skills supplementary to those used in agricultural production proper. 4 As Marx (1974a) insisted, manufactory production entailed a quantitative as well as a qualitative transforma- tion of the labour process. Thesocietal division of labour, which was the hallmark ofpetit bourgeois society, was based on producer ownership (and control) of the instruments and process of production, possession of the knowledge and skills required to perform all of the operations involved in making an article, and earnings based on commodity exchanges between producers (or between producers and merchants). But in the manufactory, ownership of the means of production and formal control of the process and purposes of work passed to the capitalist, jobs were subdivided, and earnings were derived from wages paid by an employer.

4 / JamesW.Rlnehart

an entire commodity, began to be subdivided and the job fragments were permanently as- signed to individual workmen.’ Although fewer and fewer manufactory workmen were capable of performing multiple production functions, the handicraft foundation of this transitional mode of production set limits on the extension of the division of labour. Consequently, skilled labour continued to predominate.6

A second vehicle for expanding output re- volved around control over the labour process. The work patterns of independent producers (artisans and farmers) typically were casual and sporadic (cf. Thompson, 1967; Rinehart, 1975: 25-9). By gathering together under one roof workers dependent on wages and subjecting their activities to supervision, employers were able to regularize and intensify the pace of toil. Nevertheless, the predominance of craftsmen in manufactories restricted employers’ control over work routines. Because artisans monopo- lized craft knowledge, they, not employers, were responsible for the quality of the articles that were produced. Craftsmen also regulated the recruitment and training of apprentices, thus ensuring that skilled workmen would not be easily replaced. Such craft practices pre- vented employers from unilaterally determining the methods and pace of work.

The emergence of the factory system in the 1870s accelerated the dilution of labour skills and the reduction of workers’ control. The

introduction of new power sources (first steam and then electricity) and machinery created a stratum of semiskilled machine tenders and eventually destroyed handicraft production.’ Machinery had multiple advantages for the capitalist. It decreased production time per unit and the value or price of commodities. As com- pared with handicraft technology, machines re- quired less skilled, more easily replaceable, and cheaper labour. Finally, machines, particularly those that could be paced and controlled by employers, eroded workers’ capacity to govern the labour process.’

While mechanization did give rise to a stratum of skilled machinists, its application to more and more spheres of production was generally des- tructive of skilled labour. Some crafts did manage to escape the full impact of mechaniza- tion - at least temporarily. Well into the twenti- eth century, for example, Canadian iron- moulders maintained traditional skills as well as a substantial degree of control over work methods, recruitment and training, and hours of work. Printers were also successful in holding on to craft prerogatives despite the introduction of linotype machines. Neverthe- less, the experience of coopers was more typical. Throughout most of the nineteenth century this group exercised considerable discretion over work routines. The introduction of machinery and the coopers’ inability to regulate the supply of machine operatives spelled the demise of

5 The principle underlying this development and all subsequent extensions of the division of labour was first expounded in 1832 by Babbage, who demonstrated that labour power for a given task is ‘performed more cheaply as dissociated elements than as a capacity integrated into a single worker’ (Braverman, 1974: 81). In addition, the division of labour was extended in order to solidify capitalists’ control over the work process. Specialization allows employers to ‘divide and conquer.’ It also reduces workers’ knowledge of the overall process of produc- tion, thereby increasing their dependency on employers. For a provocative discussion of the relationship between capitalist power and the division of labour, see Marglin (1974). The division of labour, then, was intentionally ex- tended for capitalists’ purposes. Because of this and because of the reciprocal relationship of capitalist authority and the division of labour, it is impossible to meaningfully assess their independent effects on industrial conflict and alienated labour. 6 Nor was the manufactory dynamic enough to absorb more than a portion of the population of skilled tradesmen. As late as Confederation, many artisans retained their status as independent producers (Harris and Warkenton, 1974). 7 The factory system did not immediately drive out handicraft production and manufactories. In many branches of industry, manufactories were apparent throughout the nineteenth century (Ryerson, 1973). But by 1920, Johnson (1972: 170) maintains, ‘large-scale manufacturing and capitalist production had almost entirely eliminated crafts production. . . . I

8 The loss of workers’ control increases with the application of ever more sophisticated equipment, reaching its apogee in the modern automated plant. In the early factories human coordination, supervision, and strict discipline were as essential to labour output as were central power and machinery. Work patterns were synchron- ized to the rythym of machines and the clock, and overseers were charged with the responsibility of maintaining an orderly workforce and an unrelenting pace of toil. Testimony to the 1889 Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital revealed that the organization of work in nineteenth-century Canadian enterprises was not unlike that which had prevailed years before in the ‘satanic’ mills and factories of England (Kealey, 1973).

Contradictions of work-related attitudes and behaviour / 5

craft controls. By the 1880s the coopers’ craft was virtually extinct (Kealey, 1976).

Around 1890, capital started to concentrate and centralize, and Canada’s economy began to change from entrepreneurial to corporate capitalism.’ Corporate capitalism stimulated the mechanization, specialization, and ration- alization of the work process, thereby causing a rapid multiplication of semiskilled wage earners. In the first quarter of the twentieth cen- tury, the socio-technical innovations utilized in manufactories and early factories to increase the productiveness of labour and to facilitate the accumulation of capital were supplemented by scientific management and mass-production techniques.

Based on the writings of Frederick Taylor (1919), scientific management extended the divi- sion of labour horizontally by fragmenting work and vertically by transferring craft knowl- edge from the shop floor to the front office. Taylorists observed, recorded, and timed work practices. This enabled management” to sub- divide the multiple tasks involved in a complex job and to reconstitute each operation as a single, repetitive job. At the same time, time and methods study placed at the disposal of management the knowledge of production held by skilled workmen. Managers were now able to effect a sharp distinction between those who planned and those who executed work. Detailed plans specifying the task to be performed, the time to be taken, and the methods to be used were formulated by management rather than workers. While such practices were especially destructive of the prerogatives of skilled work- men, they also allowed management to impose more standardized and rigorous work routines on all grades of labour.

Investigation of the impact of Taylorism on Canadian industry is just beginning. As early as 1906 the Greening Wire Company of Hamilton, Ontario, standardized and timed

jobs, tried to eliminate all unnecessary physical motions, transferred authority from skilled workers to foremen, and introduced bonuses and piece-work schemes. Similar programs were introduced in London and Toronto. In 1911, Industrial Canada (organ of the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association) reported that the Lumen Bearing Company of Toronto had placed an ‘expert adviser’ on the shop floor. ‘He is on the floor all the time; he is corrective to slovenly practices. The stop watch is his gauge’ (cited in Heron and Palmer, 1977:433). In 1922, effi- ciency experts reorganized the Canadian textile industry (Kidd, 1974). Apart from these cases (and others reported by Heron and Palmer, 1977), it is probably true that American branch plant managers of this era were sufficiently aware of and receptive to Taylor’s ideas to put them into practice in this country.

Despite its rather obscure origins and history in Canada, we can confidently assume that scientific management has exerted a profound and lasting influence on the organization of work in this country. The legacy of the new ‘science’ is evident in a permanent thrust for efficiency, one form of which continues to be standardizing, compartmentalizing, and timing jobs. As Braverman (1974: 87) has pointed out, Taylorism has become the ‘bedrock of all work design’ in advanced capitalist societies.

Mass production techniques, particularly the assembly line, were the twentieth century’s mechanical counterpart of scientific manage- ment. Like the latter, they left a permanent imprint on the organization of work. Mass pro- duction is based on machines that put out stan- dardized and interchangeable parts. It involves the principles of economy, accuracy, continuity, speed, and repetition. As Chinoy (1964: 56) has noted, ‘elimination of any substantial degree of skill from routine tasks is made possible by the pre-determination of tools and techniques by engineers and technicians. Each operation is

9 The terms ‘entrepreneurial’ and ‘corporate’ capitalism are borrowed from Clement (1975). These terms are descriptive of a transformation in the size and ownership patterns of industrial firms. For example, in 1890 there was an average of five employees in the 70,000 Canadian manufacturing units. By 1920 there were only 22,000 manufacturing enterprises in Canada, but the mean number of employees per unit had grown to 26. Throughout this period production increased steadily (Urquhart and Buckley, 1965; Bertram, 1967). According to Acheson (1973), the /eading manufacturing enterprises of the 1880s employed at most several hundred workers and were wholly owned by either a single family or by partners. Forty years later the joint-stock company dominated the Canadian industrial scene. 10 In the joint-stock company, managers assumed the daily operational functions once performed by the entre- preneur. Because the main goal of managers is the same as that of employers - to generate corporate growth and profitability - I treat the two interchangeably in this paper.

6 / James W. Rinehart

precisely defined, tools are placed exactly where they are needed, and the amount of time allowed for a particular task is set by ... time and motion study specialists.”’

The introduction of automation in the 1950s was hailed by some observers as portending a reversal of the long-term trend towards alienated labour. Blauner (1964) in particular argued that automated technology provided more complex, responsible jobs and allowed for greater control by workers over the labour pro- cess. This sanguine description of the organiza- tion of work (which was based on observations of a single chemical plant and interviews with twenty-one chemical workers) has received little research support.

The main purpose of the application of any kind of machinery to capitalist production is to lower labour costs. Because it reduces produc- tion time per unit as well as the size of the plant workforce, automation meets this purpose ad- mirably. In addition, automation has not dis- cernably upgraded workers’ skills. The skills of most maintenance and repair workers under automation are not substantially greater than those required by less advanced forms of machinery. Any increment of such skills associ- ated with the introduction of automated equip- ment generally has been more than offset by its levelling effect on other categories of workers (Braverman, 1974; Bright, 1958). The job con- tent of continuous process operatives illustrates this point.

The operative’s basic function in automated plants is not to initiate operations or to control

the quantity and quality of output. Rather, the worker monitors a group of machines, ensuring that they perform in accordance with manage- ment-determined criteria (Faunce, 1968). The alleged workers’ control over production methods consists of nothing more than discre- tion over the use of time. In the plant Blauner studied, for example, operatives were relatively free to decide when they worked but not how they worked. (There are, after all, few alterna- tive methods of reading dials.) Even discretion over the use of time is eliminated in the most advanced plants, where workers’ movements are now activated by computer instructions (Susman, 1972).12

Today, most workers are locked into jobs that require little knowledge and skill and that are defined and controlled from the upper eche- lons of complex organizations. The gratifica- tions of craft work are denied to all but a few, and jobs which are officially designated as skilled usually bear little resemblance to the tasks performed by traditional craftsmen. Moreover, ‘the training requirements and the demands of the (semiskilled operative) job upon the abilities of the worker are now so low that one can hardly imagine jobs that are significant- ly below them on any scale of skill’ (Braverman, 1974: 430).”

The impact of the development of industrial capitalism on the organization of work has been to degrade labour by extending the division of labour and creating a labour force of life-long detail workers and by progressively eliminating the control functions of workers.“ This trend,

11 Attacks on craftsmanship were not restricted to Taylorism and mass production. Employers supplemented these techniques with such practices as an aggressive open-shop campaign, victimization of unionists, union busting, the use of injunctions to break strikes and boycotts, and the attempt to lure foreign skilled workmen to Canada. The determination of employers to gain control over the work process was matched by the equally fierce resistance to such efforts on the part of workers. The content and intensity of the struggle can be gauged by the 421 strikes that occurred in ten southern Ontario cities between 1901 and 1914. Of these disputes, 257 involved issues relating to control of the workplace. For an excellent discussion of these questions see Heron and Palmer (1977). 12 A recent study of a continuous process chemical company in England found that the majority of production workers was performing unskilled labour, while the skill level of process operatives was only a cut above that of the unskilled workers. Nichols and Beynon (1977: 68) observed that “the packing and bagging operators do very much the same sort of work to be found in traditional assembly lines in technically less ‘progressive’ sectors, and the jobs in the control room, while easier, can hardly be said to have produced a ‘new type’ of worker.” The responsibility of continuous process workers - so heavily emphasized by Blauner (1964) - is not born of the necessity to use complex knowledge and skills. What is required is reliability in the performance of work, a trait necessitated by the extreme costliness of errors and accidents. As one continuous process worker stated: ‘The thing about these jobs is the responsibility. That means you musn’t fall asleep’ (Mann, 1973b). 13 It is not surprising to learn that a recent study in England found that of the more than 350 jobs across one labour market, only a handful entailed as much skill as is used in driving to work (Mann, 1973a). 14 Parallel developments have occurred in the office both in the public and the private sectors of the Canadian economy (Rinehart, 1975).

Contradictions of work-related attitudes and behaviour / 7

when taken in conjunction with the precipitous decline of self-employment in the twentieth cen- tury (see Johnson, 1972), has virtually elimi- nated meaningful j ob alternatives for the majority of the Canadian labour force.

T H E M E A N I N G OF INSTRUMENTALISM A N D JOB SATISFACTION

It is because variations in the intrinsic charac- teristics of most blue collar jobs are not large and because such differences as do exist are situated in authority relationships in which the process and purposes of production are not governed by workers that we are justified in raising ques- tions about the meaning of ‘satisfied’ and ‘instrumental’ reactions to work. To argue, as Goldthorpe and his associates (1969) have, that the dilemma of the working class is a choice between high wages and gratifying work is to suggest a degree of variation in job complexity and control which simply does not exist. As Fox (1974: 161) remarks, ‘men who have never ex- perienced intrinsically satisfying work can hardly be said t o have “chosen” intrinsically unsatisfying work.’ Consider the following statement of an ‘instrumental worker’: ‘You don’t achieve anything here. A robot could d o it. The line here is made for morons. It doesn’t need any thought. They tell you that. “We don’t pay you for thinking,” they say. Every- one comes to realize that they’re not doing a worthwhile job. They’re just on the line. For the money. Nobody likes to think that they’re a lit- tle cog. You just look at your pay packet - you look at what it does for your wife and kids. That’s the only answer’ (Beynon, 1973: 114).

Instrumental orientations should be under- stood as rational adaptations to jobs that are characterized by extreme specialization, sub- ordination, and inequalities of prestige and treatment.” If jobs are selected on the basis of economic criteria, this only reveals the flatness of the world of blue collar work and not an absence of (abstract) desires for gratifying jobs. Workers opt for jobs with relatively high wages in exchange for what can only be minor loses in intrinsic work satisfaction.

Instrumentalism is shaped by objective reali-

ties. So too are ‘satisfied’ responses to work, which should not be construed as statements of preference. They are no more than pragmatic judgments of one’s position vis-u-vis the narrow range of available jobs. Also relevant to under- standing the significance of job satisfaction is the permanent existence of the reserve army of the unemployed and the constant threat of re- dundancies, lay-offs, and plant shutdowns, all of which are responsible for pervasive feelings of insecurity among the working class. The ‘choice’ that is presented to most workers is that between work which is intrinsically unsatisfying and no work. A job, any job, is preferable to none at all, and this necessarily affects evalua- tions of work. The negative frame of reference used to evaluate jobs is illustrated by the follow- ing statement of a ‘satisfied’ worker: ‘You see I’m a labourer, just a labourer. When all is said and done all I can do is labour. That’s all I can sell isn’t it ... you know what you are and you’ve got to make the most of it. It’s a good job really ... When I married the wife we lived with her people in this fucking great house. It was freezing in the mornings. I used to look for- ward to coming to work, to go to the toilet and have a warm wash. I used to look forward to coming to work. This is a hard company. There’s no doubt about that. But you appreciate things like that’ (Beynon, 1973: 93-4).

Job appraisals are not merely a function of workers’ recognition of the parameters of the labour market. Their evaluations also are af- fected by expectations of work, expectations which are shaped by experiences on and off the job. Unfulfilled hopes might be expected to pro- duce dissatisfaction with work, but this condi- tion is minimized by a progressive scaling-down of occupational aspirations. This long-term process tends to bring job expectations into rough correspondence with labour market realities.

Among working class youth the adjustment process initially entails eliminating the possi- bility of obtaining white collar jobs; some time later expectations of blue collar work are lowered. As early as age thirteen, Canadian working class boys (70 per cent of whom are destined for blue collar jobs) ‘select’ a school

15 Long before the ‘discovery’ of the modern instrumental workers, Marx (1974b) recognized this orientation as oneelement of alienated labour under capitalism. This element is the externality of work; work that does not belong to the worker but to someone else; work that is not the satisfaction of a need but merely a means of satisfy- ing needs external to it. But Marx viewed instrumentalism as a reaction to the way in which work was organized rather than a working class desideratum. Neither could the worker, according to Marx, shrug off or neatly com- partmentalize work, for as a species-defining activity it enveloped peoples’ lives.

8 / James W. Rinehart

curriculum that is ‘preparatory’ for manual work (Breton, 1972). If aspirations for high status occupations initially survive such stream- ing, the objectives of the school program even- tually are realized. A large percentage of the sons of manual workers who maintain some hope for white collar work upon entering high school ‘will have changed this aspiration or recognized its futility within three or four years ... ’ (Tepperman, 1975: 198).

As working class youth enter the labour mar- ket, there remains (at least for some individuals) a residue of optimism about the possibilities of blue coliar work. Such hopes fade with time and job experience and are replaced by more realis- tic appraisals of the world of work and one’s place in it. Research has shown that older workers and those with more work experience express greater job satisfaction than their younger and less experienced counterparts (Berg, 1970; Kornhauser, 1965; Sheppard and Herrick, 1972). When individuals ‘see their hopes still unrealized as they grow older, they begin to rationalize,I6 to reduce the pain of the discrepancy between their expectations and their achievements’ (Berg, 1970: 131). It is this alignment of aspirations with the objective characteristics of blue collar work that is largely responsible for workers’ pronouncements of job satisfaction.

The influence of minimal work expectations on job appraisals - a factor ordinarily con- cealed in attitude surveys - is illustrated by the following exchange between a manual worker and an interviewer: ‘This worker told me in a rather offhand way, “I got a pretty good job.” “What makes it such a good job?” I responded.

He answered, “Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t say it is a good job. It’s an OK job - about as good a job as a guy like me might expect. The foreman leaves me alone and it pays well. But I would never call it a good job. It doesn’t amount to much, but it’s not bad”’ (Strauss, 1974: 5 9 . ’ ’

This worker’s remarks reveal that individuals do maintain a conception of desirable work, albeit one that does not generally serve as an operative reference point to evaluate jobs. As practical responses to work, instrumentalism and job satisfaction should not be taken as indicative of an absence of abstract desires for meaningful work. When workers are asked to rank elements that define ideal jobs, intrinsic job qualities and self-determination take prece- dence over all other traits, including wages (Beynon, 1973; Kahn, 1972). Nor is it uncom- mon to hear wage-earners express abstract desires for independence and job discretion (Chinoy, 1955; Department of Manpower and Immigration, 1974a; Walker and Guest, 1953).” Another piece of evidence for the hiatus between workers’ own jobs and what they regard as ideally desirable occupations is the common attempt of working class parents to steer their children into higher status positions (Chinoy, 1955; Kahn, 1972; Sennett and Cobb, 1973). l 9

The prevalence of abstract yearnings for de- cent work is also shown by a tendency of manual wage-earners who report job satisfac- tion to state they would select a line of work different from their own if they could start their lives over again. A national survey of Cana- dians found that 85 per cent of blue collar

16 For some workers expressions of job satisfaction may be a rationalization devised because they feel they ought to be contented with work. To admit otherwise is to define oneself as a failure. Apparently such rationalizations are ineffective, for depth interviews have shown that many working class people are afflicted by feelings of self- degradation stemming from the nature and status of their jobs. The strength of such sentiments is revealed by working class parents’ efforts to ensure that their children grow up to be unlike the parents (Sennett and Cobb, 1973). 17 The relationship between work expectations and the objective features of the job has been sensitively explored by Beynon and Blackburn (1972). In their study of a mass-production factory the authors found that female part- time workers were generally satisfied with their line jobs, because they expected little else from work than wages to supplement family income. Older male assemblers expressed satisfaction, because they felt that all jobs available to them were stultifying and because their desires for secure wages were being met. In contrast, young males on the day shift, whose jobs were objectively the most desireable, were dissatisfied with work. Their disenchantment resulted from an absence of family obligations, a consequent lack of interest in wage levels, and expectations for gratifying work. 18 Data from the Department of Manpower and Immigration’s ‘Work Ethic Survey’ as re-analysed by Peter Archibald, John Gartrell, and Owen Adams. 19 An interest in meaningful jobs can also be inferred from behavioural data, especially the various techniques manual workers devise to make work more interesting and challenging (Faber, 1976; Garson, 1975).

Contradictions of work-related attitudes and behaviour / 9

workers were satisfied with their jobs. When these same persons were asked what type of work they would seek if they were to re-enter the labour market, 52 per cent of the skilled and 64 per cent of the unskilled chose an occupation different from the one in which they were then employed (Department of Manpower and Immigration, 1974b).20 Coburn’s (1973) study of Victoria residents revealed an equally large disparity in manual workers’ expressions of job satisfaction and the jobs they would choose in hypothetical circumstances.2’

It is not conceptions of ideal work that serve as the basis of job orientations, expectations, and choices. Rather, it is logical to conclude from the evidence that the comparative frame of reference used by workers to select and evaluate their jobs is mainly a negative one.

WORKING CLASS ACTIVITY: CONFLICT A N D ALIENATION

The argument I am advancing is that workers’ attachments to jobs are in fact limited, prag- matic, and instrumental. But in contrast to the position taken by most observers - even the majority of those who view instrumentalism and job satisfaction as rational responses to limited job choice - my thesis is that such job orientations neither imply nor factually entail indifference to or acceptance of the nature of work.

High wages cannot neutralize the impact of what wage earners are obliged to d o for over one-third of their waking hours, year in and year out. To argue that workers select jobs on economic grounds is not tantamount to saying that non-economic working conditions are a matter of indifference. It is unrealistic t o believe that even the, most calculating workers can effectively ignore and insulate themselves from daily workplace experiences. The validity of this argument is not shown by workers’ attitudes, especially as they are expressed in survey analyses. Rather, it is most forcibly revealed by workers’ actions.

Class conflict is endemic to capitalist societies. The outlines of Canada’s turbulent history of industrial relations have been drawn by Jamieson (1971). Strikes are a persistent

feature of the industrial system, and they periodically erupt to involve massive numbers of workers. This country has experienced five major strike waves in the twentieth century, the latest one occuring in 1974-5, when there was an all-time high in the number of man-days lost from strikes and lockouts. While many observ- ers claim that this record is proof of workers’ overriding concern with wages, the reality of work stoppages is more complex.

Without denying the salience of pecuniary interests, it is important to realize that strikes are a complex phenomenon. Work stoppages ordinarily arise out of a multiplicity of conten- tious issues, and during the course of a strike it is not unusual to find shifts in the importance workers attribute to the issues (cf. Hyman, 1972; Knowles, 1952). Even if we assume (along with government agencies) that the major causes of a strike can be classified and ranked in terms of salience, it is clear that a substantial number of work stoppages (now as in the past) are not rooted in economics per se but are the result of grievances arising from working condi- tions broadly defined - job allocation and transfer, forced overtime, work loads and work speeds, safety and health problems, disciplinary measures and dismissals, etc.

Disputes bearing on non-economic matters sometimes get translated into economic demands. There are various reasons for the dis- placement (Gouldner, 1954), but the main one is that the collective bargaining process does not easily lend itself to the resolution of non-eco- nomic disputes. As Hyman (1975: 27-8) points out, ‘pay claims are readily negotiable, since they provide ample scope for bargaining and compromise; whereas non-wage demands often involve questions of principle on which compro- mise is far more difficult. Trade union negotia- tors ... are usually far happier pursuing demands which offer reasonable prospects of peaceful settlement.’

Strikes are only the most obvious expressions of working class discontent, the tip of the ice- berg as it were. Less visible workplace struggles are continuously waged over working condi- tions and managerial prerogatives. While orga- nized labour has fought for economic gains, struggles over the organization and control of

20 Data re-analysed by Archibald, Gartrell, and Adams. 21 Such large response differences are not typical of groups such as professionals, managers, and proprietors. For example, Coburn (1973) found that 82.9 per cent of professionals were satisfied with their jobs, and 73.8 per cent would choose the same occupation if they could start again.

10 / James W. Rinehart

the workplace have been waged primarily by rank and file workers on the shop floor, inde- pendent (and sometimes in defiance) of the union.22

Class relations are sharply etched in the daily encounter between bosses and workers, result- ing in antagonisms which take various forms - slow downs and sit ins, restriction of output, wildcat strikes,*’ working to rule, absenteeism and tardiness, personnel turnover, insubordina- tion, and sabotage. In this constant ‘war of the workplace’ workers not only resist managerial authority but a t times collectively act to take over some part of management’s role. What must be stressed is the routine character of fac- tory conflicts. While ordinarily hidden to all but insiders, they are not an episodic phenomenon but a permanent feature of social relationships within capitalist enterprise (cf. Faber, 1976; Glaberman, 1975; Johnson, 1975; Rinehart, 1975; Roy, 1967, 1969; Watson, 1972).

ATTITUDE-BEHAVIOUR INCONSISTENCIES

If workers were really satisfied with or indiffer- ent to their jobs, conflict and struggle would not be such a prominent feature of the world of work. But the disparity between job attitudes and on-the-job behaviour is only partly resolved by a re-interpretation of the meaning of atti- tudes. We are still left with an irreducible resi- due of uncertainty about such interpretations. How are we to treat the fact that workers do say they are satisfied with work, however minimal and qualified these assessments may be? There is no complete answer to this question. In fact, it would be surprising if attitude -behaviour dis- crepancies could be neatly reconciled, because what astute observations of the working class reveal is that such contradictions are not a t all unusual. Consider the following examples of the striking inconsistency of values and behaviour.

Goldthorpe and his associates (1969) found

that workers held privatized values; they were oriented to their immediate families and were not deeply involved with other workers or work- ing class institutions. Moreover, these workers tended to view their relationship to the company as a cooperative one rather than one of opposi- tion and conflict. Yet, it is now well known that shortly after the publication of the final volume of the study these same cooperative, privatized workers engaged in a militant strike that includ- ed threatening the life of the company director, running up the red flag, and singing the ‘Inter- nationale.’

A similar phenomenon has been described by Glaberman (1976) in his study of World War 11

no-strike pledges among the United Auto Workers. Prior to being presented with a secret ballot on the no-strike issue, workers were besieged by patriotic proclamations of the media as well as their own union leaders. The message was clear - uninterrupted production was necessary for the effective pursuit of the war effort. The UAW membership voted two-to- one in favour of banning strikes. Nevertheless, ‘before the vote, during the vote, and after the vote, a majority of auto workers were on strike,’ (Glaberman, 1976: 29).

The disparity between consciousness and action is also emphasized in Mann’s (1973a: 51) discussion of a study of the turbulent 1960-61 general strike in Belgium. Workers interviewed just prior to the strike were described as ‘apathetic trade unionists, hostile to political strikes and completely ignorant of radical reform programs.’ Mann reported that the author of the study was surprised to discover that these same ‘apathetic’ workers had as- sumed active, leading roles in the general strike.

The above cases are dramatic illustrations of an ordinary phenomenon. It is not unusual to find lip service being paid by workers to hege- monic values, with a corresponding behavioural denial of them. Wage-earners generally adhere to the notion that improvements in one’s socio-

22 When contemporary unions have taken a stand on such matters it has usually been one of formalizing control gains already established on a de facto basis by the rank and file. Consequently, the union’s strategy of ‘agressive economism’ and ‘defensive control’ (see Mann, 1973a) cannot be explained as a simple reflection of rank and file needs, interests, and priorities. The strategies of organized labour are more adequately explained by reference to structural constraints which oblige unions (under threat of destruction) t o ignore questions of authority and control. 23 Eldridge (1968: 90) maintains that wildcat strikes ‘may be seen as a particular expression of dissatisfaction with the existing rules of the industrial game. ... The work group becomes more than usually aware of the essentially coercive nature of the rules and rebels from a sense of oppressiveness. The unofficial strike then becomes a gesture of defiance against their industrial lot.’ In such countries as Canada, France, Great Britain, and the United States wildcat strikes comprise a t least one-third of all work stoppages.

Contradictions of work-related attitudes and behaviour / 11

economic position are dependent on individual efforts. In practice, however, they rely on the union - a collective means - for such advance- ment. Workers have been known to condemn organized labour for holding too much power and yet evince fierce loyalty to their own union. They may oppose strikes in general and actively support a work stoppage at their own plant. Workers can endorse private enterprise one day and the next day occupy a factory and demand that it be taken over by workers, the commun- ity, or the government. And workers usually express some degree of job satisfaction at the same times as they are struggling against the way in which work is organi~ed . ’~

INTERPRETING T H E P A R A D O X

How can we account for this paradox? Atti- tudes to work are one element of a working class ideology that is neither well developed nor independent of hegemonic capitalist values. The dominant value system, as a representation of the perspectives and interests of the privileged classes, endorses and justifies existing inequali- ties of status, income, and power. The working class is heavily influenced by this perspective, but their value system is not a mere reflection of i t .

While all classes are exposed to and internal- ize to some degree dominant (capitalist) values, such values are mediated through a prism of class-specific life conditions and experiences. For the working class, Parkin (1971: 92) argues, ‘the tendency ... is not to reject these (domi- nant) values and thus create an entirely different normative system, but to negotiate or modify them in the light of their own existential condi- tions.’ Parkin claims that the working class employs two levels of normative reference - the abstract and the situational. When purely abstract judgments are evoked, the normative

frame of reference is provided by the dominant value system. When evaluations situated in con- crete social circumstances involving practical choices are called for, hegemonic values are no longer appropriate, and a negotiated version furnishes the normative framework.25 The out- come of this process is an ideology riddled with internal inconsistencies. Westergaard (1970) aptly labels the working class value system a ‘quasi-ideology’, which is incoherent, frag- mented, and contains contradictory elements of acquiescence and dissent.

For example, wage-earners’ perspectives on work are influenced by dominant values which are pertinent to and supportive of the prevailing organization of production. Yet, workers share subcultural standards which, if not directly con- tradictory to dominant values, at least are not identical to them. To illustrate: wage-earners tend not to question the legitimacy of consti- tuted authority, including the right of em- ployers (and managers) to direct production. At the same time, the actual exercise of managerial authority is often resisted because workers’ definitions of the scope of that authority are narrower than those held by employers; because workers resent being controlled disagreeably; and because workers often hold conceptions of justice, fair treatment, and what constitutes a ‘fair day’s work’ which differ markedly from those embodied by the dominant value system.

The thesis set forth above stresses that domi- nant values are held alongside dissenting and oppositional beliefs which have been forged out of the daily experiences of working people. The working class tends to modify dominant values whenever these precepts fail to serve as mean- ingful guides to rewarding courses of action. Adherence to abstract norms of capitalist pro- duction such as the sanctity of private property, the legitimacy of constituted authority, and the identity of interests of employers and employees

24 This tendency raises questions about the relevance of attitude surveys of the working class. Workers respond to questionnaires privately and individually, but their existential circumstances are neither private nor individual. Nothing they do as individuals has any impact on their situation at work. To the extent that individual opinions are relied on to explain or predict conduct at the workplace, survey techniques are misleading because they do not penetrate the dynamics of collective thought and action. For example, drawing on evidence from strikes, Mann (1973a: 50) concludes that workers manifest a spontaneous inclination toward collective solidarity, each one identifying with what are perceived to be the group’s objectives, even thought the individual worker may not per- sonally agree with these objectives. “During a strike a new form of rationality emerges, one based not on a summation of individual calculations but on collectivism us an end in itself” It should be noted, however, that the interpretation given below is based primarily on conceptual rather than methodological grounds. 25 Parkin’s thesis is supported by Mann’s (1970) secondary analysis of attitude surveys. Mann found that workers tended to endorse dominant values when they were phrased abstractly but often rejected these same values when stated concretely and located in the context of workers’ immediate circumstances.

12 / James W. Rinehart

is meaningless in situations where workers di- rectly experience the consequences of capitalist power. The final link to understanding contra- dictions of working class attitudes and action is found in the authority relations of capitalist enterprise.

Because of the virtual destruction of thepetit bourgeois mode of production (self-employ- ment), working people are forced to sell their labour power to those who own the means of production in exchange for wages. The sellers of labour power surrender any formal right to determine the methods and goals of production. The employers’ right to dominate the labour process is based on their ownership of property and is buttressed by the legal and military appa- ratus of the state.z6 This power relationship means that the purposes of production and the uses to which labour power is put are deter- mined by employers rather than the direct pro- ducers. Consequently, the labour process is not organized in accordance with the inclinations and needs of workers; it is arranged to corre- spond with the employers’ need to generate profits and expand capital.

Because employers must accumulate capital, they are obliged to use their power to debase labour through such practices as keeping wages down; speeding-up the pace of work; fragment- ing jobs; closely supervising the work process; neglecting pathogenic and unsafe working envi- ronments; introducing labour-saving machin- ery; establishing onerous workplace rules enforced by punitive sanctions. Any of these expressions of capitalist power can and do elicit resistance from workers, whose needs for secur-

ity and autonomy can only be realized by defy- ing the exercise of capitalist authority and by defending or extending their own control over the work process. It is systematic efforts of employers to cheapen labour, extract more work, and divest workers of their control over the labour process that drives the latter to act in ways which are inconsistent with some of their own beliefs and values.”

CONCLUSIONS

Industrial conflict is a manifestation of antag- onisms deriving from the unequal distribution of power. Because the purposes of production are determined by employers and their mana- gerial minions, the needs and interests of workers are secondary to and often interfere with the central capitalist need of profitability. However, the immediate problem as perceived by workers is not capitalism or capitalist authority relations. Rather, their daily dilemma is how to exist within this system with the great- est amount of ease, security, and autonomy. To make life on (and off) the job more tolerable workers are forced to resist capitalist authority, to defend customary prerogatives, and to ex- tend their own control over work routines.

This is not to imply that working class strug- gles ordinarily are the result of a well-formu- lated philosophy of workers’ control and socialism. In fact, resistance occurs despite workers’ adherence (however inconsistent and superficial) to dominant values which justify and legitimize integral elements of capitalist production. But when workers react to specific

26 As was pointed out above, in the early days of industrial capitalism the potential implications of the de jure control of production vested in owners were not fully realized, because of the exercise of customary, de facto con- trols by workers (especially craft workers). Since that time, employers have been engaged in a protracted struggle with workers in which the former have attempted (with some degree of success) to divest workers of their de facto power. It is only by wresting power from workers that employers can give free rein to their need to cheapen labour. 27 This interpretation bears obvious similaritites to Rodman’s (1966) explanation of behavioural deviations from dominant norms regarding marriage and illegitimacy in the Caribbean. High rates of unemployment and low wages make it difficult for men to fulfil the legally binding economic obligations of marriage and parenthood. Consequently, without rejecting dominant marital norms, such persons ‘stretch’ these norms so that entering non- legal unions and having illegitimate children also become acceptable practices. In Rodman’s case as well as in this paper behavioural deviations from dominant perspectives are understood as reactions to factual deprivation. There are some less obvious differences between the two cases. Rodman (as does Parkin) views lower class action and the value stretch as adaptive responses. In contrast, I am inclined to define workers’ actions in less passive terms. Depending on the circumstances, workers’ actions may be construed as a form of defence against coercive power, a defiance of it, or an attempt to replace it with their own organs of democratically-based power.

Contradictions of work-related attitudes and behaviour / 13

irritants as they arise on the shop floor, the underlying cause of these conditions generally remains unchallenged.” The fundamental issue is not time clocks, wage rates, autocratic fore- men, or repetitive jobs, but power, and each specific workplace deprivation is merely a manifestation of prevailing authority relations.

In the final analysis, struggles of instrumental and ‘satisfied’ workers can only be described as a curious blend of acquiescence and defiance - an accommodation to the structure of capitalist authority and resistance to the actual exercise of this authority whenever it adversely affects working people. It is in the melange of tensions and contradictions arising from capitalist domi- nation and the subordinate position of workers that one finds the dynamic of progressive social change. 2 9

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