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Fri 25 April
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Sat 26 April
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Wednesday 23 April 2014 16.30 - 18.30
X-4 LAB39 New Contours in Industrial Relations: Secondary Analysis of Case Studies Conducted since the 1960s
UR2 Germanistik second floor
Network: Labour Chair: Lutz Rafael
Organizer: Peter Birke Discussant: Nicole Mayer-Ahuja
Peter Birke : Sociological Research Institute at the University of Göttingen: Autonomous Workers – Workers Autonomy?
Rationalization processes at “taylorist” and “post-taylorist” workplaces This paper uses the field notes of three studies conducted by SOFI researchers between 1976 and 2006. It examines how workers in two shipyards (1976-1978), a car plant (2002-2006) and different internet service providers (2002-2004) perceived and shaped processes of socio-technical rationalization. In ... (Show more)
Rationalization processes at “taylorist” and “post-taylorist” workplaces This paper uses the field notes of three studies conducted by SOFI researchers between 1976 and 2006. It examines how workers in two shipyards (1976-1978), a car plant (2002-2006) and different internet service providers (2002-2004) perceived and shaped processes of socio-technical rationalization. In order to compare these three cases, a discussion of the different historical contexts is necessary. On the one hand, each is characterized by a common feature: the dynamics of the sectional crisis that became evident during the research process in all three cases. This is reflected in the field notes which include interviews and workplace observations. On the other hand, institutional and economic frameworks changed considerably between the end of the 70s and the beginning of the 2000s. This paper addresses the question of whether the division between “Taylorist” and “Post-Taylorist” workplace organization – which has been highlighted by sociology of work since the 1980s – can be traced back to the micro structures of the rationalization processes.
Drawing upon primary material, this paper emphasizes the informal and tacit knowledge of workers which is crucial for the functioning of the labor process, especially in the initial phase of the rationalization process. Thus, it stresses that on the verge of these processes, the reciprocal but asymmetrical dependency between capital and labor becomes more explicit. Based on the field notes and especially on the documentation of more than 300 qualitative interviews that were conducted in the three studies, aspects of the multi-faceted and ambivalent perception of workers will be reconstructed, including product identification, gendered identities, changing perceptions of “good work” and “healthy conditions” as well as co-determination and trade union influence. With regard to the second phase of the rationalization processes under consideration, this paper examines conflicts concerning re-regulation of the labor process and re-conceptualization of management prerogatives based on experiences in the initial phase of rationalization. What forms of worker’s autonomy were actively “preserved”, even at the end of the “second phase” of rationalization? Did these forms differ? In which way did they challenge both management and trade union strategies? Are they really compatible with the “emergence of a project centric polis” as identified by Boltanski and Chiapello?
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Felix Bluhm : “Good Work” as Everyday Practice: Appropriation of the Work Situation by Industrial Workers
Felix Bluhm, Sociological Research Institute at the University of Göttingen: “Good work” as Everyday Practice: Appropriation of the Work Situation by Industrial Workers.

This paper will use material generated at the Sociological Research Institute in Göttingen (SOFI) in the course of several case studies about industrial labor since the late 1960ies ... (Show more)
Felix Bluhm, Sociological Research Institute at the University of Göttingen: “Good work” as Everyday Practice: Appropriation of the Work Situation by Industrial Workers.

This paper will use material generated at the Sociological Research Institute in Göttingen (SOFI) in the course of several case studies about industrial labor since the late 1960ies for a secondary analysis. It will confront the sources with new questions which were not the main points of interest for researchers at the time of the primary analysis. While the studies were originally designed to examine the effects of processes of rationalization and automation on workers and their consciousness, the secondary analysis calls for everyday solidarity at the shop floor. The questions of special interest are how diversified work process constellations, work organization and work force composition effect collective action. By combining a re-analyses of interviews with industrial workers with a re-interpretation of the workplace observations carried out by the primary researchers, preliminary answers are sought for the following questions: which forms of everyday collective practice do industrial workers develop in order to approach a realization of their visions of “good work”? How does the work situation influence their ability to act collectively? In what way do everyday forms of collective action bear the potential for open conflict and for overarching processes of trade unions and political organizations? It is of great interest to analyze which changes can be identified within the period of investigation when confronted with these questions.
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Jon Lawrence : Worker’s Testimony and the Sociological Reification of the Manual/Non-Manual Distinction in 1960ies Britain
Jon Lawrence, Reader in Modern British History, University of Cambridge: Worker’s Testimony and the Sociological Reification of the Manual/Non-Manual Distinction in 1960ies Britain

This paper will use the original interview transcripts from Goldthorpe and Lockwood’s classic study of so-called ‘affluent’ workers in 1960s Britain to explore how British workers understood social ... (Show more)
Jon Lawrence, Reader in Modern British History, University of Cambridge: Worker’s Testimony and the Sociological Reification of the Manual/Non-Manual Distinction in 1960ies Britain

This paper will use the original interview transcripts from Goldthorpe and Lockwood’s classic study of so-called ‘affluent’ workers in 1960s Britain to explore how British workers understood social class differences both in the workplace and in their neighbourhoods. In particular, it will explore how workers, both manual and non-manual, explained the different employment terms and facilities made available to different grades of worker (different canteens, different time-keeping arrangements, different holiday entitlement etc.). It will also examine workers’ testimony about patterns of socialising and neighbouring. Did manual and non-manual workers view such issues from radically different perspectives, as Mike Savage’s recent work on this material would suggest (Identities and Social Change 2010), or were other factors - notably age, gender and ethnicity - more important in shaping the way in which cross-class interaction was understood? Equally importantly, did workers interviewed at home, in the presence of their wives, discuss questions about class differently from when the same people were interviewed alone at work? Unfortunately, only manual workers were interviewed both at home and at work for the Luton study of 1962-64, and the earlier pilot study of Cambridge (where Goldthorpe and Lockwood were both university lecturers) consisted only of home interviews (though for this study two-thirds of respondents were non-manual workers, compared with only one fifth for the Luton study). This paper will argue that not only did Goldthorpe and Lockwood exaggerate the differences between manual and non-manual workers’ attitudes and social practices, but that subsequent re-analysis of this material by Savage, Todd and others has also tended to reify the manual/non-manual or ‘working-class’/ ‘middle-class’ divide, with serious consequences for how we understand the significance of social and cultural change in Britain in the third quarter of the twentieth-century.
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Ole Johnny Olsen : Identity Formation for Post-Tayloristic Work Organizations in Norwegian Industry
Ole Johnny Olsen, Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, Norway: Identity Formation for Post-Tayloristic Work Organizations in Norwegian Industry

In this paper central thesis of the research based on studies in the production units of Norwegian chemical process industry from the end of 1980s will be proved by a secondary analysis. ... (Show more)
Ole Johnny Olsen, Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, Norway: Identity Formation for Post-Tayloristic Work Organizations in Norwegian Industry

In this paper central thesis of the research based on studies in the production units of Norwegian chemical process industry from the end of 1980s will be proved by a secondary analysis. This analysis will partly base of the original material of the 1980-study and partly by a historical comparison on the basis of material generated from studies before and after the 1980-studies. A main thesis of the research in question was that a fundamental condition for the development of the post-tayloristic work organizations and “new production concepts” was a new type of qualified skilled workers evolved within this industry. The thesis builds on a broad set of material and the analysis is developed both on a structural and a subjective level. On the subjective level, however – regarding the question of skilled worker identity – the analysis is cautious and preliminary. One reason was the rather short history of the worker categories; another reason was conceptual and methodological limitations (the project was designed before the general revitalization of subjectivity research in the sociology of work in the 1990s). The material from a project from 1997-98 on vocational education and qualification politics in the same industries offers an extended analysis of the life coarse of the categories, and with a concentrated analysis of the subjective perspectives of the workers on both points of time, equipped with lessons from a conceptual renewal, the thesis may validated on a new basis. From both of these projects there are transcripts from interviews with apprentices, workers and their supervisors. In the same industry there was several research supported projects for organizational development both in the 1960ies and 1970ies. In the material from these projects we will find possible sources for a comparison of the workers perception of work and labor before the evolvement of the skilled worker categories. (Show less)

Wiebke Wiede : "Good Work" Without Work: The Perspective of the Unemployed
Wiebke Wiede (University of Trier): "Good Work" Without Work: The Perspective of the Unemployed

On the first sight, the unemployed are excluded from the working world. Nevertheless, this paper will try to shed light on the perception of working conditions and conceptions of the unemployed in Germany during the 1970s and ... (Show more)
Wiebke Wiede (University of Trier): "Good Work" Without Work: The Perspective of the Unemployed

On the first sight, the unemployed are excluded from the working world. Nevertheless, this paper will try to shed light on the perception of working conditions and conceptions of the unemployed in Germany during the 1970s and 1980s, assuming that the perspective of the unemployed as marginalized but significant figures of labour societies opens up displaced, presumably unruly, understandings of "good work". The general term "good work" will be used in a broad sense to describe entitled workplaces, organization of work and payment, but also imagined ideas of labour or visions of work ethics. Especially in times of fast rising and persistent unemployment in Western Europe of the 1970s and 1980s, the experience of unemployment became more and more common. Insofar the perceptions given by the unemployed about their (former) working experiences reflect an experience, which is more and more "normal" in social life, but which is still defined as exception in "normal biographies" of labour societies.
This paper will re-analyse SOFI case studies on unemployment in the 1970s and 1980s. These include original interview transcripts, accompanying data material such as questionnaires, statistics and interviewer commentaries as well as the opinions of social scientists and experts on particular research topics to examine the experiences of unemployment in contrast to paid employment. Is employment always better than unemployment? Under what circumstances can unemployment be integrated into a biographical narration as an acceptable or even as a valuable experience? Does the narration of unemployment interrelate with the experience of former employment, or play other factors, as gender, age or family support a more important role for dealing with unemployment and the modes talking about it? In a second step, the findings of the SOFI material should be compared with other German social surveys on unemployment of the 1970s and 1980s, such as the 1989 Bremen survey "Status Passages and Transition into Employment" (Statuspassagen in die Erwerbstätigkeit) or the 1987 Nuremberg survey "Unemployment and Competence" (Arbeitslosigkeit und Handlungskompetenz). These comparisons will helpful in learning more about different points of view and how social scientists in Germany during the 1970s and the 1980s regarded unemployment and the unemployed, in order to avoid the reproduction of social constructions of first analysis in secondary analysis.
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