On the Shop Floor: Two Studies of Workshop Organization and Output: Early Sociology of Management and Organizations (The Early Sociology of Management and Organizations)

THE EARLY SOCIOLOGY OF MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONS

THE EARLY SOCIOLOGY OF MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONS VOLUME I Scientific Management Frederick Winslow Taylor Comprising: Shop Management The Principles of Scientific Management Testimony Before the Special House Committee VOLUME II The Philosophy of Management Oliver Sheldon VOLUME III Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett Edited by Henry C.Metcalf and L.Urwick VOLUME IV Papers on the Science of Administration Edited by Luther Gulick and L.Urwick VOLUME V Management and the Worker F.J.Roethlisberger and William J.Dickson VOLUME VI The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization Elton Mayo VOLUME VII Organization and Management: Selected Papers Chester I.Barnard VOLUME VIII On the Shop Floor: Two Studies of Workshop Organization and Output T.Lupton

THE EARLY SOCIOLOGY OF MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONS Edited by Kenneth Thompson VOLUME VIII On the Shop Floor Two Studies of Workshop Organization and Output T.Lupton

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 1963 by Pergamon Press, Oxford This edition published 2003 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Copyright © 1963 T.Lupton Editorial matter and selection © 2003 Kenneth Thompson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested. ISBN 0-203-50909-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-57080-4 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-27982-8 (set) ISBN 0-415-27990-9 (volume VIII) Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original book may be apparent.

ON THE SHOP FLOOR Two Studies of Workshop Organization and Output by

T.LUPTON Head of Department of Industrial Administration, College of Advanced Technology, Birmingham. Sometime Senior Lecturer, Department of Social Anthropology and Sociology, University of Manchester.

PERGAMON PRESS OXFORD · LONDON · NEW YORK · PARIS 1963

CONTENTS

Page List of Figures

vii

List of Tables

viii

Preface

ix

Chapter 1

The Problem

1

2

The Workshop at the Wye Garment Company

12

3

Norms, Expectations, Output and Earnings

39

4

“Sociable” Groupings in Workroom X

64

5

Conflict and Co-operation

75

6

Conclusion (Wye Garments Case Study)

86

7

Jay’s Electrical Components. The Industry and the Firm

92

8

People and Production in the Small Transformer Section

108

9

The Method of Wage Payment at Jay’s

125

10

Norms, Expectations and Performance

135

11

Output and Earnings

166

12

Conclusion (Jay’s Case Study)

180

13

General Conclusion

183

Appendix 1

199

References

201

Subject Index

203

LIST OF FIGURES Page FIG. 1 Diagrammatic layout of Workroom and No. 3 Unit FIG. 2 Daily output of units FIG. 3 Fluctuations around average weekly earnings. Full weeks FIG. 4 Average Weekly earnings. No. 3 Unit Full weeks only FIG. 5 Average Hourly earnings FIG. 6 Working positions FIG. 7 Tea Break Groupings FIG. 8 Diagram of Work Flow FIG. 9 Sketch of Management Structure FIG. 10 Flow of Work and Typical Positions of Workers FIG. 11 Tea Break and Lunch Groups FIG. 12 Comparison of “Job Spoiler” and “Conformer” FIG. 13 Bonus per cent., Daywork Hours, and Average hourly earnings: 4 workers

22 51 53 54 57 65 69 97 100 104 123 170 174

LIST OF TABLES Page TABLE 1 Workers of No. 3 Unit TABLE 2 Average (weekly) hourly earnings and range of variation (No. 3 Unit) TABLE 3 Tea Break groupings TABLE 4 Workers in the Small Transformer Section TABLE 5 Wage Rates TABLE 6 Average (Weekly) hourly earnings and range of variation TABLE 7 “External” and “Internal” factors

35 54 70 124 132 176 195

PREFACE

THIS study is based upon research carried out from the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester during 1955 and 1956. The work was sponsored by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research/Medical Research Council Joint Committee on Human Relations in Industry, and financed from Counterpart Aid funds derived from United States Economic Aid. The idea of a study of the social factors influencing output in factories originated from Max Gluckman, Professor of Social Anthropology at Manchester, and arose from discussions with Professor Homans of Harvard about American work in this field. I was engaged to carry out the study and was given complete freedom to develop the idea, and the investigation, in my own way. However, Professor Gluckman gave liberally of his knowledge and experience at every stage. His advice was invaluable. The atmosphere in the Manchester Department of Social Anthropology is always stimulating, and I count it a great privilege to have worked there. If this study has any value, it derives in great measure from the helpful but pointed criticism it had at every stage, from individual colleagues and from the Manchester seminar. I was particularly helped by Sheila Cunnison, Shirley Wilson, and John Bescoby, who were engaged on similar work, Dr. Victor Turner, although his fieldwork interest lay in Africa, took a lively interest in the work and placed his great understanding of sociological theory at my disposal. Neither they nor my other colleagues are in any way responsible for shortcomings in the work. In preparing for, and in carrying out my investigations on the shop floor, I relied heavily on the help and advice of officials of the Waterproof Garment Workers Trade Union, the Amalgamated Engineering Union, and the Electrical Trade Union, and of managers of the factories where I worked. Without their counsel, and without the friendliness and co-operation of the workers, my task would have been impossible. I cannot name them without breaking my promise to preserve anonymity of people and firms. I can only hope that my work will add to greater understanding of the problems which they, and others like them, face. This was its only object.

CHAPTER 1 THE PROBLEM

THE material for this study was gathered while the investigator was playing the role of industrial worker. Those with whom he worked knew him as a University investigator and were told of his purpose in coming amongst them. This method, which may be described as “open participant observation” is not widely used by sociologists. It has been criticized because it is open to the possibility of bias and personal idiosyncrasy in the selection of data, because only a small area can be investigated, and because comparison between the work of different investigators is difficult. The method was adopted for this study simply because it seemed most appropriate for the problem to be studied.* The danger of personal bias is a real one and the reader is therefore entitled to know not only what was observed but also how far the efforts-of the investigator to maintain a posture of detachment and impartiality were successful. It is therefore necessary for the investigator to describe his own activities and states of mind. For this reason, and also to avoid the awkward use of “the investigator” and “the present writer” the book has been written as an account of a personal experience as well as an essay in sociological analysis. From here on, the first person singular will be used. I recall first the way my mind was working when, in the Autumn of 1954, I began to think how the research problem which had been set for me might best be tackled. The title of the project for which funds had been granted was “Production Norms in Factories, with reference to the social factors determining their establishment.” I was free to decide, within this very wide frame of reference, which research field I should choose to investigate and what research methods I would use. My first task was to work out a set of hypotheses which could be submitted to the test of empirical observation, and which were *A fuller discussion of the merits of “open participant observation” as a research technique may be found in Appendix 1.

2 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

based upon previous work in the field, upon my own personal experience and perception of the problem. In the 1930’s, during my apprenticeship as a marine engineer, I spent some years in an engineering workshop. This experience brought home clearly to me the influence of customary workshop standards of conduct upon individual behaviour, and the subtlety of the sanctions employed to enforce conformity. It was the custom of the workshop in which I served my apprenticeship for the workers to cease work some 15 minutes before the official finishing time. During the second day in the shop I was given a job by the foreman which completely absorbed my interest. I became oblivious to my surroundings and to the passage of time. I was disturbed by the sounding of the “buzzer” which announced the official finishing time, and when I looked up I found myself surrounded by a group of men who had obviously been watching me for some time. They were all ready to go home. Nothing was said, but their looks made it clear that I would soon become unpopular if I persisted in observing official times. The lesson was quickly learned, and not unwillingly. In time I learned other lessons about the customs and usages of the shop. To work too quickly was to be labelled a “teararse” and to be at least partly shut out from the friendly give and take of the shop and from the spontaneously formed “scrounging groups” which, in defiance of management rulings, assembled in secluded corners of the shop for unofficial tea breaks and discussions. Here, the latest sporting and political news was argued about and highly coloured accounts of sexual adventures were retailed. If to be a “teararse” was to court exclusion from the social life of the workshop, it was also regarded as a breach of workshop custom to be too much of a “scrounger”. The man who persistently dodged work and whose output fell below what was generally considered “decent” became an object of ridicule. Equally, in this workshop of skilled craftsmen, the man who produced shoddy work lost status in the shop and was pointed out to apprentices as a bad example. As it so often turned out, the “teararsers” and the “scroungers” produced the shoddy work. So workshop custom was reinforced by the value placed on a high standard of workmanship, a value held by management and workmen alike, and by the apprentices even before they entered the shop. Many of the customs of the workshop effectively regulated the output of the shop in respect both to quality and quantity, and it was known to be management’s opinion that the output of the shop could easily be increased. From time to time a determined effort was made by management to enforce official starting and finishing times, to break up the scrounging groups, to end unofficial tea breaks, and generally to tighten management control. The threat to use the sanction of dismissal, or suspension of apprenticeship, might for a time be effective, but gradually shop

THE PROBLEM 3

custom would reassert itself. The running battle between management and the workers in this shop was sometimes brought out into the open but for the most part it was guerrilla warfare. Woe betide the worker who betrayed the strategic aims and the tactics of the workshop to the other side. He would be labelled a bosses’ man; and to be a bosses’ man was the greatest of workshop misdemeanours. I spent the greater part of my youth amongst industrial workers. My father was a skilled craftsman, his kin and his friends were skilled craftsmen. I became one myself. Listening to their conversations led me to believe that my own experiences were not unique and that workshops everywhere were much the same. It was no surprise, therefore, later to learn that industrial psychologists and sociologists had observed the same kind of behaviour in workshops. I was enthusiastic to discover how they interpreted behaviour of a kind which I personally had observed and experienced. As an adolescent I had accepted such behaviour as being in the nature of things, although I remember being troubled at times that what I was doing offended against the virtues of hard work and conscientiousness which I had been taught at school and in the home, and which was at the core of the religious teaching I had received. I quickly learned to overcome what scruples I had. In industrial sociology behaviour such as I had seen and experienced is widely described as “restriction of output”. It seemed from the literature as if managements estimated what output could reasonably be expected from a workshop on technical grounds and giving due weight to the skill, experience and organization of the working force. Outputs below this were regarded as “restrictive”, and as the outcome of the kind of behaviour I have just been describing. The puzzling question arises: why do the workers behave in this way ? It is especially difficult to explain why restriction is encountered in workshops where money incentives are offered to call forth the best efforts of the workers. In a time-rate workshop, restriction could be quite plausibly explained on the ground that it is a human failing (either innate or culturally formed) to grab money for nothing. If the wage is guaranteed each week provided a certain period of time is spent within the factory, it would follow from this premise that men would be inclined to do as little as possible in the time, and instead to use time in the factory to pursue activities less unpleasant than hard work. But in a shop where cash incentives were offered one would expect that up to a point at least the offer of extra cash would overcome inertia and idleness. The most thorough study of the phenomenon of “restriction of output” is the Bank Wiring Observation Room study.* It was from my reading of this study that I learned of explanations which

4 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

were based on thorough investigation and which appeared to be plausible. My own work, most of which is reported in the pages which follow, has led me to question these explanations. But I am now trying to recall my state of mind before I began my own research in this field, and my reading of the Bank Wiring Observation Room study was a powerful formative influence. While investigating management-worker relationships, the motives of workers, and other problems, the observers in the Hawthorne plant noted a widespread tendency for output to fall below what could reasonably be expected.* It was therefore decided to undertake serious and intensive investigation of this problem. Before summarizing the results and conclusions of the Bank Wiring Observation Room researches it is necessary to point out that the investigators were University men working in active collaboration with the management of the firm. Research activities were accordingly directed to problems defined by management—or jointly by managers and research workers. There is no evidence that workers were consulted before investigations were planned to discover what they considered to be problems worth investigating, although at every stage afterwards the workers were kept fully informed and their co-operation sought. It would be fair to say that the investigation into restriction of output was undertaken in the hope that out of it would emerge conclusions which would enable management to devise policies to help close the gap between expected and actual output. After becoming actively interested in the problem of restriction of output, the Hawthorne researchers decided to set up a small workroom in which the workers could be observed over a long period and records of output kept.† An observer remained in the workroom throughout the day and recorded behaviour and conversation. From time to time the workers were taken from the room and interviewed by another member of the research team. It soon became clear that the group was imposing upon the individual workers a standard of output. This group standard was below the limit set by normal fatigue.* The workers were paid according to a group piecework scheme. Like most piecework incentive schemes, this scheme rested on the assumption that the workers would attempt to maximize their earnings up to the limit imposed by skill and physical fatigue. But, as Professor Homans has pointed out in his excellent re-analysis of the Bank Wiring Room data:

*One of the many studies carried out in the Hawthorne Plant of the Western Electric Company in Chicago in the 1920’s and 1930’s. See Ref. 1 for report of Bank Wiring Room study.

THE PROBLEM 5

“Whether the men were expected to behave as described, the fact is that they did not…. They had a clear idea of a proper day’s work…output was clearly not as great as it would have been if fatigue had been the only limiting factor.” and: “Together with the belief that a man’s output ought not to go above [a certain limit] went the belief that a man’s output record, that is, his average hourly output, ought to show little change from week to week”.(4) The output graphs of individual workers in the Bank Wiring Observation Room approximated to straight lines. The output of individual workers was held to the group norm by a complicated and subtle process of social control operating within the work group. There were many differences between the Bank Wiring Room and the workshop in which I served my apprenticeship. The work in the Bank Wiring Room was simple and repetitive. In my workshop it was skilled and varied. The Bank Wiring Room was a piecework shop, mine was a timework shop. One could point to many other differences. There was one important point of similarity, namely the existence of a customary code of behaviour which affected the output performance of individuals and of groups. I was therefore interested in the interpretation of the events observed in the Bank Wiring Room. A number of possible explanatory hypotheses were advanced and examined in the light of the data from the Bank Wiring Room. Was it possible, for example, that the workers were consciously and deliberately exercising control over output in the belief that they were protecting themselves against rate-cutting and other actions by management which would make them financially worse off in the long run ? This hypothesis was rejected. The investigators argued that the actions of the workers were not based upon a logical appraisal of their situation. According to the evidence of the interviews with the workers it was clear that the method of wage payment was imperfectly understood. Without full knowledge, it was argued, it would clearly have been difficult for the men to act deliberately to serve what they considered to be their long-run interest.

*“Reasonable expectations” being defined with reference to obligations implied in the contract of employment, and taking account of the technical equipment and materials provided and the skill and training of the workers. The concept of “reasonable output” also includes judgments about what constitutes “normal fatigue” and a “fair effort”. †The Hawthorne investigators were not the first to pay serious attention to this problem, see for example Ref. 2; also F.W. Taylor discusses the problem at length, see Ref. 3.

6 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

The “quiet life” hypothesis was then examined. This states that workers restrict and stabilize output at a certain level so as to ensure that the attention of management will not constantly be directed to their activities; in order, for example, to see whether the layout of the shop ought to be improved, or the system of wage payment altered. As against this the Bank Wiring Room investigators argued that restriction of output may well lead to an increase in the unit cost of the product and bring about the very interference that workers are assumed to fear. On these grounds the argument that restriction was the outcome of a shrewd calculation of certain crucial aspects of their situation on the part of the workers was rejected as inadequate. Yet when the workers were interviewed, and asked why they held output at a given level, these were the very reasons they gave. The investigators resolved this apparent paradox by calling the “reasons” rationalizations. The notion that the workers were malicious, ungrateful, or just plain lazy was summarily rejected on the evidence from the Bank Wiring Room, as was the suggestion that the workers’ behaviour was a manifestation of suspicion of, and hostility towards, the management. Such evidence of hostile attitudes towards management as was adduced, was explained as emerging from the efforts of the workers to maintain the internal organization of their group. Briefly, the conclusion of the Bank Wiring Room investigators was that what had become known as restriction of output was the outcome of a discrepancy between two logics. Management logic is a logic of efficiency. Workers are “groupish”, they adhere much more to custom and tradition, and their logic is a logic of sentiment. This is why their reactions so often seem to be irrational and so exasperating to management.* A similar conclusion is reached by Collins, Dalton, and Roy, after reporting several studies of working groups. They write: “Analysis has indicated that restriction of output is an expression of group solidarity, arising from causes other than economic fear, laziness or dishonesty”, although it “at the *There are many difficulties about the concept of “normal fatigue”. Friedmann has drawn attention to the lack of knowledge of human physiology which is implied in the everyday use of the concept by managers. See Industrial Society, Glencoe, 111., The Free Press (1955) especially Chapter 3. *Since, according to the Bank Wiring Room investigators, levels of output were not the outcome of deliberation and planning, they suggested that it is misleading to describe behaviour such as they observed as “restriction of output”.

THE PROBLEM 7

same time expresses a feeling that workers are different from management, that their motivations and goals are quite apart from those of management employees”.(5) Collins, Dalton and Roy thus place more stress than did the Bank Wiring Room investigators on the social position of the workers in relation to management, Donald Roy(6), reporting a participant observer study of a machine shop, explains the workers’ manipulation of the piecework incentive system not so much in terms of adherence to traditionalistic values, in as terms of a shrewd appreciation of their economic position and of an effort to protect and improve it, Roy is acutely aware that explanations of restriction given by workers may appear to management irrational, and that behaviour is affected by sentiment as well as hard-headed pursuit of self-interest, but his argument shows up a flaw in the reasoning of the Hawthorne investigators. It is surely possible to argue rationally to a policy of self-interest from a position of incomplete knowledge. Such a policy may have consequences which are unanticipated. In this case the unanticipated consequences themselves are another item of knowledge which may modify policy. Roy describes, for example, how the workers’ behaviour in the machine shop led management to institute controls designed to prevent the manipulation of the incentive system by the workers. These controls were immediately countered by more ingenious methods of manipulation. Both sets of manipulations were designed by the working group to serve the same end, namely, to retain control over the working situation and over earnings. Comparing my own experience with the findings and conclusions of other investigators, and comparing their interpretations, I conclude that although there is much agreement about the existence of differences between expected and actual output in modern industrial workshops, there could hardly be more disagreement why this should be so. I think this disagreement can be explained as follows. In the first place it is clear that the values of the investigator influence the method of approach and conclusions. The term “restriction of output” itself has always seemed to me to carry an odour of disapproval, as if to fall short of expectations based upon a logic of efficiency indicated industrial malaise. Many social investigators have attempted to postulate the conditions under which working groups and individual workers can achieve satisfaction in work and managers can at the same time achieve satisfactory outputs. Coch and French, reporting a study of resistance to change, observe that “a strong psychological sub-group with negative attitudes towards management will display the strongest resistance to

8 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

change. On the other hand groups with high ‘we-feeling’ and positive attitudes are the best re-learners”.(7) The implication is that management should encourage “wefeeling” as a matter of enlightened self-interest, Another study of managementinitiated changes concludes that people “do not change under threat; their attitudes and behaviour are modified most rapidly and most effectively in an atmosphere of acceptance. (8) Seashorereports similarly upon a study of industrial working groups: “The direction of deviation of group productivity (i.e. towards a higher or lower productivity) is a function of the degree to which the larger organization (the company) is perceived by group members to provide a supportive setting for the group”(9) thus echoing the conclusions of the monumental study of the American Army in wartime.(10) These writers, though not always explicitly, confirm that the planning of production is a process of social control in which workers are expected to modify their behaviour to meet the requirements of the production plan. In addition it is thought to be desirable for them to accept the norms and values of the planners and the pattern of sanctions associated with the enforcement of these norms. All these writers echo the difficulties of practising managers who see the administrative problem of control as involving the acceptance by workers of the norms and values of the planners, at least to some extent. A recent textbook on management may be quoted to illustrate the point. “Unfortunately, the attitude of willing, informed, intelligent obedience is not inherent or automatic—it must be engendered and developed, and this is only possible in an atmosphere of mutual trust and belief in a worthwhile purpose and of enthusiasm for attaining that purpose”.(11) From the standpoint of management, the problem is seen as one of devising methods and incentives which will ensure optimum use of mechanical and human effort. In order to ensure that production plans are fulfilled, the behaviour of workers must be subjected to control. The controls which are used by management seem to be of two kinds. First, there are those controls which inhere in the production plan itself, which may be called the technological controls. The extreme examples of this kind of control are, of course, the moving assembly line and the automatic continuous process where the behaviour of the individual workers is controlled throughout the working day by the speed of the belt or by the demands of the continuous process. But even in the highly mechanized workshop other controls operate to regulate behaviour. The worker submits to the dictates of the machine in

THE PROBLEM 9

return for cash reward, and to the orders of management because of the moral obligation implied in the contract of employment and the specific sanction of dismissal and hence loss of earnings. Within this framework of obligations and sanctions the extent to which the expectations of the management about output are fulfilled in practice, will depend upon the interpretation of these obligations in day-to-day relationships within the workshops between management, supervisors and workers. It is to be expected then that managers, and those who have accepted management’s definition of the problem of restriction of output, should be preoccupied with the development of “human relations” techniques to win over the workers to an acceptance of management norms and expectations, especially since it is clear that workers do not always accept the moral obligation to submit completely to technological and administrative controls. This approach rests upon the belief that there is something sacrosanct about management goals and norms. It also tends to assume that the interests and goals of managers and workers coincide, if only workers could be persuaded to shed irrational fears and accept this. But this approach “robs workers’ claims of their legitimacy”(12) as Cozer puts it, and begs the question. It was partly because of my own background as an industrial worker that I suspected the management-oriented approach to the problem of differences between actual and expected output, but a training in sociological analysis increased my suspicions. It is naïve to believe, for example, that managers are always competent enough in all circumstances to create the conditions for optimal social co-operation. It is also naïve to believe that there are no fundamental differences of interest between managers and workers and to accept the view that irrational fears, plus the insecurity which promotes workshop solidarity, alone prevent workers from coming to a full realisation of the extent of their identity of interest and aim with management. Most of all, as a sociologist I suspected the simplicity of some of the interpretations.* For all these reasons I have decided to dispense with the concept of restriction of output; but my reasons differ from those which influenced the Bank Wiring Room investigators. They rejected the concept because it implied deliberate policy. I think standards may be set deliberately but are not therefore reprehensible, and I shall not use the term again. My analysis will therefore proceed by way of an examination of controls over behaviour. These controls may be technological, or administrative, *I have elaborated these points in my article “Industrial Conflict and Cooperation”, Industrial Newsletter, 5.C.M., December, 1955.

10 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

or quasi-legal, or they may be customary. Since the kind of controls which operate to regulate behaviour help to define the roles which individuals are expected to play, the existence of discrepant or conflicting modes of control may well produce conflicting role expectations. Generally, one would say that the kind of controls which management exercises over the behaviour of workers are dictated by the need to meet market demand and (with due consideration for the health and welfare of workers) to make profits—or at least to avoid losses. It is by no means clear that the behaviour of workers as individuals is determined by these considerations, nor is it at all clear whether one can speak about workers’ motives in general terms. Since management behaviour in any particular factory is likely to be affected by the situation which confronts it in the market for labour and for the product, and in its relationships with other firms, it is likely that workers’ behaviour will be affected by the behaviour of particular managements and the kind of controls which each exercises. That is to say, the pattern of role expectations will differ according to the economic, technological, and administrative context in which the unit of production operates. This means, of course, that the controls which workers either individually or collectively attempt to exercise over output and earnings may well differ from unit to unit. It seems to me, therefore, that the most interesting task for the field investigator which emerges when the problem is posed in this way, is to map out what may be described as the field of social forces which operate to produce certain kinds of behaviour. Since the chief concern of this report is “behaviour of workers in relation to output”, this behaviour will be considered as a kind of moving resultant of the interplay of social forces in a field of economic, technical and administrative, and customary controls. Of course output behaviour is itself a factor affecting the field, and not just the end result of the interplay of other factors. I am studying a dynamic process, and from it I select one factor for special emphasis. I must discuss one further general consideration before analysing the field data. If, as I have postulated, there are discrepant systems of control, and discrepant role expectations associated with these, and if, moreover, the pattern of social relationships persists and exhibits regularity, then there must exist some mechanism for resolving or handling the discrepancies. I shall attempt in the analysis to show how these mechanisms operate and how behaviour is affected by them. It is in the working of equilibrating mechanisms that customary controls appear to be most relevant and effective. For convenience of exposition the two workshops are considered separately. In each case I shall begin with an analysis of the technological and administrative controls. Since the effectiveness of these controls is relevant to an explanation of the reaction of

THE PROBLEM 11

the workers, I shall not only consider the controls planned by management and the interests and values associated with them, but I shall also describe them in their detailed operation in the workshop. I then go on to introduce an analysis of the social structure of the workshop. Then I consider the output performance of individual workers and attempt an explanation of output and earnings levels. This will involve a number of detailed case studies of factors influencing performance. The process whereby conflicts are handled within the workshop will be analysed using detailed descriptions of the resolution of conflict situations. Each case study concludes with a more general interpretation of observed behaviour by reference to expectations and to various types of controls and sanctions. I shall be arguing throughout that levels of output and earnings are the outcome of the interplay of a complex of factors, some of which lie outside the workshop itself and therefore outside the power of management or workers to control. In general conclusion I suggest hypotheses to explain differences in behaviour between the two workshops. This will involve the assessment of factors usually considered to be the concern of economic analysis. But since there are marked differences between the two workshops both in response to cash incentives and in pace of work, and since these cannot be completely explained by reference to factors operating within the workshops, I have thought myself justified in trying to explain the differences by reference to external factors.

CHAPTER 2 THE WORKSHOP AT THE WYE GARMENT COMPANY

THE Wye Garment Company was formed in 1868 as a small workshop making waterproof garments. It has since embraced other manufacturing activities, chiefly by way of backward integration towards the sources of raw materials. More recently, the firm has moved into other branches of manufacture, but waterproof garments still form a significant part of the total output of its workshops. The history of the industry, and the structure of the industry and the firm, have helped to shape the present-day behaviour of managers and workers, so it is necessary to sketch briefly some of the chief historical and structural details. The history of the industry is one of alternating prosperity and depression. This may, of course, be said of many other industries. In this case even the periods of relative prosperity have been interspersed with short term and seasonal fluctuations. The market situation is marked by chronic uncertainty. During the first World War and immediately after, the industry rode on the crest of a boom. When Government contracts were reduced and pent-up civilian demand was satisfied, a fierce price war ensued, accompanied by a descending spiral of low wages, cheaper and faster production, and debasement of quality. Agreements on wages and conditions of employment which had been drawn up by the organized sections of the industry were ignored. Even the best firms were forced into the undignified scramble for orders, for only in this way could they remain in business. During this period the downward pressure on wage rates was powerful and much hardship was suffered by the workers. There were prolonged and bitter industrial disputes. During and since the second World War demand has become more stable and seasonal and short term fluctuations, while still occurring, have been less severe, especially in the larger firms. Competition is still keen, but since demand has been brisk, prices fairly high, and labour in short supply, the downward pressure on wage rates has been somewhat relaxed. Throughout its history, the structure of the industry has changed little. Noting this, a Commission of Enquiry, set up to

ON THE SHOP FLOOR 13

consider an application to establish a Wages Council for the industry, was of the opinion that the present relatively high wages were due primarily to labour shortage. The Commission thought that existing negotiating machinery would be inadequate to maintain standards in the face of contracting demand. If demand became less, another price war would develop and the downward pressure upon wage rates would be irresistible. For these reasons they recommended the inclusion of the industry in one of the existing Wages Councils for the clothing industry. In an industry such as this, the development of Trade Unionism and the establishment of stable relationships between Unions and Employers is beset with difficulties. That collective bargaining has been established at all is a tribute to both the tenacity and ability of the Trade Union officials and to the far-sightedness of a group of employers. Although the industry and the Trade Union were well established before 1919, it was not until then that a comprehensive piecework price list covering most firms was agreed upon by the Union and the Manufacturers’ Association. But in the difficult inter-war years many firms not covered by the agreement enforced wage reductions. The others were compelled to follow suit and soon the agreement fell into disuse. The Employers’ Association was also weakened by resignations and it disbanded in 1936. Trade improved during the late 1930’s and fresh efforts were made once again to introduce stability into the Union-Employer relationship. One result of these efforts was the formation of a new association of Employers. During World War II this Association and the Union opened discussions on a new price list. These dragged on into the postwar period and in 1946 Union officials, impatient at the delay, called an industry-wide strike to bring matters to a head. Agreement was finally reached. One of the conditions attaching to the new agreement was the provision that the Union and the Employers jointly would apply for the establishment of a Wages Council for the Industry. The Union is more confident than the Employers that the existing machinery of negotiation would stand the strain of another severe depression in trade, and it is the latter who have pressed most strongly for the establishment of a Wages Council as a safeguard against unfair wage competition in conditions of general decline in the market. The Wye Garment Company is one of the most progressive firms in the industry. For its 3,000 odd employees it provides a wide range of services. Canteen, club, sports, and welfare facilities are better than most in the industry. There is a superannuation scheme for the workers, and a profit-sharing scheme administered by a committee on which employees are represented. In recent years a Personnel Department has been formed, Joint Consultation has been introduced, and a start has been made to

14 WORKSHOP AT THE WYE GARMENT CO.

apply modern methods for the selection and training of workers. The firm of Wye Garments has also pioneered the introduction of modern production engineering methods in the industry. The extent of its advance in this field will be the more easily appreciated if the present structure of the industry is outlined and some of the production methods in use are briefly described. The Working Party on Rubber-Proofed Clothing, which reported in 1947, estimated that there were between 200 and 300 firms in the industry. Between them these firms employed some 6,000 workers. Most of the firms were very small. Of the 115 firms concentrated in the same area as the Wye Garment Co., 51 had fewer than 20 workers. Only 24 had more than 100 workers. There has been some expansion and concentration since 1947 but the industry is still for the most part made up of very small firms. Many of the larger firms manufacture plastic and chemically proofed garments. The figures quoted above apply only to the manufacture of rubber-proofed garments. It is the firms, or departments of firms, which produce rubber-proofed garments, which constitute the Waterproof Garment Industry. Although the Wye Garment Company employs over 3,000 people, only about 400 of these are engaged on the actual assembly of rubber-proofed garments. Even so the firm remains one of the largest and best known in the industry. The industry is still intensely competitive. This is due, of course, to the large number of small producers in relation to the size of the market. It is also due to the organization of the market itself and to the nature of the product. Most firms are too small and unstable to afford the risk of keeping stocks, and wholesalers find it unprofitable to do so. In these circumstances even short-term prediction of demand is difficult and the growth in size of firms is inhibited. Demand for the product is also related to weather conditions, or so it is believed, and upon changing fashions. It is therefore risky to expand productive capacity in anticipation of a steady flow of orders. It is also risky to instal expensive plant, and for the same reasons. It should now be clear why, in times of brisk demand, the small producer can survive. Since methods of production remain primitive the only equipment required to start production is a set of cheap hand tools and sewing machines. In buoyant market conditions almost any skilled worker can set up on his own with a small capital outlay (£20 is a current estimate) and either produce for the market direct or as sub-contractor for a larger firm. In this industry, any contraction of demand tends sharply to intensify price competition. This in its turn leads to downward pressure on wage rates, since few economies can be made elsewhere. The industry is not to any significant degree mechanized, nor is it possible in such an industry easily to finance research into mechanization, or to make it worth while for

ON THE SHOP FLOOR 15

manufacturers of machinery to devote serious attention to the design of special machines. Thus when the market is depressed the chief way for manufacturers to gain competitive advantage is wage reduction, or its equivalents, speed-up and reduction of quality. All these things have, as we have seen, happened in the past. Small firms have been driven out of business, collective bargaining procedures have been ignored, and much unemployment has resulted. These things remain very much in the minds of employers, workers and Trade Union officials, and, as we shall see, affect their attitudes to output and earnings. Although the manufacture of a Waterproof Garment is still, in most firms, primarily a manual task, methods of production differ from firm to firm, and even from workroom to workroom within a firm. Four methods of production may be distinguished: the “make-through” method, the “set” method, the “conveyor” method, and the “unit” or “section” method. Whichever method is used, the process of assembly of the garment begins when a set of cuttings from the rubberproofed material is delivered to the worker or workers responsible for assembly. (i) In the “make through” method a skilled maker, working with one or more machinists, assembles the whole garment. (ii) In the “set” method a skilled worker supervises the work of a number of semi-skilled workers who prepare the parts for assembly, and then he (or she) does the final and difficult assembly operations. This method lends itself to abuse, and the Trade Union has attempted with some success to limit the numbers of semi-skilled workers who may work with any one skilled maker. (iii) Where the “conveyor” method is employed, semi-skilled workers work on either side of a moving belt or a stationary table. The work moves, or is passed, from worker to worker through the various stages of assembly, (iv) The “unit” method entrusts the assembly of the garment to a team of workers of differing degrees of skill who co-operate. In some ways this resembles the conveyor method, but in the “unit” method there is no machine-pacing, the team is usually smaller, the sub-division of tasks differs, and the layout of tables and machines is different. The “make-through” method is traditional and is used typically in the smaller firms. However, some of the larger firms still employ skilled makers-through in some of their workshops. Wye Garment Company still has one workroom employing make-through methods on high class and expensive garments. The “set” method is not used at Wye. Some of the large firms employ variants of it but its use is mainly confined to the very small firms on the margin of the industry. The “conveyor” method was used extensively in the workrooms of Wye Garments until a few years ago. Recently it has been replaced by the “unit” method. The new

16 WORKSHOP AT THE WYE GARMENT CO.

method has been planned in accordance with modern principles of work flow and motion economy. At the same time as the units were being introduced, the firm undertook the replanning of the flow of work through the plant as a whole, and introduced modern techniques of production and cost control. The calculation of piecework prices by time-study and job-evaluation has been established for the past few years. This is a new departure in the industry. By agreement with the Union, the firm no longer fixes prices according to the industry Price List for the majority of its workers. The new method of job pricing will be discussed in detail presently. All these changes at Wye have embraced the Waterproof Garment Department. The present study was carried out in one of the workrooms of this department. I shall refer to this workroom as Workroom X. I worked as an operative in this Workroom and in the training school for nearly six months. In the section which follows I shall describe the system of production in Workroom X. I shall also consider how it operates as a mechanism of social control. THE PRODUCTIVE SYSTEM IN WORKROOM X I now examine what may be called the human ecology of Workroom X. This is an essential first step in the analysis of the factors affecting output, to show how the system of production operates as a means of management control over the behaviour of the workers. In any workshop the layout of machines and other equipment will set limits to the social relationships which can be entered into by workers.* The extent of this limitation will depend upon the operation of other factors. The effectiveness of the control exercised by supervisors and managers in ensuring that workers fulfil the roles assigned to them in the productive system, the force of the sanctions they are empowered to apply to this end, the degree of response by the workers to cash and other incentives offered as an inducement to maximize effort—all these factors operate in addition to the controls implicit in the productive arrangements themselves. Then there are the normative controls over behaviour, the standards of right behaviour, which, in their *William Foote Whyte observes: “We have ample data to show that the formal structure (i.e. the official allocation of positions) does not determine the pattern of human relations in an organization. Nevertheless, it does set certain limits upon the shape of that pattern” ‘The Social Structure of the Restaurant’, Amer. J. Soc. Vol. LIV, No. 4, Jan., 1949.

ON THE SHOP FLOOR 17

turn, influence management’s definition of the worker’s roles and the worker’s definition of his own role in the productive system. In the literature, it is the discrepancy between two role definitions which has been seen as the main clue to the problem of differing standards of output as between managers and workers, although it is not always explicitly stated as such. The hypothesis which has been advanced by the Bank Wiring Room investigators and others is that the worker’s role in the informal group of workmates is in conflict with his role as defined by management in the productive system. In this chapter I shall be concerned only to show how management’s definition of the worker’s role is expressed in the productive arrangements in Wye Garments. There is a distinction to be made between the system as planned, and as it actually operates. To say this is not to imply criticism of management. It is merely to recognize that to fulfil a plan in a situation where so many factors have to be taken into account is a difficult task. Attempts to run according to plan are often defeated by happenings which are outside the control of management, and some of which are non-recurring and unpredictable. Since the difference between the planned and the actual affects the expectations of workers, and the expectations of those responsible for management and supervision, it is germane to our problem. The system of production in the Wye Garment workshop appears to have been designed according to the principle of the divorce of planning from doing; or what some writers have described as the “transfer of intelligence from the shop floor”.(13) Theapplication of this principle relieves the worker of the responsibility for planning the supply of materials to his workplace and of deciding on the method he will use to perform the task. Production flow and methods are seen as being management’s responsibility. To show the extent to which management in Wye Garments considered this to be so, I refer to a lecture by a member of the production engineering staff which I attended while I was learning my job in the firm’s training school. The content of this lecture also contains management’s definition of the worker’s role, and its expectations about worker behaviour. The object of the lecture was to familiarize the trainees with the design of the productive system, and to show them the part they would be expected to play in it when they had completed their training. The lecturer’s approach was fairly representative of that of the management as a whole. Evidence which will be examined at a later stage in the analysis will, I think, confirm this. The lecturer began by describing, with the aid of a blackboard diagram, the layout of the workrooms in which the trainees would eventually work. He explained that a lot of thought had gone into the layout and that its object was to reduce to a minimum the movement of people and materials, thus enabling more to be

18 WORKSHOP AT THE WYE GARMENT CO.

produced. He said that the system was better than the one it had displaced, i.e., the conveyor system, because it made the work less monotonous. The new system was also designed to raise output, and since operatives were paid according to what they produced, this meant that higher earnings were possible for them. He went on to say that when a trainee was transferred to a workroom at the end of the training period she would be shown the best way to do the job to which she was assigned. It would then be up to her to develop speed and to avoid unnecessary movements. “All the seconds add up”, he concluded, “and that means that you earn less and fall behind the rest of the team.” These remarks suggest that the principle of the divorce of planning from doing was also seen as involving here the separation of the planner from the doer. Thus, in terms of the production plan, operative control over output was limited to control over the speed at which the work was performed. The operative could, according to management’s definition, and within limits imposed by skill and fatigue, vary the speed at which operations were performed and hence her daily output and earnings. But the incentive scheme was designed to control this factor. Given the supply of materials and tools— controlled by management—the operative’s earnings would depend upon the effort expended by her. Management expected that the operatives would attempt to maximize earnings and this expectation was tied in to the production plan itself. It is only possible to plan production on a flow principle if it is possible to estimate reasonably accurately the daily output of the operatives. And it is only possible to make such an estimate in terms of an adequate response to the monetary incentives offered. Differential responses would interrupt the flow and upset the planned operation of the system. Common failure to respond would result in outputs below those planned for by management. In Workroom X there were three production units. Each unit normally comprised sixteen workers, although the units were sometimes supplemented to facilitate work flow or to meet special circumstances. Figure 1 shows the layout of the workroom. The work did not pass from unit to unit. Each unit was separately responsible for the production of a number of complete garments each day. The component parts of the coat were received into the workroom from the cutting room. They were marked, and sorted and after a preliminary operation known as “stripping” they passed into the units. In the units the various parts were prepared for assembly and they were passed from worker to worker through the various stages of sub-assembly and assembly until a garment emerged, complete save for buttoning and final inspection. After inspection the finished garments were taken from the room and despatched down a shute into the warehouse.

ON THE SHOP FLOOR 19

A more detailed description of the operations which were performed upon the material as it moved through the workroom is necessary for an understanding of the degree of co-ordination which was called for by the system. It also serves to emphasize the dependence of the workers upon management planning for that smooth flow of work through the room upon which their earnings so largely depended. The chief product of Workroom X was the double texture rubberproofed garment, although occasionally single texture garments were made. The manufacture of a double texture garment of good quality called for the operation of stripping, as a preliminary to the assembly of the garment. The Stripper removed a narrow layer of cloth from the edges of the cuttings, leaving a strip of rubber exposed. The operation was wholly manual. A cutting was laid on a table and the cloth loosened from the rubber with a pad soaked in naphtha solvent. Then, with a bradawl-like tool, the cloth was ripped away from the rubber on one side of the double-texture “sandwich”. The operation was complete when the loosened cloth was cut away with shears leaving a strip of the proofing exposed. There were three strippers in the workroom and each was responsible for keeping one of the units supplied. The strippers worked in a group close by the shute where the cuttings were delivered to the room, and near to the marker, who stamped the job and batch numbers on the cuttings prior to stripping and assembly. After the work of the strippers was completed, the cuttings were ready to enter the teams. In each team there were sixteen workers: 11 makers, 4 machinists, and one maker-machinist if such an operative was available. If not, the machining work involved in the operation was taken over by another machinist. But the production plan called for a maker-machinist and it is with the plan that we are now concerned. The cuttings passed from operative to operative to be smeared, hemmed, joined, and machined, emerging complete save for buttonholing, buttoning and inspection. Although there were some limits imposed upon the machinists by the speed of the machines, the work of the teams was not machine-paced. The work of the maker was wholly manual, and the quality and quantity of finished garments depended upon the skill and dexterity of the makers and upon the degree of coordination achieved between the workers, both makers and machinists, in the unit. This co-ordination was provided for in the production plan. It was the concern not of the operatives but of management and of supervision. In terms of the plan, so long as the operative carried out the job by the method prescribed by management, co-ordination was thereby secured. The inflow of work into the room was part of the factory-wide flow plan, and in

20 WORKSHOP AT THE WYE GARMENT CO.

this, of course, the productive capacity of the operatives in Workroom X had to be taken into account. In the team the maker worked at a smooth-topped table, the size and surface of which were designed to facilitate the handling of the work. The tools the maker used were few and of simple design. They consisted of a roller, a cleaner, and a piece of “weeding”. The materials with which the maker worked were varnish (a solution of rubber and naphtha) and a supply of tape if the operation called for this. To give an impression of the work of the maker I describe the operation of smearing backs, a simple initial operation on which I myself was engaged for most of my stay in the workroom. According to the production plan this operation was combined with certain machining operations on the back of the garment and was carried out by a maker-machinist. Maker-machinists were not easy to find and often, as in my case, the smearing operation was done separately and the machine work was passed to an adjacent machinist. I collected from the stripper a “turn” or batch of back cuttings already stripped. The cutting was then laid on the table with the stripped seam along the edge. I then dipped my forefinger into the can of varnish and drew it quickly along the seam, depositing a thin smear. When I had finished smearing all the seams which required it I then laid the cuttings over a trestle to lie there until the varnish became tacky. Before taking up the next cutting I cleaned the table of surplus varnish with the “weeding”—a piece of semi-hard rubber varnish. After I had smeared a few cuttings the varnish had become tacky on the first one and it was ready for hemming or capping. Capping consisted of turning over the cloth along the seam and sticking it down, usually to a width of about l/8th of an inch, although the width varied with the operation and the part of the coat being worked on. I would turn the hem down with my right hand and stick it down with my left hand. Then I would roll it down firmly with the roller. More experienced makers cap and roll in one swift movement and save time by doing so but this requires much skill and practice. It was only towards the end of my stay that I began to acquire proficiency at this. During the smearing operation a careful watch had to be kept to see that varnish was not deposited on the cuttings where it was not required. This surplus varnish was removed with the cleaner before it became hard. There were other parts of the “smearing back” operation but enough has been said to give a general impression of the maker’s work. On completion, the smeared back was picked up from the trestle by the machinist who sewed on the vent pieces. It was then passed to another maker who affixed linings and prepared the seams for joining to the front parts of the coat, which were undergoing similar making and machining operations in another

ON THE SHOP FLOOR 21

part of the unit. Other components, such as collars and sleeves, were meanwhile passing through the appropriate operations. All the components came eventually to be joined by a worker at a specially designed machine which sewed and stuck the seams together, in one operation. It now remained for the seams to be taped over on the inside to make them completely waterproof. This operation, which followed immediately upon the combined sticking and sewing operation, was regarded as being the most skilled of all the operations carried out in the team. Particularly difficult was the operation of taping the joint where the sleeve joined the body of the garment. Usually there were two operatives engaged upon taping the joinedup garment. They were known by the other operatives as “armholers”. From the “armholers” the garment was passed along a rail to a machinist who performed final sewing operations. When these were complete the coat left the team. The place in the sequence of the operations of marking off buttonholes, making buttonholes, and sewing on buttons was not always the same. Sometimes these operations were performed before the coat was completed, sometimes afterwards. In any case, these operations did not take place in the units. The making of buttonholes was done on special machines, and these machines served all three units. There were three operatives engaged in the hand-sewing of buttons and one whose task was to mark off the coat for buttons and buttonholes. None of these operatives was attached to a unit. The completed garments were examined in the room by two passers. They returned faulty work to the workers responsible to ensure that the coat measured up to the standards of workmanship required by management, before it left the workroom. All the operations in the room were supervised by a chargehand. The chargehand stood at a table where she could see most of the operatives in the room. She acted both as a general supervisor and as a progress chaser. That is to say that she tried to ensure as far as possible that the work flow envisaged in the production plan was maintained. The flow of production is shown diagrammatically in Fig. 1. For its efficient operation this system called for planning of a high order. The strippers relied upon the cutters and upon the marker for a steady flow of cuttings to their tables. Similarly, the makers and machinists who performed the initial operations upon the stripped cuttings relied upon the strippers to supply them evenly and steadily with work. And each operative in the various production routes within the team depended upon the operative who preceded her in the workflow. The finished output of garments was determined by the joiner. the armholers, and the final machinists. They in their turn relied not only on the smooth

22 WORKSHOP AT THE WYE GARMENT CO.

FIG. 1. Diagrammatic layout of Workroom and No. 3 Unit

and uninterrupted flow of work down the back, front, and sleeve lines, but on their co-ordination, so that all the component parts reached the place where they were to be joined as and when they were required. On the principle of separating planning from doing, with its corollary, the separation of the planner from the doer, coordination to ensure a smooth flow of work was accepted as the sole responsibility of management. It was a task which bristled with difficulties. Each worker was expected to keep the next supplied with work to keep the flow steady. The breakdown of the manufacture of the garment into its constituent operations and the system of wage payment had to be so arranged that at no point in the system were more or less parts being produced than were required to maintain an even flow. For if more were being produced there would be a glut in the supply of one component and also pressure by the operative back down the line for more

ON THE SHOP FLOOR 23

parts. If less were being produced than the plan called for, the worker would be under pressure from further up the line. To meet this problem the management attempted, when calculating the rates for each operation, to pay each worker according to skill, experience, and ability, and to offer each one sufficient incentive to produce the number of parts necessary to an even flow. Since the tasks within the teams required different degrees of skill—armholers for example were much more highly skilled than back smearers—and since individuals differed in their speed and dexterity and to a lesser extent in their response to monetary incentives, this was a difficult task. Job pricing was apparently planned in conjunction with the breakdown of the operations,* so that, given the rates for the particular operations and an adequate response to the financial incentive, there would be no more over- and under-loading of the system than could be avoided in any system planned and operated by human beings. That is to say, management would expect that a constant eye would be kept on the flow of work so that such adjustments as were required would be made. The responsibility for making these adjustments rested chiefly with the supervisor who was responsible for several workrooms, and with the chargehand in the room. The chargehand was in fact the only person who could really make the adjustments as difficulties arose, for she alone could observe the work passing through the room from hour to hour. The chargehand and the chief supervisor were also consulted when job rates were being fixed. The calculation of the rates was based on time study, the time studies being carried out by the production engineering staff. The supervisor and the chargehands were called in when assessments of skill and experience were being rated for inclusion in the job prices. The reader will have gathered that the workers were paid on the basis of straight piecework. It might seem as if for team work such as this, group payment would be more suitable. But both the management and the workers had experience in the past of group payment. Managers argued that group piecework slows a team down to the speed of the slowest member. They also said that the workers preferred individual piecework, and my own enquiries on this point amongst the operatives showed that most of them did, This was especially true of the speedier workers, some of whom complained to me that in the days of group piecework the fast workers would help the slow ones so as to keep up the output of the team: “We earned their wages for them, now everyone makes their own wages”. Some of the slower workers were less keen on *I had assumed that this must be a corollary of the system as planned, but I have since been told by managers that it was not.

24 WORKSHOP AT THE WYE GARMENT CO.

the new arrangement but generally all agreed on the desirability and equity of individual piecework. But individual piecework made the system more inflexible, and threw a heavy responsibility for coordination on to management. The responsibility might have been lighter with group payment, since the group itself would have had an incentive to make any adjustments required to expedite the flow of work. For the purposes of planning the production system workers must be regarded as units in the work flow. As one manager put it when describing the system to me: “We have to regard the workers as machines”. He insisted that he did not mean to imply by this that this was how he regarded particular operatives, but that it would be impossible to plan if every individual difference and idiosyncrasy were taken into account. It had to be assumed that each worker would do the job assigned and taught to her, and that all workers would work according to the prescribed methods and would respond similarly to the monetary incentives offered. Thus in terms of the technological system operatives were considered as individual work units and not as a social group. As planned, the productive system set a premium on human cooperation. But co-operation was planned as a “built-in” factor; the workers were not expected spontaneously to devise means to maximal cooperation. According to the sub-division of operations, each worker, in performing the role assigned to her in the system, at the same time provided work for the next workers in the designed line of work flow. The design of the layout was such that to achieve co-operation the worker need not move from her place; she was in fact anchored to her bench or machine throughout the working day.* This meant that, theoretically at least, co-operation could be achieved without verbal communication between workers and without any formal hierarchy of authority being required within the production units. So far as the productive system was concerned all workers were of equal status, although there were, as we have seen, quite marked differences in skill. Thus the system was designed to be quasi-mechanical in its operation. There was no machine-pacing of the work, the level of output depending upon the efforts of the workers and upon the effectiveness of the provision for built-in co-operation. The incentive which was offered to the workers was a straight piecework incentive. That is to say, the individual worker was paid a cash price for each operation performed. This system set a premium on individual striving for cash reward and at first sight it seems to militate against the planned goal of the system, which *Except at “break” times, and at odd times when varnish tins had to be re-plenished or personal needs satisfied.

ON THE SHOP FLOOR 25

was co-operation between 16 workers to produce a finished garment. As I have already noted, it would appear more logical in a system such as this to arrange for cooperative, rather than individual, effort to be rewarded. But there was no such obvious conflict of principles at the planning level, since co-operation was “built-in” to the plan. In actual operation, as we shall presently see, this conflict of principle did emerge. There is one other point to be made before this analysis of the planned productive system is concluded. Since the rewards offered to workers were graded according to the skills they were called upon to exercise, as well as according to the time taken to perform operations, it follows that, since there was wide differentiation of skill within the teams, there was also wide differentiation of earnings. This being the case, the emergence of a “norm” of output was inhibited. For output is expressed in cash terms in a straight piecework system. Thus, had there been a norm of output it would have been expressed in terms of the expected earnings of sixteen people, most of whom were engaged on different tasks and whose earnings were arranged on a scale according to the skill required for their job. This was an almost impossible task when it is remembered that the system tended to inhibit communication between all the members of the team. The emergence of a “norm” was further inhibited by the emphasis which the system placed on individual striving for cash reward. To conclude the description of the formal system, it is necessary for me to say something about the arrangements for “booking” work done by the operatives. These arrangements provided a means by which the workers could regularly observe the relationship between the effort they were expending, and the cash reward for that effort. They also enabled management to check upon the performance of the operatives, and of course they provided the wages department with the information needed to calculate earnings each week. Affixed to each bundle of cuttings (the material for a complete garment) which came into the workroom was a sheet of dockets, each one of which represented an operation to be performed on the material. The worker performing a given operation detached the appropriate docket from the sheet, and attached it to her own individual work sheet. Thus at the end of each day the work sheet showed the number of operations which the worker had performed. The sheets were handed each evening to the chargehand and were delivered by her to the wages department. The dockets did not show the price to be paid to the operative (I was told that this used to be so but that the practice had been discontinued) but most of the workers knew what the price for their operation was. So at the end of each day the worker knew what she had earned.

26 WORKSHOP AT THE WYE GARMENT CO.

For the most part the workers followed the formal procedure for booking. But there were some minor exceptions. These, and their causes and consequences, will be discussed in a later chapter. THE WORKERS The productive roles of the workers as defined by management have now been discussed. Now the persons occuping these roles are described. I shall not only describe them as people but I shall describe the relationships between them which were prescribed in the planned productive system. I shall say little about the members of Units 1 and 2 as individuals since I can only describe those I knew well and was in a position to observe, i.e. the members of No. 3 Unit and a few others. It could be argued, I suppose, that the discussion of individuals is out of place in a sociological analysis, on the ground that sociology is the analysis of role relations.(14) To push this kind of argument further one could say that the sociological analysis of relationships other than those prescribed by the formal system ought to be handled in terms of roles in an informal system. I cannot take this view, since so much of what I observed is difficult to fit in to the categories of formal and informal organization. I cannot see why it is necessary to block the way to understanding by using these categories in analysis. I therefore devote this section to describing the people who worked in the work-room, the work they did, and the way they were linked together by the requirements of the system of production. This will help the reader to follow the subsequent analysis and will provide the material on which alternative interpretations to my own may be based. With two exceptions, the workers in Workroom X were women. The exceptions during my stay in the workroom were Joe the stripper, and myself. During my period in the training school, when it was already known that I would soon be moving into Workshop X, it was assumed by the women instructors that I would wish to join another man during the morning tea break and at lunch, and I was introduced to Joe, who made the arrangements for a supply of tea and eatables and accompanied me each day to the canteen for the midday meal. This arrangement, once made, persisted and during the whole of my stay in the factory I joined Joe each day at break time and dinner time. We became good friends and he proved to be an intelligent and knowledgeable informant. “My background”, wrote Joe, in response to my general request for written life histories from the workers, “is such that I was born in the vicinity of the factory in what was a slum area. Later we moved to , rather a bit more refined. My father was a lorry driver,

ON THE SHOP FLOOR 27

also secretary of the Labour Party until he died at the age of 45. My mother then went out as a cleaner to rear a family of six, five boys and a girl the girl being the oldest, at the time 19 and employed here at the factory.” “After being invalided out of the services I was reluctant to go back to the factory owing to my position but being informed that they were doing a rehabilitation scheme sponsored by the Government I went as a garment maker”. Joe is now married and has two children. Until very recently he lived, as most of the workers do, in the congested working-class area close to the factory. Recently he moved to an “overspill” estate about 6 miles from the factory. Joe often expressed to me his disapproval of the behaviour of the women in the factory. He maintained that they were “mugs”, who allowed themselves to be hoodwinked and pushed around by managers, supervisors and chargehands. He said that they did not know how to look after themselves. In this situation he felt that it was best for him “to look after No. 1”. He had no intention of “sticking his neck out for the women” who would not appreciate his efforts anyway. Unduly influenced perhaps by Joe’s views and those of other male workers I came to know, I came to think that, although management did not deliberately set out to intimidate the workers, women workers were more reluctant openly to express the criticisms of management which they voiced to me and amongst themselves. Individual complaints and grievances were voiced but usually only when matters had reached a critical stage. I worked with the women in No. 3 Unit when I was in the workroom, and it is to these I shall mostly refer in my analysis. But I gathered a good deal of information about other workers in the room so I can give an overall picture of the composition of the working force. Of the 48 workers on whom I was able to collect fairly complete information, 47 were women, ranging in age from 16 to 60 plus. Nine of the 47 were girls in their teens, 2 were in their twenties, 8 in their thirties, 12 in their forties, and 14 in their fifties. One woman was over 60. I have information about the marital status of 47 of the workers; 18 of them were married. Of these 11 were young married women with children of school age, 4 were older women whose children were grown up and financially independent. I did not find out whether the remaining 3 had children, but I knew their ages and from these I infer that if they had children these would be wageearning adults. Twenty-three of the 47 were single persons, and 13 of these were over 30 years of age; 9 of the remaining underthirties were still in their teens. The remaining 5 of the 47 were widows. Thus the working force was composed for the most part of women in, or approaching, middle age. Most of them had long

28 WORKSHOP AT THE WYE GARMENT CO.

service with the firm, and few had experience of industrial employment outside the industry. A few had worked for other firms in the same industry, and a few had transferred to garment making from other jobs with the firm. All the workers in Workroom X came from working-class families. All save one—a grammar school girl—had attended public elementary or secondary modern schools. Some of the women were reluctant to disclose to me the occupations of their husbands and fathers. My enquiries why this should be so amongst people who were free with other kinds of information elicited the response by some informants that some of the women were ashamed because their husbands had jobs carrying low pay and status. These informants remarked that people would rather talk about the achievements of their children of which they were proud. I found this to be so. From those who did volunteer information about occupations of husbands and fathers I learned that for the most part they were workers of unskilled or semiskilled status, for example, rubber worker, lorry driver, policeman, and labourer. I did not come to know all the workers well enough to obtain detailed life histories, but some whom I did know well wrote life histories for me. I include extracts here since I have reason to believe that the life histories I have are fairly typical and they help to explain some of the behaviour I shall describe later. They are also of interest in themselves. Nancy, a garment maker in her middle thirties, wrote this for me: “My father never had a proper full week’s wages, for 16 years he worked at…and they had to do four half-days so that it made them as they could not draw any dole. It should have been three days in work and three days on the dole which would have been better, but the firm would not let them do that so that my mother had to take in washing to make ends meet. Which I personally think is three parts of her ailments today”. Nancy’s father is dead now and her brothers and sisters are married. She lives in a street in a slum area not far from the factory with her mother who is a chronic invalid. She finds little time for leisure. Most of her time away from the factory is spent cleaning, shopping, and preparing meals. She stays at home most evenings and her greatest pleasure and relaxation is the “telly”. Since Nancy is her mother’s chief support she must earn as much as she can. I worked near her for many months and I found her pace of work fast and her skill and dexterity remarkable. Yet for

ON THE SHOP FLOOR 29

all her pressing need for cash she always was generous, and willing to leave her own work to help me out of my difficulties. The chargehand told this story: “When mother was left a widow, father having passed away at the early age of 36 I was called upon to help to “mother” the younger members of the family of whom I was the eldest aged 11. I had two sisters and one brother, and mother had a rough time earning a living for all of us. This she did by cleaning offices, doing day cleaning, and in the early hours of the morning “knocking up”. Life was indeed very hard for her. “Often after putting the youngsters to bed I would give mother a hand with the cleaning. This I did even after I had started work and as the others grew older they took their turn. However, those days are over and the other three are married with a family. My young sister and husband and girl are living at home with mother and I”. She then tells of a life active in the voluntary service of youth and states that her philosophy of life is “service is the rent we pay for our room on this earth”. She concludes: “My hobbies these days don’t take me much beyond the garden or out for walks with the dog. I haven’t much energy left after working all day”. The cases of Nancy, and of Maisie the chargehand, are not exceptional stories of hardship. Many of the older women in the room have had just as hard lives. Kitty, a skilled garment maker wrote for me: “I was left with seven children to bring up at the age of 34. The eldest is now married and the youngest twenty, now doing his National Service. Three of my girls were shorthand typists but now married. The other one is a Sister at a hospital. I have a sister who is a B.A. having got it at Manchester University and is now a teacher. I still live in the same house as when I got married which is now 33 years. I enjoy being at work as I get very lonely at home now that my family have left me.” The general statistical picture of the working force in Workroom X and the extracts from the life histories of some of the operatives suffice to show that the persons who operated the production system, and who in their interrelationships made up the social system of the workroom, were in the main women who had had

30 WORKSHOP AT THE WYE GARMENT CO.

hard lives. The area of the town from which they came was one of the most badly stricken in the depression of the ’thirties. At the time of my investigation its residents were much more prosperous than they had ever been. I distinguished three categories of women workers at Wye. First, the older single women and the widows, who worked to support themselves or dependent relatives. Second, the married women who worked to supplement the family income. Third, the teenagers, who came to work to make a contribution to the family income, but also to buy clothes and cosmetics, and to pay for entertainment. I mention this fact of differential economic position in passing. I shall raise it again when I consider the extent of workers’ response to financial incentives. Throughout the subsequent analysis, the workers of No. 3 team will be my chief concern and I now describe them briefly. The order of description follows the positions of the workers in the work flow, so that the descriptions may be read in conjunction with the chart showing work flow in Fig. 1. Some of the details of social background and circumstances, and of personal characteristics, which I describe, will not be referred to again in analysis so I must therefore explain why I have included them. I did so mainly in order that those who wish to make an attempt to relate differences in performance to individual differences may have all the material available to refer to. But I also believe that the reader will be interested to discover what kind of people worked in the workshop at Wye. Sally, who performed the initial operation of machining front parts, was a married woman with a grown-up family. She and her husband lived by themselves in a house a few minutes’ walk from the factory. Sally was workers’ representative on factory committees. She represented the unit at the meeting I held to explain my research purposes, and subsequently gave me an “official” welcome to No. 3 Unit. Sally had worked at Wye since 1939, and had no other industrial experience. Helen, a 17-year-old maker, took the fronts from Sally, and after she had finished her work on them she passed them to Wendy, another 17-year-old. Both these girls had been trained in Wye training room and had worked in the workroom for about a year. Helen sought the company of both sexes actively, but Wendy was a quiet, thoughtful girl. Wendy passed the fronts on to three older and more experienced makers, Mary, Annie, and Jean, who all worked at the same table. Mary, a long-service employee, was a married woman with two young children, Annie, who worked opposite, was married but childless. These two were good friends, even though Mary was a much older woman. There was more horseplay and noise from these two than from any other workers in the room. They were

ON THE SHOP FLOOR 31

also friends outside the factory, which was unusual for this workshop. Jean, the third front part maker, had worked at Wye continuously since 1930, which was 10 years longer than Annie. Jean, who, like Mary, had once worked as a skilled maker, was a much less forceful personality. She was single, in her forties, and she lived within walking distance of the factory. I gathered nothing from her of her home circumstances. Although not unfriendly to me, she was reticent about her private affairs. For most of the time I was in the workroom I myself performed the first operation on backs. For some of the time I was working on belts and sleeves, and during this time backs were smeared by Joan, who was subsequently transferred to another team. But as she will be mentioned again later I note here that she was a widow with a son aged 22 who lived at home near the factory, and two married daughters. Joan always looked ill and was said by the other operatives to be “chesty”. Certainly she lost a lot of time through illness and this is one reason why she was changed around from job to job and from team to team much more than others. The other reason was that she was a slow worker. More than most people, Joan found difficulty in making enough parts to cover the guaranteed minimum rate. The operative usually engaged on the second set of operations on the backs was Pam. Pam was a single person in her thirties. She had worked at Wye since before the war, but it was only in the last few years that she had joined a garment-making team. She had previously worked in the department which prepared the tapes for the garment makers, and she was reputed to be one of the fastest smearers in the room. She was the wit of the team—“a scream”, as she was described by the others. Pam was easily upset, and when she was upset she did not work so hard; she would talk of going back “across the road” or would go around voicing her grievances, to the great amusement of the others. Pam’s emotional instability goes far to explain why her earnings fluctuated much more than those of her workmates. But they do not by themselves constitute a sufficient explanation, as I shall show when I analyse the output figures. The sleeve girls, Pat and Thelma collected the sleeves cuttings from the strippers and they performed the same operations upon them. Thelma however did the machining on the sleeves. I did not see Pat doing machining operations. Pat was a single woman in her twenties. She had lived in the area around the factory all her life until she moved quite recently with her parents to a new council house in an overspill housing estate some ten miles away. She was quiet and uncommunicative. She was not unfriendly to me but difficult to draw out. I know little about her except what I have already stated.

32 WORKSHOP AT THE WYE GARMENT CO.

Thelma was a much more lively person than Pat. She was in her late teens. She planned to marry at the end of the year during which I was in the factory. After leaving school at the age of 15, Thelma took a job as a machinist in a garment factory, but stayed there for only a few months. She applied for a post as a trainee maker with Wye in 1951, and was taken on. There was no break in her service with Wye. Her experience as a machinist was useful to her and to the firm, as we have seen. She worked on the next table to Pam and talked to her much more than she did to her fellow sleeve girl, Pat. Some of the sleeve machining, as well as the front part machining, was done by Millie, a teenager. Millie, as the layout plan shows, worked with her back to the front part makers in the corner and partly faced the two girls in the team who were about her age, that is Wendy and Helen. But her view of them was obscured by a shelf arrangement and she could not converse with them while work was in progress. Millie was more isolated from human contact by her position in the team than anyone else. She did not seem to mind this much for she seemed to be a quiet, hard-working girl, although there were occasions when she turned from her work to converse with those behind her. Millie came to No. 3 Unit from another workroom in the factory, where she had worked since leaving school. Parts from the back and front lines, and from the sleeve girls, all found their way to Dora, who operated the joining-up machine. Dora, a single woman in her fifties, had worked for Wye continuously since 1916. She left grammar school at the age of 16, and she was trained by Wye as a skilled waterproof garment maker. After working for many years as a maker she developed ankle trouble, the result, so she said, of working in a standing position for long periods. She was transferred to machining so that she could work seated, and was assigned to the joining-up machine when No. 3 team was formed. Dora lived with her unmarried sister in a terrace house in a working-class area of the city, but some miles from the congested area where most of her colleagues lived. A kindly and helpful person, Dora proved to be a useful informant. She knew well many of the older workers in the firm, and she had worked at the bench with the present chargehand, with whom she was on very friendly terms. Dora’s skill as a maker was useful to her, and to the chargehand, when other members of the team were away. Eileen and Jenny were the armhole makers. They took the joined-up garments from the hangers where Dora had placed them and taped them ready for final machining by Alice. Both Eileen and Jenny were skilled garment makers. They could make a whole garment if they wished to do so but they seemed to

ON THE SHOP FLOOR 33

prefer to be in a team and be responsible for only one—the most skilled—operation on the garment. Eileen was a widow in her fifties. She had one grown-up son. She lived alone but said she saw a lot of her son and daughter-inlaw. With the exception of a period of three years during the war when she was engaged upon war work in an engineering factory, she had made waterproof garments all her life, but only came to Wye 6 years ago. She had experience of several firms in the trade. Her father and mother before her were waterproof garment makers. They met and married while they were working at Wye Garments. Eileen was a speedy and highly skilled maker and a woman of independent character. Her colleague Jenny was the oldest and longest served operative in the team, and, with one exception, in the whole room. Jenny started at Wye Garments in 1910. She was a widow. She left Wye for some years after she was married to bring up her family of 5. When they were older she returned and she had worked at Wye ever since. Jenny found it difficult to keep up speed and her output and earnings were much less than Eileen’s. She was absent often and it was said that she suffered from rheumatism. Alice, the final machinist, was about 50. She was a married woman with four children. These were now in their teens and twenties. Alice had been with Wye Garments for 13 years. She had never worked anywhere else. A very competent machinist, she had no difficulty in handling the output of the armholers and was often looking out for extra work to keep her occupied. Alice was a rather quiet person who concentrated on the work in hand. She conversed with Sally sometimes while she worked. But more often than not it was Sally who started the conversations. Standing with her back to Alice and opposite to me across the table worked Nancy, the collar girl. Nancy was a single woman in her thirties. I have mentioned the life story she wrote for me already. Nancy started work at Wye in 1943 after having worked for some three years with a firm in another industry on semiskilled work. Only during the last few years had she taken up garment making. The war contracts on which she had been engaged came to an end and Nancy was transferred by the firm to the work she was now doing. Nancy was a capable maker now and one of the highest earners in the team. She led a difficult life. She was the sole support of her invalid mother and also kept house for her when she was not working in the factory. I owe much to Nancy for making me welcome and accepting me as a colleague. We worked opposite one another for a long time and became good friends. Nancy said that she was glad to see me and sorry to see me go. Usually, she worked alone at the table and lacked company. Despite the racket of the sewing machines and particularly of the buttonhole machine just by, she was able to converse with Sally on her right while working. Nancy completed

34 WORKSHOP AT THE WYE GARMENT CO.

the whole collar and from her it passed either to Alice or to the armholers for assembly. It only remains now to mention Vera, who had worked at Wye since 1941. Vera was not, while I was there, a regular member of No. 3 team. She was however, quite often drafted in by the chargehand to help out with armholes and other jobs in the team when people were absent or when there were gluts and shortages in the flow. A married woman in her thirties, Vera had one small child. Like so many others, Vera kept her husband’s job secret. And like so many of her colleagues she lived quite near to the factory. Vera seemed to be regarded by the chargehands as a utility worker. She moved around from unit to unit whilst I was in the room and also from job to job. She did not seem to resent this and seemed capable of doing most of the operations in the teams. She preferred, as she told me, to work in No. 3 Unit. She said she found the atmosphere friendlier. This was to be expected since her close friend Pam was in No. 3 Unit. Wherever she happened to be working Vera would come to join Pam at lunch and at break time. Table 1 summarizes the information I have about the operatives in No. 3 Unit, so far as their individual characteristics are concerned. It will be noted that, like the workroom as a whole, No. 3 Unit was composed mostly of older persons, almost all of them with long service with the firm. But there were, as in the other units, a group of teenagers, who had been recently recruited and trained as semi-skilled workers for the unit system. I gathered that these young people had been recruited partly to replace older women who had left rather than work on the unit system, partly as part of a management policy of expansion, and partly as an insurance against the future when many of the older workers would retire. Although there appeared less reason for the younger people to try to maximize earnings—none had dependants and since they had the same job prices as the older women they were able to earn high wages—they usually adopted the pattern set by the older women and worked very hard. Therefore I shall not refer to them as a separate group when considering how the workers reacted to management’s expectations, which I shall analyse in the chapter which follows. Later, when I consider friendly groupings, and their effect on production relationships in the workroom, the age factor will be taken into account. So far, my description of the productive system has been confined to the work done and the persons doing it. I conclude this section by trying to convey my own subjective impression of what it was like to work in the workroom. I do not claim, of course, that my own impressions corresponded with those of the other workers. But the reader will perhaps be better able to assess these

ON THE SHOP FLOOR 35

TABLE 1 WORKERS OF No. 3 UNIT

from my description and from the remarks made by other workers, which I shall quote. I found the work itself tedious and boring. Sometimes I would work for weeks smearing backs, the same thing all day and every day. It occurred to me that I might be exceptional and that those who had been there for many years might be accustomed to the routine. Certainly, some of them were, but I also heard many complaints, such as the following: “You hear a lot of people complain about the youngsters nowadays having no interest in their work. It’s not surprising when you look at it, the same thing day after day”.*

36 WORKSHOP AT THE WYE GARMENT CO.

I found the work hard and exhausting. Makers had to stand all day. I found it difficult to adjust myself to a job which required me to stand in the same place for long hours. On this score I heard no complaints from the other workers, although Dora, who suffered with her ankles, was of the opinion that it was bad for a person’s health. I was laughed at as being a “cissie” when I mentioned how tired standing made me. I did hear many complaints about the pace of the work, which I myself found it difficult to maintain. “They don’t want workers around here, it’s machines they want”; “They want men from Mars with more than two hands, that’s what they want round here”; “They must think we are all octopuses”; “I think I’ll try a spell in Holloway, they reckon it’s cushy there”, were some remarks I heard. The working conditions were the best possible in the circumstances, but the building was old and the workroom not very well ventilated, so that the room became stuffy in hot weather. It was rather more pleasant to work in in winter since the central heating was quite adequate. But there was always a smell of naphtha in the room. This smell was overpowering to the newcomer, but one quickly became used to it. I do not wish to convey the impression that everyday life in the workshop was all tedium, or that the workers grumbled all day long. The tedium was broken by the usual joking and leg-pulling and the workers appreciated the wireless programmes, and sometimes joined in singing. I was sometimes the butt of the jokes; as when some of the workers made a coffin from cardboard, containing eleven candy figures, to symbolize the expected coming defeat of Newcastle United, whom I was supporting in the Cup Final against Manchester City. Jenny, the buttonhole marker, was decked out with decayed watercress—in lieu of shamrock—on St. Patrick’s Day to the great amusement of everyone. On warm summer days workers would create, in animated conversation, a fantasy world in which everyone was bound for Blackpool on pleasure bent instead of being tied to the work bench. Among some workers, representatives of management, particularly the time-study men, became the butt of mimicry and ridicule in their absence. But for the most part these activities did not interfere with the rhythm of work. If they threatened to do so the chargehand would intervene. Talking and horseplay, if these interfered with output, were definitely frowned upon. The distinction between “them” and “us”, which has been noted by Hoggart(15) and other observers of working-class life, was marked in the workshop. The managers (and this included the time *I was unable to judge whether the work was less monotonous than it had been on the conveyor system, as management claimed. And no worker made this comparison.

ON THE SHOP FLOOR 37

study men and all representatives of management other than the female chargehands) were called the “higher ups”. The places where the higher-ups worked when they were not in the workroom were covered by the one term “the office”. To make the distinction between “them” and “us” was not to express resentment against managers as a class, nor envy. The workers I knew never hoped to become one of “them”. They seemed to be well adjusted to what some would consider the rather narrow range of their lives, and they never grumbled about their position as workers. They grumbled about the behaviour of particular managers, and particular landlords, but then to be plagued by landlords and managers was part of normal working-class life, and something to be “put up with”. Although the workers appeared to have adjusted well, I do not imply by this that their attitude was one of resignation or indifference. On the contrary, behaviour not in conformity with their rather strict ethical code was harshly condemned, and as I shall presently show, there were occasionally active individual protests against what was believed to be “unfair” treatment. I have already indicated what hard lives some of the workers had experienced, and I have described how some of those with dependents still have great financial handicaps to overcome in living what they regard as a “decent life”. Yet they were extraordinarily generous, both with their money and in their impulses. A “whip-round” or “gathering” for a person getting married, a regular collection for a charity, or for a friend in personal difficulties, or for a present for someone leaving the factory, found workers donating sums quite large in relation to their income. The manager of the department once remarked to me that to keep his subscriptions to “gatherings” on a level with those of the workers made a considerable hole in his income. When I left the workshop after my fieldwork, I was presented by the members of “No. 3 Unit” with an expensive cigarette lighter and case. For me, the monotony of the job and the working conditions were tempered by the friendship and generosity of the workers, and I think the same considerations would apply for the other workers, although this was never stated explicitly. Perhaps managers, albeit not consciously, rely a good deal upon the capacity of workers to adjust without undue complaint to conditions of monotony and boredom, a capacity which is a result of the tough social training of a class of “we’s”. “You have to take the rough with the smooth in this life” or “I can’t grumble really, there’s many a one worse off than me”—such phrases as these illustrate the ideology which underlies the enormous capacity for “making the best of a bad job” which I encountered amongst these workers, But again I would emphasize that although there was a feeling that everyone shared a common lot, to make the best of it

38 WORKSHOP AT THE WYE GARMENT CO.

was largely an indidivual matter, as far as relationships with management were concerned. Such social solidarity as existed— and the productive system sets limits to this—was a generalized friendliness and generosity rather than organization in terms of specific ends, either for or against something or somebody. In my second study I shall draw attention to the difference between the solidarity of the men in their workshop and of the women in Wye. I can only say here that although I myself, like the other workers, grumbled about the pace of work, the irregularities in the flow of work, the system of production, in fact almost everything, I found the shop a fairly friendly place in which to be and so, I am sure, did many of the other workers.

CHAPTER 3 NORMS, EXPECTATIONS, OUTPUT AND EARNINGS

IN an earlier chapter I described, by quoting from a lecture given to new workers, how management expected the workers to behave. It will be recalled that this lecture did not include any notion of a “proper” level of output expressed in units to be produced in a given time, or as a sum of money to be earned. Rather, it emphasized the kind of behaviour likely to maximize earnings, and contained the assumption that the workers would wish to earn as much as they could. The content of the lecture is summarized in the statement: “This is the work, these are the job prices; the more work you do, the more you earn”. As I have already noted, some investigators of workshop life have drawn attention to differences between the expectations of managers, and the behavioural norms of work groups. It has been argued that the systems of rewards and punishments instituted by management to ensure that workers conform to its expectations, often come into conflict with a system of informal social controls spontaneously developed by working groups. The adjustment between the conflicting systems of control, both of which operate within a wider system of technological and administrative controls, produces productive performance by workers below management expectations. An example of a possible mode of adjustment is described by Gouldner; he terms it the “Indulgency Pattern”.* Other writers have referred to a conflict between two logics, “the logic of efficiency” of management, and the “logic of sentiment of the work group”. But there are, logically speaking, other possible modes of adjustment of the relationship between management and the workers in a firm. Workers may accept management definition of their role, and conform to management expectations, and the workshop group may use informal sanctions to ensure conformity to shared norms, supplementing formal management sanctions. Another possible alternative is one where workers conform to management expectations as individuals and where the only controls which operate to regulate behaviour are the formal management controls. I now examine the situation in the Wye garment workshop, to discover the extent to which management expectations were

40 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

accepted by the workers. Before I do this, it is necessary to state that, though workers may accept management’s definition of their role and fulfil management expectations, this does not necessarily mean that they are satisfied with their situation. Other factors may intervene to create dissatisfaction. I shall therefore describe situations in the workshop in some detail so that as many as possible of the factors which seemed to be affecting the relationship between management and the workers are brought into the analysis. I shall also attempt to trace the factors which influence the capacity of the workers to earn. Earnings would seem prima facie to be an important element in a worker’s satisfaction with the job and in relationships with management. The analysis of the earnings figures will also help to determine whether a norm of output and earnings existed which differed from the management norm. The examination of workers’ social relationships will indicate the extent to which such controls over output and earnings as existed were collectively sanctioned. During my stay in the workroom I kept a daily record of events observed and remarks and conversations overheard. Management gave me access to records of the earnings of the workers. It was my intention to treat output and earnings as the resultant of the interplay of a number of factors in the work situation, and to try to relate my observations to the output and earnings figures in the hope that this would illustrate the factors which affected earnings and output. I shall attempt this now. I shall try also to recreate the “atmosphere” of the workshop rather than merely to assemble a number of facts into categories. I shall therefore present extracts from my field-notes as I wrote them and try to extract from them a picture of the operation of the various factors affecting the output of the workers. “This was the first really sunny and warm day since I started. The workroom was hot and stuffy. By the middle of the afternoon I felt sleepy, thirsty, and fed up. I went out about 3 p.m. for a smoke and lingered in the yard for a breath of fresh air. When I returned I worked slowly on the batch of sleeves on which I was engaged so that it would last until finishing time. But I could not manage it. About twenty minutes before finishing time I went to the chargehand for more work. I was given a batch of sleeves. I carried them back to my table feeling very reluctant to make a start so near to finishing time. I persuaded myself that a spell would be in order, and *The “indulgency pattern” is characterized by friendly easy-going relationships between management and workers and tolerance of behaviour not in strict conformity with formal management rules. See Ref. 16.

NORMS, EXPECTATIONS, OUTPUT AND EARNINGS 41

that this would give me an opportunity for a leisurely observation of the rest of the unit at work. I had hardly started to idle when Mary bawled out from the other end of the unit, ‘Have you nothing to do?’ It was obvious that I had for my table was piled high with sleeves. Now the eyes of the whole team were upon me. I tried to appear unconcerned but I felt so uncomfortable that I was compelled to reach for a sleeve and to begin smearing the hems. When finishing time came I went over to the table where Mary and Annie worked and said jokingly, ‘lt’s a bit thick when a man can’t have a few minutes spell without being bawled out’. The reply to this was a reminder that I ought to remember what time the shop started work in the morning. [I had been a few minutes late on a few mornings.] After a bout of good-natured banter sweets were handed round and we all went home”. This extract from my notes illustrates a dominant group norm which can be summed up in the phrase: “You work hard when you have work on the table.” This corresponds to management expectations. The workers, for the most part, did attempt to maximize earnings and when work was available they worked at what seemed to me to be a high speed. The workers themselves distinguished two paces of work, “steaming” and “sweating”. Steaming described the behaviour of a worker who knew that the price of the job made it possible for her to “make her wages”, and who worked at the normal pace of work. “Sweating” described the behaviour of a worker whose job was tightly priced and who was working at a “killing” pace, and probably making some sacrifice of quality to prevent a slump in earnings. Each operative had a notion of what her “wages” were; that is she had formed an expectation of a “proper” level of daily earnings for herself against which she judged whether the price of the job was “tight” or “loose”. A common form of greeting in the shop was the call, “Are you making your wages?”; or, if it was quite obvious that you were, “You’re doing alright today”. Sometimes the greeting “You’re doing alright” had a sour sound, for, as I shall show later, there were times when some workers in the workshop were “doing alright” while others were finding it difficult to “make their wages” even by sweating. And others might be short of work. In the next two extracts the concept “making your wages” is illustrated. But it is necessary first to say something more about the incentive scheme than I have so far done. The incentive scheme which operated in the workshop was designed to maximize output by offering to the workers an opportunity to increase earnings by increasing effort. As in all cash incentive schemes management must base its calculations of job prices upon the concept of the average worker, and of the

42 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

effort such a worker can maintain from day to day without undue fatigue. It would be pointless to fix prices in such a way that workers must wear themselves out to earn what they consider to be a reasonable wage. This would be to store up trouble for the future, or to encourage workers to leave. Or workers might just become disillusioned, and cease attempting the impossible. Starting then with some idea of the appropriate level of earnings for workers of given skill, management will seek to fix job prices in such a way as to enable a better than average worker to earn more than this working at normal pace, and the average worker to earn more by increased effort, or the less than average worker to bring his or her earnings up to the average by greater effort. In the Wye scheme, the attempt was made, when fixing prices, to make it possible for the least capable worker to earn the negotiated minimum wage for the industry—£4 18s. 0d. per week.* The average worker, doing a job requiring average skill, would be enabled to earn £5 15s. 0d. per week. And the better than average, more highly skilled worker, would find it possible to earn much more than this. Any person entering the workshop who was unable, after a trial period of a few weeks after training, to earn, at current piecework prices, the minimum rate for the industry, would not be accepted as suitable by management. From management’s point of view, this was a reasonable policy, since they were bound by their agreement with the union to make up the workers’ earnings to the minimum rate. Only one worker was dismissed during my stay in the shop, and she was dismissed for consistent failure to earn the minimum rate on piecework. Shirley, the dismissed worker, was a teenage girl fresh from the training school. I relate the circumstances which led to her dismissal both to illustrate the extent to which the workers accepted the principles of the scheme, and to throw light on the concept “making your wages”. I knew Shirley as a fellow trainee in the training school. She liked “a bit of fun” and was regarded by her colleagues and by the trainers as a “bit of a character”. She showed less interest than the other girls in the job, and found it much more difficult to learn than they did. But she was friendly and sociable. She enjoyed the company of the other girls and seemed to get a great deal of satisfaction and enjoyment out of life. But she lacked concentration and a serious interest in output and earnings. Her reputation followed her into the workshop and she was placed in a position in the workroom where the chargehand could keep a constant eye on her. The chargehand gave Shirley a good deal of help, showing her the best methods to use, and keeping her supplied with work, and generally doing her best to make it possible for Shirley to “make her wages”. She also did her best to make Shirley apply steady and concentrated attention to her

NORMS, EXPECTATIONS, OUTPUT AND EARNINGS 43

work. But she failed. It soon became obvious that Shirley would never “make her wages”. She continued to “dodge the column”. Many of the workers told me that Shirley would not have been given an extended trial period if it had not been for the chargehand. It was said that the chargehand had asked the management to give Shirley every possible chance to improve. There was little sympathy for Shirley amongst those with whom I discussed her case. They did not approve of her “playing about”. “You can’t expect to get your money for nothing” expressed the general attitude. I heard no expressions of regret when Shirley was finally dismissed. That she “couldn’t make her money” was taken as a good and sufficient reason for her dismissal since she had been given a fair chance. It seemed to me that every worker in Workroom X had a clear idea of what her “wages” ought to be each day or week. The expectations of the workers corresponded closely to those of management. The management had decided on the £5 15s. 0d. datum as a reasonable level of earnings for an adult semi-skilled worker, on the grounds that it offered a good deal more than the minimum time rate to the average worker, and more still to the worker with greater skill. It also compared favourably with the rates in comparable jobs in other industries. The workers were quite prepared to accept this figure as a datum. The other element in the concept of “my wages” was derived by reference to past earnings. But if the workers were prepared to accept management’s view of what constituted “a fair day’s pay”, and were prepared to work hard on piecework to “make it”, they also expected management to create the conditions which made it possible for hard work to produce the “wages”. Their lack of sympathy for Shirley was produced by the knowledge that she had been given every chance. Work had been provided for her and she had been told how to do the work. But she refused to work hard for her wages so she was undeserving of sympathy. It was when, in spite of hard work and of willingness to work hard, the worker found herself not able to make her money that she expressed dissatisfaction. Although there was no fundamental disagreement between management and the workers about the principle of the scheme, the workers judged it unfair if for any reason other than a refusal to work hard throughout the day, they failed to make their wages. The most serious obstacle to “making your wages”, provided that work was available, was the “tight” price. Since workers often complained about tight prices I asked them to explain the reason why tight prices existed. The most common *For persons under 21 the minimum rate was lower, but the same job prices applied.

44 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

explanation was that the whole business stemmed from the fact that most prices were based upon the prices fixed on one common style of garment during the period when the unit system was being introduced. It was said that the original unit, whose operatives’ work was timed, was composed of fast workers. Some said that the supervisors had attempted to supply slow workers for the first unit but had been frustrated by the Work Study Consultants, who had insisted on having the best workers. I quote some of the accounts of what was alleged to have happened at the time when the prices were being calculated for the staple garment on which, it was said, most other prices were based. I do not, of course, assert that these accounts are accurate history, but they were accepted as such by the workers, whose behaviour may be influenced accordingly. “The girls were kidded into working hard when the jobs were timed. The Union man said that we mustn’t stand in the way of science in industry, but they blinded the girls with it”. “When time and motion came in the workers were put out of their stride. They were put off by people standing behind them with stop-watches”. “The new system benefits the experienced workers and doesn’t give the less experienced much chance. Everything is rush nowadays”. “The girls worked very hard for when they were putting the system in. One girl set out to prove that she could make 64 a day. She worked herself to a standstill.…told her she was very clever, but she had spoiled the job for everyone else”. A slow worker: “We are not overloaded with money. We were all right on the conveyors but this time and motion has finished it”. Most workers with whom I discussed the matter said that the slower workers had suffered relatively from the changeover. But in their minds this was not an argument for a general loosening of the rates. It merely showed that on the group piecework system on the conveyors the fast workers had been earning money for the slow ones. Now “everyone earns their own money”. In my experience there existed in the workshop a shared belief in what constituted a reasonable effort or pace of work which corresponded to management expectations. I have already shown how I was myself subject to banter and ridicule for taking it easy or leaving my bench, and how Shirley was regarded for her refusal to work for her money. But this shared belief did not issue in action to remedy the whole system of job pricing. Individuals

NORMS, EXPECTATIONS, OUTPUT AND EARNINGS 45

complained about particular prices. “A fair day’s work” enabled some workers to “make their wages”, others on the same task failed to do so. Since there were also considerable skill differences and since all the workers in the units were for the most part engaged upon different work at any one time, it would have been surprising if any ground for common complaint had arisen. I think I have been able to show that while the workers attempted to conform to management’s expectations in attempting to maximize their earnings, they considered that management ought to create the conditions in which it was possible to “make their wages”. They were aggrieved if management failed to keep its side of the bargain, and, as I have said, they complained about tight prices as a failure of management in this respect. But the workers also criticized other kinds of failure on the part of management to keep its side of the bargain. One common complaint was of waiting for work. To “make your wages”, even when prices were such as to make this possible without sweating, meant that a worker had to have work on her table or machine throughout the day. The chargehand did everything possible to ensure that the workers were kept supplied with work but she was often defeated by factors beyond her control, and her efforts often raised a fresh crop of difficulties. The difficulties of the chargehand were well summed up for me by one of the workers who said, “the system runs the chargehand, the chargehand doesn’t run the system”. The following extracts from my field notes illustrate this point, and also introduce the discussion of the efforts of the workers to control some of the factors which affected their output and earnings: “The unit is changing over from the production of a garment known as ‘the black shiny’, a single texture garment, to a blue double texture garment. The workers at the beginning of the process of production are already working on parts for this new coat. The final assemblers are still working on the ‘black shiny’. In a day or two all will be working on the new coat. “Pam complained to me again about earning little bonus on the blue coats. She yearns for the ‘black shinies’. She has wasted a lot of time since she finished working on black shiny parts and seems disinclined to work hard on the blue coat”. A change to a new style of coat had led Pam to believe that she would now be unable to “make her wages”, even by sweating. She was therefore disinclined even to make the attempt. The work was available and in this sense management had fulfilled her demands

46 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

but she felt cheated because the price did not enable her to “make her wages” by working at normal speed. “Jenny and Mary were absent this morning. Joan has been transferred tempor-arily to another workroom, so the team was short. A slow start was made. I was drinking tea with Dora at eight, ten minutes after official starting time. But people soon settled down to a high speed. I finished an odd batch of work which had been brought in from another workroom, and was then introduced to the method of making backs, on which I was to help Pam. This again showed me how difficult it is for the inexperienced to keep up the pace expected. I had noticed the same with sleeves last week. It would be impossible for me to earn a decent wage for the work I am doing at present. “When I was collecting my dockets this afternoon, I took the opportunity of asking Pam why she liked Black Shinies best. She said that she didn’t really know why but she was emphatic that she did like them very much. “I mentioned the question of absentees to Joe. He suggested that the absenteeism was deliberate. It was to avoid badly paying work. I questioned Eileen about the absentees as we walked to the canteen together. “T.L.: I see your friend [Jenny] hasn’t turned in today. “EILEEN. Yes, it’s Monday morning, she probably slept late. She will be in after dinner. I wouldn’t be though. If I sleep late I have the day off. It’s not worth coming in for. She [the chargehand] asked me once why I had been off for a day. I said I had slept late. She said ‘what, all day?’ The next day: “More absentees today. Mary and Jenny still absent. Wendy is also absent. Jean is sent by the chargehand to take Jenny’s place on armholes but goes absent herself in the afternoon. By three o’clock the flow of coats to Alice, the final machinist, had dried up. I was pressed, by the use of chaff and banter, to work harder to produce more backs so that Alice could sew in the vents. For the first time since I joined the team I saw Alice leave her machine during working time. “It is not easy to find what has caused the absenteeism. But the coincidence with the introduction of the blue coat seems more than an accident. Pam was greatly pleased that she had been transferred to Jenny’s job. During the afternoon she announced that she had got her money in for the day and didn’t care”.

NORMS, EXPECTATIONS, OUTPUT AND EARNINGS 47

The next day Jean came back to work but the chargehand did not put her to work on her own job. Instead, Jean was sent to take Jenny’s place on armholes, In the afternoon she was absent again. “In response to my enquiries why there were so many people absent, Nancy told me that one of Mary’s boys had tonsillitis, Jenny was ill, and Jean had gone absent because she had been put on armholes, while her own work was being done by someone else. Dora hinted that Mary had really gone absent because there was no money to be made on the new blue coat”. The above extracts illustrate the resentment which is generated when: 1. The introduction of a new style of garment reduces the capacity of a worker to “make her wages”. On her own job (backs) Pam was unable to make her wages. Yet when she was transferred to Jean’s job she was able to do so. But Jean, on her return after a short absence, was resentful at not being given her own job back. This may have been because she found it difficult to make her wages, and/or because she felt the regular work she did (front parts) was by right “her job”. There are involved here two principles, both of which are valued, yet which are to some extent in conflict. Workers felt they had a right to the job they customarily performed and at which they had acquired skill and speed. But they also felt that management should create the conditions—work on the table at a reasonable price—which would make it possible to make their wages. The chargehand, faced with the problem of keeping work flowing through the units when the units were depleted, was obliged to move workers, and work, around. If resentment at being moved from one’s own job was adequately compensated by good earnings then protest was unlikely to be made and the move might be welcomed (Pam’s case). But if the move reduced earnings then the principle of “right to the job” was asserted. In Jean’s case, and possibly in Mary’s, protest took the form of absence. But this only increased the chargehand’s difficulties and made more transfers necessary. 2. The chargehand’s efforts to keep work flowing generated pressure by one worker on another worker to keep her supplied with parts so that she could make her wages. Sometimes workers were on jobs which were unfamiliar and they found it difficult to work up speed, thus causing the flow of parts to the worker next in the flow to be inadequate (my own case). Since management’s formal expectation was that workers as individuals would attempt to maximize earnings, the workers made little attempt to organize co-operation amongst themselves to maximize the output of the

48 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

whole team. The attempt to do this would not necessarily have increased the earning capacity of all the team since some jobs might pay better than others. It was therefore seen as the chargehand’s responsibility to arrange the work in such a way that a worker could make her wages on her own job. But when the team was depleted by absenteeism this was clearly impossible. A worker faced with a shortage of “work on the table” would feel resentful, and would attempt to bring pressure to bear upon those supplying her with parts to produce enough to enable her to make her wages. The application of such pressure led usually to irritation on the part of the recipient though it did not often lead to open quarrelling, since the workers were aware that somehow the problem was insoluble. But sometimes open quarrelling did occur, and anger issued in threats to leave the workroom altogether, and sometimes workers actually left for this reason.* The chargehand was seldom blamed for creating situations such as I have been discussing. The workers saw that she had a difficult task, and they were aware that she did not play favourites. Further, they appreciated that she made the attempt, within the strict limits imposed upon her since she could not directly alter the job prices, nor decide which work would be done by which unit, nor control absenteeism, to give everyone work on which they could “make their wages”. I think I have now made it sufficiently clear that the workers, as individuals, accepted the definition of their role as stated by management. But the workers defined management’s role as being to provide them with the means to “make their wages”, i.e. to rate the jobs “properly” and to keep work on the table. This was impossible for management to achieve the whole time. With a working force which contained many married women, some absenteeism was unavoidable, and its incidence was difficult to predict. Since management’s chief interest was to maximize the output of the depleted units, they were obliged to deploy the working force and the work to gain the best possible output. This was seen as the chargehand’s responsibility since she alone was able to assess the best mode of deployment in the work-shop. She alone knew intimately the skills and capacities, and the temperament, of individual workers. But any deployment of the working force was likely to offend against the principles valued by the workers, i.e. the proprietary right to the job, and the capacity to make one’s wages. Since management itself had helped create these expectations workers were the more aggrieved. But their anger was tempered by the knowledge that the chargehand was faced with a tremendous problem in trying to reconcile these two *In a subsequent chapter I shall analyse the social mechanism which operated to control quarrels of this kind.

NORMS, EXPECTATIONS, OUTPUT AND EARNINGS 49

conflicting principles. This attitude of sympathy was fostered by the workers’ experience of the behaviour of the chargehand. They knew that while she was strict in her insistence on hard work, she would try to create the conditions which made it possible for them to make their wages. And they knew that she worked tremendously hard to this end. They also liked her as a person. Absenteeism made for difficulties in reconciling conflicting principles, and absenteeism lay outside the control of management. And so it was with changes in style of garment coming into the units. These were decided by market conditions. Management obtained what orders it could, and these were allocated to the units. Some orders gave short runs, some long runs, and always the operatives could anticipate that there would be changes from time to time in the style of garment on which they would be working. And changes in style often affected their capacity to earn. The ability of management to loosen the rate at the request of an operative was limited by the necessity to keep costs low. They operated in highly competitive markets and since labour costs obviously formed a large part of the total cost of the product, large concessions were impossible. Further, management were often reluctant to alter job prices when individuals complained since the complaint sometimes arose from a temporary difficulty due to having to master a new sequence of movements. It must also be mentioned that management was confident that its system of determining job prices on the basis of careful time study gave fair prices. They were sometimes willing to undertake re-timing at the request of a worker but were unwilling to alter prices if it appeared to them that the worker was naturally a slow worker and her slowness was reflected in her pay packet, or if the worker was using a method other than that prescribed by management and wasteful of movement and time. But errors in calculation would, of course, be corrected. Absenteeism, and market factors, were largely outside management control. The workshop system had therefore to be manipulated by management in such a way as to maximize output within the limits imposed by these external (uncontrollable) factors. The manipulations, in their consequences, were interpreted by some of the workers, on some occasions, as a failure of management to keep its promise to create conditions favourable to them. In my analysis of the productive system I argued that the system itself, with its minute sub-division of tasks, and with wide differences in skill and earning capacity, obstructed possible attempts by workers to control the effects of imbalance in the work flow, tight prices, and the like. My analysis in this chapter has shown how the individualism of the workers, which was encouraged by management, and which was intensified when the capacity to earn was affected by temporary difficulties, militated

50 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

against the development of collective control to mitigate the effects of these factors on output, and hence on earnings. The only controls which I observed were the practice of “sweating”, i.e. sacrificing quality for speed when the rate was tight, and “dead horse”, i.e. the practice of booking in dockets for work which had not yet been completed. But these were individual practices not sanctioned by the work group (“dead horse” was condemned by some workers as immoral), and in any case management made them difficult to operate. Since dockets did not begin to circulate until work was delivered to the units, the scope for “dead horse” was limited. The system of inspection and the responsibility of each worker for the quality of her own work, made “sweating” a risky business. Shoddy work, if discovered, might involve the worker in a great deal more work without extra pay. This being so, it was to be expected that some of the processes which I have been analysing would find fairly accurate reflection in the earnings of the workers. I shall now examine the earnings of the workers and trace the effect of a number of factors which I have already mentioned, in causing fluctuations in earnings. The incentive scheme at Wye was a straight piecework scheme. Earnings were therefore a direct measure of output. I found it easier to gain access to figures of earnings than to measures of the output of various components. For this reason, and also because the workers made their own calculations in terms of earnings and not of output, I conduct my analysis of the output of individuals mainly in terms of their earnings. But I collected figures showing the output of completed garments by each of the units in the workroom each day during the period when I was in the workroom. These figures were obtained from the chargehand’s report book, which was submitted to the manager each day, and they are shown in Fig. 2. To enter into detailed comparisons of the productivity of the three units in Workroom X on the basis of Fig. 2 would be unrewarding, because there were no long periods when each unit was producing the same style of garment. Since different styles raised different problems of assembly, accurate comparison of the productivity of the units was not possible. Length of run was alsoa quite important consideration. This was indicated when the day-to-day fluctuations in the output of the three units were compared. In each case there were marked fluctuations in output, but the output of No. 1 Unit was seen to be much steadier than the output of the other two units. This was partly due to the fact that No. 1 Unit had the benefit of longer runs on the same style of garment than had the other two units. During the period of my research No. 1 Unit experienced only one change of style; No. 3 Unit experienced 9 changes; and No. 2 Unit 5 changes. No. 2 Unit also experienced a long period when extra work on leggings and aprons was being carried on in addition to garment production.

NORMS, EXPECTATIONS, OUTPUT AND EARNINGS 51

FIG. 2. Daily output of Units

The difference in treatment of No. 1 Unit, as compared with the other units, in the matter of work allocation, is to be explained by the fact that the workers in the unit were considered to be the most skilled and experienced in the workroom. They were usually given high quality work. They also had the lion’s share of the longterm contract work which was the firm’s staple product. Short orders of odd garments were usually allocated to the other two units. Thus the workers in No. 1 Unit were favoured in that they had less frequently to make adjustments to take account of new styles and new job prices. And this helped to account for the often expressed sentiment that No. 3 Unit, with which I worked, was underprivileged. I was told, and my experience confirmed this, that the prices on the staple contract work were much fairer, i.e. one could make one’s wages more easily, and tighter prices were fewer.

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Whatever the explanation for the difference in fluctuation of unit output, it is clear from the figures that in none of the units was there an effective norm of daily or weekly output for each unit. None of the units regulated the behaviour of its members according to some notion of what ought to be produced on each style of garment each day. I have already indicated some of the reasons why this was so, and indeed, since the incentive scheme rewarded them as individuals, there seems no obvious reason to expect the workers to be concerned about the output of the unit as a unit. The only workers one would expect to be concerned about unit output would be those enaged on final assembly, since their output was the output of the unit (the team output figures in Fig. 2 are in effect the output figures for the final assemblers). Yet within the workroom it was regarded as right and proper that the team ought to work in such a way as to keep the final assemblers continually occupied. This I interpreted as in some measure a carry over from the old system of conveyor production when the earnings of all individuals depended each week on the output of the final assemblers. But the principle that the final assemblers should always be kept occupied conflicted with the principle that management should provide the individual with the opportunity to “make her wages” each week. This was inevitable since, due to absenteeism, to imbalance in the work flow, and so on, to keep the work flowing to the final assemblers often meant that individuals had to be transferred from job to job within the units. Since the output of the units was the output of the final assemblers the policy of the chargehand was to keep work flowing to them. She pursued this policy intelligently. This being so, it was to be expected that the fluctuations in the earnings and output of the final assemblers would fluctuate less than those of the other members of the unit. Figure 3, which shows the fluctuations in the earnings of the workersin No. 3 Unit around their own average earnings, indicates that the final assemblers were amongst those with less violent fluctuations in earnings, but it also shows that, like the other workers, they were subject to marked fluctuations in their earnings. From my own observations I can say that the final assemblers, that is Eileen and Jenny, the “armhole girls”, were seldom short of work. It would seem therefore that the fluctuations in their earnings have to be explained by reference to other factors, for example, style changes or anomalies in job prices. I defer detailed analysis of the factors affecting the earnings of the final assemblers until I can deal with the earnings of all the workers in No. 3 Unit in detail. I have already argued that the productive system itself militated against the emergence of collective control over output and earnings. Most of the workers were working on different operations within the units, and since the allowance for skill in the prices differed from operation to operation, there were wide

NORMS, EXPECTATIONS, OUTPUT AND EARNINGS 53

FIG. 3. Fluctuations around average weekly earnings. Full weeks

differentials in earnings within the unit. I argued that these differentials were a factor dividing the units internally, helping to prevent co-operation either to further management objectives or to control the level of earnings. I now illustrate the extent of these differentials. Figure 4 shows that only three workers in No. 3 team earned on average more than the piecework average for the workshop. Two of these,Nancy and Eileen, averaged just over £7 per week. Eileen was an “armholer” whose high average earnings reflected her special skill as a maker. She was also a speedy worker. Her colleague Jenny was also skilled but she was old and slow, and her earnings are thus well below the earnings for the hypothetical average worker. Nancy was a speedy worker, engaged on the tricky job of collar assembly. Sally, the other high earner, was a machinist who was especially quick at the relatively straightforward sewing operations she was expected to perform. The average earnings of the rest of the team fell below the level of the hypothetical average worker. This one would expect in the case of the inexperienced teen-agers. They were not expected to make the adult minimum wage—it will be recalled that Shirley was fired for failing to make the juvenile minimum, about £3 10s. 0d.—but many of the adult workers in No. 3 Unit made, on average, somewhat less than the average worker was expected to make, given the job prices. Possibly these workers were below average with respect to skill and speed according to the management. The evidence suggests,

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FIG. 4. Average weekly earnings. No. 3 Unit. Full weeks only

however, that most of the workers were average or above average in potential performance, but were prevented from realizing their full potential by anomalies in job prices, stoppages in work flow, and the like. There are one or two workers to whom this explanation does not fully apply. I refer particularly to Joan and Pam. The reasons for Joan’s poor performance lay in her poor health and in her inability to adapt herself to new methods of work. Although Pam’s earnings were affected by imbalance of work flow, transfers, and the like, her personal attitude to the job accounts to some extent for her low figure of average earnings. I shall discuss her case in more detail presently; I merely mention here that she was easily discouraged and was inclined to slack off when it appeared to her difficult to make her wages, and her earnings slumped. Taken by itself, the fact that so many workers in No. 3 Unit failed on average to reach the £5 15s. 0d. level was not for them a serious cause for complaint. It could hardly have been so since, in my experience, none of them was aware that management considered £5 15s. 0d. to be a fair weekly reward for a worker of average skill working at a reasonable pace. Nor were they aware that management took this into account when calculating job prices, Each worker’s concept of a reasonable level of earnings was based upon her own past experience and on comparison with other workers doing roughly the same work, insofar as it was possible for her to make this comparison, Thus “to make one’s wages” was to reach one’s accustomed level each week. To fall

TABLE 2. AVERAGE (WEEKLY) HOURLY EARNINGS, AND RANGE OF VARIATION. No. 3 UNIT.

NORMS, EXPECTATIONS, OUTPUT AND EARNINGS 55

short of this gave rise to discontent, which was probably emphasized by the fact that the individual was powerless to do much to alter the circumstances which caused her to fall short. More accurately, most individuals showed no wish to control these circumstances, but felt aggrieved that management had somehow let them down. The figures of output and earnings that I have given so far serve to back up the argument I have already advanced, namely, that there were in this shop no effective group norms of output, either about the output of completed garments by the group, or about the output of completed parts by individuals. By this I do not mean that there were no shared ideas about right and proper behaviour, I have already shown that there were such shared ideas. And I have also shown that each individual operated with an idea of what her “wages” ought to be, an idea which was related to her own subjective estimate of the relation between the effort she was expending as against the reward accruing. Measured by this yardstick, any one day or week could be adjudged “good” or “bad”. Thus the situation in this shop was that the behaviour of the members of the group and of management is judged according to standards which are widely accepted within the group even though effective techniques for the control of the working environment in terms of these standards are absent. I now go on to elaborate this general point by examining in detail the earnings of No. 3 Unit. I shall attempt to show, by an examination of the causes of fluctuations in earnings, that individual control over levels of individual output was very limited, and that collective control over output did not occur. Table 2 is an analysis of earnings fluctuations. It gives figures of the average hourly earnings of each worker in No. 3 Unit for nineteen weeks, together with two measures of earnings variation—the range over which individual earnings fluctuated, and the mean deviation. Both these measures show a considerable variation in most cases, as did the graph in Fig. 3 showing the range of fluctuations of gross weekly wages. I have already said that I had observed that most of the workers worked at a fast even pace when they had work “on the table”, except in periods of “sweating” when quality was sacrificed for speed to offset the effects of a tight price; and I argued that the variations in pace of work which I did observe were far from sufficient to account for the fluctuations in the earnings of individual workers, or to explain why the earnings of some workers varied more than others. I think I can now demonstrate this convincingly from my field notes on the fluctuations in the earnings of some of the workers. Referring to Table 2, it will be seen that the average hourly earnings of Pat and Thelma, the sleeve girls, are remarkably steady in comparison with those of, say, Nancy, the collar girl, or Pam, the back maker. This was due primarily to the fact that the

56 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

sleeve girls were to some extent shielded, by their position in the unit, from the effects of imbalance in work flow. They collected cuttings direct from the stripper, completed the making of the sleeves, and delivered them direct to Dora, the “joiner-up”. Only shortage of sleeve cuttings could keep them short of work. It seemed that in their case the stripper could usually keep them supplied. I rarely saw them short of work, nor were they frequently transferred to other work. They were also little affected by changes in style, for sleeve making was a relatively straightforward operation, and changed little with change in style. Such fluctuations as these two workers experienced were due to occasional shortage of work. It may be that these two workers used “dead horse”* to even out fluctuations but I have no evidence of this. Such indirect evidence as I have, for example, in statements by Nancy, Dora, the chargehand and other informants, suggests that few workers used “dead horse”. The considerable difference in the range of fluctuation between Pat and Thelma on the one hand, and Nancy on the other, is correspondingly explained by the fact that collars do vary considerably from style to style, and involve a good deal of adjustment of work routine when the style changes. Making collars is a tricky operation, and difficult to price. Since Nancy was a speedy worker, she was often ahead of the stripper, and this meant that she was more subject to waiting time and to transfers to other work than were Pat and Thelma. There are so many factors involved that it is impossible to do more than to indicate the probable reasons for differences in the range ofvariation in the earnings of the workers. I have suggested, in comparing the earnings of Pat and Thelma on the one hand and Nancy on the other, that position in the work sequence and the degree of complexity of the operation are two factors affecting stability of earnings. But there are many others. To illustrate the effect of these I now examine in a little more detail the earnings of six workers, and attempt to explain, by reference to my field notes, the reasons for particular fluctuations. Graphs of earnings for these workers are shown in Fig. 5. The asterisks along the time co-ordinate indicate those periods when the unit was changing over to a new style. Pam

Pam’s earnings fluctuated widely and showed a lack of systematic variation. They did not seem to be particularly prone to change only with style changes. Her earnings moved sharply up and down in a period (weeks 3 to 6)when styles were unchanged. Yet in a

*i.e. booking, and being paid for, work not yet completed.

NORMS, EXPECTATIONS, OUTPUT AND EARNINGS 57

FIG. 5. Average hourly earnings

similar period, from week 11 to 15, her earnings are very steady. They seem to have been affected greatly by a number of style changes in the last four weeks of the period. The drastic slump in week 5 illustrates the effect of absenteeism in the unit on the allocation of work within the unit and hence on earnings. Mary was absent for a few days on week 5. The chargehand transferred Pam to Mary’s job. Pam found that she could do quite well on this new job. Meanwhile, Joan was moved into the unit to take over Pam’s job. When Mary returned Pam was not moved back to her own job at once but was found a few odd batches of varied work to keep her occupied. Pam was upset about this, and, as I have mentioned she was prone to stop trying to “make her wages” when this objective appeared difficult to reach. In this instance she was also accumulating waiting time while the chargehand found work for her. All these experiences are reflected in her pay packet for the week. Pam also suffered from her reliance on my efforts to keep her supplied with parts for the back making operation. My inexperience often caused me to fall behind and Pam had to wait for me. She never failed to draw my attention to this, for if she accumulated waiting time as a consequence, her earnings were adversely affected. But sometimes I was myself held up by drying

58 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

up of supplies from the stripper. My output dropped in consequence and Pam was affected. The examination of fluctuations in earnings in Pam’s case illustrates the effect of absenteeism, transfers, personal response to frustration, and imbalance in the work flow. It also shows how the flow of work may be affected in a system such as this by the presence of workers of inferior skill in the units. Nancy

Nancy, whom I closely observed during the whole of my stay in No. 3 Unit, did not, as did Pam, vary her pace of work when she felt aggrieved or frustrated. She had an invalid mother to support, and it was perhaps for this reason that she always strove hard to reach maximum output. In temperament she was much less volatile than Pam, who was regarded as “a bit of a character”. Nancy was described as a “good hardworking girl”. For these reasons it is in an examination of Nancy’s earnings that the effect of style changes and anomalies in the job prices can be most clearly seen. For the first few weeks of the period Nancy’s earnings were well below her own average. Then, with the full introduction of a new style which paid well, her earnings climbed to well above her average. After a few weeks of high earnings, another change in style brought a slump in earnings. Then towards the end of the period she became accustomed to the new style and her average hourly earnings increased markedly. Nancy’s experience indicates not only that earnings were affected by the difficulties of working up a new routine of work on a new style, but also that there were sufficient anomalies in the job prices for the same effort on different styles to yield a smaller or larger cash reward. It is not possible to account for the difference in the level of Nancy’s earnings in weeks 4 and 5 on the one hand and weeks 17 and 18 on the other by reference to difference in effort expended. It is true, of course, that I did not possess an accurate measure of effort. I am comparing my own observation that Nancy worked at a fast and even pace with the objec-tive figures of earnings. But then there are no such accurate measures of effort—at least there are none which do not require expensive equipment, and which are suitable for use in a workshop. The most up-to-date techniques for measuring and evaluating work involve subjective estimates of effort expended.* The sudden slump in Nancy’s earnings which occurred in week 15 was due mainly to work starting on a new style of garment which presented difficulties in assembly. There was a good deal of uncertainty at the time when this garment was introduced. Work on the garment, which was made of cloth which was difficult to handle, was under way before the workers knew what prices were to be paid. There were rumours that all operations were to be

NORMS, EXPECTATIONS, OUTPUT AND EARNINGS 59

timed. Others said that average rates were to be paid because the run was to be a short one. There was also uncertainty about how the work was to be allocated amongst the members of the unit. It is difficult to say whether work slowed down only because the cloth was difficult to work, or because of a combination of the factors I have cited. After a few days, during which a number of jobs were time-studied, job prices for the garment were made known. By this time many of the initial difficulties attending the changeover had been overcome. Most of the workers were also satisfied that they could “make their wages”. From then on earnings rose for Nancy, as for many of the other workers in the unit. Alice

Like Nancy, Alice’s earnings were affected by style changes. They also varied a good deal in periods when the same style was being assembled. This was mainly because Alice, a machinist, undertook a variety of operations. Her regular task, that of completing the sewing of the garment at the final assembly point, did not occupy her whole time. Alice’s position illustrates once again the general difficulty of organizing work on flow principles in a unit system of this kind. There are two chief sources of difficulty. The first is that of deciding the number of workers required in the unit and the sub-division of operations required to ensure that each worker will be fully occupied, and not under or over-loaded. Obviously if a worker cannot deal with the output of the worker who is supplying her with parts, then she herself will probably find it difficult to keep the worker next to her fully occupied, and thus the flow will be disturbed. The second difficulty is that of staffing the units with workers of sufficient skill and speed to fit into the system. Marked individual differences will be likely to disturb the flow. Thus it was that I was often unable to keep Pam fully occupied. In Alice’s case, the “armholers” did not always produce sufficient garments to give her enough final sewing operations to keep her occupied. Threequarters of an Alice would probably have been sufficient for a smooth flow; or a worker three-quarters as fast as Alice. As it was the chargehand had to find Alice other work to keep her fully occupied. Sometimes Alice helped out machinists like Sally, if they happened to have too much work. Sometimes extra “bits and pieces” were not available and in this event waiting time reduced earnings. And, of course, frequent changes of operation tended to break the rhythm and slow down her pace. In weeks when there was a good run of her regular work, her earnings were better. It

*For discussion on this point see Refs. 17 and 18.

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could be argued that this worker could have planned her work better so as to iron out fluctuations, but since the supply of work to her depended on the activities of other people, who had similar problems, this would have been difficult. Alice, like many other members of the unit, was affected by the general uncertainty which surrounded the introduction of the new style in weeks 14 and 15. Eileen

Like Nancy, Eileen’s earnings seemed to have been affected mostly by style changes. There was about a shilling an hour difference between her average hourly earnings in weeks 3, 4 and 5, and in weeks 13, 14 and 15. Eileen, an armholer, was never, as far as I know, transferred to other work. The output of the unit was usually sufficient to keep her and her colleague, Jenny, fully occupied. But a change in style often radically changed the nature and sequence of the operations they performed, and this, together with pricing anomalies, often radically changed their opportunities to “make their wages”. The slight slump in Eileen’s earnings in week 8 is probably explained by the effect of her own absence at the beginning of the week. She remarked to me that she wished she had taken the whole week off since her work had been done for her by two other people, and she came back only to be plagued by waiting time. The drop in earnings in week 6 is mainly the result of an error in assembly. Several coats had been completed before the error was noticed and all the work had to be undone and made again. Dora

Dora’s earnings were affected only slightly by most changes in style. The variations in her earnings are largely due to the fact that she worked on an important sub-assembly operation, “joining-up”. Her capacity to earn was affected by the efforts of about half the workers in the unit. Backs, fronts, and sleeves, were supplied to her, and she joined these together ready for taping by Eileen and Jenny. Any hold-up in the supply of any of these prevented her from going ahead. But Dora was able to avoid the worst consequences of imbalance in work flow. Besides being a skilled machinist, Dora was also a skilled maker. Often, when she had no machining work, she could find some making to do in the unit. Dora explained to me some of her difficulties in trying to make her wages. At the beginning of week 6 she told me that to make her wages (i.e. about £1 0s. 0d. a day) she had to complete about 60 joining-up operations. She found that it was difficult, on this particular style, for other workers to keep her supplied at this rate. She remarked that she could do 60 easily enough if she got the

NORMS, EXPECTATIONS, OUTPUT AND EARNINGS 61

parts, but if she did 60 this would be too many for Eileen and Jenny to cope with. To meet her difficulty, she worked at the rate of 60 a day until supplies ran out, and then left her machine to help Eileen and Jenny to clear away the work she had accumulated for them. But, as she explained, her assembly work was, for lack of practice, slower than her machining, and she lost money. Thelma

I have already discussed some of the reasons why the earnings of Pat and Thelma, the sleeve girls, were less subject to fluctuations than those of other workers. Such fluctuations as they experienced were probably due to waiting time, caused by shortage of supply of stripped sleeve cuttings, and to slight price anomalies. It is impossible, of course, to rule out the effect on the earnings of these two workers of changes from day to day and week to week in their own attitude to the job. From my own experience of this work I can say that there were days when one felt disinclined to start work, and eager to finish. At other times one was prone to make errors. This must have applied to all the workers in some measure but is obviously not to be held responsible for major differences in earnings. It is impossible to trace clearly the effect of “sweating” on earnings, for any of the workers. But the measures taken by the inspector to prevent deterioration of quality, and the effect of these on earnings, can be illustrated. I refer to the graph of Pam’s average hourly earnings, particularly to weeks 5 and 6. Pam had told me that she was pleased that a new style was coming into production. She had made this style before, she said, and she knew she could make her wages on it. When the new style was introduced she started “sweating” to make up for her poor earnings on the previous style. But the inspectors returned a large batch of work to her, claiming that it was below the quality required. She had to do the work again. Pam, and many of the other workers, stated that the inspectors always found some minor fault on a new style and returned work to the workers. It was believed that they did this so as to impress upon the workers that they were on their toes and would not allow a new style to be the occasion for a drop in quality. It was also believed that the inspectors “picked on” certain workers whom they believed were prone to “sweat”. Certainly, if work was returned, earnings suffered. From the foregoing it is clear that there were many factors influencing the capacity of the workers to make their wages. Some of these could not possibly have been controlled directly by the workers either as individuals, or collectively. The proliferation of styles, and the length of run on any style, was dictated by the market. I was told by managers that they would have preferred to

62 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

have long runs on the same small range of styles, but that to keep the units fully employed they had to get the orders which were available, and this often meant short runs on odd styles. All this created problems. Changes of style often meant changes in the kind of cloth to be handled, and on the sub-division of tasks within the unit. Some kinds of cloth were easy to handle, others induced eye strain, and so on. When fixing prices, the attempt was made to compensate for such factors as these. The workers often considered the allowances inadequate, and it will be easily appreciated that managers found it extremely difficult accurately to calculate allowances which reflected the effect of changes in materials on the output of workers. It is possible that difficulties were in some cases overestimated, in others underestimated. Thus, in various ways the earnings of workers were affected. Although the workers could do nothing to influence the market they could possibly have controlled some of the effects of market factors on their capacity to earn their wages. For example, they might have refused to accept prices which did not compensate them for working with difficult materials. They might have used the ultimate threat of withdrawal of labour to back their demands. This they did not do. There were individual complaints about job prices, and sometimes changes were made as a result. But mostly the prices as fixed by management were accepted. If they were tight, workers grumbled about them but they took no action to get them altered, except “sweating”, and the effect of this was defeated in most cases by the efficient inspection system. Absenteeism was another unpredictable factor. And absenteeism led to transfers, and these, in their turn, affected the workers’ capacity to earn. But I never once heard a demand made for “transfer allowances”, or for compensation for “re-learning”. Similarly, when shortages of work accrued due to imbalance in the work flow, allowances could have been claimed for waiting time. This was never done. It is true that an allowance for average waiting time was incorporated in the job prices, but in any one period waiting time might be much greater than the management estimate of an average, and earnings would be adversely affected. No attempt was made by the workers to alter this situation. It is clear that although the workers could not directly control the market situation, they could possibly have taken steps collectively to offset the effect of market factors on their capacity to make their wages. They took such action extremely rarely as individuals, and never collectively. Certainly they never attempted to use the strength of the Union to enforce claims of any kind. I was told by informants that women workers in Wye had been known to make collective protest against what they considered to be injustice. There have been walk-outs from particular workrooms. There have also been cases of individual protest but this has usually taken the form of permanent withdrawal. I myself

NORMS, EXPECTATIONS, OUTPUT AND EARNINGS 63

observed that some women left the factory when they were personally dissatisfied with conditions. But I saw no efforts by the workers collectively to control either the level of their earnings or their stability of earnings from week to week. “Dead horse”, which is extensively used in other sections of the waterproof garment industry, was not as far as I know extensively used at Wye. At a later stage, when I compare the behaviour of the women workers at Wye with the behaviour of the workers at Jay’s factory, I offer an explanation of the absence of any norm of output or earnings at the Wye factory. This explanation will be made largely in terms of the influence of the structure of the industry, of the markets for labour and for the product, and of the traditions of the industry. But the reader will have noticed already that there were some features of the organization of production and wage payment which militated against the developments of collective controls over output and earnings. The unit system, operating as it did in conjunction with individual financial incentive, did not encourage co-operation and workers’ solidarity, and acted against any tendency to combine. The tendency to “look after No. 1” already there, was encouraged. Since the system did not encourage social co-operation except in the sense that it was designed to make co-operation automatic with a minimum of inter-action between the individuals operating it, one could expect that to work in such a system would be unsatisfying, especially since there was little in the work itself to give satisfaction. It is true that absenteeism was high, and was management’s greatest worry. But neither absenteeism nor labour turnover was excessive when one considers the composition of the working force. I now attempt to explain why this was so.

CHAPTER 4 “SOCIABLE” GROUPINGS IN WORKROOM X

IN Workroom X, the productive system set fairly rigid limits upon social interaction during working time. Any worker, while working, was able to converse only with those within a few feet of her. To communicate with others called for shouting above the noise of the machines, and this could not be sustained for more than a minute or two. The requirements of the productive process, and the need to maintain a rapid and continuous pace to “make a wage”, kept workers anchored to their positions in the room, so conversation groupings on the process were limited to a very few persons. But the layout of the benches and machines offered greater opportunities for conversation for some workers than for others. The front-part makers faced one another around a table and formed a convenient grouping for conversation. The two armhole tapers also faced one another and could converse easily while working. But some workers worked alone, facing a wall or a window, and for them conversation was difficult. Figure 6, which shows the working positions of the workers in the room, shows clearly the kind of groupings where continuous conversation was possible, and those where workers worked back to back, or in an isolated position, so as to make conversation difficult. The diagram also shows that, within the room during working time, there was little possibility of cross-unit grouping, and that within each unit the layout, while facilitating work flow, broke up the teams into small sub-groupings and isolated individuals. Overmuch conversation, and especially horseplay, was regarded by management as an interference with output and was discouraged. Young Irene, for example, whose position (11c in the figure) made it impossible for her to converse with anyone without either shouting or stopping to turn around, was sometimes severely chided by the chargehand for leaving her machine to talk to the front-part makers behind her. But a worker did not often leave her work to talk to others. Most of the workers were anxious to “make their wages”, and this, as I have said, required them to stay at their tables or machines continuously. So few workers left their work just to make conversation. During many months’ observation of No, 3 Unit, I saw no one leave work for more than a few minutes

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FIG. 6. Working positions

just to talk. The workers left their places only to visit the toilet, or to replenish their cans of varnish, or perhaps to collect work from the strippers or to see the chargehand. I was myself chaffed by the members of No. 3 Unit when I left the job for more than a few minutes. The circumstances therefore ensured that the productive units and sub-units were the conversation units, But as I have already shown, workers were sometimes moved around within the units; despite the separation entailed by the productive process, workers came to know each other quite well. My own experience is a good guide here. When I started work in No. 3 Unit I quickly came to know Nancy, who worked opposite me, very well. During the months we worked together we managed to find topics of conversation for most of each day and got to know a lot about one another. My work was sewn by Sally, but she was too far away to make continuous conversation possible, unless one shouted above the noise of the machines. I would pass a word with her when I took work to her to be sewn, but I was never able to know her as well as I came to know Nancy. But I came to know the other members of the unit reasonably well. Sometimes little groups

66 SOCIABLE GROUPINGS IN WORKROOM X

would assemble and laugh and talk in the few minutes before starting work each morning and afternoon, Some of the workers passed me en route to replenish their varnish cans and would exchange a few words. But of course I was able to leave my work more often than others to ask questions and to converse. Yet, if I did too much of this, I was quickly reminded that this was “not done”. “Have you got nothing to do?”; “You must be on a good thing this week”; “We always thought women were the great gossipers, but you can beat us”, were typical of the remarks which were shouted if I left my work for more than a few minutes. So, although there were some workers with whom I did not exchange more than a few words during the whole of my stay, I soon came to feel that No. 3 Unit was a recognizable social unit and that I was an accepted member of it. But I found it difficult to establish contact with members of the other two units, and so far as I could see it was almost as difficult for the other members of No. 3 team. I had to ask specific questions to find out the names of some of them; and my workmate, Nancy, who had many years service with the firm, did not know some of the members of the other units by name. Certainly she spoke to few of them during my stay there. The social frontiers around the units were therefore strictly marked during working time. Workers were not often moved from unit to unit. I was convinced, and so were the other members of No. 3 Unit, that it was the most friendly and cohesive of the three units. I may have been wrong in this, but two instances will serve to show how members of No. 3 Unit identified themselves with their unit. On one occasion the colour of the garment being made by No. 3 Unit was changed. This necessitated, for the machinists, a change in the colour of the cotton in their machines. One of the machinists neglected to change her cotton, and had sewn parts of several garments before she noticed her error. To have unpicked all these parts herself would have meant a substantial drop in earnings. The rest of the team sacrificed their tea break and combined to unpick the parts so that after the break the machinist could carry straight on. The second occasion was when a machinist from another team was introduced into No. 3 team to take the place of an absentee. Although this worker was keeping the flow of parts moving and thus making work for the team, she was given a hostile reception, and was glad to return to her own team, as soon as she could. It would be unwise to over-emphasize the solidarity of No. 3 Unit, since this solidarity did not extend so far as to touch significantly the value placed on individual striving to maximize earnings. People were prepared in this case to sacrifice their free time, but they were seldom prepared to help others out in working time—although this was not unknown—since this would have severely affected their own capacity to earn. On another occasion,

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when, owing to a change in style of garment, a large number of collars were wrongly assembled, the worker who was responsible was sympathized with, but was left to fend for herself. Spontaneous co-operation was rare. The workers accepted the situation which management had created, in which co-operation was expected to follow from the pursuit of her own interests by each individual. Resentment was expressed by individuals when this “built-in”co-operation broke down for any reason and adversely affected their capacity to earn; “They told us that time and motion meant that I would always have work on my table, and it is up to them to see that it is there” was one common expression of this attitude to management and supervision. It seemed to me that such solidarity as there was, was the expression of the sharing of a common situation vis-à-vis management and other groupings, a negative thing, rather than something with positive content or purpose. This would explain why No. 3 Unit seemed to be the most cohesive of the three. No. 3 Unit had a grievance as a unit, in addition to the grievance of its members as individuals about work shortages, tight rates and the like. The grievance was that No. 3 Unit was treated badly in the matter of work allocation. It was said that they were given the awkward, badly paying work, and that the other units received more favoured treatment. There was some justification for the complaint. No. 1 Unit was the first to be formed under the new system, and was made up of those whom the management considered were the most skilled and experienced workers. This group was drawn from workers from the same workroom who knew each other well, and was given high quality work, which was also said to pay better. No. 2 team was also formed from workers from the same workroom and was considered to be next in the status hierarchy to No. 1 Unit. No. 3 Unit was made up of persons, many of whom were initially unknown to each other, who were drawn from different parts of the factory, from outside the firm, and from the training school. There was a significant difference in the number of trainees in the units, No. 3 team having by far the largest number. It was also significant, perhaps, that I myself, a stranger and a trainee, should be assigned to No. 3 Unit. The management regarded No. 3 Unit as less reliable than the other two, and said so. Certainly there was a good deal more singing, conversation, and horseplay in No. 3 Unit than in the other two units. In deciding on the allocation of work to the units, in the light of the quality required by the customer, and the date of delivery, the management took account of the differences, real or imagined, between the three units, thereby perpetuating the differences. The productive system—in which I include the system of wage payment—encouraged individualism. The layout, and the attitudes and expectations of the workers, discouraged

68 SOCIABLE GROUPINGS IN WORKROOM X

spontaneous cooperation either to help or to hinder management’s plans. When, due to the breakdown of the planned system of cooperation—either because of defects in the system itself or because of the intrusion of haphazard factors such as absenteeism —the workers’ expectations of a “fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” or “a steady supply of work on the table” were frustrated, they reacted as individuals. Their common grouse did not result in a common protest or a common effort to control the system in their own common interests. I shall return to this topic later. I mention it here as a possible explanation of the fact that as soon as the workers were free, as at tea breaks, to decide with whom they would associate, they tended to leave those with whom they worked, and sit with others in another part of the room. This tendency was less marked in No. 3 Unit than in the others, and this was to be expected in view of the position of the unit as an underprivileged group of newcomers. Figure 6 should be compared with Fig. 7 and the tendency will be clearly seen. Figure 7 shows the position in the room, and the composition of the tea-break groupings. Table 3 analyses the composition of the groupings. It is clear that spatial propinquity on the process is not the sole, or even the chief, basis for “free” group formation, although some of the groupings, for example group (g), are based on this principle. Age and length of service with the company seem to be the principles on which some of the groups are formed. This seems to be the case with groups (d) and (e) which were composed of teenagers, all fairly new to the firm. And of course, in this case, common interests outside the factory, dancing, boys and the like, drew these youngsters together and marked them off from the others. Members of No. 3 Unit tended to stay within the territory of the unit (the exceptions being Helen, Wendy, Jenny, and myself) *, but they chose for the most part to group differently from the way they were required to do by the process. Even the three front-part makers split up at break times, although they were regarded by the others as being “very thick”—a term used to describe close exclusive friendship groups. The pattern of tea-break groupings represented in Fig. 7 was persistent. There were no changes in the pattern during my stay in the shop. My own experience shows the difficulty of changing one’s group, although mine was a special case since I was one of the two men in the room. All the same, I found that once I had become attached to one group, I was regarded with suspicion if I attempted to enter another group during break time.

*Helen and Wendy joined the teenagers, Jenny a group of older women, while I joined Joe the stripper, the only other man in the workroom.

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FIG. 7. Tea-break groupings

It would appear that for the most part the tea-break groupings weregroupings of old friends who had struck up friendships long ago, when methods of production had been different. It may have been that on the old processes they had worked alongside one another, but I cannot comment on this since there is no clear evidence. However these friendships started, it is clear that some of them have persisted through many changes in the production arrangements and layout of workrooms. A good example of this is group 1. This group contained members of all three units. All the members of the group were middleaged or elderly women, all of whom had long service with the firm and had worked in the same workroom for many years. The reader will have noticed that some of the persons who worked in Workroom X did not belong to the tea-break groupings, Some of them went during their break to other workrooms in the factory, where they had their special friends. And in group (b) one of the worker-trainers from the training school came into Workroom X to drink tea with her old friends. Although the tea break lasted only a few minutes, and convenience might have dictated that the workers stayed at their work stations with their workmates, they looked forward to the breaks in order to join what I like to call the “friendship” or “sociable” groupings.

70 SOCIABLE GROUPINGS IN WORKROOM X

TABLE 3 TEA-BREAK GROUPINGS WORKROOM X

ON THE SHOP FLOOR 71

I myself believe, and I later produce more evidence in support of this, that these “sociable groupings” were the means by which life in the workshop was made reasonably pleasant. Belonging to them developed some sense of identification with the firm. The “sociable groupings” also served as a refuge from the individualism and competition engendered by the productive system and they cut across inter-unit rivalry. Several of the male operatives whom I met in the factory were of the opinion that the women workers were “mugs” who would put up with any kind of treatment. When

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I asked them to explain why the women remained with the firm year after year and still grumbled and fought individually against the management, they said that “all the women have Wye stamped on their backs”, i.e, that they had a strong sense of identification with the firm. It would be cynical to suggest that there were no good reasons besides membership of “sociable-groupings” to explain the strong sense of identification with the company which the women, especially the older ones, undoubtedly felt. There were financial and welfare benefits to be gained from remaining with the firm, and it is highly probable that employment was more stable than in other firms in the industry. I would suggest, however, that the workers’ attachment to the company sprang very largely from the emotional attachment to the small group of friends. Certainly, as I shall show later, the reluctance of workers to leave the workshop and the firm, even when they were convinced that they had been badly treated, and the ability of the management to persuade them to stay by an appeal, inter alia, to loyalty to the firm, stemmed largely from their reluctance to leave their friends. Further support to this interpretation of the role of the small sociable groupings in offsetting some of the disintegrative tendencies inherent in the process of production itself, is given by the persistence of the friendship groupings when necessity had demanded the withdrawal of a worker from the productive process. People who left the firm years ago to marry, or for other reasons, would often visit the factory to see their friends. Shirley, who was sacked, hung about the factory at lunchtime to meet her friends— until she found another job. I shall give other examples of the power of the “sociable group” to cement an attachment to the wider unit later on. Much of my analysis of them is summed up in the phrase which many of the women used: “We come to work for the company”—(that is, of other women). This is not to say that they had no other motive for coming to work. For most, work was a compelling economic necessity. Nancy was the sole support of her widowed mother. There were widows with families to support and single women who lived alone and supported themselves. But much of the emotional satisfaction they derived at work was gained from the close friendships they formed with other workers. There was little satisfaction to be gained from the job itself. Thus although the work itself offered little intrinsic satisfaction, and it was hard and often unpleasant, and the system of production often engendered jealousies and antagonism between individuals and groups and threatened the peace of the shop, the existence of the sociable groupings, which cut across the groupings on the process in many cases, had an integrative effect. The analysis of the sociable groupings helps to explain why, in a situation where so many tensions were present, labour turnover remained fairly low. As I shall show in the next chapter, people did

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withdraw either temporarily or permanently to escape these tensions. But most of them stayed. What still remains to be explained fully is why workers who combined freely in friendly groupings showed no tendency to combine together to control output and earnings, or at least to offset some of the effects on their earnings of such factors as imbalance in the productive system, transfers, changes in style and the like. There was no lack of individual grumbling about these things, and sometimes individuals attempted to seek a remedy, but no attempt was made either to exert joint pressure on management and supervision, or at collective control over output. I am tempted to argue that the system of production itself destroyed the basis for the emergence of a common interest in controlling output and earnings. Since few people in the room were doing the same job, and since the system called for fairly wide skill and earnings differentials, we might expect that it was not only difficult for workers to appreciate the special problems of others, but it was also difficult for them to have knowledge of the level of earnings of other workers and to compare these according to some common yardstick. Thus the workers did not perform the same task, nor were they in the position of knowing what the earnings and output situation of the units were as a whole. In this rather confusing situation, so the argument would go, it was to be expected that each worker would look after her own interests. To further strengthen this argument, it could be pointed out that since the layout of the units was such as to inhibit the development of groups based on spatial propinquity on the process, communication on common problems was thereby stifled. The cross-unit nature of the tea-break groupings also inhibited communication on matters of ouput and earnings in particular units. Thus the social mechanism which was most effective as a cushion against individualism enabled individualism to persist. This is an attractive argument and it accounts for most of the facts. But there are some facts for which it fails to account. The little evidence I have suggests that when the same workers were working on the old process, on a system of group piecework which encouraged co-operation, individualism showed itself in arguments about the share-out of the group bonus, and, I was told, these arguments were often quite bitter. Indeed, one of the chief attractions of the unit scheme to the workers when it was first suggested to them, was that piecework would be on an individual basis. As one of the workers put it: “On the conveyors the slow workers held up the fast ones and because the fast ones helped the slow ones to keep the speed up, it meant that they were earning their wages for them. Now we earn our own money, and the slow ones are feeling the draught”. It would seem that an individualistic attitude existed long before the unit system, and

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there was a corresponding reluctance to develop collective controls. It seems to me that despite the considerable difficulties in the way, collective action could have been taken, and the grumbles about tight rates, transfers, etc., translated into collective action to control output and earnings, or at least to mitigate the effect of uncertainties upon them, if the desire to do so had been there. I was often tempted to say, when workers complained to me about tight rates, or what they considered to be unfair allocation of work, “Why don’t you get together and do something about it”. In my own experience as an industrial worker, a threat to one was considered as a threat to all, and I found it difficult to understand why the workers in Workroom X did not seem to see it this way. As I have shown already, I was not unaware of the difficulties in the way, but it is not as if the attempt had been made and failed, because of the difficulties. As far as I could see, it had never been made. The absence of a “will to control” has to be explained and this cannot be done entirely, or even partly, by an examination of the workshop alone. It would seem as if individualism is a traditional feature in this industry as a whole. The emergence of the tradition can possibly be explained by reference to the seasonal nature of the industry, and the uncertainty about the prospects of continuous employment which has been a feature of its history. Perhaps the tradition also stems from the time when the industry of small units was first established: “to setup on one’s own” was a quite legitimate ambition and moreover it was an ambition which could be realized by some. It is true, of course, that few of the workers in Workroom X had any desire to set up on their own. But it is quite possible that they have inherited the tradition of individualism. And few of them have had any experience of work in other industries as a basis for comparison with their situation in the waterproof garment industry. They have erected the tradition of individualism into a living principle of hard work, and “looking after No. 1”. I found this a bit disconcerting since the principle seemed in the circumstances of Workroom X to rob the workers of the possibility of exerting any control over their situation. As one of the male maintenance workers put it to me: “They let the management get away with anything”. I shall be returning to a further discussion of this point in a later chapter. I go on now to discuss in greater detail how the jealousies and quarrels which emerged in this situation were dealt with.

CHAPTER 5 CONFLICT AND CO-OPERATION

MY analysis of relationships in the workroom has shown how the expectations of the workers that management will provide them with the means to “make their wages”, were on occasion frustrated. The failure of management to make this provision was, as I have repeatedly pointed out, largely, but not entirely, due to factors outside its control. For example, if absenteeism depleted the units, replacements were difficult to find at short notice in a situation where demand for labour was keen. And the incidence of absenteeism was difficult to predict. Similarly, market conditions determined the length of run and style of garment and management could do little to control the market. Again, in calculating rates for the job, inevitably errors were made, so that “making one’s wages” was difficult in some situations for some workers. Since all these contingencies affected the flow of work through the units, the supply of work to individuals was affected, and at times this affected the relationships between individual operatives. Redeployment to maintain the flow of work, as I have shown, sometimes generated resentment if earnings were affected. The situation I have described and analysed was paradoxical, for it would seem that the value which both management and the workers shared, to maximize output, was itself both the source of conflict between workers and management, and also between worker and worker. Management, in trying to maximize output, had to deploy the labour force in such a way as to create occasional resentment, and was forced into this position by the pressure of factors which lay outside the workshop and over which it had little control. In attempting to maximize output, management sometimes adversely affected the capacity of individual workers to maximize output and earnings. And this effect was emphasized by anomalies in the job prices. Conflict between worker and worker was sometimes generated by a failure of one worker to keep another supplied with enough work to enable her to maximize output and earnings; and a worker’s failure to produce her allotted output often arose from management’s organization for maximum output.

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Up to a point, of course, workers tend to regard minor fluctuations in earnings, and minor frustration in expectations, as part of a process of “taking the rough with the smooth”. But at times there occurred serious breaches in the relationship between management and worker, and between worker and worker, which generated heated argument and complaint. Sometimes, as we have seen, workers would temporarily leave the situation. But some threatened to leave altogether and a few actually did so. I now analyse a number of cases of conflict to show the process by which such conflicts were usually handled. Dr. V.W.Turner, in an illuminating analysis of conflict within an African society,(19) has suggested the concept of social drama to describe the process whereby serious disturbances in social life are handled. Turner noticed “a pattern in these eruptions of conflict—…phases in their development seemed to follow one another in more or less regular sequence”, and “divided the social process which constituted the social drama into four major phases”. These phases are: 1. Breach of regular, norm-governed relations; 2. Period of mounting crisis; 3. Redressive mechanisms; and 4. Re-integration or irreparable breach. The episodes in the life of the workshop which I now analyse follow a similar sequence. However, I must emphasize that the workshop society is not a closed system, nor is it as bound by custom as the society which Turner analyses. Relationships are bound by rule as well as by custom. The relationship between worker and management is a contractual relationship, and relationships between worker and worker, so far as the productive arrangements at any rate are concerned is, to use Durkheim’s terminology, an organic rather than a mechanical one. But relationships are governed to some extent by custom. As I shall show, there are some resemblances between the mechanisms which are brought into play to handle conflict in the African society which Turner studied, and in the workshop at Wye Garments but there are, of course, significant differences. I cite first the case of Jean. It will be recalled that during a period when No. 3 Unit was changing over to a new style, Pam, in Jean’s absence, was transferred to Jean’s job by the chargehand. On her return to work Jean was not assigned to her own job but was told to assist Eileen on armholes in Jenny’s absence. Jean accepted the charge-hand’s direction with some reluctance and after the midday break she was absent. It was clear that she had absented herself as a protest against her transfer to armholes. She was absent for four and a half days.

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On her return to work Jean immediately gave notice to the charge-hand that she was leaving the firm at the end of the week. This move generated much discussion, indeed excitement, in the workshop and in No. 3 Unit in particular. I discussed the situation with Nancy, who declared that this sort of thing had happened often in the past. “At times”, she said, “a rash of notice-giving breaks out”. She advised me not to take it too seriously, implying that Jean’s threat to leave would not, in the end, be carried out. Around 11 a.m. on the same morning, my attention was drawn to the fact that Jean had been called to “the office”. The chargehand came down the room to Jean’s workplace and escorted her the whole length of the room towards the office, under the curious eyes of everyone in the room. “They’ll talk her out of it up there,” remarked one operative near me. Jean was away for about half an hour. While she was away there was a good deal of gossip about what would be happening to her, and when Jean returned she was questioned about it. I was unable to talk with Jean at this time, but I learned that she had told those who worked with her that she was still determined to leave but that she had promised to reconsider the matter and to give management her final decision the following morning. At lunch time I left the factory in company with Jean. I did not wish to embarrass her with direct questions about what had happened in the office so I made some remark about the weather. But Jean was anxious to tell me about her experience. “It was just like a court”, she said. “Smithers [the departmental manager] was sitting there with Hetty Jones [the chief supervisor] on one side of him and Maisie Callaghan [the chargehand] on the other side. It’s enough to frighten anyone, but I have been here for 26 years and I was not frightened”. The day after Jean had been “before the higher ups”, as one worker described it, she was silent and subdued. I asked a worker who passed me on her way to replenish her varnish can, what Jean had decided to do. This worker said that several people had asked Jean about it but she had told them to mind their own business. At break time I discussed the case with one of my most reliable informants. I was told that it was extremely unlikely that Jean would leave. “They never leave, for all their threats; even though they can earn better money elsewhere in the trade, they stay because Wye is their religion”. The high priest of the order, it turned out, was Hetty Jones, the chief supervisor. It was said of her that once when her home was partly under water during heavy floods, she insisted on being carried shoulder high from the house so that she could get to work. As the week passed it became obvious that Jean would not be leaving. No one was very surprised and gradually interest

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subsided. But several people said that she had been justified in making her protest because she had been treated unfairly. By now Jean was back on her “own” job and the situation which led to her protest no longer existed. Jean’s protest arose out of the breach, by the chargehand, of a norm that a worker had the right to remain on her “own” job, unless she was adequately compensated for transferring. But, of course, the charge-hand’s duties required her to deploy the labour force at her disposal so as to maximize total output, and when workers were absent those who remained were often transferred. And it was usually the older, more experienced workers who were so transferred since they often had experience of jobs other than their “own”. But the crisis which developed in the relationship between Jean and the management, which led her to threaten resignation, was not taken up by the rest of the workers as an issue of principle. Since, at various times, most of the workers were placed in a similar position to Jean, it might have been expected that they would use a particular case such as Jean’s as the occasion for a collective protest. But, as we have seen, the reaction was a lively interest in Jean’s fate, and a scepticism about the seriousness of her threat to leave. One factor inhibiting joint action was, as I have already indicated, the differential impact of redeployment on the various members of the unit. During the week in which Jean handed in her notice to leave, her earnings had dropped, due to transfer, from £6 0s. 0d. to £5 10s. 0d. In the following week she suffered a further drop to just over £5 0s. 0d. But Eileen’s earnings over the same period, on her “own” job were £7 0s. 0d., £8 3s. 0d., £8 3s. 0d., well above her own average. And the earnings of some other members of the team were little affected. Therefore there was no immediate pressure upon other members of the unit to support Jean on principle. The evidence seems to indicate that there was no underlying desire for collective action to remedy common grievances, which might find expression in a critical instance such as Jean’s protest. The emphasis seems rather to be on the value of individual service to the firm—again an acceptance of management expectations. To further illustrate this point I examine the influences which were brought to bear upon Jean to withdraw her resignation. The workers, and particularly the longer-service workers, accept that the most important thing is to “get the work out”. Many workers told me that they thought it a good thing to learn to take the rough with the smooth, indicating that individuals sometimes lost through attempting to get the work out but on other occasions they gained. They should, it was felt, balance one thing against another and not complain. This was why some of them deplored Jean’s threat to resign. Yet there was also sympathy in their

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attitude since a large slump in earnings was regarded as unfair. So the norm “get the work out” came into conflict with the value placed on “making one’s wages”. The subtle pressures exerted on Jean by her fellow workers, as, for example, the open scepticism about her threat to leave, only strengthened her obvious reluctance to leave her friends and the firm she had worked in for so long. And, as reported to me, the management “Court” placed emphasis upon the value of co-operation as against temporary individual gain or loss, thus attempting to reconcile the two conflicting principles. But, of course, there were other pressures restraining the disgruntled worker from leaving. It was said by some that it was the service pay (i.e. the employee’s share of the dividends of the firm’s profit-sharing scheme, which increased with length of service) which led Jean to withdraw her threat. And Jean had been with the firm for 26 years. Many of her close friends worked for the firm. She had no experience of other workshops against which to measure and interpret conditions at Wye. That these were perhaps the crucial considerations in Jean’s case may be seen by reference to the case of Diane, who gave in her notice and actually did leave, as she had threatened to do. Diane, an attractive teenage girl, worked in No. 1 Unit. She had worked for Wye since she left school two years before. No. 1 Unit comprised, for the most part, the most skilled and speedy of the workers in the workroom. Diane worked on front parts. Her task was to prepare the front parts for operations to be performed by two older and more experienced workers. Because of her inexperience, and perhaps lack of desire to maintain the pace expected of her, she found it difficult on occasion to keep her older colleagues supplied with a constant flow of parts. They relied upon a constant flow of parts to “make their wages”, so they exerted pressure upon Diane to increase her pace of work. One morning, about a month after the settlement of Jean’s case, I was told that there had been a “rumpus” in No. 1 Unit. I had noticed that the chargehand had been spending a lot of time with the unit but I was too far away to follow closely what was happening. But, from all accounts, it seemed that the older women had been increasing the pressure on Diane. I also learned that Diane was the last in a long line of teenagers who had worked on the job. The others had left. Diane had survived longer than all the rest. This morning she had burst into tears. One or two workers in the immediate vicinity had sympathized with Diane, and what was described to me as “a first-class row” had developed. The chargehand then intervened to restore order and helped Diane to catch up with her work. But Diane said that she had had enough and intended to leave.

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Two days later I learned that the “row” had died down. Diane had been to the office accompanied by her mother and now she was telling the other workers that she “had no intention of throwing up a good job because of those two women”. Two weeks later, to the surprise of all except the few who were “in the know”, it was announced that Diane had given final notice to leave. She had found another job in another industry. She left to take up this job. There was a good deal of gossip about Diane’s behaviour. Opinion was divided. There were some who said that “the trouble with her was that she wanted her money easy”, others said that she was wise to get out, saying “for the young girls here the money is good, but they will never earn much more than they earn now, there’s no prospects”. As in Jean’s case, there were social and material pressures to remain. Diane was a member of a close-knit, cheerful, group of peers. They shared breaks, and were often seen at lunch time, partnering off to “jive” to the music of a record-player in the canteen. All these girls had a healthy respect for the authority of the chargehand, a mixture of awe and personal liking. This all lends support to the widespread view that Diane’s mother made the decision for her, advising her to keep her counsel while looking around for a new job. Diane’s case illustrates the point that the controls imposed upon workers by the productive system, operating through relationships between persons, tended to generate conflict between workers, should someone’s opportunities to “make her wages” be adversely affected. Workers were subject to conflicting pressures. In Diane’s case, it is possible that parental influence overcame the influences pulling her towards the workshop and the firm. It is also possible that the younger workers had not fully accepted the value of hard work and conformity to management expectations. It was the older women who commented that she “did not want to work hard for her money”. There is some further evidence to support this interpretation. In the training school the instructors were constantly complaining that the girls these days were not like they were when they (the instructors) were girls. Both instructors had spent their whole working lives in the industry and, like the shop steward, they agreed that “girls nowadays do not have their minds on their work”. My query as to what they did have their minds on, was usually answered with a knowing look, and a remark such as, “they can teach us a thing or two”. The instructors, the supervisors, and the shop steward were at one with management in believing in the virtues of hard work for the workers. The teenagers were subject to a process of indoctrination in the training school and in the workshop. I observed and experienced this process, and I noticed that the pressures to conform took the

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form of an appeal by managers and trainers to economic selfinterest, the use of official sanctions—the threat of dismissal etc.— and the subtle and effective pressures applied in social relationships with other workers. I am convinced that a powerful influence upon persons to remain in the workroom was the pull of emotional attachment to other persons. For some people it seemed to outweigh economic considerations, for some could have earned more elsewhere in the trade.* Since the solidarity of the groupings in the workshop was not directed towards the exercise of control over output and earnings, the only sanction open to the individual worker for the redress of grievance was the threat to leave. This, in a situation of keen demand for labour, was a fairly powerful sanction. However, it was usually used only in the heat of a “row”. When the heat was dissipated, the pull of personal attachment would prevail. Mary and Annie, who worked together on front parts in No. 3 Unit, were very close friends. During one of Mary’s absences, the team was reshuffled and Pam took Mary’s place. Another worker was drafted in to the team to take Pam’s place, so that when Mary returned the team was overmanned. It suddenly became known that Mary had handed in her notice to leave. It was said that management intended to transfer her to another workroom. She had objected to this and threatened to leave. There were rumours that she had already secured another job in the industry, makingthrough with another firm. Rumour also had it that if Mary left Annie would also leave. It seemed clear that Mary was using the threat to leave to influence management against a transfer. Workers to whom I spoke about Mary’s intentions said she would never leave the workshop: “She’s done this before and she’ll do it again, but she will never leave”, expressed the general sentiment. And so it proved. Mary went to the office. When she came back she said she had promised to reconsider her decision. She remained on her job and as time passed the incident was forgotten. She was not transferred. It is possible that Mary, a skilled maker, would have gained financially from a move to another firm but she obviously preferred to stay, at that time. I have since learned that she did not return from her summer holiday, having taken the opportunity during the holiday to find work elsewhere.† I do not know whether Annie also left. The threat to leave, made individually, seemed to be the only sanction which the workers were prepared to use to control their conditions of work. In the absence of collective controls and an effective procedure for collective presentation, by a representative *Eileen, Dora, and Mary, for example.

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from the workshop, it was the only sanction which promised to be effective. During my stay in the shop, almost all the “rows” which blew up involved workers on front parts. I suspected that this was more than just coincidence and I asked Maisie, the chargehand, about it. I could see that those front-part makers who were involved in rows were in the middle of the flow from the preparation stage to the final assembly stages, and were probably more prone to suffer from the effect of gluts and shortages of material than many of the other workers. The charge-hand took the view that it was an accident that what she called the “malcontents” were to be found on front parts. This, she said, applied to all the units. I remain unconvinced. I would say that the position of these workers in the system, subjected them to acute conflicting pressures, although I am prepared to admit that some of the more lively aggressive personalities in the room were working on front parts. Of course, rows such as those I have been describing occurred infrequently, and, as I have shown, they rarely led to permanent withdrawal from the workroom. Only three persons actually left during the six months that I was in the shop, and one left shortly after I left. Three of these were front-part makers and one was Shirley, the trainee, who was sacked. Thus it would seem that the tensions generated between management and worker, and between worker and worker in the productive system were usually eased without permanent breach in relationships. I attribute this to the workers’ acceptance of the management expectation of hard work,* and to the pressure from the sociable grouping in the workroom. Membership of these groupings strengthened the more general tendency of workers to identify with the company, which was still further strengthened by the “fringe” benefits, profitsharing and the like, which the firm offered. The episodes in the life of the workshop which I have described have the processional form described by Turner. “Rows” are generated when individuals feel that they have been unfairly treated, i.e. there has been a breach of norm-governed relationships. Then follows the development of a crisis which usually issues in a threat to leave the workshop. The third stage begins when the attempt is made to bring into operation mechanisms to redress the breach in relationships. In the society Turner was describing, there existed no great power disparities between the persons or groups in dispute and it was therefore possible, even necessary, to find some way to stress values held in common as against those in dispute. But in the workshop at Wye there were such power disparities. In all industries the immediate †It may be that she postponed her decision to leave until she had drawn her profit-sharing bonus.

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balance of power rests in favour of management at workshop level. But in some industries disputes are channelled out of the workshop if there is no possibility of settlement at that level. They are then handled by institutions where power is more equally balanced. Thus, in the steel industry, for example,(20) and in heavy engineering, procedures for handling disputes are arranged so that workshop disputes can be taken as far as national level for settlement if this is necessary. But in the workshop at Wye the machinery for handling grievances was not well developed. Trade Union power was never, in my experience, invoked as a sanction when workers were aggrieved. This is not to say that the Union was powerless. In its dealings with the employers at district level it was successful in safeguarding minimum rates and general conditions of employment. I can only say that I did not observe one occasion when the power of the Union was used by workers as a lever to counteract the power of management at workshop level. Instead, the aggrieved worker seemed to be reminded, in the office, of the power of management as against the individual worker. I may be wrong in supposing that the shop stewards were never involved in discussions about workers’ grievances, but this was my strong impression. I was not able to check this by direct observation and my impression is based partly upon workers’ descriptions about what happened “in the office”,and upon the general attitudes to the Union which I heard expressed. The workers regarded the Union officials, if indeed they knew about them, as members of the “they” class—as persons in authority. So when a worker was aggrieved and threatened to leave, management, anxious to keep labour, tried to persuade her to stay. The pressures upon management from the market made it impossible for them to offer large cash concessions as an inducement, or even to recognize the right of a worker to a particular job (since absenteeism, for example, made constant redeployment of the labour force necessary). In an important sense, therefore, a settlement to remedy breach permanently was impossible. Given the situation which confronted management inevitably, they had to fail from time to time to create the conditions which enabled workers to fulfil management expectations, and at the same time “make their wages” and safeguard the right to “their” particular job. Management’s scope for manœuvre was therefore strictly limited. And the absence of, or the refusal to use, Trade Union power, robbed the workers of every sanction save the individual threat to leave the situation. A collective threat was not to be expected since, as I have shown, it

*The only two exceptions I have noted were Shirley and Diane, and both left the workshop.

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was unlikely, given the system of production, that workers would have common grievances at the same point in time. In situations of crisis the chargehands and female supervisors usually played three roles at the same time. They were anxious, as members of the workshop society, and often as personal friends of the aggrieved worker, to make sure that the worker remained. And they would sometimes persuade management to make minor concessions to this end, thus acting as surrogates for a shop steward. But they were also representatives of management and under pressure to act as such. It was remarkable that they were so often successful. But in evaluating their success it must be remembered that the workers knew what they were talking about when they dismissed threats to leave as idle. They saw that the threats were often made in the heat of the moment and were likely to be withdrawn upon reflection, when the balance of advantages had been weighed. Turner, in his analysis of social dramas in Ndembu villages, shows how ritual emphasizes the values which unite members of a group, as against those influences which cause them to quarrel. There were no such rituals in the Wye workshop to emphasize values which united manager and worker. Such ritual-like behaviour as was observed—the walk down the shop, the summons to the office, the sudden social isolation of the aggrieved individual—seemed only to demonstrate to all the power of management to control the workers’ behaviour. Thus reconciliation was possible only if the worker agreed to conform to management’s definition of the worker role. There could never be integration in the sense in which Turner uses the term, i.e. a reaffirmation of higher social values transcending those conflicting ones which precipitated the quarrel. If a worker refused to accept management’s definition of her role she could, of course, leave. But, as I have shown, there were many inducements to remain. In the workshop at Wye, the adjustment of relationships between managers and workers did not take the form reported in many workshop studies. There was no norm of output or earnings associated with spontaneously developed informal relationships and at variance with the formal expectations of management. Nor did workers accept the formal expectations of management as a norm sanctioned by group pressure, at least not to any significant extent. The situation was rather that the workers, as individuals, accepted the formal expectations of management that they should work hard and attempt to maximize their earnings. But again as individuals, they expected that management would create the conditions which would enable them to do this. Management’s failure to do this was not on every occasion objectively a moral

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shortcoming, and was often due to factors beyond its control: but the failure was evaluated morally and workers felt aggrieved. Yet they did not attempt to exert control over the situation to any significant extent. This absence of the “will to control” has not been adequately explained so far. I shall examine this problem in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION (WYE GARMENTS CASE STUDY)

THE concepts I have used in the analysis of the workers’ behaviour at Wye have been those of social role, expectations, and social control. I now summarize the analysis before turning to discuss the absence of collectively sanctioned norms of output and earnings in the workshop. I began by showing how the productive system acted as a mechanism of social control by limiting social interaction during working time. But the productive system could only act as a control if the workers accepted management’s definition of their role in it. I showed that in fact they did so. They behaved, on the whole, as management expected them to behave. There were, of course, individual differences, some due to personality differences, some to differing economic pressures upon persons. These differences do not significantly affect the general conclusion that the management’s expectation that persons would work hard and attempt to maximize their earnings was largely fulfilled. But the workers believed that hard work should be adequately rewarded. They also believed that management had a moral obligation to create the conditions in which, by hard work, the worker could make her wages. It was when management failed to do this that workers, as individuals, protested. I have shown that the protests were made by individuals, never by groups, and seldom by individuals representing groups, except perhaps in the sense that an individual protest might indicate to management a general source of grievance. Protests almost invariably took the form of individual attempts to control the relationship between effort and reward, such as “sweating” and “dead horse”, and, in extreme cases of violation of expectation, temporary withdrawal from the system or the threat of complete withdrawal. Since the working force was composed of women, many of whom had heavy domestic responsibilities, and a few of whom were family breadwinners, it was inevitable that there would be a good deal of involuntary absenteeism. Absenteeism dislocated the tightly-geared productive system. Management’s scope for replacing absent workers was limited by the general shortage of trained female semi-skilled labour and their difficulties were

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magnified by the fact that their productive system was unique in the industry: they could not easily replace workers who left since they had to train newcomers. It seemed to me that workers trained in other firms to make-through would not be attracted to the unit system, so the management had to rely on its own supply of trainees. So, when the units were depleted through absenteeism, a good deal of day-to-day redeployment of labour within the units was necessary if work were to be kept flowing smoothly through the units. This redeployment had to be ad hoc, since it was extremely difficult to predict the incidence of absenteeism from day to day. But redeployment was always likely to affect the capacity of some workers to make their wages, and hence gave rise to complaint. It was interesting that there were few who questioned the right of the management to shift workers and work around within the units. To “get the work out” was regarded by the majority as the greatest good. All the evidence I have analysed confirms this. Yet redeployment violated the belief that management should create the conditions in which workers could make their wages, and so generated, in many cases, individual protests of the kind I have described. A further source of individual complaint arose from anomalies in the piecework prices, and here again, it seemed to me that the complaint arose from the belief that tight prices amounted to a failure of management to fulfil its side of the bargain. One could sum up most of what I have been saying if one said that in many respects the situation in the Wye workshop represents the classic picture of the contract of employment as a matter of agreement between the individual worker and the employer except, of course, that the minimum conditions of employment were laid down in a collective agreement and in legislation. But against that background, relationships within the shop had this characteristic. And in any such contract the balance of advantages lies with the employer, even in a situation of labour shortage where the sanction of withdrawal by the individual worker is a serious matter for management. In general, relationships between workers which were generated on the productive process, were not elaborated into close personal friendships to produce an informal group structure, closely related to the groupings of workers on the processes, although there were isolated examples of this. Rather, the system tended to create competition and jealousies between the workers, in many instances. This effect was, of course, emphasized by the system of wage payment. The system of wage payment called for individualism, the productive system called for cooperation, although, as I have shown, co-operation was expected to follow from the efforts of each individual to maximize earnings. That this expectation was not fulfilled was partly due to shortcomings in planning and rate-fixing, and partly due to factors beyond the

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control of the management. My own personal conviction, which was also expressed by some of the workers, was that the system was too inflexible to be adapted easily to the strains which were placed upon it. Yet, as I have shown, there was no collective attempt on the part of the workers so to control the situation that the effects, upon their earnings and output, of factors external to the workshop—market changes and the like—could be minimized, if these operated against what they considered to be their own best interests. One such mode of control would have been a collectively sanctioned norm of output or earnings. Or, perhaps, the establishment of some procedure, via a representative, for mobilizing the workshop personnel as a whole, to slacken a tight rate or to claim a special allowance upon transfer to another task. I have shown how the productive system itself effectively inhibited the emergence of a norm of output and earnings, at variance with management expectations. But, in a situation of labour shortage, and with a Trade Union as a power reservoir, there seemed little to prevent collective action for, say, transfer and relearning allowances, or for participation in the process of rate-fixing. These would not have amounted to direct controls over the level of output and earnings of individuals, but would have given the workers a greater control over the wage-effort relationship. Job prices and work allocation would have been subjects for negotiation and not for unilateral decision by management. There is no doubt that the workers held strong views about the correct and fair relationship between wage and effort, and it is therefore a little puzzling, on the face of it, that their efforts to control this relationship and to impose their (shared) views upon the management were so feeble. I discussed this aspect of the workshop situation with managers. I argued that in view of the severe fluctuations in earnings which some workers suffered due to such factors as anomalies in the job rates, and job changes due to changes in style and absenteeism, some provision should be made for bargaining on the spot for allowances.(21) These managers claimed that because many factors intervened to distort the relationship between wage and effort expended, there would be so much bargaining for allowances that output would go down and costs up. This would place the firm at a competitive disadvantage and the workers would suffer in the long run. On the whole, they argued, the existing system, in which the chargehands and supervisors were consulted when job rates were being fixed and were made responsible for the deployment of the working force, guaranteed that the workers were treated fairly, and their grievances brought to the notice of management. The fluctuations in earnings which workers experienced were the result of the inevitable process of “taking the rough with the smooth”. That the workers were reasonably satisfied with things

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was shown, the argument went on, by the fact that labour turnover was not unduly high. This argument has some plausibility. Any introduction of bargaining would have meant that time spent on direct production would probably have been reduced, especially if many rates and transfers were contested. But whether management thought that to allow worker control over rates and allowances was desirable or not is beside the point I am now discussing. I wish to explain, if I can, why such controls were not spontaneously developed by the workers. I would, however, suggest that the argument that low labour turnover is a sufficient proof that the workers are satisfied with the system, is fallacious. The evidence I had adduced shows that there was, in the workshop at Wye, a good deal of voluntary absenteeism, some of which took the form of temporary escape from the system. I have also shown that strong ties of friendship with other workers which were of long duration held many workers to the firm despite pressures for them to leave. The women in the shop were “groupish” but the groups were based largely on sociable associations, or so it seemed to me. It was membership of these groupings which made the “rough” passages tolerable. And if the groups exercised control over the members to behave towards management in one way or another, it was to emphasize the norm of hard work and to underline management’s expectations. It was long membership of groups like this which strengthened the tie with the company, the tie which led some to aver that “the girls have Wye stamped on their backs”. Thus, as I interpret it, the workers had taken the course of accepting management’s definition of their role. Failure by management to create a situation in which workers could act out the role correctly did not call forth efforts to work out a new definition of role in terms of specifically workers’ interest, nor did it lead to collective action to control job prices and conditions of work, e.g. work allocation when teams were depleted. This may be referred to as the absence of a “desire to control” and it has to be explained, especially since in so many workshops which have been observed the “will to control” is present and finds expression in many ways. In my second case study I shall analyse behaviour in such a workshop. The first and most obvious factor to be considered in an explanation of the absence of the will to control is, of course, the sex of the majority of the operatives in the workshop. In contemporary British society, it is considered that the major role of women is that of housewife and mother and this would seem to be especially so in the working class.(22, 23) Men are considered to be the breadwinners and providers. Industrial employment for women is seen, therefore, as a means to provide marginal income and not as the sole source of income for the family. Young women, on leaving school, enter industrial employment not as a lifelong

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career, but as a temporary phase between school and marriage. This applies especially, of course, to working class women who leave school at the age of 15 or 16 qualified for little but semiskilled industrial work. Earnings from industrial employment enable these women to make a contribution to the family income for a while, and to buy the clothes and cosmetics which will make them more attractive to men, and to attend places of entertainment where they will meet men. Earnings also make it possible for young women to save towards a contribution to the setting up of a home, and many continue to work for a while after marriage, and before they start to bear children, to contribute towards the furnishing of a home. But they expect that the husband will be the main breadwinner. This expectation is, of course, recognized in the wage and salary structure. In most industries and professions women earn less than men, although they are often performing similar tasks. Married women with children who go out to work in industry do so for a variety of motives. I can say little here about these since they differ from individual to individual. It is fairly clear that a predominant motive will be to supplement the family income, but this may be mixed with a need for the company of other women, and a desire to escape from the loneliness and boredom of domestic routine. In only a minority of cases women are to be found working in industry as the sole economic support for themselves and dependants. It would seem therefore that, in general, women may be regarded as “birds of passage” in industry, and their apparent lack of interest in combining to control their conditions of employment might be explained in this way. I consider that although this is a necessary part of the explanation of the lack of “desire to control”, it is not, in itself, a complete explanation. I think it possible, for example, that women workers, like their male counterparts, will accept the customs and conventions of the industry in which they enter employment. If it has been the custom for groups of workers to control levels of output and earnings, or if there is already a well-developed system of workshop bargaining about job rates, work allocation and the like, it is possible that women workers will conform to this pattern. Equally, if there has already developed a tradition of individualism, women workers will tend to conform to this pattern. And in this case, if the previous argument about the role of women in industrial employment holds, they will find the adjustment easier. In the garment industry, the tradition of individualism is strong. There are many male workers in the industry, and the information I have about these—in other workshops in the Wye factory, and in other factories*—suggests that they, too, lack interest in collective controls over output and earnings. In its infancy, the waterproof garment industry was predominantly a male industry. If my information about this

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period, which has been gained largely from conversations with persons who knew it, is correct, many workers entered the trade hoping to become employers themselves. As I have already indicated this was quite possible for them since little capital outlay was required. Even today, it is possible for the skilled worker with a little capital to set up a workshop of his own. There has always been, therefore, a tendency towards individual striving in the industry. And this has been further emphasized by the insecurity engendered by long-term and seasonal booms and slumps in trade, encouraging persons to accumulate as much cash as they could while trade was good to tide them over the slack periods. Thus the women who began to enter the industry in large numbers in the ‘twenties and ’thirties have adopted the tradition of individualism. “You have to look after No. 1” is the way they put it. And the general attitude of women to industrial employment has, as I see it, strengthened this tendency. I would not say, therefore, that because the role of women in our society is what it is, that in all cases women will lack the “desire to control”. It would be necessary, in each case, to examine the structure and traditions of the industry in which they are working. It may be that in an industry which has been marked by great security of employment over long periods, where low labour costs have relaxed downward pressure by management on wage rates, and where procedures for workshop bargaining and control have emerged, that women coming in to the industry will adopt the prevailing pattern. There is so little evidence on which to base such a conclusion that one must admit the possibility that in all cases women will behave as individuals, and will also fear management and conform to management expectations. But it has seemed to me reasonable to suppose that in the Wye workshop the economics of the industry and its traditions are important to the explanation of the behaviour observed. I now go on to describe and analyse behaviour in an engineering workshop employing a majority of males and a minority of females. I shall return to the discussion of the importance for workshop behaviour of influences from outside the workshop at Wye when I have presented the second study.

*My colleagues, Sheila Cunnison and Shirley Wilson, who have carried out studies in workshops employing women.

CHAPTER 7 JAY’S ELECTRICAL COMPONENTS. THE INDUSTRY AND THE FIRM

LIKE Wye Garments, Jay’s was a family firm. At the time when the study was made, control of the firm was in the hands of the son of the founder, whose own two sons held important executive positions within the organization. The firm was founded in 1882 in the London area, to manufacture equipment for the generation and transmission of electricity. The founder was a pioneer in the design and manufacture of generators, cables, and other equipment. As the demand for electrical equipment increased, the firm expanded. In 1896 headquarters and plant were moved to the Manchester area. Since that date expansion has continued steadily and the firm has increased both the number and diversity of its products. The manufacture of large generating equipment has long since been discontinued, and the expansion has taken place largely in the manufacture of domestic appliances and supply and distribution transformers. The manufacture of transformers is now mainly carried on in the Manchester factory to which the firm moved in 1896, and which has since then been greatly enlarged and brought up to date. There are other factories in the Manchester area and in Scotland, and the firm also has a factory in Canada. Expansion still goes on. There is no reason to suppose that the expansion of the firm’s activities will be slowed down within the foreseeable future, since there seems to be a well-assured market for its products. The Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission, whose report on the industry was published in 1957, estimated that “The consumption of electricity has grown on average by about 12 per cent a year from 125 kWh sold in 1901 to some 68,000,000 kWh sold in 1955”. The Commission estimates that the “world consumption of electricity doubles approximately every 10 years” and that “since 1948 generating capacity has been increasing at 8 per cent per year”.(24) In striking contrast to the situation in the market for the product of the Wye Garment company, the market for heavy electrical equipment is not marked by keen price competition. There is much combination amongst manufacturers to regulate

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prices. As early as 1902 a Trade Association was established with the object of eliminating excess capacity and protecting the industry from foreign competition. In 1911 this became the British Electrical and Allied Manufacturing Association. At the same time a number of Trade Groups of manufacturers were set up whose main object was price regulation. In the post-1918 period there were several re-groupings and amalgamations which resulted in the emergence of a small number of large firms. This process has continued and at the present time the industry is dominated by giants like Metropolitan Vickers, B.T.H., and English Electric. Since the Second World War, the industry has had full order books and it is not likely that demand will slacken. Jay’s is a member of the British Electrical & Allied Manufacturing Association and also a member of the Transformer Makers’ Group. Transformers remain Jay’s main interest in what might be called the heavy side of the industry. When I was at Jay’s, I worked in the Transformer factory and it is with this part of the company’s activities that I am mainly concerned here. A transformer is a device for raising or lowering voltage in an electricity supply system. Whilst it is economical to transmit electrical power over long distances at high voltages, it is not practicable to generate at such voltages in the power stations, or to supply high voltage electricity to consumers. It is therefore necessary to raise voltages at the power stations before transmission into the grid, and then to lower them from the grid voltage to a voltage suitable for the consumer. The transformers at the power station—supply transformers—are usually quite large. The largest may be much larger than a double-decker bus, and will take many months to manufacture. The transformers which are found in sub-stations, and those which are seen attached to poles in rural areas—distribution transformers—are much smaller. The largest of these are about eight feet high, the smallest about the size of a domestic electric fire. Distribution transformers take from about one hour to one hundred hours to complete, after the component parts have been delivered to the assembly point. A transformer has two main parts, the core and the windings. The core is composed of soft steel or iron sheets clamped together. The coils of insulated copper wire encircle the core and these are wired together. The whole electrical assembly, i.e. cores, coils, and ancillary components, is contained in a tank, which is usually filled with oil. The oil acts both as a cooling and as an insulating agent.

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PRICE REGULATION IN THE TRANSFORMER MARKET The Transformer Makers’ Group includes Jay’s and most of the other large manufacturers of supply and distribution transformers. There are many manufacturers of transformers who are outside the group and who are in price competition with it, but there are few firms outside the ring which manufacture the whole range of supply and distribution transformers. The group has three kinds of agreement about prices. The first of these relates to the home market. The second deals with exports, which are considerable. These two agreements cover the whole range of supply and distribution transformers. The third agreement provides for notification of orders, and applies only to very large transformers. In the price agreement there is a minimum price provision, minima being based upon a schedule which lists the factors to be taken into account in price calculation. In practice this means that there is much “level tendering” by members of the group. It is probable that the manufacturers have found it necessary to combine to regulate prices so as to offset downward pressure on prices which might result from the existence of a small number of large buyers in the market. While it is true that the Group members are faced with price competition from outside, they are the largest manufacturers and thus have the advantage of economies of scale. Since they can also afford to finance research, they are able to lead in design. They are therefore unlikely to be priced out of the market. It appears from evidence given by the Monopolies Commission that another factor militating against the non-group manufacturer is the conservatism of consumers. In comparison with the Waterproof Garment Industry, the number of firms in the Transformer industry is small and the firms themselves are larger. Some idea of the difference may be gained when it is stated that the number of persons employed in the Transformer factory at Jay’s, which is far from being the largest producer, is about a third of the total employed in the whole Waterproof Garment industry. Unlike the demand for garments, the demand for transformers is relatively stable. There are no sharp seasonal slumps in demand and for the worker it would seem that employment has been, and still is, more secure, than it is for his counterpart in the Waterproof Garment industry. The wages of workers in the Electrical Engineering Industry are determined in the first place by negotiation at National Level between the Employers and the Trade Unions representing those employed. Within the structure thus created, there are variations to take account of special factors operating at district and at plant level.

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I have considered it necessary to give this short outline of the economic structure of the industry at the beginning of this case study of the workshop which assembles small distribution transformers at Jay’s factory. I shall refer to it, where it is appropriate, in my analysis of workshop behaviour, and stress its implications in my concluding chapter, where I compare the two workshops. THE PRODUCTIVE SYSTEM AT JAY’S The problems which managers in industry face when they are planning and controlling the productive process, are largely set for them by the situation in the market for the product. To produce at an economic price, the costs incurred in production must be controlled; and if the tools and equipment used are expensive the problem of using them to capacity will arise sharply. Thus production planning involves decisions about the appropriate work load, and the economical use of equipment, materials and labour. When the customer is considering placing an order with a firm, he will be concerned about the date of delivery. Thus, in addition to his problems of work loads and cost, the production planner must consider the speed at which materials can be obtained and worked up into a finished product. This question obviously cannot be considered in isolation. It is closely related to questions of work load and cost. Then the planner must take into account future relationships with consumers, and here the maintenance of standards of quality and durability is important. Thus decisions about the timing and flow of work in the factory must be taken in the light of decisions about the standards to be maintained, and planning must include provision for the inspection and testing of the product. So far this discussion of the problems set for managers by the relation of the firm to the market is such as may be found in any textbook on management. But managers also work with conceptions of appropriate work load on the factory, which are social rather than technical. The limits to planning are set not only by the complexity of the technical problem, and by the lack of adequate instruments of measurement and control; they are also set by prevailing beliefs about what are desirable relationships between persons and groups of persons within the organization.(25) It may be that too detailed planning and control of the behaviour of persons, which can easily be justified as a rational means to the end of cheap and efficient production, will be inconsistent with these beliefs. So, like their counterparts in Wye Garments, or indeed in any firm, the activities of the managers in Jay’s were subject to the influence of the market, and from other external

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factors, and also to the influence of individuals and groups to conform to expected standards of behaviour. I have to repeat here what I said when I began to discuss the management of Wye Garments. I am not measuring the behaviour of Jay’s management against any stereotype of perfect management. But it is necessary to describe the way production was planned and controlled within the firm, since I want to place my observations of the behaviour I observed in one small section of the plant within the wider system of production planning and control. For those within the smaller section this system set the conditions in which production was carried on. THE SMALL ERECTION SECTION IN THE PRODUCTIVE SYSTEM The Small Erection Section in which I worked was one link in a long chain of assembly operations transforming the raw material into the finished product. I shall presently describe how difficulties of co ordinating the work of the various sections helped to shape the behaviour that I observed in the Small and Medium Erection Sections. The planning of the flow of work through the Transformer factory began with the receipt of an order from a consumer by the Sales Department. The order, together with an estimated delivery date, was passed from the Sales Department to the Schedule Control Department, whose tasks were to prepare a route through the factory for the various components; to fix scheduled dates at which parts should reach various subassembly and assembly points; and, having determined the route and the schedule, to keep a constant check on the progress of the work. The check upon progress was effected by reports from the floor controllers attached to each production section. These controllers, or “chasers” as they were known in the shops, were expected to work closely with store-keepers and section foremen. The reports which the controller submitted each day were translated into positions on peg-and-string charts in the Control Room. The position of the pegs on the charts which lined the walls of the control room indicated whether the various sections were keeping to schedule. From the Schedule Control Department the order was passed to the Design and Drawing offices and also to the Planning and Ratefixing Departments. Each section of the plant was served by a separate section of the Planning and Ratefixing Department. Thus, the Tank Shop, the Machine Shop, the Coil Shop, and the Insulating Shop, to name the largest, each had a section within the Planning Office. The task of these office sections was to translate the overall schedule for its works section into specific instructions to foremen, floor

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FIG. 8. Diagram of work flow

controllers, and operatives. The Planner-Ratefixers also made out forms authorizing the requisition of small components from stores, and routing these materials to the appropriate section. When preparing instructions for individual operatives on instruction cards, the Planner-Ratefixers also entered the time to be allowed to complete the tasks which were written on the cards. The Planner-Ratefixers were also responsible for seeing that the necessary drawings were made available to the operatives. Since they themselves also worked from drawings and lists of materials supplied by the drawing office, they worked closely with the draughtsmen. The outcome of the work of the Planner-Ratefixer on that part of the schedule passed to him by the Schedule Control Department, was a number of cardboard folders each containing drawings, materials lists, and instruction cards for the order. Folders were sent to the foreman of the section, and to the floor controller. The stores requisition sheets were also included in the folders and extra copies of these were sent to the storekeepers responsible, in order that necessary the small components could be moved from the various feeder stores to stores attached to the sections, where these components were made ready for collection by the operative to whom the job was subsequently allocated. According to the plan, therefore, all raw materials, semi-finished parts, and small components, were scheduled to reach each section as they were required. I have prepared a sketch plan, Fig. 8, which shows in outline the flow of components and

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materials. This plan shows how complicated the work flow was as several orders were passing through the factory at the same time. This flow plan is not intended to represent the actual flow of components. To include all components would be confusing. Neither does the diagram show the actual layout of the plant. It is a diagrammatic layout. The large rectangles on the plan represent the feeder stores for both large and small components. Included in these are such components as wire, porcelain insulators, nuts, bolts, screws, and connections of various kinds. Some of these components were made by Jay’s, some were bought from other manufacturers. The feeder stores supplied the section stores [shown as small rectangles], and these in turn supplied the various manufacturing sections. The main components of a transformer are the Tank, the Coils, the Cores, and the Insulating materials. These components were assembled in the separate sections indicated on the diagram. All these sections served the three erection sections and the three tanking sections. The tanking and erection sections had their own stores which were also kept supplied by the various feeder stores. The task of the section stores was to store together groups of small components as they were required for each order. After each job had been erected and tanked, it was painted and packed, and then despatched either to the warehouse or direct to consumer. It should now be clear that the efficiency of the plan depended on the effective co-ordination of the flow of components into the erection and tanking section via the feeder and section stores and the sections assembling main components. And, to look further back, the main component sections, viz. the Tank, Coil, Core, and Insulation sections, could keep to schedule only if they too could rely upon the flow of smaller compo nents from the stores and from outside manufacturers. Finally, of course, the work of operatives within the various manufacturing sections had to be effectively co-ordinated so as to meet scheduled deliveries to sections further ahead in the system. To ensure co-ordination requires a plan such as I have described and also controls to ensure that the plan is fulfilled. I have already touched upon the formal arrangements providing for a flow of information about the progress of work. I said that the control room charts, which were kept up to date by information from the floor controllers, indicated the progress of the various components through the sections at any time. Thus information, on which action could be taken, was available. But information, while necessary for effective control, is not in itself control. So before I go on to describe in detail the planned and actual flow of work through the small erection section, I have to describe the planned arrangements for the communication of information and the control of productive activities.

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Information flowed to the chief “line” executive via the various specialist “functional” departments. For example, the Schedule Control Department supplied him with information about the existence of hold-ups in the work flow at various points and the Personnel Department supplied information about the deployment of the labour force. This information enabled a check to be kept upon performance. The existence of a chain of command which ran down via the Section superintendents, the foreman, and the chargehand, made it possible for action to be taken to make the work flow smoothly and according to schedule. The functional departments themselves had quasi-executive responsibilities. In this factory, the foreman and the shop superintendents were not responsible for co-ordinating the work of the shop floor representatives of the functional departments. Thus the test men, the inspectors, the floor controllers, and the storekeepers, according to the formal allocation of roles, were responsible not to the shop foremen or superintendents, but to the chief tester, the chief inspector, and the chief controller respectively. But, of course, the inspectors and testers were expected to work in close liaison with the foremen and superintendents. In the “line” the section superintendents and their assistants (“shop managers” would describe them better) were responsible for the work of the foremen, chargehands and operatives in the shop. They also reported to the works manager and it was through them that the works manager was able to take action to improve coordination of the work of the sections. The shop superintendents received information from the “planning agencies”, as did the foremen, which gave them a picture of the flow of work in the plant well before their own department was involved. For example, the shop superintendent of the Erection Shop would know the scheduled dates for the delivery of tanks from the Tank Shop to his own department and also the estimated dates for completion of transformer erection. In addition he would have been told when the Tank Shop superintendent expected to be able to deliver the Tanks. Detailed “paper” planning and control ended at foreman level. The work of the sections was supervised personally by the foreman. Within the framework of his instructions from the planning agencies he allocated the work in his department as he pleased. For example, the allocation of work to operatives was entirely at his discretion. The planning department framed instructions to be followed by operatives when doing the job, but it did not specify which operatives should do the job. The foreman and the chargehand were responsible for this aspect of planning. Their incentive to efficiency in their sections was a bonus paid upon the output of the section each month. And, of course, every

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FIG. 9. Sketch of management structure

foreman was responsible to the shop superintendent for the performance of his section. This brief discussion of the main elements in the formal system of planning, communication, management, and supervision, suffices to show that, with the exception of some lines of lateral communication between superintendents and foremen, most of the information on which control was initiated originated at the shop floor level. Figure 9 shows the formal organization of management in diagrammatic form. The level of output of finished transformers was therefore determined by the success of the controls which were designed to ensure the fulfilment of the schedule, and upon the flow of information about the actual position of components in the flow of production which indicated the specific points at which detailed control must be exercised to ensure effective co-ordination. Whether the schedule was fulfilled or not depended upon how efficient was the paperwork of ordering and requisitioning, so that materials required for any operation came together at the scheduled time for beginning the operation. If this happened, then the success of the incentives for the foreman, chargehand, and the operatives to complete the operations in any one section to schedule would determine the smoothness or otherwise of the flow of work from section to section. Of course there might arise in the assembly of components difficulties which could not be foreseen at the planning and design stage, and which would hold up the work. But such hold-ups were to some extent allowed for in the plan. The time allowed for the progress of orders through the various sections by the Schedule Control Department, when it drew up the schedules, was based upon the experience of section foremen of the progress of similar orders in the past, and this time was modified periodically in the light of experience. These allowed times were thus based upon actual experience of building

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Transformers, including experience of snags. So the plan was designed to be fairly flexible at section level, In this case it is impossible to speak of a planned expected level of output based upon a logic of efficiency against which actual output could be measured. This is because the plan itself was based upon the actual past performance of the sections. In other words, the firm was prepared to accept the situation in the sections as a basis for planning, and to leave them fairly autonomous in their inner organization, unless for one reason or another the section fell below previous performance or unless higher management thought that more ought to be done. Therefore it is not possible to measure actual output in any one section against expected output. The question then arises whether there was anything in the observed behaviour of the persons in the section which could obviously be construed as a holding back of effort. I therefore turn to a description of relationships within one of the sections in order to describe and analyse the organization of work. I discuss the workers’ response to the incentives offered them to ensure that the schedule be fulfilled, and the factors which influenced the use of time in the section. The section in which I worked was the Small Transformer erection section. This section operated at a quite advanced stage in the produc-tion flow. It was therefore dependent upon the coordination of the flow of work in sections nearer to the raw materials. Thus coils, cores, insulation and small components for one order had to arrive at the same time at the section to enable the operatives to commence assembly. Before the transformer could be completed the tank had to be delivered on time. Thus the work load in the section at any time was largely beyond the direct control of the foreman of the section. It was almost completely outside the control of the operatives. This is obvious from the description of the production flow which I have already given, for knowledge about the total flow was available only in the control room. This information was available to foremen and floor controllers; by communicating with other foremen and floor controllers they could influence the sequence of work in another section to some extent, though not very much in the case of large assemblies which were already in the course of erection. Even the operatives could have small components speeded up by making personal contact with other sections. But, by and large, the flow of work was beyond the control of the foreman, of the operatives, and, to a lesser extent, of the floor controller. As in Wye Garments, the productive system at Jay’s was based upon the “transfer of intelligence”. The planning of production, the arrangements for the supply of materials to the shops, and so on, were the responsibility of the specialist departments of management, and not of the operatives and lower levels of supervisory staff. But there are certain significant differences

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between the two systems. In Wye Garments management planning operated at two levels. The first set of plans was concerned with the delivery of materials to the workrooms assembling garments. The second set of plans covered the arrangements for production within the workshops themselves. In each case a high degree of planning was involved, so that in the workrooms the flow of work from individual to individual was the subject of management planning. As I have shown, in this plant the role of the chargehand became one of corrector of faults in the plan. In Wye, the units in the plan were individual workers. In Jay’s the units in management planning were departments or sections of departments. Within the departments and sections the initiative lay with the foreman to plan the work in the light of the overall production schedule and the flow of materials into his department. The relationships between people in the productive process were not, as they were in Wye, specified in the production plan, so there was a good deal more room for adjustment in these relationships at shop floor level. In subsequent sections I shall argue that this situation encouraged the congruence of productive and friendship groupings, and that this in its turn contributed to the greater degree of control which the workers at Jay’s exercised over output and earnings. But I would emphasize that this was by no means the only factor. The interdependence of this and other factors will emerge in the course of the analysis of relationships in the shop. ALLOCATION AND SEQUENCE OF WORK IN SMALL TRANSFORMER DEPARTMENT The work of assembly was carried out in the workshop by erectors and tankers. The tasks of the erectors were to take the coils and the cores which were delivered to the shop from other departments; to draw from the feeder stores the wire, terminals, insulating material, etc.; and with these materials to complete the erection of the electrical components of the transformer. The smallest of the distribution transformers were usually erected on roller conveyors, a pair of which ran the whole length of the section. This eased the work of moving the electrical assemblies along the shop and into the test enclosure and the stoves. There was no mass production sequence: each electrical assembly was completed by an erector, or by two—occasionally three—erector “working mates”. When an assembly had been completed, it was visually examined by an inspector attached to the section. The assembly was then rolled along into the test enclosure for a preliminary electrical test. It was then rolled further, into a stove, where it remained for up to 24 hours to be completely dehydrated. It was then ready for the operation of tanking. The larger

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assemblies were erected on the floor of the shop and then lifted into the test enclosure and the stoves by an overhead crane. An area of floor space was set aside at one end of the shop for tanking. Here tanks were delivered from the tank shop by truck. The task of the tankers who worked in this part of the section was to take the completed assemblies from the stoves, place them and secure them in the tank, wire-up and attach terminals, and in general complete the job ready for removal to the paint shop. In the tanking area the oil was pumped into the tanks from a storage tank. This work was done by a labourer. Some of the tankers’ work on larger jobs required the use of the overhead cranes, but sometimes the assemblies could be lifted by hand into the tanks. After tanking, the job was again visually and electrically tested before removal to the paint shop. Figure 10 shows the layout of the shop and the flow of components. Work was allocated to the erectors and tankers by the foreman. The sequence was determined, as I have shown, by the Schedule Control Department, and the foreman was responsible for seeing that the planned sequence was followed, and for informing the planning departments when completed transformers left his department. But subject to the overall requirements of the schedule the foreman had complete discretion in work allocation. He could bring a job forward out of turn, if he wished to keep workers busy and if parts for that job became available ahead of schedule. He was also able to decide for himself which workers were particularly capable of performing certain types of job, and to allocate these jobs to them. An operative who had no work would ask the foreman for a job and would be told to make a start on this or that job, or the foreman would warn a worker in advance of the job he was to start next. Thus every time a job was allocated the foreman, or the chargehand deputizing for him, came into personal contact with the worker. And since small transformers usually took only between one and twenty hours to erect, there was much interaction between the foreman, the chargehand and the workers in the shop. In addition, the foreman and the chargehand frequently were approached for help to sort out difficulties, such as, for example, to authorize the despatch of an ill-fitting component back to the manufacturing department, or to make out a chit for issue of special tools, In comparison with the workroom at Wye, at Jay’s the role of the chargehand and foreman involved a positive control of the activities of the persons in the shop, within the broad framework laid down in the schedule. When a worker, or a pair or trio of mates, received orders to make a start on a job, there were certain formalities to be carried out. Thefolder for the job had to be collected from the foreman’s desk. This folder contained a check list of the material which had been requisitioned for the job by the Planning Department and

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FIG. 10. Flow of work and typical positions of workers

which, if everything had gone according to plan, would be already assembled in a bin in the feeder stores. The folder also contained a list of any unusual features specified by the customer, about method of erection, type of wiring, delivery date, and so on. There would also be in the folder a wiring diagram and a drawing showing the general arrangement of the complete job. This folder was made up in the Planning Department, which sent copies of the various lists and instructions to the floor controller and the various stores so that material could be made ready for issue as required. The worker was also required to collect from the desk his job instruction card. This was an important document, for in addition

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to giving detailed instructions about the method to be employed in performing the task, it specified the time allowed for completing the job. The allowed time was the basis of the incentive scheme, for bonus was calculated on the time saved on allowed times. I shall discuss the details of the incentive scheme later. For the moment I am concerned with the production sequence, in which the job instruction sheet was an important item. It was closely examined before a worker proceeded with the actual task of assembly. On some jobs the workers found it unnecessary to draw the folder and job instruction sheet, so familiar were they with these. This, of course, applied to the standard designs of transformer. But unusual work of special design often came into the section, and for these the instructions were carefully followed and the allowed times carefully examined. Whatever the type of job, the first stage in assembly was the collection of components. Coils and cores were stored on the floor in the section, and these were brought by hand truck or crane to the assembly point. The rest of the materials had to be collected from the feeder stores. This was usually done by a labourer while the erectors and tankers were preparing the larger components for assembly. But sometimes, perhaps when there was no crane available to lift coils or cores in position, the erector or tanker would fill in time by collecting his own materials from the stores. I do not intend to describe in detail the task of transformer assembly and tanking, but I must mention that it was carried out entirely with hand tools, such as soldering irons, wire clippers, and spanners. Each worker was equipped with a set of these tools, and provided the components for assembly were ready, he could go straight ahead and complete his work. For the most part, the workers worked in pairs. Some workers preferred to work alone, and sometimes three of them worked together. The choice depended, for the most part, on what particular workers preferred, although the foreman sometimes exercised his prerogative to split up pairs. One of the advantages of working in a pair was that a number of jobs could be taken on concurrently. In this way time spent waiting for components or for the crane could be reduced to a minimum. But the workers told me that on a single job it was not possible for two men to do the job twice as fast as one, so that each suffered losses of time which reduced earnings. Yet work was usually done in pairs, and workers seemed to prefer this arrangement despite its reputed disadvantages. It will already be obvious that at Jay’s the work of an erector or tanker brought him into constant personal contact with many people, and he was not confined so closely by the requirements of the produc-tive process as were his counterparts in Wye. In the process of collecting together the materials for his job, he moved around the shop and dealt with several people—probably the

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foreman and the chargehand, the time clerk at the desk, the labourer, the crane slinger, and his own mate. And when wheeling his truck, say from the coil storage space to the conveyor, he would probably take the opportunity for a word or two with other workers. The work of assembly was not broken down into a large number of component operations each performed by different persons in accordance with a pre-conceived plan. Hence, during the course of assembly the worker was not required to co-operate with anyone else except his mate, and the division of labour between them was entirely their own affair. The system did not call therefore for a high degree of continuous co-operation between all the persons in the section. Co-operation rested in the relationship between each worker or pair on the one hand and the foreman on the other. If the worker’s job was made difficult by failure to deliver components or the delivery of faulty components, his relationships with the foreman were not much affected since the responsibility for the supply and quality of these components was not the foreman’s. For the most part then the productive arrangements did not call for the high degree of co-operation they required at Wye, and there was in consequence less strain in the relationships between the workers, since the plan did not place any one worker or pair of workers in a relationship of dependence upon another worker for output and earnings. The tankers as a group were a minor exception to this, since they relied upon the erectors to keep them supplied with assemblies. But in fact if they were held up it was usually for tanks and not assemblies. The source of their difficulties was some half-a-mile away, not in the section. Much more than in Wye, the productive system allowed the worker a wide range of social contacts on the job. Even if all the components arrived in sequence for the job and there were no snags during erection or tanking, the operatives’ range of contacts was fairly wide. But if there were errors in design, or in workmanship, or in planning, which caused delays, then the range of social interaction widened. And delays such as these were fairly frequent. I saw examples of bad design which caused difficulties for workers in assembly. Other workers were asked for help, the foreman or the chargehand was called upon. Sometimes the inspector would be asked for an opinion, and often the draughtsman responsible would be asked to come down to the shop. Then there would be a “huddle” around the job until some way had been found to get out of the difficulty. In cases of special difficulty the shop manager or his deputy would intervene. If the difficulty was due to faulty assembly of a component in another department, a labourer would usually be sent by the foreman with the component, and an explanatory note, to the other foreman. Thus the labourers had a wide range of contacts in

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other departments and conveyed news and views to and fro, forming a link between department and department. Sometimes workers from other departments would arrive to make amendments in situ. I consider that the productive system, and the difficulties associated with attempts to make it work efficiently—difficulties which seem to me to be inevitable under batch production— created the conditions for fairly intense social interaction, both on and off the job. Time spent waiting for delivery of components, or for the crane, could, for example, be spent in talk on all sorts of subjects of common interest, and again, some waiting time was almost bound to occur when batch production was, as in this case, planned on flow principles. To sum up, the unit of planning in Jay’s factory was the section and not the individual worker. Within the section the allocation of work was the responsibility of the foreman. Since the work was arranged so that a complete and fairly lengthy task was performed by one or two workers, there were few difficulties in the way of cooperation between workers. The requirements of the process of assembling transformers, together with the inevitable breaks in work flow, stimulated a good deal of social interaction. And there was also a good deal of personal freedom for the workers to choose with whom they would work or whether they would work alone. In addition to this, the work was quite varied and did not call for the repetitive production of small parts. All this was conducive to the spontaneous development of friendly groupings on and off the job, and to the spread and exchange of knowledge amongst the whole group of workers in the section. This contributed to the solidarity of the group in its relationships with management, but at the same time permitted the development of smaller groups with different interests within the larger group. For myself, I was struck by the difference of atmosphere between Jay’s workshop and the workshop at Wye. The pace of work at Jay’s seemed to be much more leisurely. This was partly because the materials being worked with were much more heavy and cumbersome, and partly because the operations extended over a longer time span. It was also partly due to the fact that much care had to be taken during assembly. A semi-mechanical set of movements could not be learned and repeated until it became habit, as was the case on many of the operations at Wye. Each assembly set the operative different problems, and care and attention were required for their solution.

CHAPTER 8 PEOPLE AND PRODUCTION IN THE SMALL TRANSFORMER SECTION

IN my analysis of the workshop at Wye Garments I described in some detail the social background and circumstances of those workers whom I had observed. I also described, in an impressionistic way, the personal characteristics of these workers. I thought it necessary to do this so that I could myself adequately explain those aspects of personal behaviour which seemed to spring from personal idiosyncrasy or social background, and so that the reader who wished to look more closely at the relationship between personal characteristics and behaviour in the workshop than I felt necessary for my argument, might do so. I also thought that it would add interest to the text if my worker colleagues appeared as real persons, and not merely as occupants of workshop roles. For all these reasons, I shall give the same detailed description of the workers in the transformer shop at Jay’s. The small erection section was not walled off from the rest of the transformer department. Many of the workers in the section had good friends across the passageway on the medium section. Often erectors from the “medium side” worked in the space between the conveyors in the “small section”. The two sections were served by one Shop Steward of the Electrical Trades Union, George Brewer. Each section had its own foreman, Jack Cornwall on the small side, and Ken Thompson on the medium side. And each of these was assisted by a chargehand, Peter Brown and Tom Irvine respectively. Towards the end of my stay in the section Jack Cornwall was transferred to another factory owned by the company, and pending the appointment of a new foreman, Ken Thompson took over both sections. When Cornwall left, a number of “medium” men were permanently transferred to the small section. These men had much experience of small transformers, had often worked alongside the men in the small section, and were well known to them. I have included this group in my analysis, for reasons which will appear.

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Figure 10 shows the layout of the shop and a fairly typical spatial disposition of the workers during productive operations. Several groupings may be distinguished. Bill, Lionel, and Fatty, Nos. 6, 7 and 8 on the diagram, worked as a team. They were not required to do so by management but they preferred this arrangement, which had persisted for a long period and which did not change during my stay in the shop. Bill and Lionel had come into the shop when the small erection section was moved from another of the company’s plants to its present site. Fatty was a newcomer who had been seconded to Bill and Lionel for training, and who had remained with them. These three men were usually entrusted with the assembly of prototypes, and with the preparation of exhibition work, although they also worked on production jobs. Many of the men in the section, particularly the younger ones, considered that Bill, Lionel and Fatty were given special favours in work allocation, and they said this was because they were regarded by the foreman as his personal friends. This group was given special nicknames by the other workers. Sometimes they were referred to as the “Benton Blue Eyes”, sometimes as the “scientific boys” (their work brought them into contact with designers and research engineers). Bill, who was regarded as the leader of the group, was sometimes referred to as “the professor”. Bill was 37 years old, a married man with two children, who had worked at Jay’s for 6 years. Most of his previous industrial experience had been in semi-skilled engineering work, but he also had experience of routine clerical work. All his working life had been spent in factories within easy travelling distance from his home in a suburb of Manchester. Bill was educated at a public elementary school and left at the age of fourteen. I found him to be a very capable person, and also an ambitious one. His colleague Lionel was 35 years of age and had also worked for Jay’s for 6 years. His industrial experience was similar to that of Bill. Unlike Bill, he had a spare time occupation. In evenings and at weekends he assisted the projectionist at the local cinema. Lionel was not considered by the workers in the shop to be as skilful as Bill, nor as intelligent. Like Bill, he had lived his whole life in the locality. Fatty, the third member of the trio, was born locally but had worked for many years in the Midlands. He returned to his home town on his demobilization after the war, and after having several shortlived jobs in factories in the area, had taken up employment at Jay’s. Fatty, like his two mates, was a married man with dependent children. He was a pleasant fellow, a conscientious worker, and well liked. I next consider the “youngsters”. This group comprised Tom Hendy, Simsey, Wilf, Fred Cotton, and Marmaduke. These are numbered 13, 23, 19, 9, and 10, on the diagram. This group was hostile to the foreman and to the Benton Blue Eyes. They

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complained that the Blue Eyes, a category in which they included not only the prototype workers Bill and Lionel but also Mac, Tot, Ches, and Eddie (who had also all worked with Cornwall at the old plant at Benton), had preferential treatment in the allocation of work. The foreman, and the Benton Blue Eyes, considered the “youngsters” to be an impertinent, irresponsible, lot. They said that the “youngsters” were lacking in proper respect for authority, that they were irresponsible in their attitude to timekeeping, and, with the exception of Wilf, they were considered careless workmen, with little pride in their jobs. Certainly the youngsters were noisy and inclined to horseplay. The foreman complained to me many times about the indiscipline of this group. Tom Hendy, the leader of this group, was a professional comic performer in his spare time. He possessed a piercing voice, and a flair for practical joking. Tom was 26. He was married and had young children. A local boy, educated at elementary school, Tom had a varied occupational career as a semi-skilled worker in local industries. During my stay at Jay’s, Tom left to take up employment with a mailorder firm as a warehouseman-clerk. He explained to me that the opportunities for overtime there were more regular, and that he needed money badly as he was buying and furnishing a home. Tom habitually worked mates with Simsey, and these two were close friends, who saw a good deal of each other outside the factory. On leaving Secondary Modern School, Simsey, who was 24 years of age, had worked as a shop assistant, He left the shop to do National Service, and came to Jay’s in 1956. Simsey was regarded as a “prickly” character, and was often at loggerheads with the foreman. Because of his touchiness, he had little social contact outside his own small circle of intimates. Fred Cotton was a trainee erector. Whenever he could, he worked with Tom and Simsey, for he found their company congenial. However, the foreman, who was anxious that Fred should have a good training not only in assembly, but also in the correct and proper attitude to authority, often seconded him to other workers, particularly Mac and Tot. Despite this, Fred usually contrived to be working within talking distance of Tom and Simsey. Fred had just started at Jay’s when I commenced my field study. He was 22 years of age, and single. He was a dull fellow, slow to pick up the skills required for the job. But he told me that he found the job very interesting, and hoped to settle down to it. I have described the “youngsters” as a group because they shared much the same attitudes to supervision and to the older workers, and because they interacted much more amongst themselves than with other workers. But although I have included Wilf and Marmaduke in the group there are some ways in which their behaviour differed greatly from that of the other “youngsters”. Wilf, who was nicknamed “45% Wilf”, was acknowledged to be the

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most skilled erector in the shop. He was a slow and careful worker and obsessively independent. He preferred to work alone so that he could take his own time on any job. Any job coming into the shop which presented exceptional problems for assembly, apart from prototype work, was usually allocated to Wilf, Wilf would not be hurried, and it was said that since he was a single man he could afford to take his time and do a perfect job, and not worry about earning bonus. Hence the nickname “45%”. But although Wilf was independent in his attitude to work, he was not a social isolate. He spent much time talking to other workers, mostly to complain about the stupidity of those placed in authority over him. And he mostly talked with the younger men. He always joined them at break times. Wilf was locally born. He left elementary school in 1941 and became an apprentice engineer. He did not complete his apprenticeship, leaving it to take up better-paid work as a semi-skilled engineering worker. Like Simsey, he came to Jay’s after National Service, which he completed in 1948. Marmaduke was the nickname of a trainee who was seconded for a while to Wilf. He was known as Marmaduke because he was considered an idle fellow. He certainly seemed always to be worn out and disinclined to apply himself to the job on hand. Some said that this was because he spent his nights and weekends on spare time work as a decorator, for which he had been trained. They claimed that he regarded his job at Jay’s as something to do to fill the day in. Others hinted that since he was newly married his mind was on other things. Like Tom Hendy, Marmaduke left the factory during my stay. It was believed that he had become a fulltime decorator. Marmaduke was 22 years old. The cleavage between the youngsters and the “Benton Blue Eyes” was the deepest in the shop. The youngsters particularly disliked Bill and Lionel. To illustrate this I relate a number of incidents in the life of the shop. It was customary in the shop to cease work ten minutes or so before official stopping time. During this time the workers packed away their tools and went to the washroom to clean up. Coats were donned and overalls put away, and the last two or three minutes were usually spent just waiting for the bell to ring. Bill and his group were no less anxious than the others to get a flying start, but they did not leave the section until the bell had gone, or was almost due. But the youngsters often left the section five minutes before the bell rang and made their way—with a show of defiance—to the exit. Bill, in particular, thought that this ostentatious flouting of the rules was wrong. He argued with the “youngsters” that it was all right up to a point to disregard management rules, but to openly flout them was to invite strict enforcement by management. It was therefore judicious to be subtle in the way one went about violating the rules. It was folly, so he said, to leave the job before time when the foreman or

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managers were in the shop. But the younger men, especially Tom Hendy and Simsey, took the view that since they were on piecework, it was their own time and money they were wasting and therefore they were entitled to do as they pleased.* They treated the foreman with a show of contempt, which they said he deserved since he did not give them fair treatment in allocating work, and in allowing them to choose their own workmates. A further ground of antipathy arose out of the noisiness of Tom Hendy and his mates. Their singing and horseplay was regarded by the foreman, and the “Blue Eyes”, as a breach of workshop propriety. The younger men sought to emphasize their apartness by leaving the Electrical Trades Union to join the National Union of General and Municipal Workers. This move was instigated by Wilf. When I asked the others why they had followed Wilf’s lead I was told that the E.T.U. had never done anything for them, but I could get no further elaboration. Again, when a rumour swept through the shop that the productive process was to be reorganized so that women would be introduced to perform the wiring operations, the younger men wanted to press the stewards to take action at once to kill the plan at birth. The others, although they were equally convinced that the plan would be disadvantageous, counselled a cautious approach. The refusal of the “Blue Eyes” to agree to immediate and firm action was interpreted by the youngsters as due to a fear of authority and to their friendship with the foreman. There were many heated arguments about this. In fact, members of the two groups rarely conversed except to argue and disagree. The normal relationship was avoidance, and it seemed to me that this helped preserve the overall solidarity of the work group as against management. And as I shall presently show, for all the hostility between groups of workers, the majority were agreed on the “proper” attitudes towards management, especially with regard to output and earnings. Mac and Tot, Nos. 11 and 12 on the diagram, invariably worked as mates. These two had both worked with Cornwall at Benton, and were for this reason regarded by the youngsters as “Blue Eyes”. But they often worked in close proximity to the youngsters, and their relationships with them, although not cordial, were fairly friendly. The youngsters claimed that Mac and Tot were favoured in the allocation of standard jobs, which were easy to make bonus on. Mac had worked with the firm for 6 years. He came to the area after the war, having married a local girl, He was 37 years of age, and a conscientious and fast worker, *Some of the grounds on which this argument rested will be considered below when the incentive scheme is discussed.

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although not generally regarded as possessing high skill. It was probably for this reason that the foreman gave him the simple standard jobs, and not for the reasons imputed by the youngsters. His mate Tot, a young man of 25, was, with one exception, the longest served worker in the section. He had been with the firm for ten years. He was unmarried, but was planning to be married soon. Although Tot was the same age as the “youngsters”, he did not mix with them. At break time and at lunch time his mate Mac usually joined Bill, Lionel, and Fatty, and at lunch time this group played cards. But Tot ate alone, and he often slept on the floor, propped up against a tool box, for most of the lunch hour. The medium section erectors who usually worked with the small section (and the majority of whom were eventually transferred to the section) were Harry Birtwhistle, Lofty, Baldy Benson, Paul Dixon, Claude Bissett, George Panton, Ben Garvey, and Bill Brunton. On the whole, these men were closer socially to the “youngsters” than to the Benton Blue Eyes. Like the youngsters, they were all comparative new-comers to the shop. For most of the time I was there their work was allocated to them by Ken Thompson, and they were, therefore, not concerned in the disputes over allocation of work which troubled the small section, Free to choose with whom they would mix, they formed a distinctive group of outsiders, not firmly attached to either group of the small section erectors, but more closely resembling the “youngsters” in their attitudes and opinions. I have numbered these men 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, and 22 on the diagram. These erectors usually went over to the medium side at breaks, but at lunch those who used the canteen joined some small-side workers and George Brewer the steward, at the same table. I was a member of this lunch group for the whole of my stay. The medium-side men fell into two categories, the mates and the isolates. Harry Birtwhistle, Lofty, Baldy, George Panton and Bill Brunton preferred to partner off, and Paul Dixon the trainee, usually worked with one of the pairs. But Ben Garvey and Claude Bissett preferred to work alone, and Ben Garvey always did work alone. Sometimes Claude took a trainee but Garvey never did. Harry Birtwhistle was a young man of 24 with one year’s service with the firm. His mate, Lofty, was of the same age and had served for the same length of time. Both were married and both had young children. Both had a varied occupational experience but they said that they intended to settle at Jay’s. Like most of their fellows they had been elementary schoolboys. Neither of them were considered first-rate erectors nor men of more than medium intelligence. They were forever making elementary mistakes, as for example when they turned a blow-lamp on a transformer assembly which was in the shop for repair after years of service. The assembly was, of course, soaked with oil, and the application of the blowlamp, designed to loosen the solder on the terminals for

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ease in dismantling, set the whole thing alight. But Harry and Lofty were triers and good-natured lads, and after a ticking-off nobody thought any the worse of them. Both were local boys. Harry, like Lionel, had a spare-time job as a cinema projectionist. Baldy Benson and George Panton were first-class workmen. Baldy, a married man of 34 years, was trained to be an interior decorator, but had given up his trade to open a confectioner’s shop in the locality. Now his wife ran the shop while he worked at Jay’s. Every day he replenished the stock of sweets and cigarettes in his tool box, for he did brisk business in the shop. With the possible exception of Syd Smales, the tanker, Baldy was the man who possessed the greatest knowledge of the details of the operation of the incentive scheme, which he turned to good use, as we shall presently see. Baldy was a tidy man, in appearance— he always wore a collar and tie—and in his work. He excelled in the arguments which were constantly going on in the shop. He had been with the firm for three years. George Panton, who sometimes worked mates with Baldy, was 27, and had also worked at Jay’s for 3 years. George was the only man in the shop who travelled any great distance to and from work, about 10 miles a day each way. A married man with two young children, George was regarded as approaching “45% Wilf” in skill in working from complicated wiring diagrams, and turning out a neat, sound job. But he was a faster worker than Wilf. Paul Dixon, who usually worked with Baldy or George, or as mate to them both, was a trainee. A man of 40 years of age, he had been at Jay’s for six months when I started there. It was said of him that he would be a permanent trainee, so slow was his progress in picking up the few skills necessary to erect a transformer. For most of his life Paul had been a clerical worker but had decided, as he said, to try the shop floor. For all the difficulties, he liked the job and said he wanted to remain. Paul was married but had no family, and his wife also worked. Bill Brunton, another trainee with a year’s service, finished his training while I was there but there were serious doubts whether he would be ever good enough to earn a reasonable bonus on piecework. Bill claimed to have served a craft apprenticeship with a famous Manchester electrical firm but no one took this claim seriously. His performance was conclusive evidence against it. It was said that Bill, a single man of 33, spent all his money on beer. He was a persistent absentee and latecomer and with all these shortcomings he was a serious problem to Ken Thompson. No erector was keen to take Bill on as a mate, yet, according to the custom of the shop, a trainee learned his job by working with and watching trained men. But Bill, a garrulous, romancing, couldn’t-care-less sort of fellow, just hung around and fitted in where he was allowed.

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Most of the erectors and trainees I have referred to so far preferred the company of mates. But Ben Garvey and Claude preferred to work alone. Garvey was the “teararse”* of the shop. He worked with tremendous speed and vigour. His work was, in consequence, not always of the highest quality. He did not follow the conventions of the shop with regard to working speed and to the booking in of work. He was called a “job spoiler” by the other workers. Only two other workers in the shop were thus described by the workers; one was Mac and the other Claude Bissett. But the epithet was only used occasionally of them. It was applied to Garvey all the time. But if Garvey violated the customs of the shop, he was not completely ostracized for it. There were many things about him that the workers admired. One was his great physical strength. Another was his capacity for sustained effort. He held the unofficial shop record for the “lacing in” of a core on one of the heaviest of the small transformers, Exploits such as these got unstinted admiration, even when Garvey was exposing “loose rates”, a major misdemeanour in the eyes of workers. But Claude was not admired. He was a job-spoiler, but not a fast or vigorous worker, nor a pleasing personality. Claude was 27, and had been with the firm 4 years. He had previously been a joiner, and he supplemented his income from Jay’s by doing joinery at weekends and in the evenings. Claude was married but had no children. Ben Garvey was 28 and married with small children. He had worked for Jay’s in two spells, one of two years and one of three. At the end of his first spell he had left to become a grave-digger, but later returned and was now nearing the end of 5 years broken service with the firm. There were three tankers on the small section: Syd Smales, Old Ches, and Eddie, numbered 24, 26 and 25 on the diagram. Syd and Ches worked mates, Eddie always worked alone. Syd Smales was a married man of 33 years, with 3 young children. A restless, footloose, type of fellow, Syd had tried many occupations. He started his working life as an apprentice compositor. After a year of this he left to start his own window-cleaning business. He then joined the Merchant Navy and served throughout the War in Atlantic convoys. On his return he spent a year in the cotton industry, and then decided to emigrate to Canada. After a year there, during which he did various odd jobs, he returned to England and became employed at Jay’s. But after two years he again felt the urge to be moving on, and left to become an insurance agent. But after a year he was back at Jay’s and had worked there from 1952 to 1956 when I began my fieldwork. Towards the end of my stay he moved again. “Canadian Syd”, as he *This is a common workshop expression. It describes a person who works speedily and carelessly. It is nearly synonymous with “job spoiler”.

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was known his exploits in Canada as a merchant seaman formed a large part of a large repertoire of personal experiences—was a sharp critic of authority and a self-appointed defender of the rights of working-men. But he was also a man of sharp intelligence and frustrated ambition, and was an awkward customer for managers and supervisors to handle’. Yet he was a competent workman. He was for me a valuable informant, for he understood better than most the intricacies of the system of wage payment, and the “angles” in manipulating the system to serve the interests of the workers. Syd’s mate, Old Ches, was 56 years of age. He was married. His only child was grown up and independent. Ches was a fitter by trade, but after completing his apprenticeship in 1918, he left his trade to become a professional musician. It was not until the outbreak of the Second World War that he returned to industrial employment to work in the aircraft industry. In 1949, he came to Jay’s as a semi-skilled worker, to work as a tanker. Ches was a complete contrast to his mate Syd. He was shy and reticent and if he had opinions about the shop and its personalities, he never expressed them. Syd looked for trouble, Ches avoided it. Syd organized the job, and Ches performed conscientiously the tasks which Syd allotted to him. Eddie, like Syd and Ches, was a local man. A former “Bevin Boy”, he came to Jay’s after completing his term of service in the coal mines and had worked there for six years. He and Ches had both worked with Cornwall at Benton. Eddie, aged 35, was married and had a young family. He was regarded as a bit of a lone wolf, and he preferred to sit alone at break times reading, rather than to join Ches, Syd, and me in conversation. But I found him to be quite willing to talk at other times, and I interpreted his behaviour at breaks as arising from a dislike of Syd, whom he considered to be a “bit of a bullshitter”.* There was little love lost between these two for Syd considered Eddie to be a favourite of the foreman, Cornwall. And Syd’s contempt for Cornwall was enormous. The tankers had little contact on the job with the assemblers during working hours. The requirements of production kept the two categories of workers apart, and they were shut off from each other by the test enclosures. But isolation was by no means complete. There were sometimes arguments between the tankers and assemblers about demarcation of work, and there were opportunities for conversation when work was short. It was not an uncommon sight to see Syd or Eddie in the assembly space chatting with the assemblers. And news of any happenings of interest passed from tanking space to assembly space and vice *Another common workshop expression, also used in the ranks of the Army, to describe a person whose conversation is always self-glorifying, and who is filled with his own importance.

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versa, usually via the labourers, whose work took them all over the section, and into other parts of the works. The inspector and the chargehand also acted as channels of communication, so that everyone in the shop was aware of the activities of others, even if their work kept them in spatial isolation. There were three labourers in the small section, Reuben, Les Bircumshaw, and myself. Our duties were to keep the shop clean and tidy, to transport materials to the section from stores and from other departments, to carry messages for the foreman, and generally to assist the erectors and tankers in any way except in the assembly or tanking operations. Les had a special job of filling the tanks with oil after tanking was complete. This was a job Reuben refused to handle because management refused to pay the special allowance for working in oil to which he thought he was entitled. I was advised by Reuben not to “blackleg”, and since Reuben was a good friend and a valuable informant, I resisted the chargehand’s attempts to persuade me to operate the oil pump during Les’s occasional absences. Reuben was a man of 50. He had a grown-up family. A local man, he had worked at Jay’s for 17 years. He had not always been a labourer but had been transferred to labouring after a serious accident on the firm’s premises had made him unfit for work on production. Reuben was not an invalid. He was a sprightly man, smart in appearance and methodical in his habits. He seemed always to be enjoying life. He was keenly interested in the people on the section and observed minutely every detail of their behaviour and gossiped interminably about it. Few items of behaviour escaped his sharp eye. His knowledge of management plans, both for his own and for other departments, was uncannily accurate. By shrewd planning of his not very onerous duties, he contrived to satisfy the foreman and to leave himself plenty of time to keep an eye on what was socially interesting in the section. Reuben also had a sharp eye for the shortcomings of management and supervisors, and was often in a position to predict minor troubles long before they arose. But he never informed anyone except his intimates, for he took a delight in watching the stupidities of those who were supposed to be more intelligent than he. I have rarely met a more shrewd and hard-hitting critic of authority than Reuben. He was an inexhaustible source of information. Les was a man of very low intelligence. Even the simple tasks demanded of a labourer were often too much for him, and the chargehand often said of him that he was enough to “drive you round the bend”. He was the butt of practical jokes, and the slowness of his movements earned him the ironic nickname “Chataway”.* Les was untidy, and often unshaven, and this often provoked derisive comment, but Les took all this as a huge joke, and, as he told me, he enjoyed working in the shop, because he

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had good mates. Some said that Les had been a tramp in his day. He himself told me that he had worked as a farm labourer for many years, and had also worked in a paperworks and an asbestos works, before coming to Jay’s 3 years before. A man of 48, Les had been twice married, the second time to a woman much younger than himself. He had many children. Reuben and Les are numbered 27 and 29 on the diagram. The positions in which they are shown are not intended to indicate permanent working positions, since, as labourers, they were mobile. They merely indicate where these two were most likely to be found if they were in the shop. I have numbered myself 28 in the diagram and have shown myself as an inhabitant of the “labourers’ corner”. But I was also mobile. Jack Cornwall, the foreman, was a man in his forties. He had worked for Jay’s most of his working life. Cornwall, as he was called, was married but childless. During his years at Jay’s he had worked as a supervisor on many processes, and had moved with the small assembly section from Benton, bringing a number of workers with him. Cornwall did not enjoy the best of health, and he looked much older than his years. He rarely smiled. He was not the kind of man who strikes up friendships easily, since he was essentially shy and withdrawn. With certain exceptions, he rarely pushed his relationships with his men beyond the formal requirements of his job, allocating work and expediting its passage through the shop. This behaviour was interpreted by most as deliberate aloofness, designed to emphasize his status as the foreman, and this provoked harsh comment since the ethos of the shop was essentially egalitarian. But if Cornwall seemed to lack interest in most of the men, and in the work they were doing, he was passionately interested in prototype and exhibition jobs, Whenever work of this kind was erected in the shop, Cornwall spent much less time at his desk, and much more in the section. In these instances his behaviour was construed as meaning that he was trying to show off before the “higher-ups”, I noticed what others had pointed out, that when Cornwall was talking to designers and managers (and these persons were often on the shop floor to inspect special work) he “scraped his tongue”* and used big words (often incorrectly). Also, since it was usually Bill and Lionel who assembled the specials, Cornwall was condemned for giving too much attention to the “Blue Eyes”. Yet those who complained about Cornwall’s neglect of them, were the first to complain if he spent too much time on the shop floor inspecting the work: “Why doesn’t he get back in the office, and let the men get on with the job, he has no

*After Christopher Chataway, a famous British long-distance runner.

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confidence in himself or in his lads”, was a common remark. “He has the wrong approach for a foreman,” was another. As far as I could make out from remarks made to me by various workers, the good foreman was defined as a man who has confidence in his men and shows it himself. He is not forever “mooching” around the shop interfering, but he is expected to take a friendly interest from time to time in his men’s difficulties. He is expected to be cheerful, and he is expected to defend the interests of his men against management, if there is a divergence of views. And above all, he must bear no malice, and play no favourites. On most counts, Cornwall failed to live up to these expectations. The episode of the tool shortage was frequently cited against Cornwall, since his behaviour during it was contrary to all these expectations. During the first months of my stay in the shop, there were many complaints that some of the larger hand-tools were useless and needed replacement, and that there was a shortage of these tools. They had to be shared, and often a man would be held up while waiting for someone else to finish with the tool. I was told that Cornwall had been approached repeatedly but had done nothing. So pressing did the complaints become that, so the story went, Cornwall started to avoid people in case they raised the matter again. George Brewer, the shop steward, was then asked to take the matter up officially with Cornwall. Cornwall said that he would see what he could do but he did not think management would supply new tools. Meanwhile, the men continued to grumble and complain, until finally, the matter was taken via Hughie McKenzie, the Shop Stewards’ Convenor, to the Departmental manager. Within a matter of days, the new tools were in the shop. Whatever the truth of the matter was, it was plain to the men in the shop that Cornwall was afraid himself to approach the manager to voice a legitimate request, and this showed he was not concerned for the welfare of the men. There was no doubt that Cornwall was unpopular with most of the men, and the youngsters especially were strongly and continuously critical of him. Yet on one count he was universally praised. It was said of Cornwall that he bore no malice, and that he would never report a misdemeanour to higher management: “You can have a blazing row with Cornwall, but next morning it’s forgotten”; “He never bears a grudge”; “You can say what you like about Cornwall, but he’s no tale teller”. All this was high praise, since to tell tales to management offended against a dominant value of this group. Cornwall’s Tory politics and his freemasonry alienated him from some of the men. Many of them told me that such a man as he *i.e., he dropped his Lancashire accent, and attempted to speak with a middle-class accent.

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would never have been promoted but for these allegiances which he shared with management. I have often encountered the belief which I found in this workshop, that membership of a Freemason’s Lodge was a sure passport to promotion, much better than ability or technical knowhow, just as left-wing political views will debar an able man. I am in no position to judge whether these beliefs are justified, but they certainly influenced the attitudes of some of the men to Cornwall, their foreman. Peter Brown, the chargehand, was universally liked. He was a man of 35, enthusiastic about his job and tremendously energetic. He was never still, but forever pottering around the shop helping out here and there, routing completed work into test, helping Les at the oilpump, having the slinger tidy up the storage space, checking up with the storeman on requisitions, or any other task he could find. Peter had occasion every day, to talk to all the workers in the shop. He was a cheerful fellow, and he shared many of the interests of the men in the shop and there was no real or simulated social gulf between them. Peter was a married man with two young children. Unlike most of the men in the shop, he was a “foreigner”, a native of the Midlands. Peter had worked as a semi-skilled industrial worker for many different firms. He came to Jay’s in 1948, and Jay’s gave him his first supervisory job. He seemed to enjoy it immensely. Joe Grundy, the inspector, was not directly responsible to Cornwall, but to the factory inspectorate. His status carried with it a place at the foreman’s desk and a distinctive uniform. Joe was responsible for the inspection of the mechanical details of the completed transformer, the wirings, the connections, and so on. At each stage in the assembly, Joe had to inspect, and the worker could not proceed to the next stage without Joe’s signature. So, like Peter, Joe’s work brought him in contact with every worker almost every day. Joe’s job was not onerous, and, being a talkative man, he spent much time on the section, even when not inspecting, just passing the time of day, or arguing about the local football team, politics, religion, or any other subject which came up. Joe had worked at Jay’s, mostly as a semi-skilled process worker, for 32 years. He was married and his one son was at University. Although Joe knew well and talked to every man on the section he was not wholly accepted as “one of the boys”. This was partly due to his age but mostly because it was felt that he was not entitled to the position he occupied. It was said that Joe had been lucky to occupy the next bed to one of Jay’s managers, when he was in hospital. The two men became friends and Joe was offered the job of inspector when he returned to work. I doubt this story but the fact that it was told, and believed, illustrates the general attitude to Joe.

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In this chapter I have tried to give an impression of the work of the small Transformer section and of the persons who worked there. In Table 4 I have summarized the information I have about these persons. This summary may be of use to the reader in following the subsequent analysis. There are three persons included in the table whom I have not yet mentioned, since they were not engaged directly on productive operations in the section. When I describe the mechanisms of control over output and earnings which the workers employed, I shall have to mention them, so I shall introduce them here. They are Slim Landon, the floor controller; old Jim, the storekeeper; and Cyril, the ratefixer. Slim, a man in his late fifties, was the shop floor representative of the Schedule Control Department. His task was to see that the component parts for assemblies were on hand as and when required by the schedule, and to keep Schedule Control informed of progress. Slim’s job was, for the most part, a clerical job. He spent most of his time at a desk in the feeder stores. He passed through the section often, en route to other departments, but he rarely stopped. “A waste of a wage”, was the comment his passing most frequently elicited. Slim was in his late fifties. In his youth he had been a famous footballer, and he had for many years after that owned a business of his own. It was said that he “drank the profits”, and had been fortunate to get a decent job at Jay’s. Jim issued small stores to the men on the small section and knew them all very well. Although he rarely came on to the section he was a valuable informant. He had time to spare to talk, and he learned much of what was happening in the section from the gossip retailed over his counter or amongst the bins. Jim was nearing retiring age after many years service with Jay’s. Cyril, the ratefixer, figured much more prominently in the life of the shop than either Jim or Slim. He was employed in the Planning and Ratefixing Department where he spent most of his time getting out requisitions, job instruction sheets, etc., for the section. But he was also responsible for fixing rates for all tasks performed on the section. When new designs were introduced, or modifications were made to old designs, Cyril would time-study the tasks and fix rates for them. And when workers claimed compensation for delays, amendments, repair jobs, and the like, Cyril would negotiate the rates with them. Most days of the week, Cyril spent between ten minutes and one hour in the section negotiating allowances. From time to time he would spend a whole day, and on occasion two or three days in the shop, making time studies. Of all the representatives of management who were known to the workers or who had contact with them, Cyril was the one whose activities stimulated their liveliest interest. Cyril had been an erector himself. He was a young married man of 30, who had been with Jay’s for eight years, He had no special qualifications in industrial engineering, but he possessed a good

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knowledge of transformer erection and was not easily fooled. He was also skilled in argument, and his job offered him opportunities in abundance to exercise this skill. When I was discussing the workshop at Wye Garments and its personnel, I first described the productive roles of the workers and then included a chapter on the friendship groupings. This distinction is unnecessary in the analaysis of the workshop at Jay’s. Here the groupings on the process corresponded almost exactly with the friendship groupings. This arose from the freedom which was given to the workers to choose with whom they would work, and also in what part of the section they would work. It was easy for workers to arrange to work with those whose company they found congenial, and to avoid those whom they disliked. The productive arrangements at Wye offered no such opportunities to the workers, and there there was little correspondence between the groupings on the process and the tea break and lunch groupings. Neither was there anything about the productive process at Jay’s which placed one worker in a position of dependence on another for the supply of components for assembly, If a man wanted to work alone, he could usually arrange this. If he preferred to share work and piecework earnings with another worker this was just as easy to arrange. And no single worker or pair were dependent on the efforts of any other member of the section for the supply of components to them. Therefore the productive arrangements themselves did not create rivalries and jealousies between workers. Any breakdown in the flow of work which affected a man’s capacity to earn, was so obviously the responsibility of some person or agency outside the section that this was where the complaints were directed, right outside the group altogether. One condition for the solidarity I observed within the group, was the existence of these outside agencies as targets for criticism and complaint. And, as I shall show in detail later, this solidarity was strengthened in the process of attempts at control over the effects of some of the imputed shortcomings of these outside agencies. This was so marked that the cleavages within the section, generated by Cornwall’s policy in allocating work, by differences of age and temperament, and the like, never offered a serious threat to the solidarity, The correspondence of the productive groupings to the friendship groupings can be clearly seen if Fig. 10, which shows the productive groupings, is compared with Fig. 11 which shows the groupings at tea breaks inthe morning and afternoon, and lists the members of one of the canteen lunch groups which I shall be discussing in a later section. In Fig. 11 it will be seen that the workers left the job at break time and assembled in groups in various parts of the shop. The small-side men split up into three main groups, the Blue Eyes, the youngsters, and the tankers. The two labourers, Reuben and Les, sat by themselves, and Eddie and

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FIG. 11. Tea-break and lunch groups

Tot ate alone. The foreman, the charge-hand and the inspector went to the desk, and all the medium-side men went to sit by the stoves on the medium side. These arrangements persisted without change during the whole of my stay in the section. Although I usually sat with Syd Smales and Ches, I was able to pass to the other groups from time to time and join in conversation. Conversation ranged over a large number of topics; football, politics, sex (there was an inexhaustible stock of smutty stories), and so forth. At one period there was great enthusiasm for puzzles of all kinds. Much time was spent also discussing personalities and incidents in the sections. But the topic which took up the bulk of the time was the work, the bonus scheme, work allocation, and the booking-in procedure which was employed by the men in the section. In my next chapter I go on to discuss the incentive scheme. This discussion is followed by an analysis of the controls which were operated within the section over output and earnings.

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Before I do this I have to mention the three women who worked within the small Transformer section on the assembly of small electrical parts. These parts were not used in the assemblies which were built in the shop. Components were delivered direct to the women and their product was taken direct from the shop. Therefore the productive process did not bring the women and the men into contact. The women worked in isolation in one corner of the shop, and though they were under the direction of the foreman Cornwall, they were not party to any of the disputes about allocation of work, etc., which divided the men. I shall not therefore include them in my analysis at this point I shall leave a discussion of their behaviour until I have to compare the behaviour of men and women, in a general conclusion to the two case studies.

TABLE 4. WORKERS IN THE SMALL TRANSFORMER SECTION

CHAPTER 9 THE METHOD OF WAGE PAYMENT AT JAY’S

THE incentive system at Jay’s was based upon allowed times for tasks performed. Jobs coming in to the small transformer section were not given a cash price, as at Wye. Instead, the cash reward for extra effort expended over a certain standard was calculated from the time saved on allowed times. When, in a later chapter, I attempt to explain differences in behaviour between workers at Wye and at Jay’s, I shall argue that the difference in the payment system is important. I think the reason for its importance will become obvious when the system at Jay’s is explained, and the behaviour of the workers there is described. Cyril, the ratefixer, received the drawings from the drawing office for each of the jobs which were scheduled to pass through the small erection shop. From these, and from the lists of materials supplied with them, he arranged for the requisition of the materials, and drafted out the instructions to the worker about the method to be followed in assembly. These instructions were filled out on a standard sheet for the folder. The allowed time was included as an item on the job instruction sheet. If a similar job had passed through the section previously it was a simple matter to look up the previously fixed allowed time and to write it in, and this is what happened in most cases. A job so nearly similar to a previous job that a time study was unnecessary, was given an estimated time. This estimate was based upon a summation of element times, of which records were kept. Even in the case of a new design, it was sometimes possible to build up an estimated time from element times, But on many new jobs Cyril would write on the instruction sheet “time study required” or “see ratefixer”. On minor repair jobs coming into the shop, or “one off”* jobs unlikely to be repeated, no estimated time was prepared, and either the job was done at day rate, or else a private bargain was struck between Cyril and the worker to whom the foreman had allocated the job, about the time to be allowed. However the allowed time was arrived at, the worker was free to qu estion it. The allowed time calculated by the ratefixer after a time study was always communicated to the worker concerned, and it was not written on to the instruction card until he accepted it.

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Once a worker accepted a rate, his signature was secured, and from then on, according to agreement between the Trade Unions and the management, the time could not be altered until design or method changed. If the allowed time was an estimated time for a new job, the same procedure was followed. Of course, on repair or “one off” jobs the whole process was one of bargaining, the ratefixer usually commencing the bidding with the words, “What do you think it’s worth?” Then haggling would go on until some compromise was reached. When a “one off” job presented novel problems of assembly, or where a specially high-quality product was demanded, as for prototype or exhibition jobs, the job was declared to be a “covered time” job. On this kind of job the worker was paid a fixed bonus regardless of the time he spent on the job. This bonus was the subject of negotiation between Cyril and the worker or workers concerned. When calculating allowed times from time-study data, Cyril used an effort rating in his calculation. Since only one worker was timed, and since other workers might subsequently be called upon to do an exactly similar job, the actual observed times had to be levelled in such a way as to ensure that the allowed time arrived at would allow an operator of average skill and working at average pace to save time at a rate which would earn him average bonus. Therefore the performance of the particular worker who was studied had to be rated. That is to say, Cyril had to judge whether he was working at normal pace, or at a greater or less pace than normal. The workers in the shop were greatly concerned about the effort ratings they were given by Cyril when he was studying them. They were quite prepared to accept that Cyril kept accurate check upon actual times taken, although, as I shall show, it was always considered wise during time studies to introduce as many time-wasting operations as possible. But they were always prepared to argue about the rating which was given for effort. The general line taken was, “My guess is as good as his”. Not only the worker who was being timed, but also the other workers in the shop, were interested in the bargain which was struck, since it was likely to affect their future capacity to earn. In a very real sense, every worker in the shop was a participant in every argument over allowed times, and if it appeared on any single occasion that the ratefixer was trying to drive too hard a bargain with one worker, others would often leave their work for a few minutes to join in the argument. And in tea breaks and at lunch table, information was swapped about “what Cyril wanted to give us for this” or “how we worked a fast one on Cyril”, so that even newcomers to the shop soon accumulated great knowledge about how allowed times were computed and the *These were single jobs so unique in their design, that it was thought that they would never be repeated, or would recur very infrequently.

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“correct” attitude to adopt to Cyril. Therefore, the system of rate fixing, in a situation where every worker might be called on to do any job, encouraged the worker’s interest in what his colleagues were doing, and in the quality of his relationship with Cyril, who represented management in the all-important process of fixing allowed times. In contrast, the Wye situation, with its minute subdivision and specialization of operations and its limitations on freedom of movement, did not encourage this interest.* In Jay’s, the freedom to move around the shop which the productive system allowed also enabled the worker to pursue this interest in his colleagues. I shall return to this point later. The system of fixing allowed times was, taken by itself, fairly straight-forward. But the system of wage payment, of which the allowed times were an important element, was complicated. The complication arose mostly from the difficulties of ensuring a smooth and continuous flow of work in a batch production shop as this, at the final assembly point. But they arose also from the structure of the national and district engineering wages agreements, on which the allowed time incentive scheme had been grafted. Few workers worked the whole of a 44-hr week on piecework, and the firm, for reasons which will become apparent, did not guarantee to its employees 44 hr of piecework each week. Components for final assembly did not always come up in sequence, and the worker might have to wait for a single component before he could get on with his work. On one occasion, which I remember well, the coil storage space was full, but because of hold-ups in the core shop “down the line”, no cores were being delivered. Many workers were sitting around waiting for them. On another occasion there was a shortage of orders, and no components were being delivered to the shop, and everyone was idle, save Bill and Lionel who were engaged on a prototype job. A frequent source of hold-up was failure to deliver tanks on time from the tank shop. The tankers would complain that the stoves and the test enclosure were full of completed assemblies but that there were no tanks to put them in. All time spent waiting as a result of hold-ups of this kind was paid at the hourly time rate of wages for semi-skilled workers in the industry. The worker himself was responsible for keeping an account of time spent in this way. A worker seldom drew time-rate alone when he was working on assembly. Most assembly jobs were piecework jobs, that is they carried an allowed time and bonus could be earned on them. But if the rate for a job was in dispute, it might be declared a “daywork job” pending settlement, in which case the worker drew time rates for the period he was working on that job. With this exception, all the hours which were spent on actual assembly (or tanking) were paid for at the negotiated piecework

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rate for the industry. I emphasize here that there were two hourly rates for the industry, the time-rate and the piecework rate. And every piecework job had its allowed time, so that in addition to his hourly earnings the worker was able, by saving time, to earn an additional bonus. I shall describe the formula by which time saved is translated into a cash bonus presently. But it is necessary to say here that it is expressed in the first place as a percentage of a fixed bonus datum. This percentage arrangement made it possible easily to award compensation to workers when working on piecework, for delays which occurred through no fault of theirs. For example, if a worker was unable to carry on with his job because the overhead crane happened to be engaged elsewhere—a common occurrence— he was entitled to a 45 per cent bonus allowance. He could claim a similar allowance if he was held up waiting for the inspector. This happened sometimes when the shop was busy and Joe Grundy was unable to meet all the demands on his services. The worker could also claim 45 per cent for delays due to errors in design, drawing-office mistakes, and badly fitting components. For lengthy hold-ups the worker was entitled to approach the ratefixer to negotiate a special allowance which would enable him to earn a reasonable bonus for the whole job. I have already mentioned the “covered time” job, on which a fixed rate of bonus was paid irrespective of the time taken. In fixing the rate of bonus the ratefixer would bear in mind the worker’s previous level of bonus earnings, and the importance of the job. I now sum up some of the items in the weekly wages calculation: 1. Payment at time rate of wages for waiting time or for time spent on daywork jobs; 2. Payment at piecework rate of wages for hours spent on piecework; and 3. Bonus payment for time saved on allowed times. The percentage bonus, on which the bonus payment (item 3) was based, was affected by: a. The bonus rate of 45 per cent for time spent waiting for the crane; b. The bonus rate of 45 per cent for time spent on amendments occasioned by errors in design, faulty materials, etc.; and c. The negotiated bonus rate for covered time jobs. *It is true, of course, that in Wye workers were frequently transferred from job to job. But the system inhibited the spread of knowledge about rates.

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The weight of each element in the wages calculation varied from week to week according to conditions in the shop; whether the flow of work was smooth or intermittent, whether the crane was in demand in other parts of the shop, how many covered time jobs were allocated, and the number of faulty parts. All these things were largely beyond the control of the workers. But it was within the power of the workers to vary the weight of the different elements in the wages calculation to suit themselves, regardless, up to a point, of variations of work flow, and management decisions. To understand why this was so, it is necessary to explain the method which was employed for booking in work, the formula which was used to calculate cash bonus earned from time saved, and the method of combining the various items which made up the weekly wage. There was a time clerk attached to each section. Nellie, the time clerk in the small transformer section, worked at the foreman’s desk. She received from the workers an account of the way in which they had spent their time in the shop, the Job Nos. of the work on which they had been engaged, the time saved on these jobs, and the amount of waiting time. She entered this information on standard forms, and calculated the bonus percentage for each worker. The forms were then forwarded by her to the wages office, and there the cash due to the worker was made up. The time clerk, Nellie, did not allocate work, and she kept no check upon whether the times booked were accurate or not. This was the responsibility of the foreman, and each of the forms made out by Nellie had to be signed by him as a correct record before going to the wages office. In fact, no accurate check was kept on the way time was spent. The foreman relied upon the workers to keep the records, and only rarely, when it was obvious that a worker was in error, did the foreman insist on the alteration of a time sheet. Nellie often told me about her job and its difficulties: “I get the time from the men every day for the day previous. At least I should. Sometimes the men do not put their time in and I have to chase it up. [In fact she came on to the section every day to ask workers ‘what about some time?’.] I fill in a white form for piecework time and a pink form for daywork time. On the piecework form I note down the difference between the allowed time and the actual time the men report to me. I calculate the percentage bonus from this. I send both sheets to the wages office, and copies to the Planning Office. They go from the Planning Office to Costing. On every form there is a cost code, so they can work out the labour cost of the job”.

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According to the management plan, then, by this method a close check could be kept of the labour cost of various jobs, and the ratefixers could judge whether the allowed times were “tight” or “loose”. But, as I shall presently show, the times booked in as actual times were not in fact actual times in many cases, so that the checks by Costing and Planning were based on inaccurate information about how time had been spent in the shop. During my stay in the Transformer shop all grades in the Electrical Engineering industry received a rise in pay. For the semi-skilled grades this amounted to 11/- per week. The erectors and the tankers in the shop were semi-skilled workers. The effect of the rise on their daywork and piecework rates is shown in Table 5. The chief effect was to increase the daywork rate (a) by 11/-, and the piecework rate (d) by the same amount. The increase of the piecework rate was added to the cost-of-living element, leaving what I call the bonus datum (b) unaffected. The significance of this will become apparent when I have described how items (a), (b), and (c) were combined to make up the weekly earnings of the operative. I shall leave the trainee allowance and the piecework allowance for trainees out of the calculation for the time being. They complicate the matter considerably. I illustrate the way in which the items are built up into weekly earnings by taking actual figures from data compiled by the Costs Department of the firm. The first example is of an operative who worked a 44-hr week of piecework. He booked in no waiting time on dayrate and worked no overtime. This was unusual but it serves as a simple example of wages calculation. The operative in question was fully trained, thus his piecework rate (d) was 143/ 6d. on the new weekly rates. He completed, or more correctly he booked in, 44 hr of piecework: thus his earnings for piecework hours were 143/6d. If the opera-tive had completed every job in the week in exactly the allowed times, his total piecework earnings exclusive of shop productivity bonus would have remained at 143/ 6d. But the operative had saved time at the rate of 101 per cent (a figure which I shall explain presently) and he was thus entitled to a bonus of 101 per cent of his bonus datum 64/2d, i.e. 64/9d. His pay sheet for the week therefore read as follows: Hours on daywork .. .. .. .. .. Hours on piecework .. .. .. .. .. Hours on overtime .. .. .. .. .. Rate of bonus earnings .. .. .. .. Payment for daywork hours .. .. .. Payment for piecework hours .. .. .. Piecework bonus earnings .. .. .. .. Overtime allowance .. .. .. .. .. Productivity bonus .. .. .. .. .. GROSS EARNINGS .. .. .. .. ..

nil 44 nil 101% nil 143/6 64/9 nil 11/7 219/10

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Before I give a more complicated wages calculation I note that if the operative I have been discussing had saved no time on his allowed times he would have been 19/- worse off than if he had worked the whole week on daywork rate. My second example is more typical except that the amount of daywork time is greater than the average for the shop. The worker booked in 20·1 hr of waiting time, and 27·9 hr of piecework time. This made his total hours worked 48. He had therefore worked four hours of overtime. His rate of bonus earnings was 84%. His earnings were calculated as follows: Payment for daywork hours (20·1 at 162/6) .. Payment for piecework hours (27·9 at 143/6) .. Piecework bonus earnings (84 per cent of at 64/2) .. .. .. Overtime allowance (4 hr at time and a half) .. Productivity bonus .. .. .. .. .. GROSS EARNINGS .. .. .. .. ..

74/3 91/– 33/11 7/5 9/10 216/5

I intend to deal presently with the trainee allowances (items (e) and (f) in the table). I now explain the relationship between time saved and per cent bonus rate and the method of calculating the productivity bonus. The formula generally used by the operatives themselves to calculate their bonus rate will serve as a convenient starting-point. The formula is: An example which was often given to me by the operatives in explanation is a job which is allowed 6 hr and which the operative completed in 4 hr. According to the formula the rate of bonus earnings on that job is The chief point to note about this calculation is that if the job is done in exactly the allowed time the rate of bonus earnings is 27½ per cent. And this, when translated into cash terms, i.e. a percentage of the piecework datum, is approximately the amount of bonus earnings required to bridge the gap between the daywork and the piecework rate. Thus for the operative to make piecework worth while he had to exceed a rate of 27½ per cent on his piecework jobs over the week. The operatives described this as “making up the 19 bob”.* The operatives found it easy on the whole to “make up the 19 bob” because the allowed times were calculated to allow the

*Slang for shilling.

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TABLE 5 WAGE RATES

*Paid dayrate for this period. NEW WEEKLY RATES = 11s. increase (post 5.3.56)

*Dayrate for this period.

average operative, working at average speed, 80 per cent bonus. Some of the allowed times were “loose” enough to make possible bonus rates well above 80 per cent. In fact I was often told by workers that an allowed time was no good unless the operative could make “a steady 90”. “A steady 90” meant that the job could be done in about two-thirds of the allowed time working at a pace defined by the custom of the shop as “steady”. Later I shall discuss at some length the conception of a “steady pace”. In this shop it lay somewhere between what was known as “teararsing” or “job spoiling” on the one hand, and “scrounging” on the other. A “steady 90” would mean a cash addition of about 57s. to the piecework rate of the trained operative making about 200s. (£10) per week, excluding overtime and productivity bonus. The manifest object of the system of piecework I have described was to encourage the workers to exert maximum effort to increase their bonus percentage, and hence their earnings. And, according to the calculation maximum effort = maximum output. As a further stimulus to effort, a productivity bonus was paid to each worker each week. Like the piecework bonus, this bonus was expressed as a percentage, but the two, although related, must not be confused. The productivity bonus was paid out as a percentage of earnings, the percentage being calculated as follows: The average bonus earned by all operatives in the Transformer

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Shop was calculated each week. The difference between this figure and 80 per cent, i.e. the expected average bonus, was published as the Productivity Bonus. If the average bonus earned in the shop was 90 per cent, the productivity bonus would be announced as 10 percent; and each operative would receive an addition of 10 per cent of his earnings. The method of computing the produc-tivity bonus was not understood by many of the workers. Even if they had known, it is clear that the productivity bonus would not have acted as a direct incentive for them, since it was not clear to the individual worker what effect his own efforts were having on the average bonus for the whole Department, on which the calculations were based. The productivity bonus was regarded by the workers as compensation for the rather anomalous effects of pay increases negotiated nationally. These pay rises made no difference to the piecework datum from which piecework bonus earnings were calculated (see Table 5), so that the operatives gained less than full benefit from the increase. Since the productivity bonus was based upon earnings and not upon the bonus datum, it operated to restore the balance. I now consider the allowances made to trainees. Table 5 shows that the piecework datum for trainees was considerably less than that for the fully trained man, and that it increased as the various stages of training were completed, reaching the top rate after two years. The same, of course, applied to the piecework rate, which was merely the bonus datum plus a variable cost-of-living item. For the first three months of training, when the trainee was working with a fully trained man, he was paid the daywork rate plus an allowance of 10s. He also received the productivity bonus. He was not on piecework. He was usually allowed to start piecework after three months; but since he was not yet able to work as quickly as the fully trained man, he was allowed a percentage piecework allowance, in addition to the Trainee allowance (now reduced to 7s. 6d.), in this case 15 per cent. This meant that he could add 15 per cent to all allowed times. For example, an allowed time of six hours in the bonus calculation for a trainee in his second three months would become 6.9 hr. He would therefore have to save less time than the fully trained man to get equal piecework bonus. But this would not bring his earnings up to the level of the trained man for, although his bonus percentage might be the same, his piecework datum and his piecework rate were lower. He was compensated to some extent for this by his trainee allowance. Another compensation for the trainee was his “bank” of 50 hr. At the beginning of training, which was done from the start in the shop and not in a training school, each trainee was given a total “bank” of 50 hr. If he found that, because of difficulties due to lack of experience, he took more than the allowed time on a job, he could take an hour or two from his “bank” to reduce his actual time taken. He could then

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declare a bonus earned. But once the hours had been so used they could not be used again. A careful check on the “bank” was kept by Cyril, the ratefixer. As the trainee became more skilled, his trainee allowance and his piecework allowance were progressively reduced, and his “banking account” became exhausted. After two years he came on to full rate and had to stand on his own feet. Every trainee was entitled to the shop productivity bonus, and also to enhanced rates for any overtime worked. The effect of the “bank” system, and of the piecework allowances for trainees, was to keep the shop level of percentage bonus earnings near to what it would have been if all had been fully trained, and this ensured that the productivity bonus did not fluctuate with the proportion of trainees in the shop. I have been careful to explain every item in the system of wage payment, as it applied both to fully trained men and to trainees. This has been necessary as an introduction to the discussion which follows of the way in which the system was manipulated in the day-to-day life of the shop. The complications I have described also illustrate the effect that the existence of strong national Trade Unions with power at workshop level can have on systems of wage payment. These complications seem to have emerged as the result of a process whereby national and district agreements have been adjusted to meet the needs of particular firms or particular workshops. For example, in a situation of keen competition between firms for a certain kind of semi-skilled labour, it is possible for a firm to introduce, under pressure from the Trade Unions, a system of special allowances for delays, or to allow the level of “normal” bonus earnings to increase, perhaps by allowing a relaxation of effort ratings. Or a special kind of bonus, based on works or departmental output, may be added in order to increase weekly earnings to a competitive level.* Where workshop bargaining is firmly established, all these adjustments will be made in the light of the conditions prevailing in a particular firm or workshop. In addition each side will attempt to safeguard its longterm interests. Thus, although there is a recognizable national system of engineering wage payment, each firm is likely to have its own more complicated variation upon it, and each workshop in the firm is likely to have its own additions.

*For a fuller discussion of this kind of process, and of its consequences for the theory of wage determination, see: Berhend, Hilde. “The Effort Bargain”, Industrial and Labour Relations Review. July (1957).

CHAPTER 10 NORMS, EXPECTATIONS AND PERFORMANCE

IN preceding chapters I have described the controls devised by the management at Jay’s to maximize the output of the workshops. I have also indicated some of the technical and social difficulties which arise in attempting to control tightly the batch production of complicated electrical equipment. One of the elements in the scheme of control was the piecework incentive scheme which was designed to reward extra effort expended by the workers with extra cash pro rata. It will be clear from the account given of the system of wage payment that management tried to compensate the workers for any losses accruing from the shortcomings in management planning. Yet the workers in this workshop had devised elaborate techniques of manipulating the system of wage payment to serve their own interests. In this chapter I shall show how the working group operated controls over the behaviour of its members to preserve these techniques of manipulation, and I shall also show how the two sets of controls came into conflict. I shall then describe the processes by which these conflicts were handled. I hope that, in this analysis, I shall be able to trace the complex of inter-dependent factors, economic, technical, and social, which affected the performance and earnings of the workers. Finally, I shall examine the earnings of workers, and try to account for regularities and irregularities by reference to the operation of these factors. I begin by describing a number of episodes in the life of the shop. EPISODE 1. A TIME STUDY FOR SYD AND BILL One morning I was standing at the bench where the transformers were being built, chatting to Bill, when Syd came up to us wheeling a small truck with a tank on it. The tank was one of those designed to take the assembly which Bill and Lionel had been building. Syd said that he had brought it down in preparation for a time-study he was to have at 1.30 p.m. I was puzzled that he

136 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

should have wheeled the tank down to Bill’s bench from the tanking section, since all the tools and equipment for tanking were at the tanking section 80 yd or so away. The reason why he brought down the tank became clear to me later in the day. At lunch time I joined my usual group for lunch at the canteen. This group included Syd Smales, Baldy, Claude, and Harry Birtwhistle. Discussion turned on the question—why Bill, Lionel and Fatty still managed to get 80 per cent covered time on the job while the tankers were to be time studied at once. The following is a summary of the discussion. BALDY: “If a job is 80 per cent, it should be 80 per cent right through. If you were on a motor-car assembly line you would be annoyed if the fellow who put the wheels on was getting a guaranteed 80 per cent and you were on piecework”. SYD SMALES: “Yes, and what do you think. Bill knew a fortnight ago that the bottom clamps would not fit over the studs on the tank bottom. He knew that the holes would have to be filed out. He could have done this and got 80 per cent for it. We will have to do it at 45 per cent on piecework”. HARRY: “Well, we all know that they are the ‘blue eyes’”. CLAUDE: “If it’s a good thing you are on, you don’t want to spoil it. The thing to do is not to spoil the 80 per cent lark, but to get the good work shared out”. SYD then apparently changed the subject: “You remember when Old Ches first brought his car to work he parked it round the front of the shop. Black [the shop superintendent] shifted him. Then he parked it round the back and he was shifted from there. This was just because he was not a manager. In this firm it’s not what you do that counts, it’s who you are”. The outcome of the lunch-hour discussion was to convince Syd that he was being unfairly treated, and further discussion just after lunch with his tanking colleagues Eddie and Old Ches, confirmed him in his determination to refuse a time-study. He said that he would tell Cyril to time-study Bill on erecting the job before he came to the tankers. Syd said that it was better to be on 80 per cent job for two-thirds of a week than to be on 90 per cent all the week, because you could book as much time as you liked at 80 per cent. [For example, it was possible to book more hours to an 80 per cent covered time job than had actually been taken. The hours saved could be used to make 90 per cent on piecework jobs. Or perhaps time spent waiting for materials could be booked to the covered time job to earn 80 per cent—T.L.]

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At 1.30 p.m. when Cyril arrived equipped for the time-study, Syd engaged him in heated discussion for about ten minutes. I was not close enough to hear what was said. When they separated, Syd went over to the medium transformer section and I supposed that he had gone to see George Brewer, the shop steward. Cyril went down the shop and talked for a few minutes to Bill and Lionel, who were at this time working on an exhibition job— another covered-time job. Then Bill and Cyril went over to Bill’s bench and spent about a quarter of an hour looking at Bill’s piecework book and at Cyril’s record book. While this was going on Syd returned from his visit to George Brewer. At 2 p.m. Cyril was talking to Lionel. Then at 2.15 p.m. Lionel came back to the tanks and joined in discussion with all three tankers, Syd, Eddie and Old Ches. It was exactly 2.26 p.m. when Cyril began the time-study. I asked him if he would mind if I made a study of a time-study man doing a time-study and he said that he had no objection. Syd also agreed. As soon as Cyril had “booked on” Syd walked right down the shop to collect the tank which he had taken down there in the morning. When he came back with the tank he again walked off, this time to fetch the folder for the job from the office. Syd had just started on the job when Ben Garvey came up to talk with Cyril. I heard something about shortage of material for a job Garvey was doing. No sooner had Garvey gone when Slim, the progress chaser, came up to discuss a point with Cyril. While Cyril’s attention was diverted Syd dawdled, screwing on nuts and then screwing them off again. I caught the eye of Eddie who winked at me and pointed to Syd as if to say “for all his threats he is having the time-study”. All through the study period, people stopped in passing to have a word with Cyril or to joke with both Cyril and Syd. At tea break a discussion took place (in the absence of Cyril) about what tactics could be adopted to fox him. When Cyril came back after the tea break to continue the timestudy, Syd brought up the affair of Bill and Lionel. He said that he had heard that Bill, Lionel and Fatty had been booking in 15 hr each for erecting the job, but that Bill had admitted that the job could be done comfortably in 6 hr. Cyril was not prepared to either confirm or deny these reports. About 4.30 p.m., just as Syd was finishing the job, Peter Brown and Joe Grundy came up and later they were joined by a draughtsman. All stood chatting for a few minutes. Then Cyril left. Next morning Cyril ’phoned to say that he was offering 3½ hr as an allowed time. Syd did not look very pleased about this; but when Cyril came down Syd accepted the time, though not without a show of reluctance. He insisted that the question of who should

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file out the holes on the bottom clamps should be decided at once. Cyril went down to Bill’s bench and brought Fatty. Eddie and Old Ches, who, with Syd, were going to be affected, joined in the discussion. Peter Brown, the chargehand, came up to investigate. Peter adopted a conciliatory attitude, but Syd insisted that Bill had known all along that the bottom clamps would not fit. It was not as if he had sent up the job to the tankers in ignorance of this. Why then, said Syd, should we have to open out the holes at 45 per cent, while Bill was on covered time at 80 per cent? After a while the discussion petered out. Syd then told me that it had been decided that Bill was to be time-studied the following day. Later, I asked Bill if this were so and he confirmed the statement. But he added that he was not surprised since he had been asking for a time-study for a while. Bill’s time-study was a much quieter affair than Syd’s, although I gathered that there had been some argument when Bill insisted on keeping a record of the time he took, as a check on Cyril’s calculations, and also when Bill criticized Cyril for entering up units of less than a minute and brought the shop steward in. A day or two later, when both Syd and Bill had operated with the new times, I enquired how they were making out. They both said that they were quite satisfied. Fatty, whom I also asked, said that the times allowed him to do well working at a nice pace and not killing himself. This episode illustrates the emphasis which the operatives placed on the principle of equality of treatment. Syd’s behaviour showed that he would have preferred to have had covered time at 80 per cent rather than piecework, but since this was clearly out of the question, he insisted that Bill should also go on piecework. Cyril and Peter Brown also subscribed to the principle of equal treatment, for as soon as they saw that there was no other ground on which to take a stand, they bowed to Syd’s insistence on a time-study for Bill. Other episodes which I shall describe will also emphasize this democratic assumption that all should be treated alike. I well remember Reuben telling me a few days after I started: “Some people here treat labourers like shit, they think that because they get a few bob a week more they can run you around the place, but it’s all wrong”. The principle also underlay the description of Bill and Lionel, and to a lesser extent Mac and Tot, Ches and Eddie, as the “Blue Eyes”, the “Benton Boys”, or “Cornwall’s Blue Eyes”, the implication being that there should be no favoured people. Episode 1 also shows the acceptance by all the operatives of the legitimacy of “working a fast one” on the representatives of management, especially the ratefixer. Claude put it very well when he said that everyone ought to get on a good thing if they could, and the 7 benefits should be shared. His advice happened to be

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impracticable in Syd’s case, but nobody argued against Claude. But both Syd and Bill, once they had accepted that they were to share a not-so-good thing, i.e. piecework, were both intent on adopting tactics to wring from Cyril the maximum allowed time. To do this they both used the power of the Union, or they threatened to do so. Syd went to see George Brewer about the question of the time-study, Bill brought George in to decide on the question of the minimum unit of time to be used in Cyril’s study. A further point arising from Episode 1 is the general interest which was roused in the shop about the outcome of the dispute over Syd’s time-study. This general interest in particular rates comes out again clearly in the next two episodes. EPISODE 2. A TIME STUDY FOR MUTT AND JEFF One morning a week or two after I started, I was sweeping in the passage between the small and medium sections when I noticed an “office type” whom I had never seen before talking to Mutt and Jeff, two medium-side erectors. I asked Reuben who the “office type” was, and I was told that it was Askey, the ratefixer for medium transformers. Further enquiries revealed that he had come down at the request of Mutt and Jeff, to time-study a new job. George Brewer, the steward, later told me that the operatives had objected to Askey’s estimated time for the job, and, according to agreement, they had asked for a time-study to be done. Whenever my duties permitted, I watched this study, which lasted over several days. On the first day I noticed that the two operatives were working at what seemed to me to be a faster rate than was usual in the shop. George Brewer also thought so; I saw him gesturing to Mutt from behind the ratefixer. There was no mistaking the meaning of his gestures. They said plainly: “Slow down a bit, you are going to spoil the job”. In the queue for dinner at the canteen I mentioned what I had seen to George and he expressed disquiet at the behaviour of his colleagues. A few minutes later, when we were seated, he took the matter up with Mutt, who was sitting at the next table. It soon became apparent that George and I were not the only persons who had been keeping an eye on the behaviour of Mutt and Jeff. For everyone joined with George in good-natured ribbing. I recorded the following parts of the conversation. HARRY: “It shook me. When I looked around they had the job unlaced and the insulation on. Then I saw Mutt fall off the scaffold and Askey asked him to get a spanner while he was down, and he did”. SYD (direct to Mutt): “You can’t keep up the pace you are working at now, not for long at any rate.”

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GEORGE:

“It’s bloody stupid to ask for a time-study because you did not want the time the ratefixer offered, and then to teararse on the study. I’ll bet you don’t get 75 per cent of what you want”. MUTT tried to defend himself by attacking the time-study man: “He told me to get on with the job when I had stopped for a bit, and he stopped off the time we took when we were getting tools”. BILL BRUNTON : “Mutt thinks we are just pulling his leg. He’s a bloody good worker is Mutt. His trouble is that he does not know when he is working fast”. It was Bill’s opinion that Jeff would handle the situation all right: “Jeff always says that he can fiddle any ratefixer. You know that when he is being time studied he measures every tube from the drawing although he really knows all the sizes by heart”. When it became apparent from Mutt’s expression that the lesson had been driven home, conversation then turned to previous time studies, handling ratefixers, and so on. BALDY told of a case where “a job came down. We heard that it used to be a 30-hr job in the old days, but now they were allowing only 13½ hr. We knew it could be done in 13½ hr but we decided not to spoil the job. We all deliberately lost money on it”. SYD: “Yes, I lost 8s 9d that week and so did Old Ches”. BALDY: “And so did I, and then when they did the timestudy X rushed the job and they allowed a time of 11 hr.” During the afternoon, and later, as the time-study progressed I noticed that the pace of work had slowed down and one or two people remarked that the ribbing of Mutt had done some good. Syd, who was usually as severe as anyone in his criticism of ratefixers and “job-spoilers”, said that there wasn’t a lot to worry about really because Askey was one of the few rate-fixers who knew the job backside first and could take up the tools and do it himself. Askey was also “very fair with his effort ratings too”, Syd added. Some days later the allowed time for the job was announced. The time was declared by the operatives to be satisfactory. This episode underlines two points: (1) “Fiddling” the ratefixer, if it could be done, was regarded as legitimate behaviour; and

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(2) the widespread interest which was aroused amongst all the operatives in the behaviour of their fellows, especially when allowed times were being fixed. But as I shall show later this general interest and concern extended to almost every aspect of behaviour, not only in the workshop. This episode has also introduced the conception of the “job spoiler”. A job spoiler, as defined by the operatives, was not only guilty of not behaving properly towards ratefixers to get satisfactory times. A man was also called a job spoiler when he demonstrated that he could make money with an allowed time of 11 hr, whilst other operatives were making a financial sacrifice to preserve the rate at thirteen hours for their future benefit. Before I relate an episode which brings this point out more clearly, I must try to describe what the operatives considered to be reasonable behaviour, and what they considered to be satisfactory allowed times. To do this I must turn to a fuller account of the way in which work came in to the shop and quote some statements which I noted down. The reader may be thinking that the motive behind the behaviour of the workers was to do as little work as possible and get paid as much as possible for it, but that would be to oversimplify, as I shall now illustrate from my field notes. In general the workers considered that an allowed time was satisfactory if it enabled them to make bonus earnings of about 90 per cent and still have an hour or two “up the sleeve”. They argued that, since the policy of the management was to fix allowed times which enabled the average man to earn 80 per cent, it would be foolish to rush the job and book in high percentages, because this would encourage the ratefixer to take measures to cut down the time. If he did this then there would be no “slack in the system”. “It’s better, even if you actually save time at the rate of 100 per cent or more, to book in time saved at 90 per cent and ‘bank’ the extra time to meet future contingencies. Of course, if a fellow is a bit short one week, it’s all right for him to book in time at over 100 to make up as long as he doesn’t make a habit of it”. The allowed times had also to permit a reasonable amount of time during the day for tea-drinking and conversation. Any operative who took more than the customary and reasonable amount of time for this purpose or who slacked on the job when he had work to do was as heartily condemned as the job-spoiler. One day Tom Hendy drew my attention to Marmaduke who was leaning over a job languidly and yawning his head off: “Look at Marmaduke draped around the job. I’m not a masters’ man, but I believe in doing a fair day’s work for the money”. Marmaduke always took ages over a job and was condemned for it, but 45% Wilf, also a slow worker, was commended for his behaviour. None of Wilf’s jobs “went down” in test and he was always given the most complicated wiring jobs to do. It was considered quite all

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right to work slowly if you did a good job. Respect for workmanship was great. So between the job spoiler and the scrounger like Marmaduke there was a conception of the ideal worker who earned a steady 90 per cent, observed the customary late starts, early finishes, and tea breaks, and who was friendly and sociable. Hardly anyone behaved quite like that all the time but I would say that Fatty, who was liked and respected in spite of his association with the “Benton Blue Eyes”, came nearest to it. I have referred to the custom of “banking” time against contingencies. It was explained to me that there were good reasons for this. This, I was told, was a jobbing shop. The workers did not know from day to day what work would be allocated to them, or what snags would be encountered. If difficulties arose which reduced the worker’s capacity to earn, then a few hours could be taken from the “bank” to even things up. And workers never knew from week to week how much time they would spend waiting for work. So each week they had to make a nice calculation as to what proportion of their time would be booked as waiting time and what as piecework time, so as to maximize earnings. They might have to ask themselves whether, for example the yield from a small proportion of piecework hours paid at the lower piecework rate, plus bonus paid according to the formula:

would be a better return than the yield from a larger proportion of daywork hours at the higher daywork rate. A few hours “in the bank” could be very helpful if the calculation indicated that a policy of “cross-booking” would maximize earnings. And the worker had to remember the bonus ceiling imposed by custom when considering his booking-in policy. Of course, a run of jobs with “tight” rates would threaten a disastrous slump in earnings unless there was time “in the bank” to draw upon. Scope for manipulation was also limited by production schedules. To underline this point, newcomers were told of the stupidity of the worker who once booked time on a transformer which had been in service for three months with the British Electricity Authority. They were told “only book in work which is still in the shop”. A few of the workers, notably Syd and Baldy, were expert at calculations of this kind. But everyone knew the general rules to be followed. Newcomers were taught the procedure to adopt when booking in work long before they began to understand the complexities of the system. The newcomer was indoctrinated by a demonstration of the rationality of the booking-in “fiddle” in the light of general principles, and instruction in the rules of “cross-booking”. I illustrate this in the following episode.

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EPISODE 3. HARRY’S INDOCTRINATION Harry, the trainee, had just come on to piecework. One day at the canteen the firm’s plan to introduce work-study in the shop was being discussed. George Brewer, as shop steward, had been attending a meeting arranged by the firm to explain the proposals, and was saying that he thought the idea a good one, and that the Unions had agreed to it. Syd said that if the firm was keen on it this could only mean that they were hoping to get more work out of the operatives for less pay. George argued that if the men stuck together they would be able to make sure that the benefits of workstudy were fairly shared. Harry listened to all this and said that he was inclined to think that the men would not stick together. Syd then said that it always paid to “look after number 1”. “Take cross-booking”, he said to Harry. If you don’t think you can make on a job, don’t cross-book; just refuse to do it until you get a good time for it”. “That sounds like a good idea,” replied Harry, “but what if someone else has accepted the time before. Then you just have to take the time and make the best of it.” “Nothing of the sort”, retorted Syd. “You just refuse to start until the time satisfies you”. BILL BRUNTON then intervened: “Yes, you tell the foreman that the time is no use. Then you get on with some other job until they get the time altered”. HARRY: “But you have to do what the other blokes do”. GEORGE: “No, that way you will never get things changed. Look at Claude. He made 10s and lost £50. He accepted a time for the job that was no good. He made 10s on it but he should have made 30s. If fifty of these jobs come through he'll have lost £50 or someone else will. It's the long run you have to take into account”. HARRY: “That’s all right, but I am new here and I don’t understand properly. What can you do when a bloke like Garvey makes money on a job and you can’t”. SYD: “It’s up to you to say that you can’t make on it. That’s what I do and I never have any trouble with rate-fixers. I know what I want and I see that I get it”.

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Syd and George were describing ideal behaviour. Underlying their remarks was the belief that the pursuit of individual self-interest, in accordance with a general belief that the rate-fixer would do you down if you did not watch him, would be in the general interest in the long run. Harry was confused because he was unable to square what Syd had told him with the behaviour he observed. Certainly both Syd and George would cross-book to cover losses. The question of deviance from ideal behaviour also arises. Garvey and Claude are mentioned as being guilty of deviant behaviour. Their departure from the ideal was described in the way Claude accepted bad times, and in Garvey’s habit of working at more than normal pace and thus making bad times seem reasonable. It was also said of Claude that he always booked up to the limit, i.e. that he did not accept he 100 per cent ceiling, and of Garvey that he was such a “teararse” that he would make fantastic bonuses and still have time in hand. Both Garvey and Claude were considered to be “job spoilers”. Harry was advised not to become a job spoiler, regardless of the behaviour of Garvey and others. He was to try to behave according to the general idea of the ideal operative, i.e. he was never to accept a time which he personally thought was tight, and he was to do this whatever other people did. The appeal to Harry was an appeal to individual self-interest; but only because the pursuit of individual selfinterest is always an attractive appeal, and because self-interest was thought in this case to benefit all members of the group in the long run. This kind of argument is reminiscent of Adam Smith’s “hidden hand” which operates to ensure that the common good is served by individual self-interest. But the men did not think that the pursuit of individual self-interest was by itself sufficient, to protect the long-run interest of all. The pursuit of individual selfinterest was to be pursued only along certain lines. To be a job spoiler was to sacrifice the long-term interest of the group for shortterm individual gains, and this was frowned upon. It is clear that the reason why the emphasis in educating new men was on “looking after oneself”, was because the system of piecework operated through individual bargains between the rate-fixer and the individual operative. Piecework prices were not a subject for group negotiation, at least not in the first instance. But the group safeguarded itself by keeping a careful collective watch on potential job spoilers. The belief which lay behind the kind of reasoning I have been describing was that the motives of rate-fixers were to reduce times, to make them “tight”, as it was said. This belief found ready

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expression whenever there was suspicion of “job spoiling”, and it was based upon evidence of the past actions of rate-fixers. The following episode bears on this point. EPISODE 4: CYRIL EXPOSED I had heard so much from the operatives about the rate-cutting of Cyril, that I was anxious to discuss the matter with him to ascertain his views. He agreed to come down to the shop half an hour earlier than usual one afternoon and (after he had dealt with the usual queries and complaints) to discuss his work with me. He failed to keep his appointment. The following morning I was just about to sit down to morning tea with Syd and Old Ches, when Cyril came up. Syd greeted Cyril with the “F—off; who invited you?” words: T.L.: “Just a minute, Syd, I can’t have you insulting my guests like that. Cyril came at my invitation”. SYD : “All right, but remember, this tea is bloody hot and he is handy so he had better watch what he says”. Cyril then apologized to me for not keeping the appointment. I explained to Syd and Ches that I had arranged to have a session with Cyril on the philosophy of rate-fixing. I then turned to Cyril and said: “One of the questions I wanted to ask you was this: if a time-study man came from another firm, knowing nothing about this shop, do you think he would give the same effort ratings as you give”. Cyril evaded the question by saying: “Well, we haven’t always given the same ratings here, you know. Up to a couple of years ago we hardly ever gave more than 80. We wanted to give the blokes a better incentive so now we often give 90.”

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CYRIL (heatedly): SYD:

CYRIL:

SYD :

OLD CHES. :

CYRIL:

At this Syd interjected: “But it is still a bloody swindle. All you are interested in is cutting the times down”. “That’s bloody nonsense.” “Of course it isn’t. You want production increased, don’t you? That’s your whole idea. Well, there’s only forty-four hours in the week. If you want more transformers you have to reduce the time taken for each”. “But if a fellow is working all out it is impossible to cut his times. The trouble with you chaps is that you are dishonest. If we make a mistake and give you an easy time you cross-book. If we make a mistake and give you a tight time you raise hell until we alter it. You want it both ways”. “But you do cut times. I can prove it. Ches, didn’t they cut a time on one job from 4½ hr to 4 hr ?” “Yes, a job came down with the same order number as a previous one—it was the same job exactly. The time on the card was 4 hr 5 min instead of 4½ hr. We shouldn’t have, but we accepted it. We have had 4 hr for the job ever since”. “But that was a clerical error. You know that the girls fill out the cards and they sometimes make mistakes. The trouble with you fellows is that you make no allowance for the human element”. At this moment Cyril went away to continue a timestudy he was doing. When he had gone Syd commented: “They are always the same. They always say that they never cut times. I can show you thousands

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CHES. :

of jobs they have cut the times on”. “But Cyril has an answer to everything”.

This conversation, which like most conversations between operatives and the rate-fixer, was carried on in a tone of goodnatured banter, spiced with the usual workshop adjectives. It illustrates what I found to be the general attitude of the men and their firm conviction that their fear of rate-cutting was based on evidence from the job cards, and not on legends transmitted to them from older generations of operatives. I was unable to do a thorough check myself from the cards, but later I was to have the opportunity to talk with the rate-fixers in their office, and to listen to their explanations of the operatives’ viewpoint. The rate-fixers said that it was their job to see that all the allowed times are reasonable, neither too “tight” nor too “loose”. They could rely upon the men to draw attention to tight times so they did not have to worry about that. But since it was the practice in the workshops to conceal loose times by cross-booking, the rate-fixer had to rely upon his own observations and experience to detect loose times and then to take the opportunity, perhaps when a slight change was made in design, to remedy matters. The ratefixers argued that in this way they would eventually make all times reasonable. Cross-booking would then be unnecessary and unprofitable, and payment would be commensurate with effort expended, as it ought to be. Some of the operatives put it to me that changes in design were often deliberately introduced so that new allowed times could be offered. I found no evidence of this. Design and rate-fixing were separate management functions, and although improvements in design might well be made with the express purpose of reducing the time taken in assembly, it is hardly likely that they are introduced especially to give the ratefixer the opportunity to rationalize the system of piecework payment. In my observations of the rate-fixers working in their office, I saw nothing to suggest collusion with the designers to alter rates. Nonetheless, minor changes in design, which were quite frequent, were seen by the rate-fixers as offering the opportunity for dealing with loose times where these were suspected. But the rate-fixer, in pursuing the ideal of a rational incentive system, was beset by many social pressures. If he pursued too rigorously his quest to abolish loose times and make all times keen enough to call for all-out effort, he evoked the displeasure not only of the workers but also of the shop management and supervision. The workers, in their attempt to preserve their area of control over the system, which they felt to be necessary to handle the situation of uneven work flow, and the effects of bad design,

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and mismanagement, resisted the attempt to tighten up times. When the technique of cross-booking to cover losses failed they used the power of the Union to prevent effective downward pressure on rates. This procedure involved shop management in long negotiations with the steward, the rate-fixer, and the men immediately concerned. Since shop managers and supervisors had to live at close quarters with the men from day to day they did not like to be constantly bickering about rates. A ratefixer who was continually “in the office” was regarded as a bit of a nuisance, interfering with the smooth running of the shop. But the rate-fixer was also dealing with the operatives every day in face-to-face relationships and was subject to pressure to conform to the easy-going informality of workshop relations of which Episode 4 is a good example. Thus, if the rate-fixer wanted to have a comfortable existence he soon found that this was inconsistent with the single-minded pursuit of his ideal of a rational incentive scheme. These pressures transformed him from a pure representative of management into a kind of arbitrator. He was induced to work in terms of what was acceptable, given existing relationships. The foregoing account of the behaviour of workers and ratefixers is sufficient to account for the existence of loose times. It does not adequately explain why there were tight times. Since part of the rationale of cross-booking was to offset the effects of tight times on earnings, it follows that the manipulation of the system would have taken a different form if no rates had been regarded as tight. I must try to explain therefore why there were tight rates. But it is first necessary to explain that the concept of a “tight” rate is a relative one. To the workers, any rate which made it difficult for them to earn around 80 per cent bonus would be regarded as already on the borderline of “tightness”. But to the rate-fixer, this was a “reasonable” rate. The concept of “tightness” has also to be seen in the context of the notion of a steady pace of work. And again there was disagreement about this, Effort ratings were a bone of contention. The existence of tight times, as these were defined by the workers, was often explained in terms of the activities of past “job spoilers”. But more usually it was said that people who were not, in their normal behaviour, “job spoilers” would sometimes succumb to the temptation to expose loose times and make high bonus when they had trainees working with them. I give an example of the kind of arguments which I encountered in discussions of behaviour like this. 45% Wilf complained to me one day that Cornwall had given Mac three jobs to do: “There’s not much work coming through and there’ll be nothing for us”. He then went on to say, with support from Reuben: “Mac has done a week’s work in three days, there’s no wonder they cut the times”. “I’ve told him”, Wilf continued, “I said, ‘If you were a firm would

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you pay out £3 piecework for nothing ?’ He said, no he wouldn’t— but just look at him”. I myself spoke to Mac about this and he said that it was true that he had done a lot of work since Monday but this was because he had a trainee with him. A trained erector or tanker who undertook the initial training of a new worker could gain compensation by booking in the trainee’s time as his own. I wondered whether Mac had done this. If he had not but had put time “in the bank”, then there was no need for Wilf to worry. I checked on this by reference to the wages record for Mac for the week ending 17th February, the week in question. Mac’s average bonus was only 82 per cent, although in previous weeks he had booked in at the rate of 107 per cent and 109 per cent. It would seem as if Wilf was doing Mac an injustice, and that his added complaint that Mac did a shoddy job and spoilt the times was also unjustified. It may be that Wilf’s remarks persuaded Mac not to book up to the limit and that in subsequent weeks he drew upon his “banking account” to see him over a sticky period. Whatever happened, this much is clear: if a man is obviously “teararsing” then he is regarded as being a danger to the group, whether he books actual times saved or not. It might appear from the extract given here that the figure “average bonus” sometimes shows marked fluctuations and goes well above a 100 per cent on more occasions than would seem to be warranted by the analysis so far. But the fluctuations do not necessarily represent bonus rate earned each week. They represent bonus rate calculated each week. Thus, if a worker began a 30-hr job on Thursday he could not finish it by Friday night or even by Saturday midday. Since his percentage bonus earnings were not paid until the job was finished, his piecework sheet for Friday would read “job incomplete”. The time saved on Thursday and Friday was not counted in the calculation of bonus earnings for that week but boosted the average for the following week. The most extreme example of this in the earnings record was found in Harry Birtwhistle’s figures for the weeks ending 9th and 16th March. Harry is described as having earned bonus at the rate of 4 per cent for 44 hrs piecework in the first week and 357 per cent for 40 .9 hr in the second week. His earnings jumped from £8 12s l0d to £16 17s l0d. Harry was so bucked with his windfall that he told most of the shop about it. It was the subject of much banter in the wages queue. It turned out that he had been on a job on the medium side which had lasted well over a week and his bonus had been saved for him. “The trouble is”, he said, “the wife will expect £16 every week. Her face’ll drop when she sees my pay packet next week”. Fluctuation of this magnitude was rare. My observations showed that the operatives often worked hard on Friday to finish a job if they had a poor week, so as to lift their bonus average for the week. On occasions they would book a job

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in as complete even if it still had a few finishing touches to add. They would then complete the job on Monday. During the first couple of months of my stay in the shop I formed the impression that the “steady 90” was a well-established custom, although there were deviations. I was also moved to admiration at the skill of the operatives in handling the many variables in their situation by the method of “cross booking” and “banking”. I could go on giving examples of this but they would be tedious for the reader. I was anxious to check upon my impressions. I decided, therefore, to talk the matter over with the time-clerk, Nellie. Nellie amply confirmed my impression. She said that the men normally booked in about 90 per cent. She also said that if they booked in a lot more than this she used to ask them if they had made a mistake. She went on to give an example of this from the medium side. Two men had booked in 120 per cent. Nellie asked them if they had made a mistake. They said no, and she was very puzzled about this. She said that there were some fast workers like Garvey who often booked in more than 90 per cent but that was exceptional. But these two, she said, were not exceptional. She also said that sometimes when the foreman was signing the sheets he would note if someone was booking in at a high rate and would check up on it. I have myself heard of cases from other sources where a foreman would advise an operative to crossbook. It became clear to me that the procedure which many workers described as the “fiddle” could only continue to operate if the time-clerk and the foreman collaborated. In this case they collaborated to this extent. They did not continually check the booked-in times against the actual times saved. Indeed, to have done so would have involved them in a good deal of hard work. For the time-clerk it was difficult enough to get returns from the workers each day and to enter them up as daily returns to the Planning Office. And she had no information, other than that which was contained in the workers’ piecework books, about when workers actually started work on a job. It was not her job, but the foreman’s, to issue work, and since there existed no system of clocking on and off when jobs were issued, she made out her returns from the times booked in. The foreman, who knew when workers had been given work, was much too busy to keep a constant check on the exact time each operative had spent on each job. To have kept such a check in a situation where workers might change from one job to another during the week or even in the course of a day, according to availability of materials, snags occurring which required the presence of a draughtsman or an inspector, and the like, would have been impossible in view of the foreman’s other responsibilities, so that in checking the piecework and daywork sheets, he would only ask questions if some too obvious attempt to falsify the account caught his attention. But the foreman had

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also to consider his relationships with the men. They expected of the foreman that he would let them get on with the job and not stand over them all day checking on every item. They expected the foreman to be on hand to help them for they considered that a foreman should know how to deal with their problems when they arose, but not to pry too deeply when things were going normally. In so far as Cornwall fulfilled these expectations, he received the collaboration of the operatives when he himself was faced with difficulties in fulfilling his programme. If he behaved otherwise, he forfeited his moral right to ask for help. So, like the rate-fixer, the foreman was subject to social pressure to conform to the possible rather than the ideal. As for the time-clerk, her position and status was such as to preclude her from actively checking actual as against booked-in time. She therefore accepted the “ceiling” as being part of the natural order of things and only asked questions when operatives went too high above the ceiling. And she did this because, as she said, the foreman would probably ask questions about it anyway. It seemed to me that the foreman condoned the “fiddle”, and indeed co-operated to make it work, because any attempt to stamp it out would have been difficult administratively and socially. In the circumstances it was doubtful whether the unpopularity and lack of co-operation which attempts to stamp out the fiddle might have generated would have stimulated the workers to greater efforts. Donald Roy,(26) in a recent article, has described how a group of machine operators whom he observed relied upon the co-operation of other groups and persons to operate what they described as “the fix”, which was similar to the “fiddle” which I have discussed. He describes how the attempt by management to end the “fiddle” by insisting on a close check on booking was confounded by the informal network of reciprocal obligations in the workshop. It is likely that something like this would have happened at Jay’s had accurate booking been enforced. At Jay’s, the inspector, the progress chaser, and the storeman, as well as the foreman and the time-clerk, were involved in a network of reciprocal obligations. A tight time could be made tighter if the inspec-tor insisted that all work be perfect, so standards of quality would not be too rigidly insisted on if it was obvious that the operative was having trouble in what Roy describes as “making out”. The operatives appreciated this and described Joe Grundy, the inspector, as being “all right”. The storeman and the progress chaser would often make a special effort, going well beyond what was formally required of them, to get materials to an operative who was held up. As Slim once said to me: “The lads are on piecework, they lose if they are held up, so I do the best I can for them”. The “lads” were not always satisfied by Slim’s efforts. But their remark that paying him was “a waste of a wage” and “he doesn’t know what he is doing half the time”,

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showed that they expected him to assist. His failure to do so led to the unofficial transfer of some of his functions to Reuben, the labourer, who often acted as an informal and unpaid progress chaser. Slim’s failure was attributed to laziness and a too intense preoccupation with picking winners: “All he does is sit behind the cage making his bets out all day instead of chasing the material up”. Ideally, then, the operatives expected that the persons who serviced the shop and supervised it would take part in the procedure for operating “the fiddle”. Failure to do so was condemned but so long as the “fiddle” was not directly frustrated, no social pressures were applied. Rather, excuses would be made for the individual. His personal shortcomings would be emphasized. The Bank Wiring Room observers, in their interpretation of the behaviour of the workers there suggested that the norm of output which the group enforced upon its members by the use of informal sanctions was largely the outcome of the process of group formation and maintenance. The behaviour of the workers was not, they argued, consciously directed towards the aim of protecting their economic interests. The group of workers in the small-transformer section did not have a norm of output which could be expressed in terms of the physical output which workers ought to produce. But, as my analysis has shown, they had a welldefined code of behaviour. The “proper” attitude to the foreman and the rate-fixer was defined. So was the “proper” procedure for booking work and the “proper” pace of work, “a steady 90”. The bonus ceiling was also reasonably well defined. We may say that this group had a well-defined set of behavioural norms. These norms were enforced by the same kind of informal sanctions as were observed in the Bank Wiring Room. The “speed king” of the Bank Wiring Room is the “job spoiler” of Jay’s, and he was subject to sarcasm and ridicule. He was also appealed to not to destroy the solidarity of the group and expose its inner secrets to management. The “chiseller” of the Bank Wiring Room, is the “scrounger” Marmaduke at Jay’s, the object of contempt. But here the resemblances in behaviour end. Like Roy’s fellow workers, the workers at Jay’s “made noises like economic men”(27), and the noises made by the men at Jay’s seemed to me to have a logical ring about them. The pressures to conform exerted at Jay’s were logically based on a fear that to “book straight” given the situation the group found itself in, was to surrender economic advantages, as well as, and in greater measure than, social satisfactions. (This point will be demonstrated in Chap. 11 where earnings are analysed.) I shall attempt to demonstrate presently, by comparing the earnings of a “job spoiler” with the earnings of a conformer, that cross-booking gave the balance of advantages to the “conformer”.

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To say this is not to suggest that the interpretation of the Bank Wiring Room material is wholly wrong, although I believe that an interpretation made partly in terms of the use by the workers of a logical policy of economic self-defence, would fit the facts. All I say, at this point, is that an interpretation which is based on the assumption of traditionalistic or sentimental behaviour will not fit many of the facts observed at Jay’s workshop. I would rather accept the explanation of cross-booking and “banking” which was once offered to me by an engineering rate-fixer of long experience in another firm with whom I discussed the question at length. “I can’t understand”, he said, “why managers and other people condemn workers for ‘banking’ time. Look at it this way. When a Company Board of Directors sits down each year to decide what to do with its profit it considers itself wise if it does not distribute it all and puts a bit away in reserve for contingencies. They never know when they will want a bit of cash in a hurry. That’s one of the reasons for the reserve. Well, that’s all a worker is doing if he puts a bit of time by. And what’s wrong about that?” The question “What’s wrong about that?”, I take as the theme for my next section, in which I examine the morality of the “fiddle”. THE MORALITY OF THE “FIDDLE” It would be pointless to attempt to judge the morality of the “fiddle” by reference to any one set of criteria. So far, I have attempted an explanation of the workers’ behaviour by reference to the workers’ own arguments, and I have tried to show that if one argues from the same premisses as they do, their behaviour is rational enough. But this is not to say that the premisses will be accepted by everyone. I will show that managers strongly criticised some aspects of the workers’ behaviour, as did foremen and other representatives of management in the workshop. I think it will be useful at this point to speak of role definition and of expectations. A person or group of persons will tend to judge the behaviour of another person or group by comparing their actual behaviour with the behaviour which, in their belief, is appropriate to the role which the person or group occupies. Thus, they will expect persons to behave in a certain way. If they behave otherwise then their behaviour will be judged accordingly. In my analysis of the booking-in manipulations and of the norms and beliefs associated with them, I showed a wide consensus of opinion amongst the workers in defining the behaviour proper to the role of worker in Jay’s. I also showed how the group, by the use of the sanctions of sarcasm, ridicule, and the threat to ostracize, influenced its members to behave according to the definitions. I shall now show how the workers defined the roles of managers, foremen, rate-fixers and other representatives of

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management, and examine the criteria used to judge and to influence their behaviour. Similarly, I shall show how managers defined the workers’ role, how they judged worker behaviour, and the steps they took to influence workers to conform to management definition. This discussion will lead on naturally to the consideration of the conflicts between persons and groups within the shop, and the mechanisms which existed for handling these conflicts. When I was discussing Wye Garments I argued that since the workers accepted management’s definition of their role, disagreements occurred mainly because of the management’s inability to perform according to the definition of its role by workers. There were few sanctions which workers could employ to influence management behaviour, so the settlement of conflict was difficult. Thus the relationship between management and the workers in their productive roles was unstable. At Jay’s the situation was more stable, although the workers did not conform to management expectations of them and neither did managers conform to the workers’ of them. I shall now try to show why in such a situation stability in relationships was possible. This is, to put it in the words the workers themselves used, to show why this was a “comfortable” and a “friendly” shop. I again refer to my field notes for material to illustrate how management defined the workers’ role and judged their behaviour. I was sitting with Syd Smales and Old Ches when White, the assistant departmental manager, passed by. Although it was well past starting-time no one moved from his seat as White approached. When he had passed I rose and walked up the shop towards “labourers’ corner” with the intention of seeing Reuben to find out if any work had been allocated to me. As I walked down the narrow passage between the test enclosures I met White coming back. He said “Good Morning” and engaged me in conversation. He knew, of course, of my role as an investigator, but during the whole of my stay up to that time I had not spoken to him. His first remarks to me suggested that he feared I should be disappointed in him for not insisting that the men got on with their work, and he then went on to justify himself: “You can’t really chase the men around when they are on piecework and have no work to do. It’s just as difficult with the cranedrivers. But I do have a periodic blitz. The other morning I went up on the crane gantry about ten minutes after the starting bell and said “When are you fellows going to make a start?”, they answered, ‘Why don’t you chase them buggers down there ?’ and they pointed down to the floor of the shop where a group of erectors were sitting picking the winners.” “What can you do?” continued White, “if you get tough with a chap he will just pack up and go elsewhere”.

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There was much more in this vein, and also a complaint about the time which the workers spent queueing for tea when the wagon came round during the morning and afternoon break. But he did not condemn the men outright for this time-wasting. He said that the canteen people were largely to blame for not having an efficient system of tea distribution. Since the men were not to blame for the shortage of tea wagons one could hardly condemn them for queueing. He also said that many of the hold-ups in the production flow which led to wasting of time were the fault of the production planning people and the foremen. White said that he disliked to see people wasting their time. But he felt that his authority as a manager was undermined if production planning people created the conditions which justified wasting of time. He was unable convincingly to stress that wasting of time was a bad thing when the workers were encouraged by the situation created by the planners to believe that management did not care about wasted time. How else could they interpret management’s failure to create a smooth flow of work which would keep them busy ? That the workers did so interpret management’s action is illustrated by a remark I overheard one day, one of a number expressing a similar opinion. “The firm must be able to afford to let us sit around awaiting for work, otherwise they wouldn’t let us do it. What they do, you see, is to put it on the cost of the job and make the customer pay for it,” White did not criticize only the production planning people, he was also sharply critical of the foremen. He was supported in this by his colleague, Mr. Black, the shop manager. I went to see Mr. Black one day to ask about some earnings figures he had promised to get for me from the records, and we discussed the affairs of the shop for some time. He said that the foremen could do much, by intelligent allocation of work, to minimize hold-ups in the flow of work, but most of them fell down on the job. But, he added, the foremen were not entirely to blame, since many holdups were due to sheer bad management. Most of his difficulties, he said, were due to the short-comings of the system of production control and scheduling. He opened his files to demonstrate to me the chaos which existed with regard to tank deliveries. Black claimed that the system of production control was the chief obstacle to efficient shop management and supervision. But he was also critical of the behaviour of the foremen, as I have indicated. His criticisms of the workers were directed mainly at their inability to produce from amongst themselves efficient shop stewards. “They invariably elect the wrong type of chap to be shop steward”, he said. “I don’t like shop stewards with an inferiority complex”, he continued. “What you need is a chap who can marshal the facts and keep his head. A shop steward should not be a ‘yes’ man, but he should not be a trouble-maker, either.”

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But Mr. Black considered that most of his difficulties arose, so far as his relationships with the workers were concerned, from the piecework system itself: “I do not think that this shop is really suited to piecework, but I have said this so many times at management meetings that they now just tell me to shut up.” He said that it would be obvious to me that the piecework system created many problems. His difficulty was to handle negotiations about prices with the men in the face of the “dog-in-the-manger” attitude of the rate-fixers: “I often find myself in sympathy with the men, but in view of the attitude of the rate-fixers to their calculations—they won’t shift—I am placed in a difficult position”. “Recently,” he continued, “there was some trouble over piecework prices in one of the sections, and for a long time I was on the men’s side. But they chose to have a fight and chose the wrong issue; and, of course, I could not give them support. They walked out and we had to give them notice. Many came back, and the outcome was that we got rid of some of the trouble makers.” Although Mr. Black, as shop manager, was forced by circumstances and by the requirements of his position to come down on the side of management over this issue, he did not attribute the difficulties which were continually cropping up solely to trouble makers. He was aware that the dislocations in the production flow, and the anomalies in the piecework system to some extent justified the behaviour of the workers. So far as he was able, he would support the men, but he valued the “proper” procedure, which as he saw it, was to come to a settlement by discussion. That is why he was disappointed with the men because they did not elect good stewards, and with the rate-fixers, who often made it difficult to reach a settlement. The shop managers thought that much of the behaviour which they regarded as morally reprehensible (time wasting, the fiddle, and so on), was justified to some extent by the situation in which the workers found themselves, and which shop management was powerless to alter. They also thought that bad timekeeping, late starts and early finishes, long tea breaks, had come about because of the general increase in the power of organized labour and that this tied their hands although they felt that this behaviour was wrong. Ideally, they would have liked to have had a system of wage payment and productive organization which stimulated continuous effort from the men, and which robbed the men of justification for their behaviour. In the absence of this, they pitched their expectations much lower, and condemned the workers only if these withheld from management the respect that they felt was due to them. If the workers failed to come up to the (lower) level of expectations, then they felt justified in exercising authority. So from time to time, when it appeared to them that advantage was being taken of their leniency, they would stress their authority, by condemning practices, which they considered

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beyond the limits defined as proper. For example, one day I noticed that several workers and shop stewards from another part of the shop were in Mr. Black’s office. I gathered that the discussions were about piecework prices. In the washroom later I overheard two of the men whom I had seen in the office, discussing what had taken place. One of them, reporting what the shop manager had been saying, said: “He said that there’s too many bloody tea parties in the shop and they’ll be having a ‘blitz’.” The other replied that “it’s no use pretending you have work if you haven’t, if you are not drinking tea, you get to doing ‘foreigners’* to look busy”, thus indicating a view common amongst operatives that management’s right to manage was only valid provided it performed its duties to manage. I shall give examples of this later. The foreman of the section in which I worked took much the same view as the shop management. Since there were shortages of work and waiting time despite his efforts to keep people busy, he did not attempt to exercise authority over people whose behaviour he considered to be justified by the situation. He expected his men to behave responsibly and to produce high quality work. He also expected them to co-operate if he asked for a special effort. He condemned their behaviour if they fell short of these expectations. When I first entered the shop the foreman told me that I would find that some of the workers on the section did not pay enough attention to quality. They were poor workmen, a rough and ready lot, who would “get a quarter hammer if a thing was one-eighth of an inch out”. He was referring mainly to “the youngsters”. He often complained to them, and to me about them, “that they were too noisy and irresponsible”. I could go on multiplying examples of the expectations and evaluations of managers and foremen. In general, their behaviour conformed to what Gouldner has described as the “Indulgency Pattern”.(28) The managers did not insist too strongly that the men conformed to the rules about timekeeping and the like, and, as I have shown in earlier chapters, managers were aware of the “fiddle” and other breaches of rule. They did not think it expedient to exercise close control continuously, but invoked the rules on occasion only. In these circumstances, it was possible to maintain a good deal of informality and friendliness in relationships, and this, in its turn, enabled grievances to be brought into the open and dealt with. Or at least this is how the managers reasoned. In fact, as I observed, the men considered that in many ways management fell short of the behaviour which the men expected, in this and in other matters. *That is, the manufacture of gadgets for the home, using the company’s materials.

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THE MEN’S EXPECTATIONS AND EVALUATIONS In a study of this kind, it is inevitable that the expectations and evaluations of the workers when they observe management behaviour, will be given more prominence than the expectations and evaluations of the managers. I spent most of my time on the shop floor with the men. Only occasionally did I talk to managers and foremen. But since the behaviour of the workers with regard to output was my chief concern, I was interested in how they evaluated the behaviour of managers and foremen. This kind of data would, I thought, help me to explain why output was what I found it to be, and why the procedures which I have previously described were adopted to manipulate the piecework system. I found that the men valued highly “fairness” of treatment. And, in so far as management fell short of the men’s standards of fairness, they were sharply criticized. To illustrate this point, I turn first to the question of promotion. So far as I was able to ascertain, promotion from the shop floor was decided by management. Only in the case of the appointment of ratefixers and similar personnel, were the jobs advertised in the works and applications invited. And the final selection in each case rested with management. I first heard discussion of promotion when I joined a group of workers at tea break shortly after I had started in the shop. I had just been talking to Joe Grundy and the first words which were said to me when I joined the workers were: “I bet you found that he knows nowt, he only got his job because he got friendly with the chief when they were both in hospital together. That’s how he happened to come straight into this department from another department and take over the job. We have nothing against him personally, it’s just the way things are done here”. This is just an example amongst many of the belief which I have encountered so often in this and other workshops that, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know that counts”. I was not, of course, able to check whether in fact promotions were determined in this way or that, but the belief was strongly entrenched that personal friendships with people in management, or membership of organizations to which managers belonged, were surer passports to promotion from the shop floor than ability. Ability, far from being a help, was regarded as a positive hindrance to the man who sought promotion. I once sat in on a long discussion of promotion in which this belief was affirmed by many of the workers. When, towards the end of my stay in the shop, the foreman was transferred to another factory owned by the company, it was expected that the chargehand, who had often taken charge in his absence, would be promoted. When it was learned that someone else was to be appointed there was great disappointment for the chargehand was universally liked. In the

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discussions which took place all were agreed that a man who was useful on the shop floor would never get promotion. The chargehand, they said, had always worked too hard, and was a “mug” for doing so. Examples were quoted of men who had been promoted to rate-fixing who were so poor at the floor job that they could never make any bonus and who were now in a position of having to judge the performance of men who could do the job well. “Yet, look at George Brewer, he is a careful and thorough worker, give him any job in the shop and he will do it well. He is given all the really difficult work, with the result that he never makes big bonuses. He suffers because he is a good worker. And he will never get promotion”. It was also commonly believed that a good man could possibly get promotion if he was prepared to go to another firm and then apply for a job from there. Several examples of this were quoted to me. The difficulty was to get out of the workshop in ordinary circumstances if you happened to be useful there, and you did not know anyone who could “give you a push”. It is possible to explain the statements I have quoted as “rationalizations”, but this does not alter the fact that this belief was strongly held. So far as promotion was concerned, it was held that it did not pay a man to be a conscientious and useful worker, and, in fact, it could be a positive hindrance, These criticisms of promotion policy indicate that the men regarded management’s promotion policy as unfair, in that it seemed not to place a high value on hard work and good workmanship and responsibility. Promotion was not the only issue on which the workers felt that management fell short of the workers’ standards of fairness. Two issues on which management were strongly criticized were on allocation of work, and on payment for work done. The “youngsters” were particularly critical of the foreman. They said that he had favourites and that he gave them the best work, i.e. the work which paid well. One evening, as I was leaving the shop, I noticed that the foreman and one of the youngsters were having a heated argument. In the morning of the following day there was a good deal of talk about the incident. It appeared that Fred Cotton, who belonged to the “youngsters” group, had been working all the week with Mac. As finishing time approached, Fred had offered to help Simsey to complete a piece of work so that he could get ready to leave a little more quickly. While he was so engaged the foreman came up and reprimanded Simsey for using Fred. Simsey then took the opportunity to tell the foreman that he thought he always gave preference to the “Blue Eyes” and that the youngsters did not get fair treatment. It was all right, it seemed, for the others to use trainees (and bump up their earnings) but not for the youngsters. The foreman replied that he always gave the “Blue Eyes” the difficult work and that they were therefore justified in having the

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help of the trainees. But the young erector retorted that this was not so. “Me and my mate”, he was reported as saying, “lost 2 ½ days last week because you gave us all the shit”. But if the “youngsters” felt that the “Blue Eyes” were being favoured by the foreman, the “Blue Eyes” themselves thought that, on occasions, they were unfairly treated, and they used exactly the same standards to evaluate management’s behaviour. It was true, as the foreman told the “youngsters”, that the “Blue Eyes” were given the difficult work. But he was using the term difficult in a different sense. The youngsters equated difficulty with “tight” times, the foreman with the degree of skill required. The “Blue Eyes” were usually allocated the prototype work, and assemblies which were being prepared for exhibition. This work was difficult and entailed greater responsibility than the run of assembly work. Prototype jobs were usually “covered-time” jobs. The chief complaint of the “Blue Eyes” was that they were not adequately recompensed for special responsibility, and thus claimed that they could earn more bonus on production. The “Blue Eyes” had many arguments with the management about this, and they claimed that it was unfair of management not to allow them to earn at least as much bonus as the erectors on production jobs. Because they regarded management as unfair, the “Blue Eyes” felt that they were justified in fiddling, by using time from the prototype jobs as a bank to bump up earnings in weeks when they combined prototype work with production work. One of the “Blue Eyes” explained to me how managers and foremen had tried to justify the low bonus rated on prototype work. “The manager”, he said, “told me that the firm was spending a lot of money developing new designs, and they did not want further expense”. Although, as the “Blue Eye” said, the shop manager and the foreman were sympathetic, they found difficulty in transforming sympathy into action on his behalf. These accounts of the workers’ beliefs, and evaluations of management’s behaviour in the light of these beliefs, show that management was regarded highly if it behaved according to the standards the workers set, and if its behaviour was consistent. In comparing the expectations and performance of workers and managers, it has become clear from the evidence so far presented, that the managers were far more ready to excuse the workers if they fell short of expectations, than were the workers in evaluating management behaviour. The managers whom I quoted excused the workers on the ground that they were justified in their behaviour, even if this fell short of the ideal of the reasonable, loyal, and co-operative worker, because of the shortcomings of the specialist departments who failed to plan and control the processes in such a way as to ensure a smooth flow of work. Equally, the workers, while critical of managers generally, and of

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particular foremen, also felt that most of their troubles originated with the specialist departments. They reserved their most acid comment for rate-fixers, designers, and planners (all departments responsible for work flow were lumped together under this head). My notebooks are full of complaints about bad management, and most of the complaints were directed, not against shop managers but against the planners. The many complaints I heard were summed up for me one day by one of the shop stewards: “It doesn’t pay you to work hard here. Once me and some of the lads made some new equipment of our own so that we could do the jobs quicker, but when they timed the jobs they docked off the time we saved by using the equipment”. Again, he said: “Say you work hard and do a job in excellent time, the rate-fixer will say ‘you have done a good job there, I’ll allow you 90.’ And say a fellow does it slow. The ratefixer will say ‘I’ll give you 75, you haven’t done so well’, but at 75 he has a better price than the other fellow”. On “planning”, he made the following points: 1. “Drawings never get altered and parts keep coming through wrong every time. A terrible amount of time is wasted like this. The last place I was at they altered a drawing as soon as a mistake was discovered in the shops, and then the mistake wasn’t repeated”. 2. “The planning department wants doing away with. They either order stuff wrong or else they forget to order it. Some of the people in there don’t know a brass nut from a steel one. They have never been on the job themselves, that’s why”. [This was not, in fact, true. I spent some weeks in the planning departments where material lists for ordering were made out. Most of the planners were men with long workshop experience. But I did see many examples of repeated mistakes when I was in the workshop.] 3. “The management complain that they can’t get orders because they can’t quote quick delivery dates. Yet we spent a quarter of every year in waiting time. If all that time were spent on production then production would go up about a quarter. Bad planning somewhere”. I was not able adequately to check the shop steward’s criticisms by reference to the facts. Certainly, during my stay in the planning department, and in conversations with the persons responsible for scheduling the work of the department, I was impressed by the difficulties inherent in the planning of smooth production flow when there was such a variety of components both in size and design, and so many departments whose work had to be coordinated. And I gained the impression that the planners and

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schedulers were competent people. It is not my purpose, however, to judge, but merely to report judgments, whether these appear to be fair or not. The workers did not consider that it was their responsibility to bring shortcomings in design, or in planning, to the notice of those responsible, except where these led to a complete hold-up. This attitude was expressed to me by one operative who said he had been waiting for months for some special parts. He had been told that someone in planning had forgotten to order these. Another worker, who was standing by, said, “Why don’t you chase ’em up?” The reply was “Why should I? If they can’t do their jobs properly, why should I bother my head?” When I discussed this matter with another worker on an occasion when a number of jobs had had to be dismantled because one component was of the wrong size, he said that he did not know who was responsible but he was sure that the “buck” would be passed, until the whole thing was forgotten about. I do not wish to give the impression that all the workers and managers in the shop were daily driven to distraction by what they considered to be the shortcomings of the specialist departments. On the contrary, there was much joking about these. Soon after I began work in the shop I was told that, “This is a comic opera place”, and later, that there are “Three ways of doing a job, the right way, the wrong way, and the Jay’s way”. And, for all their criticisms of specialist managers, ratefixers and so on, the workers thought the firm treated them well. The following are some of the many remarks I heard during my stay in the shop. “Jay’s don’t kill you with money, but it’s a comfortable place”. “It’s the best place in the world, they look after their employees at Jay’s”. “Old Black will listen to complaints and give you fair play”. I would support these judgments myself. Certainly the pattern of expectations which had been built up was based upon leniency, the second chance, and all the other attributes of Gouldner’s “indulgency pattern”. I would suggest that one of the bonds which held together shop management, the foremen on the one hand, and the men on the other, was a common “enemy”, in the specialist departments, and the fact that the workshop group could exercise a good deal of control over its situation without coming into headon collision with shop management. The advantages of impersonal production planning by outsiders in the shop were apparent here as providing a mechanism of redress for quarrels at workshop level, always provided that the control was not too close to have the effect of breaking up workshop solidarity. In Jay’s, despite the divisions between the groupings on the shop floor, there was much solidarity. I shall illustrate this by discussing how workers described and evaluated the behaviour of other workers.

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WORKERS’ EXPECTATIONS AND EVALUATIONS I have shown already that there was general agreement amongst the operatives about the desirability of maintaining a bonus ceiling as a safeguard against rate-cutting. Values of this kind are often reinforced through deviation. That is, in the process of handling deviation from the norm, the group reaffirms the value which has been threatened by the deviant. In doing so the value of the norm and of group solidarity is reaffirmed. Members of the group expected that others would not “drop them in the cart” by accepting tight rates. I had only been in the shop a few days when I was told how in another part of the department, some of the men had accepted “tight” rates: “Now it’s b——chaos over there, but there are only a few of us over here and we watch it.” But within the section there were complaints about job-spoiling. I was told several times by workers that they were having difficulty “making 90” because someone had spoiled the rate by booking to the limit. I have already shown how job spoiling was regarded by the workers at Jay’s. I now give an example of how deviant behaviour was dealt with so as to bring the deviant in to line with the group’s standards of “proper” behaviour. Harry Birtwhistle and Lofty reported to me that they were having a great deal of difficulty in “making out” on a new job. They had been thinking about asking Cyril to add another hour to the allowed time, but they had learned that Garvey had spoiled the job and by “teararsing” had shown that it was possible to make bonus on it. On Syd’s advice, Harry and Lofty told Garvey of their difficulties. It turned out that although Garvey had in fact completed one of the new jobs in considerably less than the allowed time, he had not yet booked in any time to the job. He said that he was quite prepared, when booking in time for the job, to make it appear as if the time was really very “tight” so that Harry and Lofty would have good grounds for requesting an extra hour. It was Garvey’s willingness to help others in this way which ensured that, despite his general habit of “booking straight” and playing the lone wolf, he would be accepted as a member of the group. Claude was less willing to be accommodating and he was treated accordingly. I think that I have now given sufficient evidence to show how discrepant values and expectations were adjusted so as to avoid open breach of relationships, both between shop managers and workers, and amongst the workers themselves. From the point of view of shop management, workers’ behaviour which they considered unreasonable by ideal standards, was excused on the ground that it was a natural reaction to the shortcomings of the planners and rate-fixers. And since the workers themselves attributed many of their own difficulties to the behaviour of planners and rate-fixers,* they considered that the behaviour of

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the shop managers was fair and reasonable. I suggest that at Jay’s the planners and rate-fixers, by creating anomalies in work flow and job prices, laid the foundation for a good deal of stability in the relationship between shop management and the workers. They were the common enemy. Similarly, the workers were themselves united, despite the existence of conflicting interests and values, and despite the occasional quarrels arising out of the foreman’s allocation policy, in manipulating the system of wage payment. And the foremen, chargehands, inspectors, and the like, were under a good deal of social pressure to connive at the “fiddle”. Later, I shall attempt a more rigorous sociological analysis of the behaviour which I observed in Jay’s workshop. I now consider the effect of the processes I have been describing on the earnings of individual workers. I had hoped to compare the output of the shop as expected by management, and the actual output. And I had hoped to make a similar comparison for individual workers. I soon realized that neither would be possible. In the first place, the output of the shop was measured by management, not in terms of the numbers of transformers assembled, but in terms of a measure of the electrical capacity of the shop’s output. And, since the estimate of expected output was based on estimates of what may be called the social optimum, it was impossible to find any estimate anywhere of what output would be if some technical optimum—expressed in terms of perfect work flow and maximal worker co-operation—had been achieved. There was, therefore, no measure of the extent to which the performance of the section fell below management’s technical optimum. Similar considerations apply when the attempt is made to examine the output of individual workers. Because of the way in which “booking in” was manipulated, the records kept by management of worker performance did not represent the way in which time was actually spent. And if management could be said to have any conception what the output of the workers should be, it was that ideally a chap should put in a full day’s work if work was available, and that he should work hard to try and maximize bonus earnings. But from the records kept by management, it was impossible to tell whether any worker had in fact measured up to this ideal. To digress for a moment, I consider this as a general problem of some practical significance. If manipulation of booking-in is practised by workers, it follows that management has no accurate record of how time is spent in a workshop. Thus it is impossible for them accurately to estimate the direct labour cost of a particular item. Nor are they able to assess with any accuracy the amount of time which is spent unproductively, as this also is *For comparison see Ref. 29.

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concealed by the manipulation of booking-in procedure. It is clear that the records will show less waiting time than has actually occurred, since it is obvious that the worker will attempt to book as many hours as possible to piecework. Management control over the variables affecting performance is adversely affected. And this leads to shortcomings in scheduling and costing. And it is the shortcomings in scheduling which gives rise, in certain conditions, to operatives’ attempts to manipulate the incentive system. The process has a circular form. In a private communication with the works manager of an engineering firm in the Manchester area, I was told that this firm had attempted to break out of this circle by abolishing its piecework scheme in favour of time rates. The workers have agreed that in return for high time rates, they will keep accurate records of time spent, thus enabling management to plan more effec-tively. Time-study is used only to set targets of output which persons are expected to achieve, and which will co-ordinate the flow of work from person to person. I gather that there is now a tendency for industrial opinion to move in favour of this kind of scheme, which is sometimes referred to as “measured daywork”. These opinions are based upon the desirability of obtaining accurate records of the way time is spent on the shop floor as a basis for management control. In Jay’s, the system did not produce accurate records. I therefore propose to examine the effect of the whole complex of factors in the workshop situation, on the earnings of individual workers. A complete account of the earnings of all the workers whose behaviour I have analysed in the text is included in an appendix. Here I analyse the earnings of a representative selection of workers.

CHAPTER 11 OUTPUT AND EARNINGS

THE workers at Jay’s described their systematic manipulation of the incentive scheme as the “fiddle”. From my observations of their behaviour, and from many discussions of the fiddle which I overheard or participated in, I concluded that the following advantages were claimed by the workers for the “fiddle”: (a) It was regarded as a defence against rate cutting. (b) It was thought to stabilize earnings. (c) It was seen as a protection from the effects of management shortcomings. (d) It gave a measure of control over the relationship between effort and reward. I have myself hinted that the “fiddle” was also a source of psychological satisfaction. It gave the workers a sense of being in control of the situation in a battle of wits with the boss. However, no worker explicitly claimed this advantage for it. The claims made for the “fiddle” by the workers at Jay’s resemble the explanations which the workers in the Bank Wiring Room gave to justify their adherence to a norm of output which fell below the “reasonable” expectations of the management. But the workers in the Bank Wiring Room placed less emphasis on protection from management shortcomings, probably because the problems of work flow in the Bank Wiring Room were more tractable. As I pointed out in Chapter 2, the Bank Wiring Room investigators were not satisfied that the workers’ explanations really showed that they were controlling the situation consciously in pursuit of economic interests. The investigators suggested that the norm was the outcome of a social process by which the group adjusted its internal relationships and its relationship to the social and technical environment. The explanations came afterwards to justify a situation which was satisfying, but which had not been consciously brought about. One reason why this interpretation was favoured as against the “economic man” interpretation was the demonstrable lack of understanding of the

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incentive scheme on the part of the workers. Surely workers who did not understand the incentive scheme could not manipulate it to serve their own economic interests. It was also shown that in fact the behaviour of the workers was, in some instances, plainly detrimental to their stated economic interests. I do not think that the behaviour of the workers at Jay’s permits this kind of interpretation. It is true that not all the workers I met at Jay’s were familiar with all the complexities of the incentive scheme. Most of them were unable to give an accurate description of the procedure followed by rate-fixers in calculating rates from “raw” timestudy data. Few could explain exactly how the productivity bonus was calculated, and only three workers in the small transformer section could give me an accurate and complete description of the scheme. But to say that most workers in the shop did not have what Shimmin(30) has called “formal” understanding of the scheme is not necessarily to mean that they were therefore incapable of turning it to what they considered their best advantage. Most workers had what Shimmin calls “functional” understanding. That is to say, they knew from experience how their own efforts were related to the cash rewards the scheme offered, and they had learned a procedure for booking work which seemed to offer them advantages. In her own study, Shimmin tested functional understanding by comparing workers’ predictions of the bonus due in the pay packet with the actual bonus found there. The workers at Jay’s were not only able to predict their bonus earnings, in many cases they were able each week to decide, within certain limits, what they would be. The three workers who fully understood the scheme, Syd Smales, Baldy, and Bill Madden, were always ready to give advice, but their advice was seldom sought since all the workers understood the procedure for booking in work, and knew what the results would be in terms of cash reward, even if, as was obvious in most instances, they were unable to trace in detail the process from action to final consequence. Every worker in Jay’s kept a notebook in which he recorded the jobs which had been allocated to him, the time which he took to complete them, and the time which he booked to them. All the workers knew how much time they had “in hand”. They also knew the formula for translating time saved into percentage bonus, and from percentage to cash. In fact, this information was provided by the rate-fixing department to assist workers to understand the scheme. But few workers could say how the formulae were arrived at, and some needed help with their calculations. Yet I think that the workers had enough understanding of the scheme to operate the “fiddle” as a rational means to certain economic ends regarded as desirable. One does not need to have detailed knowledge of such a scheme to manipulate it. It is enough to be able to see that certain actions

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lead to certain consequences, and by experience to learn to act in such a way as to produce results desirable to oneself. But if I am to show that the workers were behaving like economic men, it is not enough merely to indicate that they had a sufficient knowledge of the incentive scheme. Nor is it enough to demonstrate, as I shall attempt presently, that the advantages claimed for the “fiddle” were actually gained. Neither of these are, in themselves, proofs that the fiddle was deliberately designed and practised to gain the advantages it gives. It is still possible to argue that the “fiddle” was a customary pattern of group behaviour, which had arisen spontaneously from the process of adjustment of internal and external relationships. It could then be said that the advantages claimed were merely explanations to justify behaviour and relationships which were valued. I do not wish to argue here that this explanation is entirely inappropriate for the situation at Jay’s. One would imagine that some of the processes by which, in adapting itself to the environment, the group came to develop the “fiddle”, were not planned as means to economic ends, although it is now impossible to demonstrate this. But I think I can show that the fiddle is in practice a rational means to ends which are valued, and that it works. I would argue that, in social adjustment, a process of trial and error can be discerned in which alternative modes are tried as new situations emerge, always provided that there is “social space” within the management control system to make this possible. Some alternatives are rejected because they offer disadvantages. That they do indeed offer such-and-such disadvantages is part of the heritage of the group, and this knowledge is passed on to new incumbents of roles within the group. The modes of behaviour which seem to offer advantages become customary and routine, and their value is unquestioned so long as they give good results. It is not necessary to know why custom works to one’s advantage, it is enough to know that it does. It is also useful if one can point to the deviant to show the consequences of not behaving thus, and it is usually possible to do this. And, as I have shown, there were in the Jay’s situation workers who could explain the why, as well as the how of the “fiddle”, and in doing so, support its efficacy as a rational means to certain desired ends. I have already shown, in my discussion of the mechanisms of the “fiddle”, that the workers discussed its details as if they themselves saw it as a means to certain desired ends. I shall now go on to show that, in fact, it worked like this, and to show the consequences of deviation. This, taken together with the argument in previous chapters, is, I think, weighty support, for the view not only that the “fiddle” is objectively speaking a rational and sensible adjustment to the situation, but also that it is regarded and operated as such by the workers. I shall show also that they were prepared to alter the methods of

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manipulation to meet new conditions and that this was done in the light of the rationale of the “fiddle”. But before I go on to examine some figures of output and earnings, I point out that my approach to my material, although superficially similar, differs in many important ways from the approach of the Bank Wiring Room observers. It seems to me as if their reasoning is essentially deductive, at least at a crucial stage in the argument. It is as if they had started off with certain propositions, gleaned from sociology and social anthropology, about the way in which groups adapt their internal structure and their relationship with their external environment so as to achieve security, stability, and survival. From this it would seem that they proceeded to say: On the basis of these propositions one would expect to find in any group certain norms of conduct and sanctions to ensure conformity. This they found in the Bank Wiring Room. It was then argued that this must be the outcome of social adjustment. The question then arose whether this was a conscious and rational process. And, since the workers did not understand the incentive scheme, since they evinced no open hostility to and suspicion of management, and since, as it appeared, they had no previous experience of rate-cutting it looked as if it was not. Thus the proposition that the adjustment of the small group to its environment is largely an unconscious process seems to be supported. I myself have started, not by accepting certain propositions about human groups, but with the human beings themselves. I have tried to see what seems to emerge if one examines behaviour in the light of internal relationships and external influences. And it seems to me that in both the Wye and the Jay case, the logic of the field data itself is that behaviour is the outcome of adjustment to the circumstances such that certain valued ends are achieved and that behaviour will be constantly adjusted and custom changed in response to changes in the environment or in the structure of the group. I shall elaborate this point in my general conclusion to the two studies. I make it briefly here because it seems to me that a too close preoccupation with general propositions may hinder understanding of particular situations. I would prefer to see, at this stage in the development of the subject, an emphasis on the collection of “raw” detailed field material, within the roughest of frameworks. The attempt to discern the logic, or lack of it, in the material, is the path of development, as I see it. To build elaborate models or to state wide and general propositions may be a hindrance. Having digressed somewhat I now go on to show, by reference to earnings figures, that the “fiddle” seemed to work at Jay’s. That is, it was a good way for workers to get what they said they valued—a stable relationship between effort and reward in terms of their conception of a “fair day’s work”, stable earnings from week to

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FIG. 12. Comparison of “Job Spoiler” and “Conformer”.

week, defence against rate-cutting and against management shortcomings or the influence of factors outside the control of workers and managers. Figure 12 illustrates the stabilizing effect of the “fiddle”. The first graph shows the bonus percentages booked by Claude Bissett, the jobspoiler, and by Simsey, a conformer. For all except seven of the 25 weeks, Simsey declared bonus of between 90 per cent and 100 per cent, and a maximum range of bonus variation between about 50 per cent and 120 per cent. Bissett’s bonus figures fluctuated wildly and his range of variation was between Zero and 254 per cent. The effect on average hourly earnings is clearly shown in the second graph. It is clear that conformity paid in stability of earnings. I must point out that this graph is not open to the alternative interpretation that for the most part Simsey had jobs issued to him which were “reasonably” rated and allowed savings of time equivalent to a consistent bonus rate of 90 per cent to 100 per cent, or on the other hand, that Bissett was allocated an assorted bag of loosely and tightly rated jobs. I have already mentioned that, in fact, Simsey and his mate Tom Hendy, were at war with the foreman over his work allocation policy precisely because they claimed that the “good” work went elsewhere, and they were given the “shit” as they put it. Bissett, on the other hand, although he was not said to be unduly favoured,

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was known to have his share of “good” work. I would say that the differences between the two graphs can be almost entirely explained by the fact that Bissett booked “straight” and Simsey “cross-booked”. There is no doubt, for example, that the most marked of the fluctuations in Bissett’s earnings were due to incomplete work. In week 5, for example, I know that he worked for 47.8 hr on piecework*. The fact that he did not earn bonus that week is entirely due to the fact that he did not finish the job that week. All the bonus he earned that week was therefore booked in the following week, and this helps to account for his inflated bonus earnings in the following week. I gave a similar example in an earlier chapter when I was discussing Harry Birtwhistle’s windfall. Incomplete work was a difficulty which affected the medium-side erectors much more than their colleagues on the small transformers. Some of the medium transformers took over a week to erect so it was much more difficult to “spread” bonus. It was easier on small transformers, and Simsey, faced with incomplete work, would no doubt have booked the work as complete and finished it the following week. But even for the small-transformer workers there were times of great difficulty. For example, a run of tight jobs would exhaust the “kitty” and lead to an eventual slump in bonus. It was, therefore, not always possible for the conformer to keep his earnings completely stable. And sometimes, from choice, a conformer would book in high times saved from a run of loose jobs so as to compensate for a slump, and in doing so go above the customary bonus “ceiling”. But this was not often done, as we shall see. I stress the point that if Simsey had “booked straight” his earnings would have fluctuated very much more than they in fact did, possibly as much as Bissett’s, and that because there were so many variables to control if perfect stability were to be achieved, all the workers’ earnings showed some fluctuations and on occasions all of them exceeded the bonus ceiling. But not often. The general rule that to book over 100 per cent was to invite ratecutting was generally observed. I have already said that there were so many factors in addition to effort expended, which affected the workers’ capacity to earn, that the attempt to control the effects of the operation of these factors—“the fiddle”—fell short of complete success. I go on now to examine the earnings of a selected number of workers to try to show, where possible in detail, which particular factors were operating at any one time, and what steps were taken to offset their effects. But first I summarize the main factors affecting the capacity to earn.

*This was an overtime week.

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i. Waiting time Inevitably, there were interruptions in the flow of work. There was little the workers could do to control this directly. They could keep several jobs on hand in various stages of completion. But this was seldom practicable either for management or workers. It would probably have thrown the planned schedules out of phase. Certainly, the workers disliked having incomplete work around, for bonus payment was postponed thereby. Waiting time was paid for at the (lower) time rate and was therefore “a dead loss”. ii. Waiting for Crane Time booked to “waiting for crane” was paid for at 45 per cent bonus. It was quite common for workers to be waiting for crane because the crane served many sections of the shop. The incidence of “waiting for crane” time was so unpredictable that no “flat” allowance was incorporated into the allowed times. Instead, time was expected to be booked to “waiting for crane” for each job, and to book it was the responsibility of the worker concerned. Often, on a loose rated job, the worker would book in for the whole job at (say) 90 per cent, as if no delay had been experienced. In effect, this was to use loose times to keep the shop bonus average high and so “bump up” the productivity bonus, as well as using the loose times to compensate for “waiting for crane” time. iii. Bad design and faulty drawings When delays were experienced by bad design or drawing office errors it was sometimes possible to negotiate with the ratefixer “on-the-spot” an allowance which offset the effect on earnings. For example Eddie the tanker once complained when, due to faulty design, he took hours to connect up some terminals. He was unable to get an “on-the-spot” allowance sufficient to compensate for his losses and his earnings suffered. iv. Faulty Materials Sometimes the components delivered to the worker were faulty and had to be returned to the “feeder” departments for rectification. Delays of this kind were compensated for as follows. All time booked in while waiting until faulty materials were rectified was counted as piecework time, and a bonus of 45 per cent was paid. But a worker could ignore the delays if the time were a loose one and book in a time which would pay 90 per cent (say). Of course, to do this was to reduce potential “time up the cuff”, and thus to limit opportunities for the future offsetting of the effects of waiting time and “tight” times. v. Allocation of Work. As we have already seen, the allocation of work in the shop was in the hands of the foreman. Complaints were often heard that work was not evenly distributed amongst the workers, as

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I have shown. Nor did work flow evenly through the shop. Since there were “tight” and “loose” rates the effect was to create unequal opportunities to earn bonus. The capacity of all to stabilize earnings was also affected. But pressure was brought to bear on the foreman to reform his method of allocating work, and sometimes he would yield. To the extent that he did so the workers controlled the allocation of work within the shop, but neither they nor the foreman had any control over the flow of components into the section. I have already mentioned in general terms how the “fiddle” operated to offset the effects of some of the above factors. I now go straight on to consider the earnings of workers in the shop to show in a little more detail how this worked out. Table 6 shows the average hourly earnings for each of twenty-five weeks together with mean average hourly earnings, mean deviation, maxima, minima and range of variation. It is clear from the table that, despite the “fiddle”, there were considerable fluctuations in average hourly earnings, in some cases. The job-spoilers Garvey and Claude Bissett show a mean deviation of 4½ and 6¼ respectively, which is, as one might expect, much higher than the general run. But there are others with high mean deviations: Cotton, Birtwhistle, and Fatty. Birtwhistle’s mean is distorted by the “freak” figure of 7/8 due to his windfall, otherwise his mean would be like that of most of the others, perhaps a little larger, since during the period he progressed to piecework. His average jumped by 11d in week 5 when this change took place. With the exception of the first 4 weeks and the “freak” week there were very few weeks when deviation from the mean was large. This only helps confirm the general impression which I have conveyed of Harry, as wanting to do the right thing—cross-booking and the like. Cotton and Fatty both changed to piecework during the period. Fatty’s earnings show a marked tendency to increase steadily throughout the period, thus reflecting his improvement during his period as a trainee, and this partly explains his relatively high mean deviation. And the same goes for Fred Cotton. Again, as we might have expected from our previous discussion, Simsey and Syd Smales have low mean deviations, as have their mates Tom Hendy and Old Ches. And Bill Madden and Lionel are at about the same level as these four. In Fig. 13 there are graphs showing the average hourly earnings, the bonus percentages, and the daywork hours for four workers for each of the twenty-five weeks of the period. In a moment I shall examinethese in some detail so as to show how cross-booking was used, but first there are one or two general points to be noted. It is clear from the graphs that high daywork

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FIG. 13. Bonus per cent., Daywork Hours, and Average hourly earnings: 4 workers

hours, when these are associated with low bonus earnings, produce low average hourly earnings. This follows logically from the structure of the incentive scheme. I have set the “ceiling” at 100 per cent, although I do not think the figure was ever so sharply defined in the shop. “Not too far above the 90 level” was “alright”. This was the generally expressed idea about the proper booking-in policy, and this general prescription allowed a good deal of personal discretion in the operation of the “fiddle”. I now examine the graphs in Fig. 13 in detail. Graph No. 1, shows the movement of hours, bonus, and earnings, for Syd Smales. With the exception of the two “boom” weeks 22 and 24, Syd’s earnings were remarkably steady throughout the period. I say “remarkably” because the amount of daywork experienced by Syd, and the fluctuations in the daywork graph, were quite large. Daywork reduced the opportunity to earn bonus, and given straight booking would be exactly represented in the average hourly earnings so long as bonus remained steady. Syd, despite the burden of daywork, seems to have ironed out his earnings fluctuations while at the same time keeping his bonus at a level

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below the ceiling. This shows his great skill in the art of crossbooking. Week 17 is a good example of the way the technique was used. There was a sharp rise in daywork hours. This was compensated for by booking in high bonus, well above the ceiling, and a drastic slump in earnings was avoided. It was possible to book in high bonus percentages: (a) if rates were loose, (b) if rates were reasonable and tremendous effort were exerted, or (c) if there was time “up the cuff” for an emergency such as this. My field-notes do not indicate that Syd worked extra hard during this week. I conclude either that Syd exploited “loose” rates to the full, or used time from “up the cuff”. In weeks 9 and 23 it seems as if Syd was unable to avoid a slump in earnings occasioned by sharp rises in the amount of daywork. Although I have no record of this I infer from the figures that in these weeks there was a run of “tight” work or an absence of “time up the cuff”. My knowledge of Syd, and of the general custom of the shop, justifies such an inference. There are two features of Graph 2 which merit special mention. The bonus percentages are low in comparison with those on the other graphs, and there is much less waiting time. These features are explained by the fact that Bill Madden, whose graph this is, was often given exhibition or prototype work. This work was not paid according to the incentive scheme. A percentage bonus was paid regardless of time taken—this was known as “covered time”. This percentage was usually somewhat lower than the ceiling. No cross-booking was possible, of course, in a week occupied wholly by special jobs, but when Bill combined work on “specials” with ordinary piecework jobs, it was possible to make “tight” jobs pay by declaring time to have been saved which was actually saved on the special jobs. The fact that Bill worked so much on special work explains his low daywork hours. I often had long talks with Bill. He told me that he thought it unwise to book above the ceiling. He said that during the war he had worked for a large firm in the Manchester area on war work. The workers were on piecework and they were asked by the management to step up production to the limit in the interests of the war effort. A solemn undertaking was made by the management that the “sky was the limit for earnings” and that no rates would be cut if they were found to be loose. According to Bill, things went well until the war ended and then the management went back on its promise. All the loose rates which had been exposed during the war years were cut, and the workers’ capacity to earn, and their scope for control, were reduced. The lesson of all this for Bill was never to expose loose rates however good the management happened to be (and he thought very highly of Jay’s management). For all his status as a “Blue Eye”, he operated the “fiddle” with the rest.

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He himself said that he kept his earnings steadier than they would otherwise have been, and protected himself from ratecutting, by cross-booking. The reason that he was so much envied by Simsey and “the youngsters” was that the covered-time jobs offered him more scope for this kind of manœuvre. But Bill pointed out that a long run of prototype work at covered time brings the bonus average down. His high bonus earnings in week 22, well above his own average, were probably due to the booking in of incomplete work, from the previous week. Graph 3 shows Simsey’s earnings, bonus, and daywork hours. I have already mentioned how infrequently he exceeded the ceiling. He did so, as the graph shows, only twice in the period, that is in weeks 9 and 16. On both occasions high bonus compensated for high daywork hours. Week 10 shows a drop in average hourly earnings associated with low bonus percentage and high daywork indicating perhaps a run of “tight” jobs and a shortage of time in hand. Simsey had much less daywork than Syd Smales, therefore his problem of ensuring stable earnings was much less difficult to solve. Graph No. 4 is the graph of a “job spoiler”, Garvey, who seemed to care little about the consequences for himself and for others of exposing “loose rates” and booking in high bonus percentages. An examination of the graph shows what happened when the bonus ceiling was disregarded, and when cross-booking was little used. Take week 11, for example. In this week, for Garvey, there was a marked slump in bonus earnings combined with a sharp rise in the amount of waiting time. This had a catastrophic effect on earnings. In the absence of detailed evidence, I think it reasonable to presume that in this week Garvey had a run of tight work during the time he was on piecework, or that he had incomplete work at the week-end. It is likely that Garvey faced a similar situation in week 17, another week of low bonus and high daywork hours. But when daywork was low and bonus high, there was obviously no thought in Garvey’s mind of saving for a time of high daywork and no bonus. He booked in “straight” and earnings soared. There is one more piece of evidence to refer to before the advantages of straight and cross-booking can be assessed. It seems to me that the evidence referred to so far shows a balance of advantages for the “fiddle”, at least in so far as it does what it claims to do. The conformers to the “fiddle” have reasonably stable earnings, they protect the “loose” rates, they compensate for the effects of management shortcomings, i.e., waiting time, faulty design, and so on. But if we look again at Table 6 where the mean of average hourly earnings is shown for each worker, it will be seen that the two workers scoring the highest are Garvey and Bissett, the rate busters. So on the face of it, it seems that if one is ready to regard stories of ratecutting as myths one is slightly better off by booking straight. But there is a difference of only ¾ d

TABLE 6. AVERAGE (WEEKLY) HOURLY EARNINGS AND RANGE OF VARIATION. JAY’S TRANSFORMER ASSEMBLY

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between Simsey, a strict conformer, and Bissett, a job-spoiler. This amounts to about 2/9d a week. Even if we forget all the other imputed advantages of the “fiddle” and argue that the “jobspoilers” do best financially, we must remember that the measure of advantage rests not merely in the comparison of cash received but in the relationship between effort and reward. When this measure is used it is clear that the “job-spoilers” are at a disadvantage. Simsey bought a lot of leisure at work for his 2/9d per week, if one may put it thus crudely. Garvey and Bissett were not only “job-spoilers”, they were “teararsers” as well. It was pointed out to me many times by Syd Smales and others that a shop could tolerate a couple of job-spoilers. If they were known to be speedy workers, then their behaviour would not lead to a “blitz” on the job times. There was little pressure on the two job-spoilers in Jay’s to conform. Bissett was something of a social isolate, but he was not unhappy to be so. Garvey was regarded as a somewhat special case, a man of great strength and, in many ways, “one of the lads”. I conclude that the “fiddle” worked. I also conclude that it was seen by the men as a logical means to desired ends. I can say something, but not a lot, about the reasons why these particular ends were regarded as desirable. Stability was desired because of the advantages it afforded in family budgeting. Many men told me that they liked to give the same amount each week to their wives. This meant that fluctuations in earnings were fluctuations in the pocket money of the breadwinner. Secondly the “fiddle” was regarded as important as a protection against ratecutting. In view of the difference in the conceptions of a reasonable rate between the shop floor and the rate-fixing office, which I discussed earlier, it seemed a necessary protection. Thirdly there were obvious advantages in having some sort of compensation for dislocation of the planned work flow. I was not able to ascertain accurately whether the “fiddle” did, in fact, result in restriction of output. This was because management made no estimate of the daily or weekly output of the shop against which I could measure actual output.* The reason why management made no such plan was due to the great variety of transformers of different sizes and designs which went through the assembly shops each week. And, as I was told in the Planning Office, the time schedules for the completion of a transformer were based upon past experience and not on some calculation from raw time-study data. So there was no hypothetical maximum against which to measure actual production. This did not mean, of course, that the firm were unable to calculate estimates for delivery. Such a calculation would be based upon the usual time taken to complete such a transformer and the work load already on the departments. It did mean that any charge of restriction of output was a general one stating that the workers could work

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harder than they were doing. And, as I have shown, such charges were made by management. But they had a hollow ring in the ears of the workers, who could show that most of the time wasted in the shop was the consequence of stoppages in work flow, for which management was responsible. As was the case at Wye, it was dislocation of management planning which gave rise to difficulties. But at Jay’s the attempt was made to cushion these effects by the “fiddle” or the control over time booked which the “fiddle” afforded. I think that it is, in general, unhelpful to describe behaviour such as I observed at Jay’s as “restric-tion of output”. To do so is to make a judgement which in most cases will rest on shaky foundations. To support a judgement that a given group of workers was restricting output, one would have to have a neutral measure of a proper day’s work. Even if one had such a measure, which is unlikely, one would also require techniques to assess actual against potential output so that those differences entirely due to a deliberate withholding of effort by workers might be isolated. I submit that in most situations there will be neither neutral measures nor effective means of assessment. To speak of restriction of output in such circumstances is merely to express an opinion that workers ought to do more. I have therefore discussed the “fiddle” not as part of a policy of restriction of output but as a form of social adjustment to a given job environment. In Jay’s, I would also say that the “fiddle” was an effective form of worker control over the job environment. The strength and solidarity of the workers, and the flexibility of the management system of control, made a form of adjustment possible in which different values about a fair day’s work, and about “proper” worker behaviour, could exist side by side. I have no doubt that, if management controls had been made less flexible, and management planning more effective, the “fiddle” would have been made more difficult to operate and probably output could have been slightly increased. But this might have destroyed the balance of the social adjustment between management and the workers, and the outcome might have been loss in work satisfaction. The shop would no longer have been a “comfortable”, may be not even a“happy”, shop. And in turn, this might have produced higher labour turnover, absenteeism and the like. One can only guess about these things, since there are so many other considerations involved: the existence of alternative employment, the ability of existing management-worker relationships to withstand the impact of radical change, for example, but it seems to me that when relationships are adjusted in a way similar to that I have described, which resembles the indulgency pattern noted by *Nor, because of the “fiddle”, was there any accurate record of time spent on various items of output.

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Gouldner, then any attempt to “tighten up” might lead to resentment and resistance. In the circumstances, management might prefer to live with the “fiddle” at the cost of what they believe to be some slight loss of output, and regard this as the price they pay for a good relationship with their workers.

CHAPTER 12 CONCLUSION (JAY’S CASE STUDY)

As in the study of the Wye Garment Factory, I have used a number of concepts in the analysis of the material: role or social position, norms, expectations, and social control. In the analysis of behaviour at Jay’s I have had to refine the concept of expectations to include a distinction between ideal and actual expectations. Ideal expectations are expressed in terms of a role stereotype, e.g., a manager will expect the ideal worker to be a good timekeeper, to show respect for legitimate authority, to observe the rules implied in the contract of employment, and so on. But on such matters as the pace of work, the amount of effort to be expended, and so on, the contract of employment is silent. The worker merely undertakes to place his services at the disposal of the employer for a given time each day. He sells his power to produce, not a specific product. It would be impossible to frame a contract of employment in any other way, since the employer is unable to predict with accuracy what specific use he will wish to make of the labour power of the worker in the future. Thus the contract of employment is of a different character from the contract of sale, where the product to be purchased is accurately specified, and the price agreed.* Thus the expectation of workers’ behaviour on the part of the employer and his agents, the managers, is open to influence by custom and by the particular circumstances affecting the worker-management relationship. It is only on those items where the contract of employment is specific, i.e., in relation to factory discipline, hours of work, etc., that management is able to act specifically. But even here their definition of ideal worker behaviour is mediated by immediate circumstances. Rigidly to enforce the factory code of discipline in a situation of full employment might lead to loss of workers. The statements of the shop managers at Jay’s indicate that they had a stereotype of the ideal factory worker as a man who attended regularly, kept factory hours, adhered to factory rules, and recognized the authority of management to determine, in relation to the situation, what workers ought to do, But most of the workers did not behave like this. They were critical of the way in which management, in the shape of the foreman, allocated work to

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them. They refused to follow the rules laid down by management for the accurate booking of work. They did not observe the official times for starting and stopping work. And many of them lacked what managers considered a proper respect. In short, they did not conform to management’s ideal expectations of worker behaviour. But management did not judge their behaviour by this criterion. Their judgements were based on how workers could reasonably be expected to behave in the situation created for them by management. It was expected that they would attempt to manipulate the incentive scheme in their own interests and up to a point beyond which manipulation became flagrant dishonesty, these attempts were tolerated. Thus worker behaviour was judged by reference not to the ideal standard, but according to a concept of behaviour reasonable in the situation. In this respect Jay’s management differed from the management at Wye. At Wye, management expected that the workers would behave according to the ideal standard, that they would work hard to maximize their earnings on piecework, that they would observe factory hours diligently, and that they would show a proper respect for the authority of management, The workers attempted to meet these expectations. When circumstances were such that this behaviour would redound to their disadvantage, they protested, but they took no steps, as a group, to alter the situation. It was left to management to modify the situation so that the workers, in meeting management expectations, would satisfy their own interests. The managers at Wye, therefore, seldom found themselves having to modify their expectations in the light of independent action by the workers to control some of the factors in the work situation. At Jay’s the managers did this. That they did so is partly to be explained by the structural separation of planning and supervisory roles in Jay’s and by the way these roles were defined. Like the workers, the shop managers and supervisors at Jay’s were faced with problems arising from the fact that decisions about the flow of work through the factory were beyond their immediate control, and to a lesser extent, immune from their influence. They were therefore able to sympathize with the workers, especially since they were not directly under pressure to exact greater effort from the workers by the close control of their activities. The management hierarchy was a fairly deep one, so that such pressure as there was, was not felt directly at workshop level. And since, as some workers pointed out, the pressure to reduce labour cost was not urgent, due to the state of the market, and pricing policy, the management could the more easily afford to tolerate and justify the workers’ behaviour.

*This is similar to Marx’s distinction between labour and labour power.

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At Wye, in contrast, the management hierarchy was shallow, and though there was a formal distinction between planning and shop management, this was not so apparent to the workers. The departmental manager had been amongst those responsible for planning the layout and the system of incentive payments, and still maintained a lively interest in these matters. He could not be regarded as a potential ally, or even fellow traveller, by the workers, in any dispute over work flow, rates, and the like. And the pressure from the market was greater and more direct than it was at Jay’s. Therefore, whatever his sympathies, his room for manœuvre was severely restricted. The material on the two case studies suggests that it may be the case that in a small firm in a highly competitive market, managers will tend to be more inclined to couch their expectations of worker behaviour rigorously in terms of some ideal standard. In a larger firm, with a deep management hierarchy, and extensive specialization of management functions, shop management will have more scope and more incentive to adopt a rather less rigorous set of expectations. In the next, and final chapter, I shall hazard a general suggestion based on the two cases, and on other studies, of the conditions under which worker control over some of the variables in the working situation is likely to be practised and those in which it is unlikely.

CHAPTER 13 GENERAL CONCLUSION

(a) THE PROBLEM RE-STATED THE expression “restriction of output”* is commonly used to describe the behaviour of workers who set standards of output below those which management considers that it can reasonably expect from them. The question “why do workers restrict output?” has produced various answers, The most widely accepted of these is that which stresses the incompatibility of the rationallycontrived controls over workers’ behaviour which are imposed by management, and the controls which are to be found in the spontaneous social relationships which workers enter into at work. According to this interpretation, management formulates an expected level of output which is based upon considerations of technical efficiency. The behaviour of workers is then directed towards the achievement of this level of output. The social groupings in the workshops, which are based upon sentiments of friendship and sociability, and which adhere to values which are traditionalistic rather than rational, develop their own norms of what constitutes a “proper” level of output and impose their own controls upon behaviour. The workshop norm may be well below what management expects. This interpretation of “restriction of output” is attractive because it does not imply laziness, malice, or deliberate planning by workers to defeat the purposes of management. Its widespread acceptance is due largely to the influence of the work of Elton Mayo and his followers. It suggests that workers do not restrict output deliberately so as to safeguard themselves from exploitation, and to protect what they believe to be their best interests. There are at least three questionable assumptions implicit in this interpretation of “restriction of output” which I have thus summarized. The first of these is that there exist methods, which allow of accurate prediction, for assessing the expected performance of productive units. Secondly it is assumed that the

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main impediment to the fulfilment of management expectations lies in informal relationships in the workshops. It is not admitted that expectations may not be fulfilled because of lack of ability by management to translate plans into actual output. Thirdly, the possibility is ruled out that there may exist real conflicts of interest and viewpoint between managers and workers. If such conflicts could be shown to exist, then it would be entirely reasonable to explain fears of rate-cutting and the like in terms of a rational and realistic appraisal of their interests by the workers. This kind of criticism of what may be called “Mayoism” is gaining ground in industrial sociology and it has been well summed up by Coser, who writes: “The studies in Industrial Sociology inspired by Elton Mayo show no recognition of the existence of realistic conflict or of its functions. Behaviour which is the outcome of a conflict situation is almost exclusively dealt with as non-realistic behaviour. They counterpose a logic of facts, ‘the logic of costs and the logic of efficiency’ (i.e., ‘facts’ which aim at beneficial results for management) to the ‘logic of sentiments’, thus depriving the workers’ claims of their realistic basis”.* This summary of the “Mayo” interpretation of “restriction of output”, and the criticism of it that I have advanced on general grounds, will serve as a point of departure for general discussion and comparison of the two case studies. (b) NORMS AND WORKSHOP SOCIAL STRUCTURE The first and most obvious fact which I shall attempt to explain is the absence of a behavioural norm relating to output and earnings, in the Wye Garment factory. I shall also try to explain the contrast between this situation and the situation in the Jay’s plant. The examination of the social structure of the workrooms showed that in each case the workers had formed groups based upon shared experience, common interest, similarity of age, and so on. In the workroom at Wye Garments these “sociable” groupings were not, to any significant extent, co-extensive with the “groupings” of workers on the processes. But at Jay’s, where the workers had greater freedom to choose their associates, and greater spatial mobility, there was an almost exact

*I reintroduce the term “restriction of output” here because it is in these terms that the problem has usually been discussed.

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correspondence of the “sociable” and the productive groupings. In neither case did I observe anything resembling the situation described in the Bank Wiring Room Study, where interaction occasioned by work formed the basis for the development of cliques, membership of which was closely related to output. In terms of hypotheses derived from the Bank Wiring Room, I might have expected something like this in the Wye Garment workroom. At Wye Garments, the productive process anchored workers to one place in the room for most of the working day, and called for a high rate of interaction. For its effective working, the system also relied upon a high degree of interdependence between the members of the productive teams. But in these conditions, as we have shown, jealousies and quarrels were as likely to be the outcome of productive relationships as an increase in friendly sentiments. And I found, in many cases, conflict and friendship co-existing in the same relationship. The findings of the Wye Garments case study show that close friendships were developed and maintained by persons who did not associate on the processes. The situation at Wye did not permit the “sociable” groupings to meet together frequently, yet the groupings persisted and many had done so for years. In Jay’s the pattern was very different. Here, the “sociable” groupings shaped the productive arrangements to a large extent. All this would seem to support the simple proposition that persons who are attracted to one another will find ways and means of coming together. Whether these groups develop norms of proper output or earnings cannot be explained by analysis of workshop social structure alone, but I shall try to exhaust the possibilities of this kind of analysis before I introduce other variables. There is some evidence from the Bank Wiring Room of a correlation between social status in the workgroup and output. In neither Wye nor Jay’s have I been able to establish a clear relationship between these factors. I have shown that some groups and individuals in each of the workrooms were accorded preference in the allocation of “good” work. Because of this their earnings, but not necessarily their outputs, were greater. I refer particularly to the “Blue Eyes” at Jay’s, and to No. 2 team at Wye. This was not so much associated with relationships within the workshop group, as with the relationships between the group and the managers and foremen. For example, the high status accorded to the “Blue Eyes” at Jay’s was not recognized by the other workers, except negatively in the description “Blue Eyes” itself. In fact, it ran contrary to the ideals of fair play and equality held by *See Ref 31. A recent British field study also adds point to the criticism of “Mayoism”, see Ref. 32.

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the group. In both workshops I found a norm that everyone was equal and everyone ought to be treated equally by management. I freely admit that the failure to establish a correlation between social status in the group on the one hand, and output and earnings on the other, may be due to the difficulties of handling a large number of variables in a situation where minor changes were constantly occurring. Whether this is so or not, it still seems clear that a comparative analysis of the social relationships of the workers, taken by itself, does not help much in explaining the observed differences of behaviour between the two workshops. (c) SOME FURTHER “INTERNAL” FACTORS CONSIDERED In seeking to explain the behaviour I observed in the two workshops, and particularly the differences between them, I have examined and compared the elements of social structure in each of the two shops. I also examined other “internal” factors which I have not so far introduced into the analysis. In each workshop I found a different system of wage payment. At Wye, there was a system of job-prices. Under this system the calculation of earnings by the workers was simple and straightforward. The workers collected a docket for each operation performed and a sheet of these was handed in each day. The jobprices were known, so it was a matter of simple addition to ascertain daily earnings. At Jay’s matters were immensely more complicated. It has been argued that knowledge is essential if one deliberately sets out to exercise control.(33) If this is so, then one would have expected to find that in the shop where knowledge of one’s own and of other people’s earnings was most easy to come by, namely Wye, control over earnings and hence output, would have been found. In fact, it was in the shop where the earnings calculations were most complicated that the greatest degree of social control over output was found. From the two case studies it would be possible to advance the hypothesis that it is where systems of wage payment are most complicated that the manipulation of them is most likely to be found, on the grounds that, the more complicated the system, the greater are the opportunities for manipulation. But I think it quite obvious that the system of wage payment is not an independent variable. I shall therefore argue that the comparison of different systems of wage payment does not by itself help greatly in the explanation of the presence or absence of collective control over output and earnings. Immediately after the field work for the case study at Wye was completed, it seemed reasonable to suppose that the absence of

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controls over output there could be largely explained by the fact that the overwhelming majority of the workers were women. I was attracted at first to the well-known argument that women accept the controls which management imposes for the following reasons:* (1) Women do not, on the whole, rely entirely on industrial earnings for their support. Also their main interests lie in the home, thus they are not as concerned as men to keep weekly earnings stable, nor are they as prone to think in terms of long-term class interests as are male industrial workers; (2) Women tend to occupy a subordinate role in working-class family life and are accustomed to male dominance. They therefore stand in awe of industrial management and submit to its dictates more easily; and (3) Women lack experience of collective action. The evidence from Wye seemed in general to favour an explanation of this kind. But two facts counselled caution. The first was that the men at Wye Garments, many of whom worked on similar work to the women, but in workrooms other than the one which was studied, seemed to behave in much the same way. Secondly, the industry was in its early days predominantly a male industry, and so far as I could gather the tradition of individualism had been transmitted from men to women and not vice versa. At Jay’s there was a small number of women in the shop. The men often said that the women spoiled things for themselves by “job-spoiling”, but in general the women had, so far as I could ascertain, accepted the standards set by the men. They haggled with the rate-fixer about prices, and employed methods similar to those employed by the men when booking in work, to minimize the effects of waiting time, and so on. There is so widespread an acceptance by men workers of the stereotype of the woman industrial worker as a “sucker”, easy to exploit, and with no capacity for collective action, or as women would perhaps say, “women are more conscientious than men”, that I hesitate on the basis of two field studies to call it into question. But the material does suggest that the matter of women’s attitudes to industrial work might be looked at again in terms of differing industrial situations.* I have already discussed in some detail, in the case studies, the influence of different methods of production as a factor in the development of production norms or workers’ techniques for controlling earnings. In neither case was production carried out

*For a full discussion of these arguments see Ref. 34.

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on a repetitive assembly-line basis. The workshops I observed can be fairly accurately described as “batch production shops”. It may be that on repetitive work of the kind which was carried out in the Bank Wiring Room, and also of the kind of work reported in Robbins’ study,† norms and controls are easier to establish and maintain. Certainly, the difficulties of batch production made the “fiddle” at Jay’s complicated and difficult to operate effectively, but on the other hand, the hold-ups which are typical of batch production were also a factor encouraging the existence of a policy of “fiddling”. But hold-ups of this kind were also experienced at Wye where no collective “fiddle” was found. It is clear, however, that the production methods which were used at Jay’s, and which allowed much discretion to the foreman in the allocation of work, lent themselves more easily to the promotion of congruence of working and social groupings. The system also offered more room for manipulation and encouraged the collusion of management representatives in the “fiddle”, since the interruptions in the flow of work which inter alia helped promote the “fiddle” were outside the control of the workers, the foreman, the inspector and so on, and an annoyance to all of them. Further, the time span of work was quite long at Jay’s. To complete the erection of a transformer took a long time, but the operation did not require continuous and close concentration and there was scope for social interaction. At Wye the length of the work cycle was relatively short, and the work did demand close concentration. The system of work allocation at Wye was impersonal but it demanded the attention of the chargehand when there were difficulties—a negative role as against the positive one of the foreman at Jay’s. And as I have shown, in Wye the individual worker was the production unit for purposes of planning work flow. In Jay’s the section was the unit. So that at Jay’s there was a good deal more scope for the workers—there were more cracks, so to speak, in the edifice of management control, than there were at Wye, to allow for worker control. The layout of the job, the pattern of work flow, the system of job allocation, and the length of the operation cycle would seem to be of importance for the comparative analysis of the degree of control which workers exercise. I shall return to this point presently. I now summarily consider the argument that the suspicions which workers have of management are a legacy of the years of *My colleagues, Sheila Cunnison and C.Shirley Wilson, have completed field studies of women workers. Their preliminary analysis suggests that women’s community roles are the significant factors in determining their behaviour. †Robbins, S., The Human Factors in Industrial Output, Unpublished Thesis, Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass. (1948).

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trade depression. According to this argument, “restriction of output” arises chiefly from the fear of “working oneself out of a job”. If this argument were to hold one would expect to find in workshops where the workers were young and had no experience of Trade Depression and unemployment, a lack of output restriction, and conversely, in those shops which had an ageing working force and a long history of trade depression, much restriction of output. But, as the case studies show, I found exactly the opposite. I would not deny, of course, that fears of unemployment are transmitted from generation to generation in the workshops, and there is some evidence that redundancy is accepted as one of the natural hazards of working-class life.* But it does not necessarily follow, as the case studies show, that fears or expectations of future redundancy produce collective action to “make the work spin out”. I have now considered singly, and in combination, all the apparently relevant “internal” variables. Although I have not advanced far along this route I have found it necessary to traverse it so as to check my findings and conclusions with those of previous observers. I now examine relations between the workers and management. Later I shall consider some “external” factors, in seeking to explain the differences in behaviour I observed. (d) MANAGEMENT-WORKER RELATIONSHIPS Although many of the workers whom I met and worked with said that they thought the firm they worked for was a “good firm”, in their dealings with representatives of management, they often expressed resentment at the treatment they received. These workers were not being insincere or contradictory. Their judgement of the firm as a good one was based upon how well the firm “looked after” its workers. The judgements of representatives of management were based upon criteria of efficiency. The workers considered that hold-ups in the flow of work were due to bad management, except where these were obviously due to mistakes by other workers, in which case this was recognized. If, due to what they considered “bad” management, their interests were adversely affected, they were resentful. By their behaviour, the workers showed that they had an interest in management efficiency, but they did not think that they ought to help management to be efficient. Indeed, they saw that there was little they could do. So that in both the workshops one heard much criticism of management and much comment on what *For a recent statistical analysis of working-class attitudes and expectations of redundancy see Ref. 35.

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management ought to do. Much of the comment was informed comment, and this was especially so in Jay’s, At Wye, where management had a specialist planning staff, it was the specialists, who were also newcomers to the factory, who came in for the most adverse comment. “After all”, as the workers said, “it’s their job to see that we have plenty of work, and that is what they get paid for”. The shop supervisors were not blamed. It was judged that it was not their fault if the system did not work well. At Jay’s, because of the size of the plant, the complications of the work flow arrangements, and the greater depth of the management hierarchy, management and supervisors at shopfloor level tended to share the views of the workers about the specialists. And here the workers were uncritical of shop management. The supervisors at Jay’s came in for some criticism over matters of work allocation. But in both these factories top management completely escaped criticism. We often heard the remark, “If only they knew what went on down here they would soon put a stop to it”. My findings are that workers not only expected managers to be efficient, but that they fairly accurately diagnosed the location of shortcomings. Their criticisms were directed more or less at the right target. When workers bestowed praise on management, it tended to be general, but they criticized particular managers and departments of management. “This is a good firm, but the planning is terrible”, sums up many remarks which I heard. I claim that all the evidence I have produced so far, shows that, as far as relationships with management are concerned, workers do take a realistic view of their situation and interests. This I found to be common to both workshops. Yet I also found that the workers in Jay’s had evolved a system to manipulate the incentive system. In the other factory this did not occur. I shall have to examine some of the “external” influences upon behaviour in the workshops before I can attempt to explain why the adjustment between management and workers took a different form in the two factories. (e) THE “EXTERNAL” FACTORS Whenever I have tried to relate the presence or absence of production norms to workshop social structure and like factors, I have come up against the fact that it is what may be called “the will to control” which is crucial. Unless this variable is introduced into the analysis the argument is inconclusive. It runs like this: collective controls over output require solidary social groupings in the workshops. In some workshops we find solidary groups and social controls, and in other workshops we find solidary groups

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and no social controls over output, or over the relationship between effort and cash reward. Thus, although collective controls may require solidary social groupings, solidary social groupings are not necessarily associated with collective controls over output. And we are still no nearer to finding out why some solidary groups exercise control over output and some do not. That is why it is necessary to extend the analysis to introduce the expectations and evaluations of persons in each situation, and to place these within a wider context. In the garment workshop, as we have shown, the workers responded to the incentives offered by management. Management expected the workers to maximize their earnings by working hard and by utilizing effectively (from management’s viewpoint) the time they spent in the workshop. By and large, the workers fulfilled management expectations. But management frequently failed to fulfil the expectations of the workers and they came in for much criticism for unfairness. In spite of the shortcomings (as the workers perceived them) of management, the workers did not attempt to restrict or manipulate. The “will to control” was absent. This was so, in spite of the fact that some rates were considered to be tight and allocation of work unfair. Many of the objective conditions for control were present, and in spite of the inherent difficulties inhibiting the possible exercise of control, which we have mentioned in the text, some control could have been exercised had the “will to control” been there. The clue to the absence of the “will to control” is to be found in the workers’ own assessment of their position in the industry. The workers were aware of the highly competitive and seasonal nature of the industry. This has encouraged them to adopt an attitude which they themselves describe as “looking after No. 1”. Because the firms are small, and contact with management close and personal, and because of the existence of an effective “grapevine” whereby information passes about the prospects at say firm A as against firm B, workers had a shrewd idea of the state of trade at any period. They were also aware of the likely onset of seasonal depression which might throw them out of work altogether. Knowing that their work was highly specialized,* and that their skills were not easily transferable, the workers tried to make as much money as they could while work was plentiful, as a buffer against bad times. The lack of “will to control” was also associated with the close identification of some workers with the management of the firm, a feature common to the industry. There was not a wide social gulf between workers and managers. I heard of a case in which the workers in one firm asked the Union’s permission to strike in protest at the dismissal of a manager. Even in larger firms, such as Wye, this set of predispositions exists. I consider that these external factors, when taken together with the analysis of the workshop situation, help explain the absence of

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control over output and earnings at Wye. They also help to explain the absence of effective Trade Union organization at workshop level. I would expect to find the same set of predispositions and mutual expectations in every workshop in the rubber-proofed garment industry. My expectations about this were confirmed by the General Secretary of the Union, who summed it up by saying that his members “always apply themselves to their work when they have any”. There is no doubt that the market for electrical transformers is much more stable, and that there are no severe seasonal depressions. It is also clear that competition between the firms in the industry is not intense: indeed there is a good deal of cartelization, and there are many collusive marketing arrangements. The firms are very much larger and certainly the amount of capital required to enter the industry would not encourage any worker to expect to become an owner. Thus there is, in the electrical components industry, more stability and less downward pressure on wage rates. One does not hear from managers at Jay’s the kind of remark we heard from a sales manager in the rubber-proofed garment industry: “A halfpenny on the price might mean the difference between getting an order and losing it”. Neither does one hear in the garment industry the kind of remark heard from workers at Jay’s: “When you are sitting around waiting for work the firm just passes the cost on to the consumer, and the consumer pays through the nose for the special jobs we do, so why should the firm worry”. Trade Unionism is highly developed in heavy electrical engineering and its organization is highly effective at workshop level. Thus at the same time as the structure and the economics of the industry create the “elbow room” for manipulation, the existence of Trade Union power in the workshops provides workers with one of the means to control their situation. Since management is not pressed by competition continually to seek to “trim” piecework prices they can accept “fiddling” as a reasonable way of adjusting their relationships with the workers and their Unions.(39) And this is further made possible because labour cost is a much lower proportion of the total cost of the product than it is in the garment industry, 8–10 per cent as against 13–15 per cent. Thus, if market conditions are adverse, savings can more easily be effected elsewhere. It would seem that the hypotheses suggested by me in an article based upon the Wye study emphasizing the importance of “external” factors is consistent with the material from Jay’s.(36)

*This applies particularly to makers, for machinists can transfer to other sections of the garment trade. But rubber-proofed clothing pays better.

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The differences in behaviour which I observed between the two workshops would seem to be explained if it can be shown that both management and workers made a realistic appraisal of their situation, and then acted according to their interests as they saw them. The material suggests that they did this. This is not to say that everyone always behaved rationally in the light of his or her interests. Much of the behaviour we observed can be interpreted in terms of “Mayoism”. But a great deal of the field material ceases to make sense unless one admits of a realistic appraisal of interests, and of discrepancy—even conflict—between the goals of workers and managers in many situations. I do not claim of course, that all the workers in the workshops I studied were aware in detail of all the factors which affected their interests. Obviously they were not, although I was often struck by the extent and accuracy of their knowledge. Sometimes their behaviour appeared to be directed against their own best interests. But lack of knowledge does not necessarily imply lack of realism. One acts on the knowledge one has. This applies to management too. For all the techniques of modern management it is not possible to predict production targets exactly, or so I found. Nor are the controls which management exercises perfect in their application. And this is because management also acts on incomplete knowledge. Although partly one of communications, the problem is greater than that. Knowledge which is in the nature of things incomplete, is communicated, and upon this knowledge people must act. It is in this area of incomplete knowledge and understanding that the social adjustments which I have described are made. I conclude that in Jay’s, where there was security, and “elbow room” to make adjustments, the “fiddle” was a quite stable adjustment of the discrepant goals and interests of management and workers. In Wye, “looking after No. 1” seemed a logical sensible policy in the circumstances. I have checked my findings with previous work in the field, and I have enquired about the state of affairs in other parts of the electrical components industry. In Roy’s work, which describes a “fiddle” closely resembling that at Jay’s, there is not much reference to what we have called “external” factors. His study was carried out in the steel industry, and it is reasonable to suppose that the complex of external factors closely resembles that which I found at Jay’s. Enquiries made at a large electrical firm in the same area as Jay’s making a similar product, and with a similar wages structure, revealed that an almost exactly similar “fiddle” operates. A manager there told us that this firm had lately taken on some foreign labour. The story is now being told in the firm that the first English phrase that the newcomers learned was “one hundred per cent”. My analysis has taken me some way towards a definition of the conditions under which restrictive and non-restrictive behaviour

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may be found. It is now possible to list the factors I have been discussing under the headings “external” and “internal” with the object of discerning whether any particular combination, or clustering of factors seems to be associated with certain kinds of worker behaviour in relation to controls over output and earnings. This is done in Table 7. When one compares the situation at Wye and at Jay’s, it is seen that with regard to all the factors listed there are significant differences. And these differences are associated in each case with differences in the pattern of shop floor behaviour. Thus we may define the situation in each workshop in terms of a “cluster” of the characteristics listed in Table 7, and state the hypothesis that when the cluster of characteristics in column A is found, one will find behaviour in the workshops which resembles the behaviour which I found in the workshop at Wye, and that when the Jay’s type of cluster is found, one would expect to find Jay’s type behaviour. I would also suggest that these two kinds of cluster are those which would be most commonly found. For example, it is in industries with small firms and intense competition that one would probably find lack of mechanization, high labour cost, women workers and weak Trade Union workshop organization. In an industry with large firms and little competition one would probably find mechanization, low labour cost, men workers and strong Trade Union workshop organization. But these are obviously not the only possible clusters. For example, one might find an industry which is composed of a large number of small firms which are not locally concentrated but widely scattered, but with Trade Unions that are strong at workshop level in such an industry. Or one may find that Trade Unions are strong in the industry in one area and weak in another. Or one might find a competitive industry of small firms which is highly mechanized. It is also true that some items in any “cluster” may be very influential in relation to other items in the cluster and to shop floor behaviour. I have myself suggested already in the Wye and Jay’s cases, that some items seem to have more weight than others. On the whole I consider that the Wye and Jay type of cluster will be commonly found, and one could consider them as lying at either end of a continuum, with all sorts of combinations making up the clusters in between, but with similar clusters themselves clustering at each end of the continuum. Those clusters at either end are in a sense definitions on the one hand of situations where there is much collective worker control over output and earnings, and on the other of those where there is little control of this kind. I have stated a hypothesis about the relationship between events happening in workshops, and what one might call the economic and social environment of these workshops. But the picture is lopsided. The material I have presented on workshop

GENERAL CONCLUSION 195

TABLE 7 “EXTERNAL” AND “INTERNAL” FACTORS

196 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

social relationships is detailed, while the material on the economic context consists of abstracted economic relationships rather than detailed description and analysis of the behaviour of managers in differing contexts. And there is nothing in the table of factors about the influences on behaviour of workers’ incumbency of roles in other social systems. But if my hypothesis is crude I am in distinguished company, for two eminent sociologists have dealt rather sketchily with the problem of the relationship between internal and external factors. Homans, in his analysis of the Bank Wiring Room material in The Human Group(37), and Warner in The Social System of the Modern Factory.(38) Homans’ attention is focused on the small working group, and Warner’s on the local community. Each has detailed material on his chosen area. Outside these areas they rely, as I have done, on partial data and shaky generalizations. Homans in particular has developed an elaborate conceptual scheme for “internalizing” external factors for convenience in analysing small group behaviour.* In my comparison of the two workshops I have been regarding the workshop as a system of social relationships included within wider systems—the factory, the market for the product, and so on. The difficulty about this kind of analysis, and it is one which both Homans and Warner have encountered, is that while it is possible to make general statements about the relationship which sound plausible, when one tries to carry out an analysis in detail of the nature of the relationship one is confronted by the fact that one is dealing with systems which are organized on different principles to those which have been properly regarded as the province of sociology and social anthropology. And this is where the chief shortcoming of this concluding chapter lies. It is relatively simple, when attention is focused on workshop life, to mark off one’s area of study. Workshops are bounded by walls or passageways, and these set the limits for observation. The difficulty seems to be to define the social context, or environment, or external system or whatever one chooses to call it. It now seems to me that when one is dealing with workshop life one has to handle in analysis a number of overlapping systems. According to this notion of overlap there are segments of different social systems which are latent within the workshop. For instance, a man’s role as a father, or as a member of the working class, may affect his behaviour in the workshop. I am aware that, because of lack of material, I have not carried this kind of analysis very far in my case studies. I have not gone as far as Collins, Dalton, and Roy, for example, in treating the problem of the deviant from workshop norms in terms of overlap.(40) One has also to look at the systems which include the workshop—the market system, the industry, the factory, etc.—as well as those which overlap into it. On these there is more information but still not enough to make detailed analysis of the relationship possible.

GENERAL CONCLUSION 197

When I embarked upon this study I was not as clearly aware of the extent to which workshop behaviour was affected by external influences as I am now. It was only as the studies proceeded and the analysis began that the full significance of these external influences became apparent. I think I had been too much influenced by the Bank Wiring Room type of analysis, and by Homans’ concept of external system. But if my analysis has in some respects a crude look about it, I claim that my hypothesis about the relationship between external and internal factors and workshop behaviour is a plausible one. I think it will stand the test of further research and act as a guide to it. The conclusions which I have drawn from my analysis of the two case studies, and from my attempts to compare them, seem to run counter to some commonly accepted views. One common view is summed up in the proposition recently stated by Seashore. This has already been cited in Chapter 1 but it is worth looking at again in the light of the foregoing analysis. The proposition states: “The direction of deviation of group productivity (i.e., towards a higher or lower productivity) is a function of the degree to which the larger organization (the Company) is perceived by group members to provide a supportive setting for the group.”*· If this means that groups with common goals and interests will cooperate in employing the means to reach the goals and to serve the ends, then the proposition is close to a tautology. If it means that work groups which feel secure in their social relationships with management will co-operate more fully with management than those who feel insecure, then my findings do not support the statement. At Wye Garments, the general feeling of insecurity associated with seasonal employment promoted a coincidence of aim and interest at many points between workers and managers. At Jay’s, where the atmosphere was “comfortable” (i.e., where the workers saw the larger organization as supportive) the workers practised the “fiddle”. This suggests that attempts on the part of managers to promote amongst workpeople “a sense of belonging” will not necessarily lead to greater co-operation on the part of workers. Such attempts might indeed have the opposite effect, particularly if the efficiency of management fails to live up to its good intentions. Given security, workers may take steps to offset the adverse effects of management shortcomings. To describe such behaviour as dishonesty or ingratitude is completely to *For a critical appraisal of this scheme as it applies to industrial groups see Ref. 9.

198 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

misunderstand it. If, as I have suggested, workers behave reasonably in the light of their position in industry and society, and take steps to protect these interests wherever circumstances make this possible, then it would seem that management would be better employed in putting its technical house in order than complaining about the restrictive practices of the workers.

*Seashore, op. cit.

APPENDIX 1 RESEARCH TECHNIQUE

THE decision not to employ conventional techniques such as the questionnaire and the interview schedule meant limiting the scope of the investigation to two workshops in two years. The problem to be investigated seemed to call for a first-hand description of behaviour, rather than a collection of statements about attitudes. The difficulties of trying to build up, from answers given in formal interviews, an accurate picture of social life in workshops, and of the process by which output levels are determined, seemed formidable. This is because the relationship between earnings and output is often the focus of dispute. In discussions with outsiders, managers and workers may have much they wish to conceal or find difficult to express in a formal interview. Information gleaned from formal questioning about these matters would have been of limited value for the description of the process whereby levels of output emerge. The interview is often useful as a means to ascertain attitudes, opinions, and beliefs, but it is not possible to proceed logically from statements about attitudes to descriptions of actual or probable behaviour. Attitudes expressed in an interview may not affect the choice made. Many choices involve a clash between attitudes stated with equal conviction in the situation of the interview. As this study was focused on the social process by which levels of output are determined and maintained, there seemed no alternative to firsthand observation of the behaviour of industrial workers, even if this meant limiting the area of study. This was one reason, probably the most significant, for the choice of “open participant observation”. It would have been possible to have concealed from the managers and the workers the identity of the investigator. This course was rejected for two reasons. First, it was felt to be wrong to spy on people. Second, the cooperation of managers and Trade Union officers was needed in the collection of documents and records so that it was impossible to conceal the purpose of the work. If the officials were to know, the workers ought to be told too.

200 RESEARCH TECHNIQUE

Once having decided on “open participant observation” the difficulties are great. To establish a relationship with workers and managers such that confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the research worker are established, requires lengthy preparatory work. The managers and the Trade Unions must be seen and the work explained, then discussions of the work with representatives of the worker from the shop floor must take place. Finally, the investigator must spend much time on explanation when he arrives in the workplace. Once there, he must continually strive not to submit to the many influences which press upon him to take sides, and to make sure that people see that his object is not to help management or the Unions but to do his job as an investigator of a sociological problem. A difficult undertaking. Whether the results of the investigation are worth the time, and the physical and mental energy expended, only the reader can judge.

REFERENCES

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

ROETHLISBERGER, F.J. and DIXON, W.J., Management and the Worker, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. (1939). MATHEWSON, S.B., Restriction of Output among Unorganized Workers, The Viking Press, New York (1931). TAYLOR, F.W., Scientific Management, Harper, New York (1947). HOMANS, G.C., The Human Group, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, pp. 60–61 (1951). COLLINS, DALTON and ROY, Restriction of Output and Social Cleavage in Industry, Appl. Anthrop, V, Summer 1946. ROY, D., Efficiency and “the fix!” Amer. J.Sociol Vol. LX, No. 3, Nov., 1954. COCH and FRENCH, Overcoming Resistance to Change, Human Relations, pp. 512–532 (1948). RONKEN and LAWRENCE, Administering Changes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. (1952). SEASHORES, Group Cohesiveness in the Industrial Group, University of Michigan, Survey Research Center (1954). MERTON, R. and LAZARSFELD, P.F. (Eds.) Continuities in Social Research; Studies in the American Soldier, The Free Press, Glencoe, 111. passim (1950). BRECH, E.F.L. (Ed.) The Practice and Principles of Management, Longmans Green, London (1953). COZER, L., The Functions of Social Conflict, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London (1956). ELBOURNE, E.T., Fundamentals of Industrial Administration, McDonald and Evans, London (1950). NADEL, S.F., The Foundations of Social Anthropohgy, Cohen and West London (1957). HOGGART, R., The Uses of Literacy, Chatto and Windus, London (1957). GOULDNER, A.W., Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London (1955). BEHREND, H., The Effort Bargain, Ind. and Lab. Rel. Rcview, July (1957). LUPTON, T., A Sociologist looks at Work Study, Work Study and Industrial Engineering, Feb. (1957). TURNER, V.W., Schism and Continuity in an African Society, Manchester University Press (1957). SCOTT, HALSEY, BANKS and LUPTON, Technical Change and Industrial Relations, Chap. 3, Liverpool University Press, (1956) passim.

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21.

22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

LUPTON, T. and CUNNISON, S., The Cash Reward for an Hour’s Work under Three Piecework Incentive Systems, The Manchester School, Sept. (1957). YOUNG, M. and WILMOTT, P., Family and Kinship in East London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London (1957). CAPLOW, T., The Sociology of Work, Minnisota University Press, Minneapolis (1954). Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission, Report on the Supply and Export of Electrical and Allied Machinery and Plant, p. 12, H.M.S.O. London (1957). FRIEDMANN, G., Industrial Society, The Free Press, Glencoe, 111. (1955). ROY, D., Efficiency and “the fix!”, Am.J.Sociol., Vol. LX,No. 3, November, 1954. ROY, D., Quota Restriction and Goldbricking in a Piecework Machine Shop, Am.J.Sociol., Vol. LVII, March, 1952. GOULDNER, A.W., Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy, Routledge and Kegan Paul London (1955) RICE, A.K., The Use of Unrecognized Cultural Mechanisms in an Expanding Machine Shop, Human Relations, Vol. II, No. 2, May, 1951. SHIMMIN, S., Workers’ Understanding of Incentive Payment Systems, Occupational Psychology, Vol. 32, 2 April, 1958. COSER, L., The Functions of Social Conflict, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, p. 52 (1956). SCOTT, W.H., HALSEY, A.H., BANKS, J. and LUPTON, T., Technical Change and Industrial Relations, Liverpool University Press, Chaps. 4 and 5 (1956). ROETHLISBERGER, F.J. and DICKSON, W.J., Management and the Worker, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. (1939). CAPLOW, T., The Sociology of Work, Minnisota University Press, Minneapolis (1954). SCOTT, W.H., HALSEY, A.H., BANKS, J. and LUPTON, T., op. cit. Chap. 4. LUPTON, T., Social Factors Influencing Industrial Output, Man, Vol. LVI, No. 49, April, 1956. HOMANS, G.C., The Human Group, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, (1951). WARNER, W.L. and Low, J.O., The Social System of the Modern Factory, Yale University Press (1947). LUPTON, T. and CUNNISON, S., The Problem of Social Context in the Analysis of Workshop Behaviour, Proc. Assoc. of Soc. Anthrop. COLLINS, M., DALTON and ROY, D., The Industrial Ratebuster, a Characterization, App. Anthrop. Winter (1948).

INDEX

A Absenteeism 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 56, 62, 63, 67, 74, 78, 83, 85, 87, 87, 88, 178 Allowed Time 104, 124, 138, 141, 147 B Bank Wiring Observation Room 3, 4, 9, 165, 168, 184 Batch Production 106 “Blue Eyes” 109, 110, 111, 122, 138, 141, 159, 160, 185 C Capacity to earn, factors affecting 66, 171 Chargehands responsibilities of 20, 22, 25, 36, 52, 63, 76 to 79, 87, 98, 99, 101, 119 life history of 28, 119 difficulties of 45 to 48 plural roles of 84 Clusters (of characteristics) 193, 194 (Table), 194 Communication 116 and co-operation 24 and workshop layout 72 and production plan 98, 98, 99, 100 Conversation attitude towards 63 Conflict resolution of 10

of control systems 9, 38 mechanisms for redress of 74– 84, 153 “Conformer” definition of 151, 152 comparison with “job spoiler” 169 Contract of employment nature of 179 Control types of 9, 10 conflicting systems of 9, 38, 182 over output and earnings 4, 40, 49, 52, 55, 63, 87, 88, 122, 134, 147, 177 production planning and social 8, 15, 16, 85, 94, 96, 122 and inter-personal conflict 80 and managerial power 84 by foremen and chargehands 103 by incentive payment 134 and efficiency 154 and knowledge 193 related to “clusters” 194 will to (see “will to control”) Co-operation on production 23, 24, 63, 106 and earnings differentials 53 reasons for breakdown of 66, 67 and group payment 73 and conflict analysed 74–84 for common goals 197

203

204 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

Coordination of production 22, 23, 98, 98, 100 Custom, influence of 179 Customary behaviour 110, 149 D “Daywork” 126 “Dead Horse” 49, 62, 85 Deployment of working force 48, 107 resentment about 74, 76, 78 and work flow 87 Deviant behaviour 144, 162 E Earnings factors affecting level of 3, 4 workers control over 10, 63, 72, 81, 87, 89, 101 and collective bargaining 12 and effort expended 17 and group piecework 23 and job satisfaction 40 and individualism 66 and labour deployment 78, 87 fluctuations of 50–63, 74, 87, 126, 128, 149, 172–175 calculation of 128–133, 149 and family budgets 176 Efficiency, “Logic” of 6, 38, 100, 184 Electrical Equipment industry 91– 93 Expectations (see Role expectations) “External” factors 190, 193, 194– 197 F Fatigue 4, 36, 41 “Fiddle” 139, 141, 149, 150, 151, 159, 163, 168, 169, 170, 187, 188, 193, 197 and earnings fluctuations 172 advantages claimed for 165, 167, 168 176 morality of 152

managers’ opinion of 155 Foremen managers’ views about 154 responsibilities of 96, 98, 99, 101, 117, 118, 129, 149, 150 opinions of 156 “Fringe” Benefits (see Welfare Facilities) G Group norms 41, 53, 84, 184, 185 payment 23 working 6, 7, 8, 38, 87, 107, 121, 184, 197 Groupings “Sociable” 63–74, 82, 88, 184, 185 Tea-break (see Tea-break groupings) H Hawthorne Investigations (see Bank Wiring Observation Room) I Identification with company 69, 78, 88 (see also “Sense of Belonging”) Incentive Scheme 6, 7, 17, 24, 41, 49, 50, 122–134, 173 formal and functional understanding of 167 Individualism 67, 69, 72, 73, 74, 87, 89, 90, 142, 144 Indoctrination 80 “Indulgency Pattern” 162 Inspection 61, 62, 94 and allowances 128 Inspectors work of 102, 116, 119 workers’ opinions of 120 Interaction, Social 102, 105, 110 “Internal” Factors, 186, 193, 194, 196, 197 J Jay’s Electrical Components 91–96

INDEX 205

“Job Spoiler” 114, 139, 141, 144, 152, 175, 176, 187 comparison with “conformer” 169 L Labour Turnover 72, 87, 88, 178 Labour Cost Ratio 192, 194 Life Histories 26, 27, 28, 107–121 “Logic” of efficiency (see Efficiency, “Logic” of) “Logic” of sentiment (see Sentiment, “Logic” of) M Management Expectations (see Role Expectations) Management and workers’ attitudes 8, 37, 53, 74, 109, 116, 138, 151, 152, 153, 154, 159, 163, 169, 189, 190 behaviour of 11, 148 and control 15, 16, 85, 129, 150, 155, 162, 177, 182 and the planning of work flow 22, 23, 48, 49, 87, 101, 154, 160, 161, 164, 178, 193 problems of 61, 94, 155, 197 power 83 structure 99, 181, 181 discipline 111 and foremen 118, 119, 156 and wage payment 134, 147, 160, 173, 190, 192 workers’ expectations of 153, 185, 191 and promotion 157, 158 and output 164 stereotypes of worker 179, 181 Management—worker relationships 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 16, 26, 36, 37, 40, 43, 45, 46, 48, 53, 66, 76, 78, 79, 82, 83, 84, 106, 148, 178, 184, 189, 190, 194, 197

Manipulation of earnings (see Time and also Earnings) Market, influence of 11–14, 49, 50, 61, 62, 74, 83, 87, 90, 91, 93, 94, 181, 181, 192, 194, 196 Mayo, Elton 182, 184, 192 Measured Daywork 165 O “Open participant observation” ix, 6, 198, 200 Output control of 10, 55, 63, 72, 81, 89, 101 restriction of 3–8, 177, 178, 182 and “fiddle” 176, 177 and redundancy 188, 189 norms and standards (see Production Norms) factors affecting 40, 49 fluctuations in 50–52 Overlapping systems 196 P Piecework 3, 4, 15, 22, 24, 42, 44, 49, 53, 111, 126, 128, 131 Group and individual 23, 73 Managements view of 155 Alternative to 165 Planning and doing 16, 17, 22, 100–4 Price regulation in Transformer market 93 Prices, job (see Rates, job) Production Norms ix, 8, 24, 40, 50, 53, 62, 79, 84, 85, 87, 151 Production Planning 16–25, 94, 96, 98–106, 154 Productive system Jay’s 94, 101, 105, 106, 111, 194 Wye 14–25, 49, 52, 63, 63, 67, 69, 72 80, 82, 85, 87, 87 Productivity 50 Promotion 158

206 ON THE SHOP FLOOR

Q Quality of work 18, 156 (see also Inspection) debasement of 11, 14, 41, 49, 61 and customer 67, 94 and ‘teararsing’ 114 and allowances 128, 129, 171 R Rates, job calculation of 15, 22, 24, 42, 44, 48, 61, 62, 114 and labour costs 48 anomalies in 52, 53, 56, 58, 59, 74 control of 88 “tight” 43–44, 45, 48, 49, 50, 55, 62, 73, 87, 87, 129, 141, 144, 147, 148, 150, 159, 163, 172, 174, 175 “loose” 129, 147, 148, 172, 174, 175 “reasonable” 147 bargaining about 126, 134–141 “levelling” of 126 Ratefixers and Ratefixing 120, 121, 124 138, 139, 142, 145, 148, 160 Restriction of Output (see Output— restriction of) Role definitions and expectations and controls 10, 38 discrepancy of 16 of management 41, 43, 44, 47, 78, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 90, 160, 165 of workers 150, 160, 162, 163 “ideal” and “actual” 151, 179 definition of concept of 152, 153 of foremen 156 adjustment of 181 and management—worker relationships 190 and wider context 190

S Sentiment, “logic” of 6, 38, 184 Scale, effects of 194 Shimmin, Sheila 167 Shop Stewards 80, 83, 84, 107, 112, 113, 155, 160 “Sociable” Groupings (see Groupings, “Sociable”) Social Cleavage 110 Social Control 4, 8, 10, 38, 40, 41, 47, 49, 52, 63, 72, 73, 74, 81, 82, 84, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 186, 190 Social Solidarity 38, 63, 65, 66, 81, 121, 190 “Social Optimum” 164 “Social space” 168 “Steaming” 41 Supervisors—responsibilities of 15, 22, 77, 84, 87 “Sweating” 41, 45, 49, 55, 61, 62, 85 T Tea-break and lunch groupings 67, 68, 69, 69, 112, 121 “Teararse” 114, 144, 163 Teenagers 30, 33, 42, 53, 67, 79, 80 “Technical optimum” 164, 176 Time “booking-in” of 24, 25, 49–55, 129, 149, 164 “banking” of 141, 149, 149, 159 “cross-booking” of 141, 142, 147, 148, 149, 170, 174 “up the cuff” 174 uses of 164, 165 Time and Motion Study 44, 48, 66, 121, 124, 134, 136, 137, 138, 138, 139, 145 Trade Unions 11, 14, 44, 62, 83, 87, 93, 111, 133, 192, 194 Transformers, assembly of 101 W Wages (see Earnings)

INDEX 207

Waiting time 45, 56, 56, 60, 104, 161, 171, 176, 187 Waterproof Garment Industry 11– 14, 90, 93 “Will to Control” 84, 88, 190, 191 Work, allocation of 159, 172, 181, 188 Work, flow of 19, 22, 23, 45, 47, 49, 50, 52, 56, 59, 60, 74, 87, 96, 97, 98, 98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 121, 122, 126, 154, 160, 188 Work Study (see Time and Motion Study) Y “Youngsters” 109, 112, 122