Peter Cook
Published: 1996
Total Pages: 360
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This is a study of industrial craftsworkers and their skills, and also a study of two important linked sets of relationships: between craftsworkers and other industrial workers, and between craftsworkers and managers. Because of their skill and all its implications, craftsworkers are both collaborators and antagonists within each relationship. They are an important dynamic force in technological and organizational development in industry, owing to their apparently contradictory positions and behaviour in relation to managers and other workers. At the heart of this book are two historically based case studies of automobile factory workers in the United States and Britain, providing new insights into craftsworkers' behaviour and relationships with other workers and with managers and their workplace strategies. The possession and exercise of skill creates its own world view, a great part of which is a belief that such work has its own moral value, which in turn has industrial, economic, social and political consequences. Conceptually, craft skill may be viewed as an autonomous fount of power and consciousness. More practically, craft skill and craft control interact with other, often hostile forces. The dominating theme therefore is that craft skill and its corollary of craft control is crucial to an understanding of much industrial change, and of many aspects of working-class development.
