Work,Employment and Society

This ethnographic study of engineers in action introduces an interpretive approach to the recent debate about the factors shaping the organisation of engineering labour within the firm. The study compares the consciousness of kind and of difference developed by R&D and sales engineers (also known as customer engineers) working for an engineering boutique. Two case stories and other field data exemplify that the R&D and the customer engineers not only developed distinct interpretive frameworks, they also enacted them in the course of daily interaction either to protect or to alter an existing jurisdictional map between the two engineering specialities. Discussion suggests that the organisation of engineering labour is partly shaped by the interrelation of interpretive frameworks developed by engineering sub-groups. The possible technisation of sales work in micro-electronics is also discussed.

This paper seeks to reassess the contributions made by Braverman and subsequent labour process writers to the critique of capitalist production. Braverman's main motivation lay with the subversion of pro-capitalist ideologies. He identified deskilling tendencies with the capitalist imperative of accumulation in order to promote the case for revolutionary change. The labour process debate that Braverman helped to initiate, while successful in broadening understanding of concrete work relations, has difficulties in excavating the necessary interconnections of capitalist alienation and exploitation. In particular, there is a problem in separating out the different levels of analysis that link essence and appearance in the work context. Narrow focus on the labour process creates unnecessary conceptual confusion about the specificity of capitalist production, and also condones an unduly pessimistic political agenda on the prospects for transcending capitalist domination. In eschewing the important interconnections between workplace organisation and capitalist social relations, labour process analysis risks inverting the critical intent of Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital by promoting the continuation of the extant social order.

The on-going skilling debate has already yielded an abundance of contradictory theories, interpretations and empirical contradictions. Based on previous qualitative research in the Netherlands (Steijn and De Witte 1992), we have contributed to this debate by introducing the internal differentiation hypothesis. This paper addresses the empirical validity of this hypothesis by analysing data from a representative Dutch panel of 1,022 respondents in paid employment. The data show a small overall net upgrading trend. However, automation seems to have different effects for various occupational groups. For blue-collar workers, our findings suggest that a trend of internal differentiation does exist. Next, we examine the consequences (for underemployment and job satisfaction) of automation and changes in work content. Although our outcomes do not support our internal differentiation hypothesis, they do show the important effect of autonomy and complexity on feelings of underemployment. The outcomes justify Mottaz's statement that one of the consequences of this underemployment is job dissatisfaction.

This paper draws upon on-going research into the changes taking place in the Brazilian vehicle assembly industry with particular reference to the state of Rio de Janeiro. It focuses upon a case study of Volkswagen's bus and truck assembly plant at Resende. The plant opened in 1996 on a green-field site and was presented as a major development in vehicle assembly. The unique feature of the plant's production system rests on the relationship between the assembler (VW) and its component suppliers. At Resende these were involved in a joint enterprise to establish a `modular system' of production. In this system, the component suppliers finance a part of the factory and organise the assembly of their components on site. As such few of the production workers are employed by the assembler whose main role in the process is to co-ordinate production and market the vehicle. The article outlines the nature of the Resende system and the negotiations and comment that accompanied its introduction. It considers the development in relation to literatures on the boundary and capacity of the firm and those relating to the role of labour in mature labour processes. In drawing upon wider changes in the Brazilian vehicle manufacturing sector it argues that the Resende experiment can be understood as an extreme case of a more general development in Brazil, involving changed relationships between assemblers and component suppliers and also with the manual workers. Some consideration is given to the idea of an emerging `Brazilian system' of production and its implication for more general developments within the sector.

Changes in the competitive and regulative conditions of British television over the 1980s and 1990s make for an environment of increased uncertainty for those who work in television. Broadcasting legislation, increased competition and technological advances have changed the working practices of the UK's 28,000 production workforce. The introduction of a 25 per cent quota of independent productions on all terrestrial channels, the implementation of Producer Choice in the BBC and the creation of a Network Centre in ITV, leading to a new commissioning process along with merger rationalisation and increasing competition have all contributed to constructing a workforce in which over 50 per cent are freelance and face much uncertainty. This paper focuses on some of the ways workers have experienced and responded to these changes by analysing the postal questionnaire and diary-data collected in an eight-wave panel study of 436 creative production workers in British television 1994-97, collected by the British Film Institute.

This paper considers whether uncertainty is a problem and finds that it is for the majority of these workers. The question of what makes uncertainty a problem is also considered. Individuals were found to cope with uncertainty by diversifying the income sources, by collecting information, building informal networks and by thinking of leaving work in television.

Class structure and class formation are two crucial aspects of class. The former relates to differences in market positions and the latter concerns social factors such as interaction, mobility and class action. This paper is based on Swedish data covering the period from 1975 to 1995. Analysis reveals a persistent class hierarchy and that there is no trend towards declining class differences regarding market position. The situation is better described as being in a state of non-linear flux. However, one persistent trend is discernible; class explains less and less of the variance in wage income. Looking at class formation there is a decline over time in class-homogeneity. Most Swedes are mobile in the sense that they end up in a class position different from their father's. A growing majority of all marriage is also class mixed. However, although classes generally lack homogeneity, social boundaries still exist, i.e., tendencies for immobility and class homogeneous marriage. In relation to the `class-is-dying' hypothesis, the results generally indicate the continuing relevance of class, although the view of classes as homogeneous social groups is increasingly troublesome over time.

The continuing expansion of women's employment has increasingly focused attention on the question of how the caring work traditionally carried out by unpaid women will be accomplished. In particular, how can caring responsibilities be combined with a long-term career? In this paper, we assess the significance of the national context through a comparison of the biographies of career bank managers, male and female, in Britain and Norway. We find that although the (considerably) more family-friendly policies of the Norwegian state do have a positive impact, particularly in somewhat exceptional cases, nevertheless in general in both countries, individuals have difficulties in combining employment with caring and no examples of a `two career' household were found in either country. These findings emphasise the continuing tension between market forces and social reproduction, which has been exacerbated by the erosion of the `male breadwinner' model of family caring and has yet to be resolved in a satisfactory manner.