1. Skill levels of manual workers and beliefs about work, management, and industry: a comparison of craft and non-craft workers in Edmonton.
- Author
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Tanner, Julian
- Subjects
INDUSTRIAL relations ,EMPLOYEE orientation ,RIGHT & left (Political science) ,ARTISANS ,POLITICAL participation - Abstract
The article presents a paper which is concerned with the relationship between skill level and left/right orientation toward worker-management relations. The paper begins with a description of a backcloth of contradictory hypotheses on this relationship in the literature. Then the relationship is explored for samples of craft and non-craft workers drawn from two different plants in Edmonton, Alberta. Relationships between skill level and left/right orientation showed different directions for workers from the different plants. Alternative interpretations of the results are discussed. Results showed that the relationship of skill level and left/right orientations did not seem to generalize across companies. The picture of workers' consciousness that emerges from this study of craft and non-craft workers is an extremely murky one and if results are consistent with any of the available theoretical perspectives on worker beliefs, it is the notion that workers, regardless of skill level, do not subscribe to highly consistent sets of beliefs of either a left or right orientation.
- Published
- 1984
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