Workers' Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles

by David Montgomery

Over the last decade, industrial workers in the United States and Europe have increasingly demanded greater control over what they do each day at work. These struggles on the shop floor have often taken place in defiance of corporate management, union leadership, and government officials. Although circumstances have changed dramatically, the movement for workers' control has been a recurrent feature of American labor and political history for more than a century. These essays, written by one of America's foremost labor historians, analyze this phenomenon from the period of rapid industrialization following the Civil War through the era of the New Deal.

The book begins by examining the efforts of late nineteenth-century craftsmen to preserve their control over the organization of production and the deployment of technology through their superior knowledge of the work process, through union rules regulating the pace, quantity, and quality of work, and through a broader system of mutual support. Professor Montgomery then analyzes the campaign by employers to assert their own mastery through scientific management techniques and widespread anti-union activity. He discusses resistance to this effort to 'rationalize' work and the political-ideological implications of that resistance, especially as represented by socialism's growing popularity among workers.

Later essays carry this conflict into the 1930s, when resistance to managerial authority was evident both in industrial unionism and in workers' efforts to regulate layoffs and to organize the unemployed. Professor Montgomery argues that New Deal programs and legislation, which initially significantly expanded the scope of workers' power at the workplace, subsequently evolved into a tight web of legal and political restrictions.

Professor Montgomery concludes by examining contemporary labor conditions, arguing that chronic 'wildcat' strikes and the spread of socialism in the middle and upper echelons of union leadership indicate that the New Deal formula no longer ensures labor stability. According to the author, these trends among workers challenge the assumptions of the New Deal and threaten the system of industrial capitalism it was designed to protect.

Genres: Labor, History, Technology, American History, Nonfiction, Economics

200 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1979

Reviews

[Mark Bowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I. David Montgomery, Workers Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)

A. Synopsis: In the first quarter of the 20th century workers fought against Taylorism and the “science of work.” Workers fought for the alternative factory system of a collective operation. The theory and practice of this idea is the subject of these essays.
B. Four periods of workers control
1. Skilled craftsmen of the late 19th exercised autonomy in the conduct of their work
2. Early 20th. Managers tried to assert its control over the workplace. Workers revolted against this.
3. 1930s-40s. The economies collapse destroyed these managerial reforms and the government was forced to reshape work relations
4. Present day. Workers demands are once again trying to overcome managerial authority.

[Romantic Rationalist · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book in Labor history.

[BespectacledBookGirl]

Finally done with this book for thesis...it's the end of an era!!