Late Twentieth Century Workplace Relations: Class Struggle without Classes

Edwards, Paul

doi:10.1111/j.1467-954x.1999.tb03499.x

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 35 publications

(27 reference statements)

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“…The idea was that to understand class consciousness -that is, something that exists at the level of action -it is necessary to work down through the other layers. The idea has been used by others (Edwards, 2000;Katznelson, 1986), who insist that this hierarchy is not deterministic; the more fundamental levels shape, but do not determine, action.…”

Section: Existing Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The essence of trade unions: understanding identity, ideology and purpose

Hodder

Edwards

2015

Work, Employment and Society

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Academics have long investigated trade union behaviour through the complex interaction of identity, ideology and purpose. At the same time, there have been increasing calls to gain a deeper understanding of the purpose of strategies but the two bodies of literature seldom overlap. The article proposes a framework to help understand the essence of trade unions and to situate strategies (such as organizing) in this broader context and bridge the gap between the literature on union purpose and identity and on strategies for renewal. It is argued that the essence of unions framework can assist with the analysis of both historical and contemporary trade unionism and allows both clarification and consideration of the range of concepts and terms already in use in the industrial relations literature.

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Section: Existing Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The essence of trade unions: understanding identity, ideology and purpose

Hodder

Edwards

2015

Work, Employment and Society

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“…The cost of rent means their families are elsewhere, as many immigrant single men share rooms or basements at rental rates of about $800 per month (the bottom-end rental rate). It further entrenches precariousness and reproduces a class of devalued workers -material conditions are manifested as class (Edwards 2000), and masked through community.…”

Section: Immigrants: "Good Jobs" Celebrating Differencementioning

confidence: 97%

Community by Necessity: Security, Insecurity, and the Flattening of Class in Fort McMurray

Major

Winters²

2013

Can. J. Soc.

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High wages in the oil sands well exceed the Canadian average, making complex class differences less apparent here than elsewhere. This lends itself to a homogenizing narrative of community despite differences in wages, background, citizenship status, and so on. Wolf's useful counter-framework outlines specific processes by which workers are situated, and by which they situate themselves, in labour hierarchies within the accumulation process. Drawing on interviews and participant observation involving two groups (university-educated immigrant professionals and high-school educated mine labourers and tradespeople from Newfoundland), we argue that layers of precariousness in both these groups thrust them into "community by necessity." The unsettling nature of work in the oil sands emerges as a story within a story. In the larger narrative, where "Fort McMurray is jobs," community is invoked as a place in which household financial security is possible. Inherent in that security, however, is a story of pervasive insecurity wrought by the possibility of injury on the job, paternalism, or redundancies created through company restructuring and economic crises. "Community" is necessary to keep people in place (literally and metaphorically) and at the same time elides ongoing struggles against dispossession.

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