Miners' identity and the changing face of the labour process within the UK coal mining industry

Abstract

Purpose: Much current academic writing focuses on the changing nature of work in the services sector, particularly with regard to the implementation of new technological processes. Bringing attention back to a traditional industry, coal mining the paper considers the impact of technology upon the labour process and identity of coal miners. Methodology: The paper is based on qualitative research undertaken by an ex-coal miner and draws upon interviews with workers in five of the UK???s remaining deep coal mines. Findings: The paper demonstrates how the introduction of new technology in the mining industry has intensified workplace monitoring and surveillance. Despite this, we identify how complete management control over the labour process has not been possible. As the paper will show, miners draw upon their identity as autonomous workers in order to mediate the impact of technology on their working practices. The underlying belief of miners is that the capabilities of new technological working practices do not extend to replacing them at the coal face and that their unique identity as coal miners, combined with the unusual nature of the job, provides them with a force for mediating management control. Originality: The paper offers a unique insight into the impact of technology upon the identity and labour process of a group of workers from a traditional heavy industry

“Getting on” and “getting by” underground

“…Contrary to Gordon's (1977) observation regarding the miner's tendency to use the covert strategy of brotherhood to restrict output, the gold miners whom I studied collectively employed the brotherhood tactic not to restrict output per se but as an adaptive, coping or defensive tactic (Allsop and Calveley, 2009; Foner, 1993; Prasad and Prasad, 1998, 2000) that they engaged in to expand rather than restrict output (Kirchhoff and Karlsson, 2012) in ways that shielded fellow workers from being punished and scolded by their bosses for failure to get a blast (production or broken ore). The team workers understood the harsh treatment their team leaders and miners were faced with if they failed to impress their superiors.…”

“…The extant literature on the informal organisation of work has paid little attention on the impact of informal working practices on workplace safety especially in underground mining operations where danger is eminent. Much of the attention has been on the manner in which workers fiddle workplace rules in order to resist or consent to production goals in ways that make sense to them (Allsop and Calveley, 2009; Bolton and Houlihan, 2009; Burawoy, 1979; Collinson and Ackroyd, 2005; Lupton, 1963).…”

Energy and labour: Thinking across the continuum

“…There is widespread acknowledgment that the specifics of extractive labour in the coal mining industry have led to the emergence of specific professional and personal identities. Allsop and Calveley (2009) link this to the autonomy of the coal worker as the reservoir of unique knowledge, skills and social relations, while Della Bosca and Gillespie (2018) emphasize the powerful role of generational sentiments, familial histories and community belonging in mining locations. Altogether, such contributions point to the importance of ‘emotions, affects and co-constituted relations with place’ (Ey, 2018: 8) in the context of resource extraction, emphasizing that the masculinist erasure of emotion has foreclosed both emancipatory politics and analytical horizons.…”