Craft production: Work and alienation in the construction industry

The study focused on the nature of the labor process in the building and construction industry. Select facets of the production process and labor relations were examined with respect to two major issues. The first concerns the organization of the labor process of a "craft-dominated" industry. The manner by which capitalist imperatives of control and productive effectiveness inform the structure and process of production were assessed by examining three aspects of the general industrial context: the site-of-production work organization, the importance of managerial attachments to employers' authority structures, and the role of the craft union. These segments of the craft industrial context were viewed both in terms of their separate and combined impact on the nature of the craft relations of production. The second major issue addressed by the study was the individual consequences of work and employment for construction craftspeople. This was pursued within the context of a theoretical framework which synthesizes alienation and satisfaction perspectives on work relations. Subjective and microsocial elements of workers' lives were examined as regards the confluence of the qualities of active participation in production and employment conditions bearing on economic security. The findings of this analysis were then used to address a few considerations of broader scope concerning the "meaning" of alienation and discontent as outcomes of the labor process. The empirical base for the above analyses was a research project conducted in 1979 of conditions and labor relations practices within a delimited regional product and labor market. Data were drawn from a survey of unionized construction workers belonging to ten local building trades unions. Three principle means of data collection were utilized: personal interviews with local union officials, participant-observation on a nonrandom selection of eleven construction sites, and a survey of randomly selected sample of building craftspeople from the ten local unions. The primary source of data for the empirical analyses were the 246 craftspeople who responded to the mailed self-report questionnaire. Their responses to items about their work experiences in the industry and items measuring five dimensions of alienation and discontent were used to develop a perspective on the nature and outcomes of the craft relations of capitalist production. Principle interpretations and conclusions from the analyses are that there has been a general misspecification of the nature of craft work in the sociological literature. In general, prevalent perspectives overstate the quality of work and employment for craft workers and overemphasize the impact of craft occupational characteristics on both the organization of the labor process itself and on the subjective and social conditions for individual construction workers. It was found, to the contrary, that employers have a considerable amount of control over the work organization and employment opportunities, while craft unions attempt to serve defensive functions for their members. Overall, the study supported a model of craft production which "contextualizes" it within the broader imperatives of capitalist political economy.