Customer Reviews

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

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This is a wonderful book on the breakdown of workers control over both the shop floor and the production process in the United States. The story begins in the post-civil war era when skilled/craft produciton still held sway. Via the influence of craft unions (most notably Gompers' American Federation of Labor and its numerous national unions) workers in many industries (Montgomery focuses heavily on machinists here) were able to hold great influence over the production process. Due to their high level of skill, and knowledge of their craft - generated a kind of structural leverage - craft unions were able to develop "cooperative" relationship with captial. However, between the 1880s and the 1900s increasing capital competition led to an employer offensive on worker's influece of the production process as a means of reducing costs, gaining control over the workplace, and augmenting profits. Their main aim was then to take the knowledge of the produciton process that the workers possessed and rationalize it - that is break it down into simple units, deskilling the particular work of the given craft...and the story goes on.

This is a higly recommended piece of labor history, one that would be well read in addition to Harry Braverman's "Labor and Monopoly Capital."

A relatively early collection of previously published essays, WORKERS' CONTROL IN AMERICA is a wonderful introduction to the late David Montgomery's written thoughts on what was happening to American workers, thanks to Taylorism, the open shop movement, and other management initiatives during the period from Reconstruction through the New Deal. Compared to the sweeping, meticulously detailed and documented narrative of Montgomery's opus magnum, THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF LABOR..., this book's organization is somewhat more topical and -- with the notable exception of a lengthier chapter on the machinists, et. al. -- tends to feature shorter, more easily digestible chapters. Its style is also that of the essayist, with notes appearing at the end of each chapter, rather than as footnotes at the bottom of each page where they are referenced.

As I am neither a professional historian nor a person of particularly scholarly inclinations or pretensions, I found this book eminently readable for reasons already cited. The chapter headings are as follow: (1) Workers' control of machine production in the nineteenth century; (2) Immigrant workers and managerial reform; (3) Machinists, the Civic Federation, and the Socialist Party; (4) The "new unionism" and the transformation of workers' consciousness in America, 1909-22; (5) Whose standards? Workers and the reorganization of production in the United States, 1900-20; (6) Facing layoffs; and (7) American workers and the New Deal Formula.

Regrettably, due to this very 'topical' organization, the book lacks a comprehensive index. It does, however, contain a substantial bibliographical essay for anyone who might be interested in further study. Also, while there is a considerable intersection of subject matter between WORKER'S CONTROL... and THE FALL..., the collaborative essay on "Facing layoffs" (co-authored with Ronald Schatz) contains material mostly or entirely unique to this book. Otherwise, readers might prefer to view this book's organization as a slightly altered partitioning from what the author would ultimately settle upon in THE FALL... (In short, with the possible exception of chapter 3 on the machinists, which contains many of the same quotes and references, we can almost consider the two books as a successful attempt at maintaining a fresh perspective via slightly different approaches to "slicing and dicing" the materials.)

Casual readers ESPECIALLY need not be discouraged, in any case. For, within these pages, they will yet find some of the finest, most absorbing labor history writing available, with much of it being readily accessible even to those of us with limited time for serious reading and study.