The Power of Shop Culture

Abstract

SummaryThis paper investigates the history of the labour process in New Zealand's state-owned railway workshops and questions the idea that large-scale industry inevitably destroyed whatever agency skilled workers had enjoyed. It also shows that relations of production vary with the political and cultural contexts. Craft control of the labour process survived in New Zealand's state-owned railway workshops and the union played only a minor role. Jop control was more important in achieving bureaucratic instead of autocratic control over such matters as hiring and firing; the retention of apprentice-based crafts; the institutionalization of seniority; and in resisting both de-skilling and the “premium bonus”. The strength and vitality of shop culture, based on craft control of the labour process, also survived and modified the Government's vigorous attempt to introduce “scientific management”. In brief the article concludes that productive processes do not inevitably determine social relations of production, that capitalism has been neither homogeneous nor uniform, and that mechanization never inevitably results in de-skilling.