vallas_workers, firms, and the dominant ideology

Workers, Firms, and the Dominant Ideology: Hegemony and Consciousness in the MonopolyCoreAuthor(s): Steven Peter VallasSource: The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 61-83Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Midwest Sociological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4121441 .

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WORKERS, FIRMS, AND THE DOMINANT IDEOLOGY: Hegemony and Consciousness

in the Monopoly Core

Steven Peter Vallas* Georgia Institute of Technology

Theorists of work and class relations have argued that organizational processes within the monopoly 'core' induce employees to identify with the firm and consent to the social relations of production. The adequacy of this 'hegemony' thesis is evaluated using data from two Bell operating companies, whose workers hold relatively high- paying primary sector jobs and are exposed to a strong corporate culture. Although these factors should favor the thesis of managerial hegemony, the data provide only limited support. In fact, an oppositional consciousness is fairly common among the workers, but with marked variations between occupational groups. The data indicate that hegemony theory inflates the role of ideological mechanisms in the reproduction of managerial control and underestimates workers' capacity to form a critical consciousness of the employment relationship. Worker consent should be viewed as problematic-that is, as exceptional, occurring only under specific social and organizational conditions.

INTRODUCTION

In recent decades industrial sociologists have spent much time seeking to identify the social mechanisms that underpin managerial control over the production process. Labor process theorists argue that shifts in the distribution of technical knowledge maintain the subordination of labor.1 Other theorists emphasize ideological influences within the firm, contending that organizational processes within the monopoly 'core' induce workers to take the existing authority structure for granted. Some attribute management's ideological hegemony to internal labor markets, which foster individualistic career orientations (see Edwards 1975, 1979; Offe 1974; Cornfield 1987). Workplace games and rituals, others suggest, foster a culture of adaptation on the shop floor, inducing workers to participate in and implicitly consent to their own exploitation (see especially Burawoy 1979, 1985). In any case, advocates of the hegemony thesis characterize monopoly core firms as ideological terrains primarily management dominated.

*Direct all correspondence to: Steven Peter Vallas, Department of History, Technology, and Society, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332.

The Sociological Quarterly, Volume 32, Number 1, pages 61-83. Copyright C 1991 by JAI Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISSN: 0038-0253.



62 THE SOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Vol. 32/No. 1/1991

Although the hegemony thesis resonates with long-standing images of the modem corporation, from Whyte (1941) to Kanter (1977), there have been few direct evaluations of its claims. This article will evaluate the expectations of hegemony theory using interview and survey data from a case study of two Bell operating companies in the North- eastern U.S. (see Vallas 1987, 1988). As these firms manifest many essential features of primary sector firms (high wages, stable employment patterns, internal labor markets, and a strong corporate culture), they afford a reasonable test of hegemony theory's claims.

After a critical review of the hegemony thesis and drawing on both in-depth interviews and surveys of Bell workers in New Jersey and New York, findings presented here raise important questions about the theory's validity. Contrary to its claims, many if not most workers manifest an acute awareness of the conflictual character of the management/worker relationship and a distinctly oppositional consciousness. Moreover, workers' consciousness cannot be viewed in terms of a single overarching ideological tendency, for clear and consistent occupational differences emerge in workers' responsiveness to managerial ideology. The study shows that although hegemony theory represents an advance over models based purely on the labor process, it inflates the role of ideological influences in the reproduction of managerial control.

THE DOMINANT IDEOLOGY AT WORK

Hegemony theory traces its lineage to Marx and Engels' The German Ideology, parts of which stress the power of ruling ideas in maintaining the subordination of the lower classes (see Marx and Engels 1969, pp. 57-67). Developing this reasoning two genera- tions later, Antonio Gramsci (1971) theorized that the defeat of the workers' movements after World War I was due to socialist parties' failure to challenge the moral and cultural dominance of the bourgeoisie (see Anderson 1976). With the rise of fascism and the stabilization of the Western capitalist nations, members of the Frankfurt School bemoaned the growing strength of bourgeois rationality, which they felt had spread into every corner of society.2

None of these formulations of hegemony theory emphasizes the direct role of the commodity production process. In recent years, however, students of work have "indus- trialized" the theory, in effect rooting the production of working class consent within the labor process itself. Thus while Marx believed that commodity production processes would nurture a challenge to the ideology of the dominant class, recent theorists of managerial hegemony invert this prediction, arguing that the social relations of production help explain the failure of the workers' movements in the advanced capitalist world (Burawoy 1979, pp. 29-30; 1985). They hold that the organization of production within monopoly core firms secretes an ideology that effectively prevents workers from developing class consciousness and binds them to the status quo.

Edwards's discussion of bureaucratic control (1979, ch. 8) and Burawoy's (1979, 1985) theory of working class consent offer two of the most important formulations of the theory (see also Offe 1974; Joyce 1980; Cornfield 1987). Edwards recognizes the coexistence of multiple systems of control within contemporary capitalism, some of which originated during earlier historical periods. However, he holds that a new system of control specific to the monopoly core has evolved. This bureaucratic control system rests on two properties of core firms: formalization of managerial authority and proliferation of internal labor markets (cf. Kalleberg and Sorensen 1979; Kalleberg and Berg 1987). Edwards views the



Workers, Firms, and the Dominant Ideology 63

latter as pivotal, for it fosters an individualistic career orientation among workers that virtually dissolves solidarity among their ranks. Simply put, bureaucratic control encourages workers to identify more closely with the firm than with their social class: "workers begin to use the first person plural differently: 'we' now means 'we the firm,' not 'we the workers' " (Edwards 1979, p. 148).

Edwards is careful to suggest that the precise workings of bureaucratic control vary at different organizational levels (1979, pp. 147-152). However, he believes that key to its effectiveness are the ideological constraints it imposes on virtually all monopoly core workers: "[T]he new system [has] transcended its white collar origins" and now encom- passes both manual and mental employees within the monopoly capitalist firm (Edwards 1979, p. 132).

Burawoy presents a somewhat different but parallel conception of managerial hegemony. His early work asked why "notions of exploitation and unpaid labor are even more removed from everyday life on the shop floor today than they were in Marx's time" (1979, p. 29) and concluded that the political economy of contemporary capitalism-later termed the nature of "factory regimes"--has fundamentally changed. Owing to increased state intervention in the capitalist economy (including the rise of the welfare state), the emergence of monopoly corporations, as well as legal constraints on accumulation processes, managerial control no longer rests purely on coercion but instead stresses worker consent (Burawoy 1985, p. 126). For Burawoy, the despotic regimes of competitive capitalism have given way to hegemonic regimes that elicit workers' consent to their own exploitation.

Burawoy's most developed account of hegemonic regimes is Manufacturing Consent, a qualitative study of a machine tool shop Roy (1952) studied a generation before. Although workers' jobs were tedious and physically demanding, management made remarkably few direct efforts to control their performance: Control was exercised indirectly, through a piece-rate payment system affording considerable discretion over one's work pace. This combination of occupational conditions-meaningless tasks, coupled with freedom from direct control-encouraged workers to define their work as a game, infusing meaning and drama into an otherwise onerous situation. Workers able to "make out"-to earn good wages even when paid low rates-publicly displayed an ability to master the system of work and thus gained standing among their peers. While the game of "making out" enabled workers to survive their working days, Burawoy finds that it induced them to take its underlying rules for granted and actively collude in their own exploitation.

There are important differences between these two variants of hegemony theory. For example, Edwards stresses the formal properties of the modem corporation, while Bur- awoy points to informal social processes as critical to managerial hegemony. In addition, Edwards believes that monopoly core layoffs (as during periods of austerity) engender worker disillusionment, weakening bureaucratic control. Burawoy, by contrast, believes that managerial hegemony persists even under adverse economic conditions, enabling employers to demand concessions in the name of the firm's well-being. While these differences are important, they should not be overstated. Both theorists hold that ideological mechanisms are critical to monopoly core managerial control and that employers dominate workers' consciousness.

A number of criticisms can be made of the hegemony thesis. Some theorists and researchers question its validity, arguing that consensual views of the social order (whether Marxist or functionalist in character) exaggerate elites' ability to impose values




on subordinate groups and classes. They argue that although subordinates' weakness is often attributed to cultural and ideological forces, it may actually reflect economic, political, and organizational conditions rather than any hegemonic ideology or value consensus as such (Abercrombie, Hill, and Turner 1980; Scott 1986; Vanneman and Cannon 1987; Wellman 1988).

Recent studies of social and political consciousness in the U.S. at least partially support this criticism (see Hamilton 1968; Huber and Form 1973; Jackman and Jackman 1983; Vanneman and Cannon 1987; Plutzer 1987). Using varying constructs and measures, these studies suggest that members of subordinate classes have not uncritically embraced the tenets of the dominant ideology; rather, they regard its premises with great skepticism. Thus Huber and Form (1973, p. 10) find that while members of privileged classes com- monly "believe that both the normative and empirical statements in the dominant ideology are true," most of the lower classes do not (cf. Jackman and Jackman 1983). This implies much greater class differences in values and attitudes than hegemony theorists allow.

The latter studies use much broader populations than hegemony theorists intend, however, and operate at some distance from concrete workplace relations. Yet two studies that do examine attitudes toward management within the monopoly 'core' also stands at odds with the hegemony thesis (Hodson and Sullivan 1985; Halle 1984). Hodson and Sullivan's study of Wisconsin workers finds commitment to the firm actually lower in nationally- based firms (where internal labor markets are most well developed) than in smaller, peripheral companies. Similarly, Halle's study of chemical workers in New Jersey un- earths a culture of muted defiance rather than of consent: workers sharply criticized management's behavior on health and safety issues and used their informally-generated technical knowledge to limit or resist managerial authority. More important, they com- monly spoke of inherent conflict between the propertied classes and "the working man," suggesting an oppositional consciousness not easily squared with the hegemony thesis. Like labor process theorists before them, hegemony theorists may have exaggerated or reified management's ability to dominate workers' lives.

A further potential weakness in the theory stems from its tendency to characterize core firm workers' consciousness in terms of a single, uniform pattern. As does the literature on economic segmentation and industrial dualism, hegemony theory ignores within-firm occupational divisions. Yet a number of studies suggest that such divisions produce salient ideological differences among workers. Friedman (1977, 1990) shows that the core/pe- riphery distinction applies to workers within particular firms, generating distinct ideological inclinations among workers subject to differing occupational conditions. Likewise, Crompton and Jones (1984), Parcel and Sickmeier (1988), and Kaufman and colleagues (1988) find sharp occupational variations in both work situations and attitudes within firms. If these studies generalize to core firms more broadly, then the question is which occupational groups exhibit greater responsiveness to managerial ideology and why.

RESEARCH STRATEGY

This research grows out of a larger study of work and power in the communications industry, historically the privileged domain of AT&T (see Vallas forthcoming). In certain respects, this industry provides an appropriate terrain for the purposes at hand. First, despite the AT&T break-up, this industry's workers enjoy highly favorable wages, benefits, and other conditions of employment that epitomize primary segment employment.3




Second, Bell workers have historically known a strong corporate culture that seeks to foster commitment to the firm. Indeed, during the first half of this century AT&T spawned a paternalistic work regime, based on a system of company unions, intended to transmit managerial values to its workforce.4 Moreover, seeking to enlist workers as public representatives of the firm's good will, Bell companies have long supported employees' in- volvements in a host of community service efforts, involving groups such as the Telephone Pioneers of America and the United Way (see Greenwald 1980, p. 229). Finally, Bell companies and AT&T have recently sought to cultivate harmonious relationships with their workers by establishing a widespread network of Quality of Work Life teams (see Hechscher 1989; cf. Grenier 1988). Bell companies thus present most of this characteristics that theorists view as constituting managerial hegemony. In fact, hegemony theorists often point to AT&T as a firm that illustrates the very processes they have in mind (e.g., see Edwards 1979; Cornfield 1987; Batten and Schoonmaker 1987).

In other respects, this study's reliance on the case study design limits the type of analysis possible. Ideally, an empirical test of the hegemony thesis could compare workers' attitudes across core and peripheral firms. Inasmuch as the data are limited to monopoly core workers, such a comparison obviously cannot be made. An alternative strategy, adopted here, however, explores the degree to which workers' conceptions of wage labor conform to the 'hegemonic' model as such.

Bell operating companies' occupational composition is fairly heterogeneous, encompassing a variety of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Most of the latter fall into two occupational categories: central office craftworkers, who test and repair electronic switching systems; and outside craftworkers, charged with installing and maintaining the trunks, cables, and loops that link the various system parts together. White-collar workers are of three major types: clerical workers, who input, process, or transmit information about subscriber accounts or the system's functioning; customer service representatives ("reps"), who process subscriber orders and accounts; and operators, who provide either directory or call-completion assistance. Despite affirmative action programs and consent decrees, employment is sharply sex-segregated: more than 90% of all operators are female, while an even larger proportion of manual crafts workers are male. In the regions of this study, most of these workers are represented by Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, a large and active industrial union formed from the remnants of the old company union structure, but since earning a reputation as a strong and progressive labor organization.

The findings reported below are based on data collected from workers employed at two Bell operating companies during a three-year period beginning in 1984. The initial wave of data collection involved a small number of in-depth interviews (55), most of which were taped and transcribed. Two distinct surveys-one "regional," one "local"--followed, beginning in 1985. The former drew a random sample of workers (802) in all the major non-exempt occupations throughout New Jersey and New York, stratified by workplace size, area, and organizational division. The latter was more intensive, based on a random sample of craft and clerical workers (175) represented by a single local union in suburban New York, stratified by occupation. In both cases the response rate was fairly low-50.3% in the regional, and 56.8% in the local survey. While such relatively low response rates cause some concern, little suggests that non-respondents held different attitudes toward management than respondents. In the local survey, for example, respondents grouped by the return date (early, late, and only after repeated follow-ups) showed no attitudinal or demographic differences.




The regional survey of telephone workers includes a battery of items that focus on workers' views of the capitalist enterprise and their place within it. The local survey also devotes considerable space to the measurement of worker consciousness. I limit my presentation here to a few items concerning workers' perceptions of management's use of new technologies. While it is important to keep the limits of forced-choice items firmly in mind when studying class perceptions (see Glaberman 1980; Femia 1975), such quantitative data can reveal the patterns of belief and perception within definite groups and classes.

ANALYSIS

Hegemony theorists contend that organizational processes within monopoly firms dissolve or uproot the basis of 'working-class consciousness'5 among employees such as these. I test this claim with both open-end and forced-choice questions designed to elicit workers' perceptions of management and their interests as wage earners.

It is not difficult to locate workers who do indeed consent to the exercise of managerial authority or even identify with the firm as such. Sometimes such consent seems infused with elements of deference. Said one retired craftworker, first employed mopping floors but later in the top-paying craft, "In the entire 28 years I've worked here, I've always been grateful to the company for providing me with a living, even with my limited education." This worker accepted his low standing in the labor market and, with it, his unequal relationship with management. In other cases, workers' acceptance stemmed from a more pragmatic alignment of perceived interests. Thus a cable splicer explained his view of wage labor, "You do your job, don't make any problems, and everything should be okay. I mean, the stronger the company, the better the chance that there won't be any layoffs, right?" Another worker took this alignment of interests even further.

Pete: I've said this at a lot of meetings, but people better start waking up! I mean, today it's like your own business. You gotta go out and you gotta talk New York Tel, because there are a lot of areas where people can go to the competition....

SPV: So the breakup has made you, in effect, a spokesman for the company? Pete: Absolutely. Sometimes I even look to make sales for the company [although he

works in the Plant department]. I'll give you an example. My wife has a job in an office in Manhattan, and her boss was considering an inferior company for their telephone service. It was going to be a $160,000 contract. And what I did was, I made sure that New York Telephone got some people down there to make that sale, and they did.

However internally rational this consensual consciousness may be, it is clearly the excep- tion rather than the norm. By far the more common world-view is conflictual or oppositional, prompting workers to voice their resentment at being treated as mere commodities and to view the company as an opposing force with whose interests they often collide.

A conflictual consciousness is especially common among operators, who are subjected to the closest supervision of all workers in Bell companies and bitterly resent management's constant concern with improving productivity. For example, when asked how she viewed the relation between management and workers, an operator in her late forties responded slowly and with great emphasis: "In my job management will use you for what




they can get from you. If they can get blood out of you, they'll get blood out of you. And they don't care how." Her co-workers underscored their agreement. One recalled that when the air-conditioning broke down in their office, her manager brought in large electric fans. "But they aimed them at the computers. They just wanted to keep the machines cool. They didn't care about us overheating." Similar patterns of resentment were expressed by a male operator in his late twenties. When asked an open-end question about what he disliked the most about his job, he replied,

I dislike the most that they think I'm a machine. They say they try to improve the technology, to make it easier for us. They're not tryin' to make it easier for us! They're trying to make us go faster! Because the faster we go, the more money they're making.

Such views are hardly limited to operators. Indeed, craftworkers manifest an even more strongly conflictual outlook and take care to detail precisely where conflicts of interest between management and workers begin and end. Thus, asked whether top management really cared about workers' needs, one craftworker replied,

I don't think top management has any respect at all for the workers, to be truthful. Middle management, lower management, yes. But top management, no.

An outside craft worker, asked the same question, interrupted,

Top management? You mean Ferguson? Salerno? [Top officers of NYNEX] These are the guys that force us to go out on strike. They don't even care about lower management!

A clerical worker in her late forties put it this way:

First-line management is just dealing with the everyday problems. But the higher management. .... They're the ones who are looking at a profit-and-loss sheet. They're the ones who are reaping the rewards.

Such remarks were sometimes surrounded by a web of qualifications, as if workers felt at least some normative constraints in expressing such views. Thus one switchman immediately voiced sharp but wavering resentment at how technology had changed his job:

It's like they have a collar on you at all times now. [Pauses, reflects.] Of course, you're working for them, and they're paying you. [Now shakes his head.] But for them to use, to abuse these technologies . . . to have to hear their snide remarks, it's just not right.

Interestingly, this worker shifted between two distinct moral codes-one based on defiance and indignation, the other on a more deferential, acquiescent set of expectations. Even in such cases as this, intimating a contradictory consciousness, the more defiant, oppositional aspect of worker consciousness prevails.

The distribution of responses to forced-choice items often used to measure levels of




class consciousness gauges the relative predominance of consensual and oppositional forms of consciousness.6 Among workers asked a standard item that compares the capitalist enterprise to a sports team ("Do managers and workers belong to the same team, or... to two different and opposing teams?"), nearly three quarters (73.5%) reported that management and workers belong to different and opposing sides. Two-thirds of the workers (64.2%) believed that management "only cares about profits, regardless of what workers want or need." Roughly the same proportion (67.5%) felt that "the people who run large corporations will try to take advantage of the workers if you give them the chance." Finally, the largest proportion seemed willing to engage in militant behavior, should events so require: should management demand worker concessions, 45.4% reported willingness to strike.7 It is of course difficult to project how workers would behave in real-life situations. Still, these are not the responses of workers who have uncritically accepted managerial control as 'natural' or legitimate.

It might be objected that the survey items tap abstract perceptions that may or may not be linked to concrete events. Partly for this reason, I applied the classical question, cui bono?-who benefits?-to the issue of technological change, an aspect of workers' experiences especially relevant here both practically, because technological change is a constant feature of their work, and theoretically, because observers have argued that ideologies of "progress" obscure the role of social choice and human agency in technological development.8 The question here is whether workers have embraced such ideologies of technological change.

Some have. As one tester put it, "I didn't come to work in a horse and buggy. It's the same thing here. We have to adjust to the new technologies or we'll be left behind." Likewise, a clerical worker saw electronic information management systems as simply "more efficient than wading through papers and line records and yards and yards of index cards. It's obviously a more efficient way to do things." Still other workers believe that the underlying factor guiding technological change is simply service improvement. Again, however, such a benign view of new technology is clearly the minority.

An item from the 1987 "local" survey queried "who benefitted the most from the use of computers and other advanced technologies." Specifically, it asked respondents who had first-hand experience of technological change whether workers benefitted the most, management and workers about equally, or management the most. The great majority of respondents (72.3%) felt that management, not workers, benefits from new technologies, and a quarter (26.5%) felt that such changes benefits them equally.9

One of two considerations guides workers' responses. The first centers on economic consequences of new technology, specifically its labor displacing effects: "They just want to do away with everybody. They either automate you or else contract the work out, do away with you that way." "Top management benefits [from technological change]. ... They're the ones who are reaping the rewards, by getting rid of people. " The second, equally common focus is on political consequences, expressed in explicitly Orwellian language. Thus one worker explained management's motives for introducing new technologies by noting that "Big Brother can watch us all that way." Another observed that "they can keep track of you better and know where you are at all times"; and still another, that "Big Brother is here. . . . They use the computers to watch us all the time." Such workers have neither uncritically accepted a managerial definition of technology as progress nor lost sight of their enduring conflicts with the company.




SOURCES OF VARIATION IN WORKING-CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

Thus far our analysis indicates that hegemony theory offers little basis for depicting the attitudes of the sample as a whole. Although further study suggests that workers in some occupational categories-customer service reps and to a lesser extent clerical employees-are managerially inclined, most-especially those in outside crafts and operators-assume a conflictual or proletarian attitude. Thus workers differentially respond to managerial ideology, depending on their locations within the firm.

A set of indices constructed to measure levels of working-class consciousness explores the nature and sources of these occupational variations. The analysis distinguishes four separate dimensions of class consciousness: (1) identification with the working-class, (2) adherence to a dichotomous or conflictual image of the firm, (3) support for greater workers' control over the production process, and (4) willingness to strike in defense of these ends. 10 Results of a factor analysis using indicators of these dimensions are shown in Table 1. While the factor loadings conform to the expected pattern, they show a need to revise the conceptual schema discussed above.

Rather than four factors, only three emerge: (1) support for workers' control, (2) militancy, and (3) a dichotomous image of the firm. Contrary to expectations, class identification does not emerge as a distinct factor and instead loads highly on the third (though somewhat less clearly than its other components). This pattern suggests that, for these workers at least, working-class identification describes more than class location. In addition, it reflects a particular view of the social relation between workers and their employers.

These three dimensions distinguish workers according to levels of class consciousness. A high score on all three dimensions shows a relatively high level of working-class consciousness, and a low score, a managerial or middle-class ideology that betokens consent to the social relations of production at work.

Table 1 Factor Analysis of Items Measuring Working Class Consciousness (Varimax Rotation)

Rotated Factor Loadings Variable 1 2 3 Communality

Class identificationa -.209 .032 .418 .219 Managers and workers are on same/different teams .106 -.033 .694 .494 Corporations take advantage of their workers .267 .380 .694 .698 All management cares about is profits .336 .247 .726 .702 If workers could make decisions, products would

improve .887 .038 .040 .790 Workers would make better decisions than

supervisors .852 .068 .153 .755 Would strike to defend benefits .127 .784 .078 .637 Would strike to defend income protection plan -.075 .827 -.007 .689 Would strike in sympathy with aggrieved workers

elsewhere in the Bell System -.053 .489 .185 .276 Eigenvalue 2.778 1.434 1.050 % of total variance 30.9 15.9 11.7 Note: aMiddle class = 0, working class = 1.




Respondents' scores on these three dimensions of class consciousness are predicted using regression equations with dummy variables for each occupational category, using the outside craft group as the referent category and controlling for age. Table 2 (A) presents the resulting coefficients. The most consistently class-conscious workers are the two craft groups, closely followed by operators. We find no significant differences in consciousness between the inside craftworkers and the referent category. Moreover, operators view the firm in much the same conflictual manner as their craft counterparts, and equally support demands for greater workers' control. Only in willingness to strike are operators significantly less class conscious than the outside craft group."

Table 2 (A) further indicates that customer service reps, and to a lesser extent clerks, manifest significantly lower levels of working-class consciousness. Clerical workers perceive the firm in less dichotomous terms than outside craftworkers, and are more reluctant to strike as well. Clerks do not balk at demands for greater worker control, however, perhaps reflecting their responsiveness to notions of worker participation. Finally, we find that customer service employees are more managerially inclined than any others and significantly less class conscious than outside craftworkers on all three dimensions. They hold a less conflictual image of the firm, are relatively unsupportive of worker control, and are more reluctant to strike than their co-workers in outside crafts.12

Inspecting each group's responses to particular class-consciousness indicators reveals the meaning of these ideological differences more fully. While the clear majority of the outside craftworkers (67.7%) view themselves as working class, only a third of the service reps (34.6%) do.13 Likewise, 50.5% of the former would reportedly walk off their jobs in sympathy with other telephone workers "even if it meant breaking the law," but only 11.9% of the latter would take such a militant step. Albeit the managerial hegemony thesis poorly describes the sample overall, it does seem to apply to service reps and to a lesser extent clerical workers. What social and organizational factors, then, produce working- class consciousness among some groups of workers and managerial inclinations among others?

The literature provides at least three arguments that might help account for these ideological variations. One focuses on differences in the degree of autonomy or control that workers enjoy over their labor; a second on labor markets and the opportunity structure within the firm; and a third on differences in occupational conditions such as job security and patterns of supervision, often more favorable for office than blue collar workers.

Autonomy And Control

Workplace autonomy is often invoked to explain the character of worker consciousness. As we have seen, Burawoy (1979) views workers' relative autonomy within the production process as decisive in the reproduction of managerial hegemony. In differing ways, authors such as Blauner (1964), Montgomery (1979), and Friedman (1977) also stress the importance of workplace autonomy in the formation of worker consciousness. Might not the ideological variations observed here stem from differences in management's degree of control over workers' labor?

This 'autonomy' hypothesis generates three empirical predictions: first, that the most managerially inclined workers (service reps) enjoy greater work freedom than others; second, that such relative autonomy exercises a moderating or 'integrative' effect on



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Table 2 Dimensions of Class Consciousness Regressed on Occupational Categorya and Selected Occupational Conditions

(unstandardized coefficients, with standard errors in parentheses) A B

Dependent Image of the Support for Image of the Support for Variable: Firm Worker Control Militancy Firm Worker Control Militancy

Predictor

Age -.03* -.02** -.02* -.01* -.01** -.01* (.01) (.00) (.01) (.01) (.00) (.01)

Operators -.24 -.34 - .41"* - 1.30*** -.23 - .74*** (.35) (.24) (.20) (.37) (.26) (.24)

Inside Crafts -.05 -.42 .15 -.32 -.26 .32 (.33) (.23) (.19) (.33) (.23) (.20)

Clerical -1.16*** -.04 -.52** - 1.24*** -.09** -.50** Workers (.29) (.20) (.17) (.27) (.19) (.17) Reps -1.43*** -.71*** -1.15*** -1.37*** -.65** -1.13***

(.37) (.26) (.22) (.34) (.24) (.22) Autonomy - .08* .03 -.03"

(.03) (.02) (.01) Perceived - .39*** -.15 -.02

Opportunity (.12) (.09) (.10) Experience of .13 .13 .10

Promotion (.20) (. 14) (.13) Job Security -3.22*** -2.00*** -.34

(log) (.62) (.45) (.40) Supervisory -.20*** -.11*** .07"* Treatment (.04) (.03) (.02) Constant 11.11 7.73 7.73 5.96 4.65 6.22 R2 .056*** .052"** .076*** .238*** .166*** .110** N (518) (518) (518) (518) (518) (518) Notes: aOutside crafts defined as referent category.

*p < .05. **p < .01.

***p < .001.




them; and third, that ideological differences between service reps and other workers will either disappear or appreciably decline when levels of managerial control are partialed out. The data do in fact reveal significant variations in managerial control between the different occupations, but these do not conform to the pattern the 'autonomy' thesis expects.14 To begin with, reps' workplace autonomy lies significantly below the sample mean: they have less freedom in their work roles than craftworkers (not shown). And although craftworkers enjoy the greatest control over their own work, they do not lose sight of class tensions or antagonisms. Autonomy, therefore, poorly explains service rep's managerial inclinations. Further, differences in consciousness between the occupational categories remain undiminished even when we introduce managerial control into the equation.

This last point becomes clear in Table 2 (B), which includes several occupational conditions as predictors (among them work autonomy) in addition to the variables presented in (A). Levels of managerial control do significantly affect worker consciousness, and in the expected direction: Unit increases in work autonomy give rise to a less dichotomous view of the firm and to a lower propensity to strike, net of the occupational dummies. Yet the service reps and clerks remain significantly more managerial in outlook than outside craftworkers when levels of managerial control are included in the equation. Ideological differences across the occupational groups thus are not a simple function of variations in levels of work autonomy.1'5

Mobility and Internal Labor Markets

A second explanation of occupational differences focuses on workers' exposure to firm internal labor markets, or FILMs (Doeringer and Piore 1971; Edwards 1975, 1979; Kalleberg and Sorensen 1979; and Littler 1983). Organizational provisions for mobility within the firm-job ladders, job bidding arrangements, and other universalistic mechanisms for job allocation-purportedly engender a career-conscious outlook among employees that stresses individual rather than collective interests. This perspective contends that service reps' and clerks' stronger managerial outlook may reflect their location within a more fully developed internal labor market, which encourages identification with the firm.

The objective or structural aspect of this thesis cannot be disputed. Patterns of mobility within the firm are quite different for clerks and service reps than operators and craftper- sons: The former are in fact more closely bound up with internal labor markets. However, for the workers in this study at least, it is by no means clear that internal labor markets have the ideological consequences theorists expect.

On the basis of job history data I have attempted to map out the structure of both blue and white collar employees' within-firm movements. The pattern that obtains is presented in Figure 1. Most noteworthy is the near absence of mobility among the manual crafts. For the most part, these workers are hired from external labor markets and remain in their job titles for their career duration. Thus nearly two-thirds of the outside craftworkers (64.4%) are still employed in the job for which first hired. The mean tenure of workers in craft job titles (just under 13 years) is greater than in any other occupational category.

As Figure 1 further shows, operators are somewhat more fully integrated into an internal labor market. Particularly during earlier periods of economic growth, lower-level clerical jobs were often filled from the ranks of operators. In fact, many of the workers




Manual Mental

Inside Crafts Outside Crafts Customer

Skilled Clerical Service a)Switching Inst. & Repair/ Jobs Representatives

Technician Cable Splicers/ (MA's Admin./ Lineworkers Assign.)

b)Frame t ELM Administrator Routine Clerical

Jobs ELM - (RSAs, Service or

Data Entry Clerks) ELM ELM Operators

Note: ELM = External Labor Market. I ELM

Figure 1. Mobility Paths among Manual and Mental Occupations

presently employed at such routine clerical jobs were initially operators. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of operators remain in their jobs indefinitely: 80.8% have never been promoted, and their mean tenure (12.2 years) is only slightly lower than craftworkers'. The difference is that most craftworkers prefer to stay where they are, while operators do not. 16

Compared with craftworkers and operators, somewhat greater mobility prevails among clerical workers and service reps. In part this reflects the sharper division of labor among the office occupations, especially among clerks: the great specialization in clerical jobs creates more positions between which to move (Stone 1975). The firm's partial reliance upon external sources of labor power (e.g., workers with some college education) con- strains promotion into service rep jobs. But at least until recently, reps enjoyed fair chances of movement upward into first-level supervision. Hence it seems clear that clerks and reps have indeed been more directly involved with the workings of internal labor markets than operators and craftworkers. Can this explain the ideological variations observed?

To see the effect of internal labor market processes on worker consciousness, I use two distinct indicators of the firm's provisions for worker mobility. The first bears upon the past experience of mobility-whether workers have ever been promoted since being hired; the second upon future prospects-the amount of opportunity workers perceive in their own departments. In retrospect, these measures are less than optimal, as their individual-level character little reveals the more structural effect of internal labor markets. Still, if the ideological effect of internal labor markets is real, the experience of mobility or the perception of opportunity should discernibly affect worker consciousness.

The findings prompt two observations. First, some evidence does emerge that perceived opportunity inhibits the formation of working-class consciousness, net of the other equation variables [see Table 2 (B)]: It reduces the perception of conflict between workers and management and diminishes support for worker control. The actual experience of promotion has no effect. Second, however, inclusion of these measures fails to explain the occupational variations in worker consciousness: In particular, reps' managerial inclina-




tions remain significant even with levels of opportunity and the other job characteristics adjusted.

Interestingly, service reps and clerical workers actually report significantly less opportunity than their co-workers: While roughly two-thirds of the former believe "not very much opportunity at all" exists in their departments, less than half of the workers in the other occupations are so pessimistic. Likewise, they are more likely than others to feel that their opportunities for promotion have eroded in recent years. Apparently, these differences flow from their higher expectations. Having traditionally enjoyed prospects for within-firm mobility, these workers feel especially deprived when these erode. Yet even though their career prospects have declined, they continue to align their interests with management. In contrast with Edwards' belief that unfavorable changes in workers' situations foster disillusionment with management (a renewed crisis of control), little suggests that the changing fortunes of these white collar groups creates a different relation toward management.

The Distribution of Organizational Rewards

A third explanation argues that the managerial inclinations of the service reps and clerical group may stem from their enjoyment of organizational rewards quite apart from autonomy or opportunity. This view is often developed in studies of white collar employees, such as the classic works by Mills (1951), Lockwood (1958), and Crozier (1971). Conceivably, the attitude of the clerks and reps stems from their exposure to more favorable patterns of supervision or greater job security, relative to their blue collar craft counterparts.

To test this explanation, items bearing on perceived job security and the nature of supervisory relationships were used to develop indices reflecting these job characteristics.17 Much as it would expect, fairly marked variations in both job security and supervisory relationships exist across the occupational categories (not shown). Service reps do enjoy significantly greater job security, as well as more favorable relationships with their supervisors, than the sample overall. However, clerical workers enjoy no such advantage: they are at the mean on both characteristics. Finally, although job security and supervisory relationships do indeed affect class consciousness, occupational differences in worker consciousness again remain significant when these work aspects are introduced into the equation.

Thus, Table 2 (B) shows that the two organizational rewards do predict worker consciousness. Increasing levels of job security produce a significantly less dichotomous perception of the firm as well as weaker support for workers' control, net of age and the other predictors. Similarly, benevolent patterns of supervision yield significant reductions in all three dimensions of consciousness. Again, however, the more managerial inclinations of the clerical workers and service reps are not affected when we adjust for organizational reward effects. Thus, if job security and patterns of supervision affect worker consciousness, they do not explain the occupational variations observed.

In sum, while these job characteristics-work autonomy, opportunity for mobility, and organizational rewards-do bear on the formation of working-class consciousness, they do not explain the strength of managerial ideology among the service rep and clerical groups nor of working-class consciousness among the craft groups. What then explains these occupational differences in worker consciousness? The interview data and field




observations suggest that two additional considerations hegemony theorists do not or- dinarily consider-gender ideology, coupled with variations in the ecology of work-are relevant. Because the role played by these factors is not easily tested in quantitative terms, our remarks should be read with caution.1'8

Gender

We have little reason to infer that traditional conceptions of femininity, which historically have encouraged conformity and submissiveness, encourage the reps and clerical employees to consent to managerial authority. For one, recent studies have uncovered numerous cases in which such ideologies actually favor resistance against managerial authority. For example, Costello's (1985) study of office employees in an insurance company finds that women's common experiences as women enable them to resist what they define as unfair treatment at the hands of male managers. Much the same, West- wood's (1982) study of hosiery workers shows that women invoke traditional definitions of femininity as a barrier against their predominantly male managers, effectively denying their bosses entry to their shopfloor culture. Finally, although operators are an over- whelmingly female group, they manifest little inclination to submit to managerial authority: They have historically led the struggle for unionism in this industry (Norwood 1984; Greenwald 1980; Vallas forthcoming) and continue to harbor attitudes that resemble those of their male craft counterparts. It therefore seems reasonable to reject the notion that the ideology of femininity necessarily engenders worker consent.

Yet, combined with other influences, gender ideology does seem to encourage male workers' defiance of management. Workers in the most militant group, the outside craftworkers, also perform the most dangerous work (climbing poles and ladders, or descend- ing into manholes), a fact they define as central to their occupational identity. Splicers in particular define themselves as different from and more manly than other workers, at least partly due to their willingness to engage in dangerous and dirty work (Epstein 1988). Proud of their rough-hewn character, outside craftworkers are especially prone to maintain a defiant posture toward management. Asked which groups were the most militant and why, a former middle manager recalled, "Splicers were the toughest, then switchers, then testers. It almost went by physical strength. The stronger you were physically, the tougher you were." Even the language that workers use to criticize management embodies gender imagery. Male workers asked how supervisors are chosen often gave such responses as, "Supervisors? They're the ones that kiss ass. They plow right up behind their bosses," and "The guy that gets on his knees is the guy that gets a foreman's job at New York Telephone." Implied is that supervisors fail to make it on the basis of skill and must

compromise their manhood in order to get ahead. Thus a supervisor may acquire power, but only by trading away his ability to "stand up like a man." In short, these working men turn gender ideology into an ideological weapon with which to challenge the character of their superiors.19

Workplace Ecology and Workplace Culture

A final consideration that helps account for variations in worker consciousness lies in the ecological conditions that shape the opportunities workers have to form an autono- mous work culture. Most office locations' social ecology offers little opportunity for service reps or clerical workers to stake out an oppositional culture at work. While office




workers do relatively frequently contact one another, this is rarely in a context that might support a culture of resistance. Reps and clerks typically take breaks and meals in company lounges, within sight of supervisors and managers. Most workplaces develop so- cially recognized "supervisors' tables" distinct from those where employees can just relax "with the girls." But voices carry, and verbal indiscretions sometimes filter to managers. Lunchtime banter therefore revolves around 'safe' topics such as family events, vacation plans, or which workers have transferred or retired. Hence the ecology of office work inhibits expression of conflictual sentiments at work and renders it that much more difficult for workers to share an oppositional set of values.

Matters are quite different for craftworkers. Although they usually work in isolation from one another, "shooting" troubles in central offices or out in the field, the uncertainty of their tasks and the physical mobility of their jobs enable them to stray from assigned duties and congregate. Opportunities for such evasive tactics are greatest among the outside craftworkers, the most spatially mobile and proud of their ability to defy their bosses: "They [management] know what we're supposed to be doing, but they're not running wires up through the trees with us." In fact, supervisors sometimes spend considerable time hunting down subordinates. "You've hit on a sore point with me," one manager told me. "Sometimes we just don't know where our own people are. Maybe the guy's just standing around somewhere with his buddies, talking about the fish he caught over the weekend. You just don't know." Sometimes supervisors grow determined to rein in their workers, yielding the industrial equivalent of hide-and-seek. Sometimes they get the upper hand. One supervisor recently promoted to foreman claimed that "I know where they like to hide. I can still think like a splicer." When workers lose, they can be suspended without pay (or even fired) unless a union official can get them off the hook. (One interview with a local union president was interrupted to bail out several of his members who had met at a bar on company time: "The jerks used to go back to the same place all the time!") Apart from the risk involved in such outlaw activities, most important here is their form: their very nature as forbidden congregations invites workers to challenge managerial definitions of their work situations, actively schooling them in the values of defiance.

DISCUSSION

This case study of workers' work and consciousness in two Bell operating companies aims to evaluate the validity of the managerial hegemony thesis. The workers on whom it focuses enjoy many if not most of the employment terms and conditions usually associ- ated with monopoly core firms, and have been exposed to a strong corporate culture. Nonetheless, the data identify important limitations in the managerial hegemony thesis and prompt a rethinking of several of its claims.

First and most important, little indicates that management has established a pattern of ideological hegemony over workers. To be sure, some workers and groups do consent to and embrace the existing distribution of authority, but they are a distinct minority. Most are quite aware of tensions and antagonisms between themselves and their employers, support increased worker control over companies, and would act on their interests and orientations should the need arise. In short, these workers do not lack the ideological resources to contest managerial authority. As one chief steward put it (referring to a number of structural trends, including automation), "It's not that we're fighting any less. It's that they took the weapon out of our hands." Managerial hegemony theories therefore




inflate the role of ideological mechanisms in the maintenance of managerial control and underestimate workers' abilities to form a critical consciousness of the employment relationship.

Second, hegemony theorists typically view workers in core firms in an overarching fashion as if all occupational groups were caught up in the same ideological net. This study instead finds that even though they work within the same core firm, workers in different occupational categories exhibit clearly distinct ideological inclinations. While some groups do consent to the status quo, others manifest a distinctly oppositional consciousness. Thus management's ideological dominance is by no means the 'natural' outcome of work relations within the monopoly core: it succeeds only under specific conditions and with certain occupational groups. Moreover, although internal labor markets and such occupational conditions as autonomy and organizational rewards do affect workers' consciousness (much as hegemony theory predicts), these variables do not account for the occupational variations in consciousness found. Rather, qualitative evidence points to the importance of other conditions hegemony theorists rarely address.

Much as Halle (1984) observes, the concept of the "working man" shapes craftworkers' consciousness, encouraging them to define their manliness at least partly through defiance of management (cf. Willis 1977; Yarrow 1987). Oppositional consciousness also seems to depend on patterns of workplace ecology. Although craftworkers are unable to interact as a group with any great frequency, the outlaw nature of their congregations (which implicitly seek to win back a measure of freedom from managerial control) teaches them to challenge managerial definitions of their work situations. Hence Burawoy's view of industrial games, which sees such rituals as adapting workers to the existing structure of authority, may be too narrowly framed. Although more ethnographic research is needed on this point, the findings here imply that workplace games and rituals often reinforce, rather than weaken, the conflictual character of workers' consciousness.

Concurring with other recent studies of working-class consciousness, this research finds an implicit counter-ideology common among many workers (cf. Hamilton 1968; Huber and Form 1973; Vanneman and Cannon 1987), a majority viewing the relation between management and workers as exploitative. At the same time, however, workers' consciousness remains the product of influences often particularistic and internally contradictory. While gender ideology fuels defiant attitudes among the working men in this study, for example, it also seems to limit men's ability to fashion an alternative (Epstein 1988). In one case what provoked a group of inside craftsmen to challenge their bosses was a supervisor's harsh and impersonal treatment of female clerks. "One thing you don't do," one male worker explained, "you don't mess with our women. " Although these workers prevailed, forcing management to transfer the supervisor, their actions served to re- produce women's subordinate position, limiting the basis on which working-class action might develop. Hence if the ethos of masculinity provides an ideological weapon in the battle against management, that weapon can at time cut both ways.20

Likewise, even the most class-conscious workers' embrace of nationalistic ideology sometimes overwhelms their perception of conflict between workers and top managers. Thus one chief steward sharply criticized management's use of new technologies to measure workers' productivity, but in the next breath expressed fear of Japanese market dominance in microprocessors and memory chips ("What are we going to do if we get into a war with Japan? Where will American industry be then?"). His comments remind us that industrial militance need not spill over into a broader all-encompassing political critique (Katznelson 1981), and that even as workers resist the ideological dominance of




their employers, wider obstacles and prejudices continue to shape their consciousness, limiting their critique of the social relations that surround them.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

An earlier version of this study was presented at the 1989 Southern Sociological Society meetings in Norfolk, Virginia. I wish to thank the Russell Sage Foundation, which provided material and intellectual support during the writing of the manuscript, and the members and officials of District I of the Communications Workers of America, AFL- CIO, who underwrote the costs of data collection. I am also grateful to Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Kai Erikson, Howard Kimeldorf, Bill Kornblum, Irene Padevic, Ian Taplin, and John Zipp for their encouraging remarks and suggestions, and to Erik Rotto for his research assistance.

NOTES

1. See especially Braverman (1974), Shaiken (1984), and Noble (1978, 1984). For insightful discussion, see Stark (1980) and Thompson (1989, 1990).

2. Many other streams of thought relate to the development of hegemony theory, but lie beyond the scope of the present context. For a discussion and critique of Weberian notions of legitimacy, see Abercrombie, Hill, and Turner (1980) and Turner (1987). For discussions of working-class em- bourgeoisement and the labor aristocracy, see Goldthorpe (1969) and MacKenzie (1973). Finally, organizational sociologists have also pointed toward processes that encourage subordinates to un- knowingly accept superiors' premises. For a discussion of such unobtrusive controls, see Perrow (1986, pp. 128-131).

3. On the break-up of AT&T see Coll (1984), Faulhaber (1987), and Kohl (1982). 4. Bell paternalism began immediately following World War I and quickly expanded into the

most elaborate system of company unions in the U.S. (Brooks 1977; Norwood 1984; Schacht 1985). Sections of the 1935 National Labor Relations Acts that outlawed company-dominated unions specifically aimed at the Bell plan. The effectiveness of Bell's system of labor control is seen in the relative quiescence of its workers during the CIO years. Not until during and after World War II did independent trade unionism emerge on a permanent basis in the communications industry (Vallas forthcoming).

5. This refers to a set of shared sentiments and perceptions involving an awareness of the conflictual character of the wage labor relationship, preference for a more egalitarian alternative, and a willingness to engage in collective action to realize this end. An operational definition of working-class consciousness follows.

6. For varying approaches to the measurement of class consciousness, see Leggett (1968), Mann (1970), MacKenzie (1973), Blackburn and Mann (1975), Zingraff and Schulman (1984), Leiter (1986), and Vallas (1987).

7. Only 10.2% hesitated to even consider the strike option, while 44.2% voiced guarded opposition to making concessions.

8. This theme was developed by members of the Frankfurt School (Marcuse 1964; Habermas 1971), as well as more recent students of industry and technology (see Noble 1978; Webster 1987).

9. Some workers resisted the choices provided, and noted no one benefitted. They deemed the new systems less effective than the older, manual ones and the changes largely counterproductive. These responses were relatively rare, however.

10. In retrospect, this conceptualization seems insufficiently precise. A number of different forms of worker consciousness exist, including trade union consciousness, craft consciousness; yet the schema developed here classifies them all as class consciousness. Clearly greater conceptual and




operational clarity is needed. The schema suffices for the task at hand, however, inasmuch as the hegemony thesis expects little evidence of any forms of oppositional consciousness.

11. I asked one former craftsman how different groups of workers behaved during strikes. He recalled that "operators ... have always been some of the most militant workers in the industry. Some of these gals, they'd pick up rocks and throw them at anybody who tried to cross the picket line. They'd say things you wouldn't have believed. They were the peasants of the industry, and they weren't shy about saying what they felt."

12. One union local's past president reported "When we were on strike, the customer service people would drive right through our picket line. I mean, they'd try to run you over. You couldn't even mention union to them.

13. This finding reinforces Elinore Langer's observations regarding service reps: "The women (reps) do not see themselves as 'workers' in anything like the classical sense." See Langer (1970).

14. An index based on six self-report items involving workers' ability to determine their method and pace of work measures levels of worker autonomy. Cronbach's alpha for the index is .84. For more detail on the construction of the autonomy index see Vallas (1987, 1988).

15. Note that in Table 2 (B), an ideological difference emerges between operators and outside craftworkers not apparent in (A). Further analysis suggests that this is mainly due to the inclusion of work autonomy in the prediction equations. Thus, levels of work autonomy may explain the relatively class-conscious attitudes of the operators.

16. Levels of alienation from work and job dissatisfaction (not shown) are dramatically higher among the latter.

17. Three items compose the index measuring job security: how worried workers are that they "may be laid off and have to look for another job," will "have to accept a job in a lower classification, with a cut in pay," and will "have to accept a transfer to a distant job location." The distribution of scores is skewed in a positive direction, requiring a logarithmic transformation. The index ranges from 0.48 to 1.08, higher scores indicating greater job security. Cronbach's alpha for this index is .76. The character of supervision, conceived as lying on a continuum between benevolent and coercive, is assessed using an index whose items ask workers how often their immediate supervisors are "considerate of the worker's feelings," "able to understand things from the worker's point of view," and "easy to talk to when things get tough on your job." Cronbach's alpha for this index is .83.

18. For example, almost no gender variance exists within each occupation, rendering statistical manipulation extremely problematic.

19. For a historical discussion of the importance of maintaining a "manly bearing" toward the boss, see Montgomery (1979, ch. 2). For more contemporary analysis of gender and class consciousness, see Willis (1977), Cockburn (1983), Halle (1984), and Yarrow (1987).

20. Male predominance in telephone workers' organizations has a long history, beginning with the exclusion of women from craft unions, to ward off the dangers of what they called "petticoat unionism" (see Vallas forthcoming, ch. 3). On patriarchy and labor organization more generally, see Cockburn (1982). For a discussion of the bearing Qf gender ideology on worker consent and resistance, see Epstein's own analysis of telephone employees.

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