ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the emergence of the radical social work paradigm. The accumulated effect of the re-organisation upon social workers was little dissimilar from the introduction of the assembly line by Henry Ford. In summary, the argument which united the small body of radical social work writers who drew on the labour process was that the social work labour process had moved, and was moving, towards an industrial model. Central to the radical social work writers' analysis of managerial control strategies was an orthodox Bravermanian approach to the separation of execution from conception. Bolger et al. consider that Braverman's concept has: a direct, central and biting relevance to welfare work. Radical social work writers acknowledge the problem of transforming labour power into actual labour on three fronts: at the levels of individual practice, the team unit and the trade union.
