ABSTRACT
This is a small article on an enormous topic—the masculine realm of workplace culture. Although it raises some questions about the general nature of working-class masculinity and of leisure-like activities or play at the workplace, some of its major themes concern how workers fabricate a multiplicity of masculinities, how these are fashioned and refashioned, how workers bring male leisure or play activities to a thoroughly controlled shop floor, and how this masculine culture operates within the context of workplace relations of power. Specifically, it distinguishes a rough masculine culture originating in the unskilled laborers' world and a respectable one arising from skilled craftsmen's traditions. Moreover, it heavily relies on a previously neglected labor history resource—the grievances that workers filed about their situations and conditions on the shop floor. These are important windows into the workplace that reveal much about the day-to-day activities and actions of auto workers in their shops and departments and the social relations of power in the American automobile industry.
