ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the strategies employees used to try to resolve the tensions inherent in commodification of labor—the principal one being to find and define moral worth in their workday contributions. One of the unavoidable problems of writing about industrial relations is that no language is readily available for making the necessary distinctions between labor and capital. It is not hard to find or create a convincing argument that these two entities approach any contractual arrangement with vastly unequal resources. Employee discretion, limited but real, is something of a loose cannon for employers. There is potential for loss of substantial control over the work process; at least there is constant vying and bargaining over the use of time. If management cannot detach the hands it purchases from the person who accompanies them, so too the worker cannot send his or her hands to work alone for eight hours a day.