Coopey, R. (Richard) (1988) Structures of control : the changing role of shop floor supervision in the U.S. automobile industry, 1900-1950. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

The thesis is based on a longitudinal study of the automobile industry
in the U.S.A. from its inception around the turn of the century, to the
1950s. Charting the changes in methods of production, organisational
structure, demography and skill configurations among the workforce, and
institutional and political formations at the workplace, the study focuses
upon the meaning of these developments in terms of the control of work and
the personnel directly involved in that control - the changing role of
foremen in 20th century industry.
Using a range of sources including contemporary governmental and
industrial surveys, company and trade union records and oral histories, a
picture is built up of the way in which methods of production, and the
control of that production, are mediated through a series of social,
demographic, spatial and ideological factors, in all of which the foreman
is a central character.
In examining the role of shop floor supervision in shaping workers
experience and actual structures of control at the workplace, and showing
how the experience of foremen, individually and as a group, in turn are
affected by changing patterns of work, the thesis constructs a historical
modification to accounts of the labour process which stress a progressive,
teleological exodus of control from the shop floor. The study points out
for example, that the role of shop-floor supervisor during the inter-war
period, largely supposed to have been proscribed and marginalised by
technological and bureaucratic developments, remained in fact the focal
point of control over hiring, firing, wage levels, production levels and
methods of work, in short almost all aspects of the industrial workers'
experience of factory life.
Having established the boundaries of power and control surrounding the
foreman in pre-war mass production, and discussed the meaning of these
boundaries in terms of class, ideology and divisions among the workforce,
the thesis then examines the origins and effects of unionisation on the
role of supervision. Following an account of the restructuring of power and
control which comes with the establishment of production workers unions in
the industry, the advent of the unionisation of foremen themselves is
examined. The Foremen's Association of America (FAA), which saw its genesis
and principal area of recruitment in the automobile industry, represented
the most serious attempt to organise supervisory workers in the USA this
century, and marks a pivotal point in the spread of unionisation,
managerial response and state intervention in industrial relations.
Building on earlier sections outlining the position of foremen in terms of
power and ideology, the thesis proposes a complex, multi-level dynamic
behind the formation, growth and decline of the FAA as a corrective to
previous accounts which stress the primacy of legislative and institutional
explanatory frameworks.
Finally the thesis charts the post-war response of management in the
industry to the threat of foremen's unionisation, locating ensuing attempts
to restructure the role, status and prestige of foremen in terms of the
historical impact and progress of competing managerial theory, in
particular that of the human relations school.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Automobile industry and trade -- United States -- History -- 20th century, Supervisors, Industrial -- United States -- History -- 20th century, Foremen's Association of America
Official Date:	December 1988
Dates:	Date Event December 1988 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Social History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Sponsors:	Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC) ; University of Wisconsin-Madison
Extent:	600 leaves
Language:	eng

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