Crossing the Great Divide

Deindustrialization, downsizing, retooling, and retraining, are just a few of the words that have crept into the American lexicon as related to work and occupations. From approximately 1944 to 1973, American workers and owners of capital participated in what pundits refer to as the "labor/capital accord." This unwritten "accord" has been generally accepted, after the fact, as an implicit agreement between labor and capital due to a need for compliant workers because of America's manufacturing preeminence after World War II; a war that left many of the participating nations with little or no manufacturing infrastructure. As America and the American worker stepped in, the world's light and heavy manufacturing fell to the country with the greatest intact infrastructure: America. Given war arenas did not include American soil, i.e. the United States, the means to serve the world's manufacturing needs were simply retooled, from war machinery manufacture to consumable goods production, to fit an emerging economy; one that allowed the bourgeoning middle class to partake in wide-scale manufacturing work as not previously experienced in America. However, as all good economists, historians, and none-to-few sociologists have observed, the only constant is consistent change. With the emergence of 1980's and 1990's downsizing and outsourcing, American workers faced new concerns that impacted not only their pockets, but also their psyche. In this work, Sociologist Vicki Smith seeks to "address these issues by untangling the contradictory strands present in contemporary transformation of jobs and work organizations and weaving them back together into a coherent but variegated whole." To accomplish her goal of providing meaningful answers, Smith examines three companies, "because they had undertaken one or more of the reforms I was interested in, such as an employee involvement, quality, or participative management program, or temporary hiring practices." The companies researched are Reproco, WoodWorks International, and CompTech. Of her first company, Smith writes, "Reproco had fashioned a service-delivery workplace that in key respects matched an ideal blueprint for a less hierarchical, decentralized organizational structure, one designed to enable workers to self manage and to coordinate their efforts." Of WoodWorks, International, a "timber-products plant in Madison, Montana" Smith writes, they "had been undergoing construction and cutbacks for a full decade before I began my research in 1992." In this case, she writes, "in distinct contrast to Reproco, then, work reform was introduced under conditions of economic and organizational crisis." This case is telling in that we witness how the potential loss of work altogether provides the substrate "for making individuals more flexible, heightening their engagement and holding workers more accountable for production and output." Such a position illustrates how companies can coerce workers into a

In "Crossing the Great Divide," Ms. Smith explores four organizations and sizes up their employment and personnel practices against the rhetorics of social science and global economy theorists. What she finds is a much more complex picture than the theorists allow for. In and of itself, this is a great service to readers interested in the "Brazilianization" of the Western work force(see Ulrich Beck's "The Brave New World of Work for a good companion read), because, as Smith notes, most of the writing on this phenomenon tends to either demonize those companies who practice "perma-temp" strategies as exploitative, or to praise them as leading-edge companies which are reacting to the exigencies of global capitalism. An example from Smith's book may be helpful. One of the companies where she conducts research, a new company which she pseudonomously calls "Reproco," contracts with firms (such as law firms and other organizations) to provide copying service -- a complete service including copiers and copy machine operators. The machine operators are paid a little more than minimum wage, are shuttled from one location to another every six months, are given little chance of advancement, but they are given training in interpersonal relations, scheduling, business goals, etc. For many Reproco employees -- most of whom worked in low-paying jobs in the service industry flipping burgers and have a high school education or less, this training gives them insight into business and handling business relationships that they never had before. So, while the constant shuttling from location to location works to prevent the formation of unions, the lessons in business practices activates a new sense of self-regard and potentiality the employees have rarely experienced. Smith then contasts these workers at "WoodWorks" an old economy "extractive" business in the Pacific Northwest which manufactures building materials (plywood, studs, etc.) The workforce has been downsized through technology upgrades and in reaction to the global market, and employees hopes for lifetime employment are coming to an end. "Woodworks" has employed a quality control program which attempts to engage workers more fully into all aspects on the business -- from understanding balance sheets, improving manufacturing quality -- as a means to creating teamwork. Theorists have charged that the devolution of authority makes workers work harder than ever, that it disrupts traditional worker/employer identities in ways that privelege employers and disadvantage workers, and Smith does find evidence of that. Yet at the same time, she notes that workers, under the gun of the global economy, choose the quality program as the best option in that it demonstrates their desire to keep the factory productive so that they can maintain the lifestyles and their local economy. Many workers to whom she spoke claimed to have learned much about business from the training programs, and some thought they could