BRINGING THE FACTORY BACK IN: THE CRUMBLING OF CONSENT AND THE MOLDING OF COLLECTIVE CAPACITY AT WORK*
Scholarship on worker collective action has followed activists' turn from labor process to labor movement, privileging external opportunities for protest and resources for organizing. Persuaded by growing appeals to examine the impact of capitalism on protest, I “bring the factory back in” to analyze how the recent restructuring of a Bronx factory's labor process shaped employees' capacities for sustained collective action. Employing participant observation and in-depth interviews within an extended-case framework, I trace the impact of worksite reorganization on shop-floor “games.” I argue that workers sustained a surprisingly long strike after a management offensive dissolved consent and unexpectedly generated a horizontal class realignment. Combining opposing labor-process perspectives, my account is predicated on the how the impact of deskilling interacts with worker behaviors patterned on preexisting hegemonic factory institutions. Though similar cases of hegemonic breakdown will not result in a resurgence of protest across American worksites, my research supports calls for a resurgence of scholarship on production as one central factor shaping collective worker behaviors.
Contributor Notes
* Direct Correspondence to René Rojas, Department of Sociology, New York University, Puck Building, 295 Lafayette St., 4th Floor, New York, NY 10012-9605 (rer271@nyu.edu).
† This is an extensively revised version of a paper presented at SUNY Stony Brook's 2011 How Class Works conference. An earlier version was presented at NYU's Economic and Political Sociology workshop. I thank my workshop colleagues for their thoughtful comments. Reviewers and editors also provided incisive feedback. I am mostly indebted to Jeff Goodwin and Vivek Chibber for their insights, suggestions and patience. Finally, without the trust and collaboration of Sole employees, this article would never have materialized.