Voices from the Shop Floor

Dramas of the Employment Relationship

This title was first published in 2001. This edition presents the view that strategies which aim for team building without recognizing the importance of diversity are likely to have limited success. This volume makes use of the an ethnographic account of an occupational industry based around lock manufacturing in England, plus a number of ethnographically informed industrial relations accounts from the developing world. The book presents some examples from the lock industry ethnographies, exploring the experience of work on the assembly line in a lock factory from both the perspective of an ethnographic observer and then from the perspective of two assembly line workers themselves. It also presents a developing world example. The ethnographic observer's view is complemented and challenged by the accounts of the people rersearched. The accounts provided give a small glimpse of the many themes that arise in the workplace.