The Bus Owner, the Bus Driver, and His Lover

Abstract

Sociologists of service work have firmly established that clients may become crucial allies for either workers or managers at conflict throughout the labor process. However, less attention has been given to how these colluding relations may extend beyond the limits of a service interaction. An ethnographic approach into the nature of the alliances between bus drivers and their passengers in Monterrey, Mexico, revealed a subterranean gender system that systematically structured workers’ struggle against management in ways that have not been considered by the sociology of service work. How might personal, emotional, and sexualized connections weave into class struggle? In this article, the author traces a series of strategies and counterstrategies developed by male bus owners and bus drivers in their quest for control over profit, highlighting the gendered motivations and means that sustain this gendered class struggle. The article concludes with a hypothetical overview of the contradictory ways class and gender systems may be articulated and how further research along these lines might deepen the understanding of class struggle.