Work and autonomy in the assembly of printed circuit boards

Abstract

Work, conceptualised as a concrete and practical activity, continues to remain an under-explored problematic in the field of Indian labour studies. The neglect of ethnographic research techniques could perhaps account for this shortcoming. Based on non-participant observation in a public sector company, this article examines the practices and attitudes of workers specialised in assembling printed circuit boards for electronic telephones. Despite the standardised nature of the product and its low economic value, operatives allocated to this task experience a significant degree of autonomy in their daily activities. In consonance with their personal inclinations and interests, they are not only free to structure their immediate physical environment but also to control their work pace and organise the way they perform their jobs. In all these spheres of practice, important variations can be observed from one individual to the next. This situation belies the conventional thesis equating semi-skilled occupations of the kind described here with job fragmentation, the absence of individual discretion and stringent managerial controls. The departure from the norm stems in part from the desire to preserve a harmonious industrial relations climate and in part from the non-strategic character of the end product—telephones—in the company’s portfolio. But slack disciplinary controls, a problem common to state-owned enterprises in general, could also explain the latitude granted to workers.