Work Relationships and Autonomy

Abstract

AbstractMany people lack autonomy because they work jobs that deny them significant and meaningful control over what they do. The negative impact of this can be ameliorated, to a degree, by the relationships that people often form with co-workers: that is, workplace sociability can itself enhance workers’ autonomy while also helping them tolerate heteronomous work by making it more bearable. In addition, workplace sociability is also a potential resource for advancing the cause of working people’s autonomy, acting as a basis for developing forms of workplace solidarity which workers can then use, through strike action and other forms of militant activity, to improve their working conditions. In this paper, we identify the tension between, on the one hand, the ameliorative and therapeutic value of workplace sociability and, on the other, sociability’s potential instrumental role in expanding workers’ autonomy. We argue that developing workplace sociability into more purposive forms of solidarity involves putting at risk those other functions performed by such sociability. If expanding their autonomy is something workers have reason to care about, navigating the varied and complex functions performed by workplace sociability is thus an important dimension of workplace organizing.