Worker Consciousness and Union Orientation: The Case of Mexican Steel Workers

Abstract

A central question for industrial sociology has been to study the determinants of working class consciousness. Relationships have been hypothesized between types of worker consciousness and socio-economic variables (Di Tella, 1965; Moore and Feldman, 1960; Faletto, 1966; Handelman, 1978); and between worker consciousness and labour process and organizational structure (Braverman, 1975;Touraine, 1965; Kerr and Siegel, 1971;Chinoy, 1965;Goldthorpe, 1968). The first of these currents holds that the rural origins of workers is a key determinant of the economistic type of consciousness held by them (Faletto, 1966; Moore and Feldman, 1960). Level of education has been singled out as a key variable in determining the radical (Handelman, 1978) or conservative (Kahl, 1968) attitude of a group of workers, as well as influencing their perspectives for social mobility in a closed social structure (Di Tella, 1965) and their participation in a combative union environment (Handelman, 1978). These are clearly part of what is meant by class consciousness. The second current relates the determinants of industrial work with expressions of labour conflict such as strikes (Kerr and Siegel, 1971) and the orienta? tion of these movements towards economic, social and labour questions and towards solidarity with other groups of workers (Knowles, 1963). These authors have presented an argument which, despite frequent criticism (Shorter and Tilly, 1974), asserts that the radicalism of labour conflict in certain economic sectors is a consequence of the specific characteristics of work in those sectors. Other studies, focusing on assembly line work and on the motor industry, have offered interpretations which link repetition, noise, the incessant rhythm of