The Weak Suffer What They Must — A Natural Experiment in Thought and Structure
The contrast between Schwab in 1996 (Figure 2) and 1998 (Figure 4) shows the structural change that Suzan’s story illustrates. In the corresponding 1996 and 1998 proximity matrices illustrated in tables 6 and 7 show the contrast as members see stewards and reps as closer to managers and supervisors in 1998 than in 1996, see themselves as closer to managers but a somewhat less close to supervisors, and see themselves as less similar to reps and stewards. In these respects, the 1998 proximity matrix for Schwab resembles the industrial one.
To what extent do these figures and tables represent shared patterns of thought? This has been an issue since Wallace raised it (1961). Romney, Weller, and Batchelder (1988) outline the theory and mathematics for computing respondents’ consensus on cultural domains, and Borgatti (1996a,b) includes it in Anthropac. Here, the purpose of using consensus analysis is only to assess the agreement among respondents. The procedure computes a factor analysis of the chance-adjusted measures of agreement among respondents. If the first factor is less than three times as great as the second, there is no consensus. Table 8 shows the ratio of the first to the second factor for each group and the number of respondents. It is clear that there is sufficient consensus at each site to consider the proximity matrices cultural constructs.
Given that there is consensus among respondents, to what extent are the samples of respondents representative of the whole group? My sampling techniques were neither very consistent nor very pure. The exigencies of shifts, transportation across a wide area, dubious quality of membership lists-the only available sampling frame–and other factors made the random sampling that I desired and attempted hopelessly quixotic. To do the work, I had to rely on other techniques, chiefly opportunistic sampling. Some of the samples represent almost the entire population, and for those sampling is not problematic. Virtually the entire staff of the local responded, so that is not an issue. Almost all of the non-support staff of the second local responded, and that included virtually all of the reps. Schwab has about 60 members (64 in 1996, but the number varies as Suzan’s narrative in this paper indicates); the first sample of 6 is thus about 10%; the second is nearly half, 42% and represents all departments as does the first sample. While these are neither random nor stratified samples, they are fairly representative of the membership. The industrial sample is from a random sample list of four industrial sites I drew from the membership list. This represents about 1% of the total industrial membership of the local. The public hospital sample partially from a random sample list I drew from the membership list and partially an opportunistic sample of its 674 service employees and 79 technicians (753 total), about a 1% sample. I think the samples of the staffs and Schwab members are representative; there may be some doubt about the industrial and public hospital samples, but here the sampling was more purely random.
Structure, agency, and class
Alford (1998) points out the problems of the multivariate approach in understanding historical phenomena–dependent variables may become independent variables as systems of relationships change over time. In highly stratified social orders defined by differential access to productive resources (Fried 1967), agency and structure may have different positions in different classes because access to resources, hence class position, rests on differential power, a structural dimension given by position in the social order. Among the working class in the United States there seems to be dual awareness of both structure and agency whereas middle class persons think more in terms of agency than structure. This suggests that the concern anthropologists have with the topic of agency may be a projection of our own class-based folk models onto the rest of the world (Durrenberger and Erem 1997b). Working class awareness of structures is less a cultural convention than a recognition of the reality of powerlessness (Newman 1988, 1993; Hunt 1996; Hackenberg 1995; Griffith 1995; Rubin 1992).
The relationship has never been stated more clearly than in the words Thucydides put into the mouths of the Athenian delegation to Melos in the sixteenth year of the Peloponnesian War: “. . . you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” (Crawley nd: 359). They went on to make the nomothetic observation, “Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can,” elaborating that the did not make this law, but found it “and shall leave it to exist for ever after us. . . .” (Crawley nd: 361-362). The democratic Anthenians then besieged the place and finally, after the Melians surrendered, killed all of the men and sold the women and children into slavery (Crawley nd:365). The Athenians’ observations are as valid for modern social orders as for ancient ones.
The chief goal of the union movement in industrial social orders is to redress the structural imbalance and give some sense of agency to those who provide labor but do not necessarily control the conditions for its use. It does this by attempting to develop collective power based on other structural principals than wealth. The intentions of the powerful are more consequential than those of the un-powerful. Thus by the actions of the powerful do their intentions become structures that determine the cognition of the powerless. Cognition and agency may determine structure for some classes while for others structure may determine cognition; the causal arrows may be functions of class position or power rather than being constant across the whole social order. Thus even the question of causal relations between structure and cognition is not a constant but varys by class. This is one theoretically iportant reason that anthropologists should not perpetuate the American folk model of the classless society but explore the structural, cultural, and practical dimensions and cosnequences of stratification in our own (see the works in Forman 1995) and other social orders ancient and modern.
Epilogue
By the middle of the summer of 1998 we had everyone back up to 8 hours at Schwab and I had held meetings to train managers and supervisors to work with the stewards as they are required to by law. I’d trained stewards on how to be treated as equals by management) when they were used to being treated as subordinates–mutually agreed upon meetings (rather than just meeting when management demanded a meeting at a time and place management dictated), how to command meetings (rather than be a passive audience), how to show solidarity when they needed to (rather than each person only looking out for him or herself). With high turnover among management, new stewards and the law behind me, I have some power to create new structures. If management elects not to participate, they know I can file charges against them with the Labor Board and cause them more trouble than they want. More importantly, the members are regaining a sense of ownership in the union and of their own ability to affect what happens at their job as they become more organized and see the consequences of their concerted activity.
———
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SUPERVISOR MANAGER STEWARD UNION REP DIF. LINE
MANAGER 1.0
STEWARD 0.0 0.0
UNION REP 0.0 0.0 1.0
DIF. LINE 0.0 0.0 0.5 0.5
SAME LINE 0.0 0.0 0.5 0.5 1.0TABLE 1
PERFECT UNION MODEL
SCH96 STAFF INDUST PUBLIC STAFF2 PURE
SCH98 -.41 -.47 -.18 -.32 -.39 -.39
SCH96 .64 -.16 .68 .64 .67
STAFF .29 .89 .98 .96
INDUST .14 .17 .21
PUBLIC .88 .88
STAFF2 .96
TABLE 2
CORRELATIONS AMONG PROXIMITY MATRICES
SUPERVISOR MANAGER STEWARD UNION REP DIF. LINE
MANAGER .73
STEWARD .23 .18
UNION REP .09 .25 .89
DIF. LINE .16 .25 .18 .27
SAME LINE .25 .20 .27 .18 .82TABLE 3
INDUSTRIAL MEMBERS
SUPERVISOR MANAGER STEWARD UNION REP DIF. LINE
MANAGER .93
STEWARD .10 .08
UNION REP .18 .25 .88
DIF. LINE .10 .08 .35 .28
SAME LINE .05 .08 .48 .30 .90TABLE 4
PUBLIC HOSPITAL MEMBERS
SUPERVISOR MANAGER STEWARD UNION REP DIF. LINE
MANAGER .83
STEWARD .04 .06
UNION REP .00 .07 .68
DIF. LINE .04 .06 .64 .49
SAME LINE .08 .03 .73 .44 .94TABLE 5
STAFF
SUPERVISOR MANAGER STEWARD UNION REP DIF. LINE
MANAGER .81
STEWARD .13 .06
UNION REP .10 .07 .60
DIF. LINE .28 .22 .31 .17
SAME LINE .31 .26 .26 .26 .88
TABLE 6
SCHWAB 1996
SUPERVISOR MANAGER STEWARD UNION REP DIF. LINE
MANAGER .86
STEWARD .32 .22
UNION REP .28 .23 .70
DIF. LINE .17 .19 .19 .22
SAME LINE .21 .28 .18 .22 .84TABLE 7
SCHWAB 1998
SITE N RATIO
SCHWAB96 6 4.5
SCHWAB98 25 4.0
STAFF 18 5.8
STAFF2 25 5.2
PUBLIC 9 10.6
IUDUSTRIAL 11 11.2
TABLE 8
SITES, NUMBERS OF RESPONDANTS, AND RATIO OF FIRST AND SECOND FACTORS IN CONSENSUS ANALYSIS
WORKER
STEWARD SUPERVISOR
MANAGER
REP HUMAN RELATIONS DIRECTOR
VP FOR HUMAN RELATIONS
FIGURE 1
ETIC GRID
DLWORKER
SLWORKER
SUPERVISOR
MANAGER REP
STEWARD
FIGURE 2
SCHWAB 1996
DL WORKERSUPERVISOR
MANAGER
SL WORK
STEWARD
UNION REP
FIGURE 3
PUBLIC HOSPITAL
DLWORKER
SLWORKER
STEWARD
REP MANAGER
SUPERVISOR
FIGURE 4
SCHWAB 1998
REP/STEWARDS MAN/SUPER
WORKERS
FIGURE 5
INDUSTRIAL MEMBERS
WORKERS
SUPERVISOR STEWARD
MANAGER REP
FIGURE 6
STAFF