Workers Control Over the Organization of Work: French and English Maintenance Workers in Mass Production Industry

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Abstract
This article is concerned with the theory of joint control, and seeks to indicate the power relationships between participants in the organization of work. It is based on a compari son of monographs about similar French and English factories and shows the effects of trade union regulation (which is more powerful in England) on the division and pace of work among workers engaged in maintenance. It establishes that English maintenance workers sustain a stricter demarcation in favour of skilled men, and that they have preserved a monopoly over the greater part of the jobs requiring any sort of skill and strongly resist delegation of these jobs to their mates, to process workers, or to contractors' men. The article goes on to show that the English workers are more successful in resisting nonstop working and thus in preserving relatively large opportuni ties for overtime.

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