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Where Have All the Robots Gone?: Worker Dissatisfaction in the '70's
Where Have All the Robots Gone Worker Dissatisfaction in the '70's Author:Harold L. Sheppard, Neal Q. Herrick Drawing on a 1969 Labor Dept./Univ. of Michigan study of 1533 American workers, plus their own studies of factory labor in Pennsylvania and Michigan, the authors (both associated with the Upjohn Institute for Emloyment Research) hammer away at what's left of the happy worker myth. Isolating "pockets of discontent," they note that u... more »nder-30 blue-collar employees, young blacks, and women are the most alienated. Although their findings are hard to extract from the dense statistical matrix, two points emerge deafly. First, pay is not the issue -- virtually all workers cite lack of creativity and challenge on the job, routinization and boredom, and little opportunity to advance via ability as the chief causes of their malaise. The plea is for more "humanized" work, less rigid controls, and relaxation of pyramidical structures which demand compulsive order and mindless obedience. Second (and here the authors lean heavily on Erich Fromm's study of authoritarian personalities), Sheppard and Herrick suggest that it is the nonauthoritarian personalities who are most alienated and most likely to turn their grievances to "politically undesirable attitudes and behavior" -- in the 1968 election it was not the robots but the rebels who voted for Wallace. Extrapolating from their research, they postulate that the disgruntlement and intractability of the young will not wane with maturity. Education, media influence, and the general level of affluence are working together to produce a new "social character" less susceptible to controls, less brainwashed by the work ethic. In short, employers had better get with enrichment programs and job restructuring. Regrettably, the turgid sociologese will restrict the readership to a narrow, professional sphere.« less