The Supervisor and the Militant Shop Steward: Evidence from the Australian Motor Industry

Abstract

For forty years management studies have repeatedly and often passionately attacked the idea that foremen held an 'ambiguous' position, 'in the middle; between workers and management. Recently labour process researchers have shown that the origins of the idea lay not in a fallacious sociology but in the well-grounded concerns of employers in a period of change early this century, when the shop steward was replacing the foreman as the natural leader of the work group. This study examines the relationship today between these two, as seen through the eyes of a group of militant shop stewards in the Melbourne vehicle industry. For them there was no ambiguity. Foremen were front-line troops of management and as such they faced them across a class divide. This is in spite of their similar origins and the availability of 'promotion' from one level to the other. The drawing of such a line was a precondition for the stewards' own effective functioning.

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