This ethnographic study illuminates the consciousness of workers at a medium-size production plant by placing it in social-historical context. The strike was a critical turning point in the plant, as qualitative change took place in the social relations of production from the early 1970s through the 1990s. Throughout the strike, workers' definitions of the situation were based on assumptions consistent with the relations of production that had emerged in the relative prosperity of the postwar era, the so-called new social contract. In fact, capital's commitment to those arrangements had faded. The decisions of ITT management during the period reflected the emerging conditions of globalization and restructuring and a new, more coercive era. The development of the strike, and particularly its aftermath, demonstrates the validity of this definition of the situation. The study is based on participant observation data, collected over a fourteen-year period, from 1977 to 1991.
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