Forced choices : class, community, and worker ownership / Charles S. Varano.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Varano, Charles S., 1957-

Series:

SUNY series in the sociology of work and organizations

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Weirton Steel Corporation.

Employee ownership--West Virginia--Weirton.

Employee ownership.

Steel industry and trade--West Virginia--Weirton.

Steel industry and trade.

Weirton (W. Va.).

West Virginia--Weirton.

Physical Description:

xiii, 396 pages : map ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [1999]

Summary:

What happens to employees when their company decides to close? Thousands of workers across America have faced this prospect in the past twenty years, but relatively few have chosen to buy the company and operate it as a worker-owned concern. Forced Choices examines the celebrated case of Weirton, West Virginia, where steelworkers and area residents fought to save a steelmill, community, and way of life.

Contents:

Weirton: The Place and Its People

An Ethnography of Class, Community, and Worker Ownership

1. Worker Ownership and Class in America 15

Worker Ownership

Employee Participation

Paternalism and Class

Class and Class Consciousness

Outline of Chapters

Part II. Historical Antecedents

2. Forced Choices I: Company Town 39

The Antecedents of Paternalism: 1909-1933

The Challenge: 1933-1951

Quiescence: 1951-1982

3. Forced Choices II: "Buy It or Lose It" 79

One Side of Paternalism's Legacy

Divided Loyalties

"Business is Business, Morals is Morals"

The Limits of Dissent

The Final Deal

Part III. Workers by Day

4. Forced Choices III: Employee Participation 143

Participation by Decree

The Structure of Employee Participation

Ideology and Employee Participation

5. A Fragile Trust: The Normative Order of Employee Participation 179

Facilitators as Industrial Therapists

Workers and Employee Participation

Internal Communications: Public Relations at Work

Part IV. Owners By Night

6. Class and Worker Ownership 227

Worker Ownership and the "Equity Solution"

Owners by Night ... Workers at Heart

7. The Moral Economy of Worker Ownership 243

The Value of Labor

Property Rights

Community, Nepotism, and Local Control

8. The Struggle for Control 293

A Changing of the Guard

Confrontation

Two Years Later: The Struggle Continues

The Lessons of Worker Ownership and Participation at Weirton Steel

Class, Community, and Worker Ownership.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 377-385) and index.

ISBN:

0791441814

0791441822

OCLC:

40043509