The Craft Tradition Under Threat: Technical Workers’ Relations with Manual Workers

Abstract

My analysis of the class position of middle-range technical staff has emphasised the tremendous importance of the craft tradition in technical work and the close association between skilled manual workers and technical workers. I have rejected any ideas of technical workers belonging to a new middle class, and have said that, through their waged labour, production of surplus value, craft tradition and association with the labour movement, technical workers in British engineering are a section of the working class. In the last few chapters I have indicated the persistence of this craft tradition in the newer as well as the established technical occupations. The two groups that are marginal to this tradition are those at the higher end of technical work for whom the craft tradition has all but ceased, and those in quasi-technical areas in production control. In this chapter I will elaborate on the daily factory relationship between technical staff and manual workers and examine the areas of co-operation and conflict between these two sections of the working class. I am particularly concerned to examine the extent of a control or power relationship between the two groups and the extent to which the ‘knowledge’ of technical staff dominates manual workers.