Add to ORKGThis study consists of an interpretation of a series of discussions tape-recorded in three workplaces - among cleaners in a University Chemistry building, in a Hospital laundry and an Old Peoples Home. The report includes edited transcripts of the discussions themselves. The interpretation centres on powerful ideas, ideas which stand out in the collective, thinking of the three groups of workers, and which they imply to be effective in their lives. It is argued that most of these ideas confer a position of powerlessness on those who hold them. They are set in the context of wider views of the world which also imply powerlessness. This sense of powerlessness is also found in views of the union. Here, power is firmly located at the top