Labor and Management in Conflict: the St. Petersburg Metal-Working Industry, 1900-1914. (Volumes I and II).

In the first decade of the twentieth century, St. Petersburg heavy industrialists faced the dual crises of economic dislocation (1901-1910) and intense labor protest (1905-1907). The policies adopted in response to these problems included the financial reorganization of many firms, a marked tendency toward various forms of industrial consolidation and employer organization, a modernization of business procedures, and a rationalization of work processes. These changes significantly impacted labor, for they entailed structural change in work force composition and a multi-form assault on traditional work patterns. The modernization of the physical plant and the simplification of work processes led to the exp and ed use of unskilled labor and to the dilution of skilled cadres. New wage systems were manipulated to increase productivity, and new controls over time were instituted. This intensification of work and the increased surveillance which attended the enlargement of the technical and administrative staff was correctly perceived by metal workers as an assault on the limited control they exercised over the workplace. Acute labor-management conflict emerged at a time when advanced technologies and methods of industrial organization interfaced with, and were imposed upon, an unreformed, largely autocratic structure of authority within the factory. Following the 1905 revolution, metal workers protested with increasing urgency the paternalistic and deferential relations which defined the old factory regime. Management proved unresponsive to labor's dem and s and continued to insist on the employer's unilateral right to structure workshop relations. The St. Petersburg Metal Workers' Union, formed in 1906, faced the difficult problems of organizing a highly stratified work force. Factory-based organizations continued to exert a pervasive grip over rank- and -file loyalties and , in addition to the hostile attitudes of the government and employers, constrained the emergence of a broad-based trade unionism in Russia.PhDModern historyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/158655/1/8204674.pd