The Question of Non-manual Workers in the Recent Sociological Analysis

The text purports to elucidate the state of a social stratum which has been gaining more and more attention in the sociological analysis — the clerks. On the basis of empirical research conducted, which encompassed 400 clerks from four different production sectors in Milan, the author is constructing a typology founded on two principal dimensions — structural and ideological-cultural characteristics. In such a manner four main types of the clerk’s position have been obtained, peculiar for the population that was the object of research: (1) traditional clerks — clerks having high-level qualifications, and good prospects of advancing in their careers, which are at the same time characterized by identification with the middle Class and setting the distinction in relation to the working class. The repercussion of that is obvious from the fact that those clerks are not organized into a syndicate. (2) politicized clerks — those who also have high-level qualifications, but they are organized into a syndicate and they identify themselves with working class interests and they are much more egalitarian in their value orientations. (3) proletarian Clerks — those having lower qualifications and accordingly much less paid, but syndically active, identifying themselves with the wording class and more egalitarian in their value orientations. (4) ruinated clerks — those are the non-qualified clerks, but nevertheless they do not identify themselves with the working class, and »declassed« in that way. Traditional clerks are most often found in smaller factories which have not yet been reached by processes of organizational and technological transformation. Proletarian clerks are, however, employed in huge factories which gravitate to large industrial centers. Politicized clerks have particularly emerged from the conflicts and disturbances of 1968/69. The ruinated clerks are those employed at jobs not demanding any qualifications, in smaller factories, in little centers whose culture is setting firm differences between manual and intellectual work