SYSTEMS of industrial relations have become institutionalised, everywhere tending to replace the pure authority-ownership relationship which gives rise to a unilateral system of employer prerogatives, with an independent bilateral one. Employers' executive decisions, hiring, classifying, promoting, remunerating, firing and, more generally, any decision affecting the status or the position of the employees, are regulated by agreements with organised employees, or through representative institutions or by consultation with individuals and groups of employees. However, industrial relations are determined relatively independently of the legal institutions which formally define the system. The true relationships between authority and subordination depend to a significant degree, and have done so for a long time, on the type of co-operation in the work place and how close this is (e.g. the relation of master and the labourer in a craft workshop). The concrete social relationships in an enterprise are influenced at least as much by these personnel inter-actions as by the type of ownership. The study of the industrial relations system has to be taken out of the enclave of the formal institutional pattern and seen as a projection of the effect of various levels of social relationships upon work relations.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE ACTORS: HISTORICAL INFLUENCESIn order to observe this projection of certain fundamental relationshipson the pattern of social relations at work, we shall first analyse the influence brought to bear by 'industrial interaction' in each society. We take as our definition of this interaction the complex of relationships stemming from the industrialising and developing mode.The French urban working class grew slowly between 1830 and 1950 out of a stagnant population. It incorporated very heterogeneous groups, journeymen labourers, agricultural wage earners and small-scale migrant urban and rural artisans who found themselves drawn together with the workers already present in the towns and cities. It included a high percentage of women, not only in the traditionally female industries such as textiles, clothing and food, but in others too where the lack of male workers made it easier for them to gain access, despite the opposition of the men. Amongst the industrial wage earners were few office workers during this period of industrialisation.The formation of the German working class was almost totally dissimilar. Its growth was sudden and enormous, since it more than doubled in a quarter of a century. This growth continued despite heavy emigration, particularly to America, and while the total population itself was rapidly expanding, from thirty-five to fifty-six millions between 1850 and 1900 (+ 60 per cent): the French population rose by only 14 per cent (from thirty-six to forty-one millions) during the same period.'These quantitive effects are bound to have qualitative repercussions although these are difficult to measure. The first of these consequences concerns the homogeneity of the working class.Th...
