Rating tales: An evaluation of divergent views of occupational identification

Abstract

This article evaluates two divergent views of the future of occupation identification by core industry employees. The first asserts that occupational identities are waning as identity-challenging managerial techniques reshape classic worker identities. The second contends that frontline workers are developing new repertoires of resistance that sustain robust occupational identities. Underlying these views, respectively, is an implicit teleology and a cyclical notion of labour history that posits trade unions as the locus of identity formation and resistance. Contemporary instances of occupational identification render these assumptions problematical. Drawing from an underground coalmining industry case study, we show how miners achieve a shared occupational identity through narrative resistance to individuating managerial techniques. We conclude that (a) labour movement decline and heightened managerialism spell neither the end of occupational identification nor of oppositional resistance, and (b) the historical unidirectionality and labour organizational essentialism contained in the two rival accounts of occupational identification are untenable.

Writing to understand ourselves: an organisational history of the Australian Association of Writing Programs 1996-2010

“…If, again according to Sennett, craftsmanship is not valued in the contemporary workplace and this is contributing to employees feeling demoralised, then it is possible that being able to invest craftsmanship's 'engaged material consciousness' (its skill, commitment and judgment) (Sennett 2008: 180) in the association's activities encourages and validates membership and the time this consumes. Reveley and McLean's (2008) evaluation of two divergent views of employee occupational identification provides a cognisant model for thinking about personal motivations for organisational membership. In line with Sennett, they work from the position that occupational identity is waning under modern managerial processes.…”