Everyday forms of employee resistance

Sociological Forum, VoL 8, No. 1, 1993

Everyday Forms of.Employee Resistance 1

James Tucker 2

Drawing on empirical material collected from over 250 indivMuals employed in a variety of short-term positions, this article examines how temporary employees pursue grievances against their employing organizations. The findings indicate that temporary employees generally respond to offensive behavior on the part of their employers in nonaggressive ways. Gossip, toleration, and resignation are popular, while occasionally grievances are expressed by theft, sabotage, or noncooperation. Collective responses, formal complaints, and legal action are rare. These restrained responses are traced not to the severity of injustices but to the social environment associated with temporary employment, where workers are loosely tied to their organizations and one another. This research may help explain the decline o f organized resistance in the contemporary workplace.

KEY WORDS: grievances; social control; temporary employees; conflict management.

INTRODUCTION

Our knowledge of how people manage conflict in modern society has grown considerably in recent years. While earlier research focused primarily on legal disputes, recent studies have begun to explore various types of informal social control in a range of contemporary settings (e.g., Merry, 1979; Thomas-Buckle and Buckle, 1982; Baumgartner, t984b, 1992; Reuter, 1984; Cooney, 1991; Ellickson, 1992). Theory on social control has also moved beyond law to address the larger universe of normative behavior (e.g., Black, 1984a, 1984b, 1990; Baumgartner, 1984a, 1988; Horwitz, 1984,

1An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1990 American Sociological Association meeting in Washington, DC.

2Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire 03824.

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0884~971/93/0300-0025507,00/0 © 1993 Plenum Publishing Corporation

26 Tucker

1990). Largely absent from this growing literature, however, are studies of conflict management in organizations (but see Morrill, 1989, 1992; Tucker, 1989). Moreover, most of what we have learned about organizational social control from other bodies of literature concerns horizontal conflict (e.g., Blake and Mouton, 1964; Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967; Pondy, 1967; Ren- wick, 1975). Social control directed upward- - f rom subordinates to supe- r i o r s - has received considerably less attention.

Addressing this issue, the present article examines how employees pursue grievances against their employers. The focus is on an expanding but understudied segment of the work force: temporary employees. Draw- ing on empirical material collected from over 250 individuals employed in a variety of short-term positions, this study indicates that temporary employees generally respond to offensive behavior by their employers in nonaggressive ways. Instead of using the more active means of employee protest observed elsewhere, such as collective action (e.g., Gauldner, 1956; Ross and Harman, 1960; Shorter and Tilly, 1974; Jackson, 1987) or formal grievance procedures (e.g., Scott, 1965; Ewing, 1989; Edelman, 1990), they are most likely to quietly complain to their co-workers or resign from their companies without addressing their problems. These restrained responses are traced not to the severity (or lack of it) of the injustices, but to the social environment associated with temporary employment, where workers are loosely tied to their organizations and to one another. This finding is consistent with previous research showing that nonconfrontational forms of social control are most likely among those in transient and subordinate positions (Baumgartner, 1988; Black, 1990; Horwitz, 1990). The article concludes with a discussion of how this research might help explain the decline of organized resistance in the contemporary workplace.

TEMPORARY EMPLOYEES

Temporary employees--individuals employed in organizations for specific, limited periods of t i m e - represent one of the fastest growing segments of the work force. This growth is due in large part to the increase in part-time employment, which is likely to be temporary as well (Pollock and Bernstein, 1985). In 1990, almost 20 million employees, one- sixth of the American labor force, worked 35 hours a week or less, a greater than 20% increase from 1980 (U.S. Department of Labor, 1990). Another factor contributing to the expansion of temporary employment has been the rise of "temporary agencies" and organizations that "lease" workers to firms. Enterprises of this kind have doubled in the past ten

Forms of Employee Resistance 27

years, employing around 500,000 people in 1980 and one million in 1990 (U.S. Department of Labor, 1990). Accompanying these trends has been a proliferation of independent consultants, ranging from semiskilled laborers to computer specialists, who are hired on short-term contracts by firms whose demand for labor is seasonal or market sensitive (Pollock and Bernstein, 1985).

Several features of temporary employment appear to make it at- tractive for employers and may help explain its popularity. For one, firms can cut labor costs by hiring temporary employees, since they are often paid less than those in permanent, full-time positions. In addition, the presence of such workers, who generally do not participate in employer- provided retirement or health insurance plans, can reduce expenditures on employee benefits. Temporary employees may also be preferred because they can be easily hired and laid off, giving firms more flexibility in times of economic volatility.

It may be that temporary employment is unavoidable in profit-making organizations. Efforts to eliminate it have been largely unsuccessful. Worker cooperatives, for example, which in theory share ownership and authority equally among members, generally cannot survive without a con- tingent of temporary workers who are not owners (Russell, 1985). Even Japanese companies, which are well known for their strong corporate cul- ture and lifelong commitment to employees, depend on short-term workers. Most large firms in Japan rely on the participation of low-paid female employees who are laid off during slow economic periods (Ouchi, 1981).

Although temporary employment is a seemingly inevitable feature of modern organizational life, little research has addressed it. Several studies have focused on so-called peripheral or marginal workers, but for the most part these investigations tend to concentrate on the social and economic conditions that create such positions, and on their effect on the economy rather than on the behavior of temporary employees themselves (e.g., Morse, 1969; Sullivan, 1978, Simpson and Simpson, 1983). Yet we would expect employees of this kind to face a unique set of circumstances at the workplace. Since temporary employees generally do not have access to the types of redress mechanisms available to employees who are more permanent members of organizations, for example, their handling of grievances should be particularly distinctive. Moreover, they generally do not belong to labor unions nor work for organizations that have formal grievance procedures as part of company policy (see Edwards, 1979). We might therefore wonder whether they sit idly by when they have been wronged or whether they take action to address their grievances. If they do take action, what are their forms of redress? This study provides tentative answers to these

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questions by examining empirical material collected from individuals employed in a number of short-term positions.

T H E S T U D Y

The findings presented below are based on self-reported accounts of grievance handling provided by undergraduate students. As most students have been employed prior to or while attending college, they allow us to gather empirical material from settings to which it might otherwise be difficult to gain access. For example, a recent study used student descriptions to examine the extent to which small firms in New York City engage in dishonest business practices, a type of information inherently difficult to obtain (Blumberg, 1989). Firms are generally unwilling to discuss their com- mercial activities, particularly their deceitful ones, yet the fact that many of the students were employed in small establishments allowed such empirical material to be collected in a covert way, with the participating organizations unaware they were being studied. The study of employee social control presents a similar challenge in data collection. Many of the actions employees take to express grievances may be considered illegitimate (or in some cases illegal) by employers. As a result, employees might be reluctant to be truthful if the study were conducted at the workplace with coopera- tion from management. By interviewing employees apart from their organi- z a t i o n s - usually after they have permanently severed the relationship-- we would expect more honest responses.

A drawback of using students is that they may differ from the larger temporary work force, which includes many older individuals, some of whom are likely to be married and to have greater financial responsibilities, and thus may be more committed to their jobs. Even so, student employees have much in common with their older counterparts in the temporary labor force. In particular, both are apt to hold low-paying jobs in companies that rely on short-term employment, including those in the retail goods and restaurant industries. Moreover, because such positions are often plentiful, temporary employees, regardless of their age, are often in a position to resign and find comparable work if necessary.

Participating in the present study were 277 students enrolled in an undergraduate sociology course at a state university in the southeastern United States. All were employed at the time of the study (1989) or in the recent past. A substantial portion (30%) worked in the retail goods industry as cashiers, stock clerks, and salespeople in grocery stores, department stores, clothing stores, and various specialty stores. The restaurant business, including "fast food" chains, employed 24% of the students as waiters, wait-


resses, cooks, "busboys," dishwashers, and delivery persons. Many others (22%) worked in administrative support positions as clerks, secretaries, re- ceptionists, and various other low-skill office jobs. Among the most popular employers of this sort were computer companies, hospitals, and law firms. A small number (8%) had positions in the recreation industry at country clubs, amusement parks, fitness centers, and swimming pools. Construction, landscaping, and maintenance laborers accounted for 7% of the sample, while 4% worked in manufacturing plants. Several (3%) were employed with wholesale distributors or worked in direct ("door-to-door") sales (2%). This distribution resembles other studies of young employees (see Ruggiero et al., 1982).

Length of employment varied; the majority had been employed in the position for one summer or less, while a few had worked for several years in the same organization. Most worked 25-40 hours a week at an average hourly rate slightly higher than the national minimum wage ($3.35 at the time of the study). The average age of the students, while employed, was 19. Just over half (55%) were female. The majority were white (79%), while 13% were black and 8% Asian.

The participants provided a self-report of an employment experience prior to or while attending college (those with experience in more than one organization wrote about their most recent job). Individuals described their job, their company, other employees in their position, and any formal and informal means by which employees voiced complaints. They also discussed in detail a specific grievance (the most recent one) they had with the organization, including the source of the problem, their reaction, the extent to which others were involved, the length of the disagreement, and the resolution, if any.

The analysis that follows focuses primarily on specific cases of conflict between respondents and their employing organizations. An effort was made to emulate the "trouble case approach" (Llewellyn and Hoebel, 1941:29) that is common in anthropological research on law and social control (e.g., Nader and Todd, 1978), and that has recently been applied in a range of modern settings as well (e.g., Thomas-Buckle and Buckle, 1982; Morrill, 1989, 1991; Baumgartner, 1988, 1992). This research strategy involves doing extensive fieldwork in a setting, collecting instances of conflict, and focusing on how they are handled. Few studies of this kind rely solely on written material from participants removed from the setting of interest, and data gathered in this manner are certainly not as rich as that collected from direct observation. Moreover, like all studies of social control based on events in the past, there is likely to be a bias toward relatively dramatic episodes of conflict (see Koch, 1974: 23-24; Baumgartner, 1988:19). This study may therefore underrepresent less spectacular, more subtle, and mi-

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nor expressions of grievance that disgruntled employees sometimes pursue. Nonetheless, it allows us to observe indirectly many patterns of social control among a little known but important segment of modern organizations.

MODES OF EMl 'LOYEE SOCIAL CONTROL

Temporary employees experience a considerable number of grievances against their employers. Virtually all of the subjects were able to describe in detail a particular problem they had with an employer, and most could cite numerous examples of grievances experienced by others. Employees in this study held their employers liable for a wide range of work-related problems, although their grievances tend to fall into several broad categories. Many center around employees' dissatisfaction with the manner in which they are disciplined (26% of the 277 cases). Disagree- ments concerning compensation (18%) and scheduling (16%) are also common. Some employees express displeasure with the organization for not dealing properly with inappropriate behavior on the part of other employees (15%). Other problems stem from the assignment of work tasks (13%), while a final set of complaints (12%) concerns broad organizational prin- ciples such as company ethics, product quality, and treatment of customers.

Despite the belief by many employees that they have been seriously wronged, the ways in which they respond to grievances are noticeably restrained and nonconfrontational. Many of the aggrieved share their problem with fellow employees, and a significant minority bring their grievance to the attention of a supervisor in an attempt to negotiate a solution. At- tempts at negotiation are rarely successful, however, and many employees ultimately abandon their conflicts or resign from the organization. Occa- sional tactics include theft, sabotage, and noncooperation. Modes of upward social control popular in other settings--including collective action, law, and v io lence- -are rarely used by temporary employees. These means of seeking redress are not mutually exclusive; in some cases individuals use more than one strategy (and thus the percentages noted in the following section add to more than 100%).

Gossip

The first step for many aggrieved employees (50% of the 277 cases) is to seek others and share their problem, but these attempts are rarely aimed at gathering supporters for a collective confrontation with management. Instead, the aggrieved and other employees often engage in gossip,


where they discuss the problem, sometimes at great length. Grievances are commonly pursued no further than the gossip network. Gossip functions as a type of settlement behavior; participants pass judgment on the case, determining fault and assigning blame. It is a trial in absentia (Black, 1989:76). Gossip is, however, less authoritative than other types of settlement. Rarely is any overt action taken against the employer and in most instances the employer is unaware of the employee grievance. (For a further discussion of gossip as social control, see Merry, 1984.)

Sometimes employees use talk with others to reinforce their position before taking other action. Here fellow employees serve not as settlement agents but as supporters or partisans, taking sides with the aggrieved party and assisting in the handling of the conflict. Their degree of support varies, but it is generally limited to an advisor role: They offer suggestions on how to proceed with a conflict but stop short of actively taking up the case for the aggrieved party. (On the role of advisors and other supporters, see Black and Baumgartner, 1983.)

The data provide many instances in which employees obtain advice from other employees on how to pursue a grievance. In some cases, fellow employees suggest the aggrieved individual take the grievance to a manager. For example, a female receptionist working for an automobile dealer was upset with a male supervisor who frequently touched her and made remarks with sexual overtones. Unsure how to respond, she told other female employees about her grievance. They were aware of his behavior and instructed her to make the manager of the dealership aware of the matter. She took their advice. The manager was skeptical of her charge and claimed he could do little to change the situation, although he apparently discussed the matter with the offender because the behavior did eventually stop.

Only on rare occasions do co-workers take a more active role in help- ing pursue a grievance. One such case involved a female employed at a small factory who suffered an injury as a result of extended work on a piece of heavy machinery. Her first response was to talk with other employees and tell them she wanted to be moved to another department. One day shortly thereafter she overheard a conversation among several supervisors, one of whom referred to her as a "complaining bitch" who was lying in order to get moved to an easier job. After she told her fellow employees what she had overheard, several came to her support:

I really didn't understand how just telling a few people about what I had overheard would have an effect on anything that went on. Before I knew it, a lot of people knew. Walking down the hall people would ask me [about my injury]. Eventually the story got around and I was the underdog, being unnecessarily hassled and different friends [fellow workers] went up and even said things to different supervisors on my behalf.

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Despite the help of her co-workers, the aggrieved employee was not reassigned to another department. She resigned several weeks after the in- itial confrontation.

Most of the time employees are reluctant to become deeply involved in the affairs of others. For instance, a young man who worked at a warehouse for a summer complained about a formal notification that his work was unsatisfactory. He thought the evaluation was unfair and tried to discuss the matter with other employees. Yet they chose to distance themselves, fearing they might be punished for becoming involved. He was left to handle the grievance without assistance and decided to do nothing, Al- though not disciplined for his poor performance, he was not offered the job the following summer. An aggrieved female cashier also faced hesitancy on the part of her co-workers when she was put on suspension for not working on a day that she had previously arranged to have off. She first approached two employees: "Neither one of them could explain it [the suspension] nor did they really want to get involved, as their jobs could be jeopardized." Later, the disgruntled employee walked into the manager's office, explained her position, and resigned.

Some aggrieved employees attempt to gather support from people other than their co-workers. In several cases, employees sought advice from their parents, and in two instances had them directly confront management. Customers are also recruited as supporters on occasion. In one example, a female working at a large department store was reprimanded in public for a mistake she allegedly made while using a cash register. After the offending supervisor left the scene, a married couple who witnessed the event approached the employee and told her that the supervisor was "out of line." The husband demanded to see the store manager, who sided with the supervisor. Undeterred, the couple told the aggrieved employee they would file a formal complaint at the company headquarters. The employee did not pursue the matter any further and was unaware of any effect of the formal complaint. She was surprised, however, that customers went out of their way to assist her in the conflict.

Confrontation

A substantial portion of employees (29%) attempt to work out a resolution with a representative of the organization, usually their immediate supervisor. Confrontation of this sort is considered risky, however. Many people stated that they would be reprimanded and perhaps fired as a result of simply attempting to share their problem with a manager. Those who


did try to negotiate with a supervisor did so at a disadvantage, and as a result were often dissatisfied with the outcome.

There were a few cases where employees worked out mutually ac- ceptable compromises. One female restaurant employee had a grievance concerning her job assignment. After working one summer at a small restaurant, she was promised a waitress job for the following year. When she arrived at the restaurant the first day of the next summer, however, she was told to work as a busperson (cleaning tables). She confronted the store manager:

I explained that I had expected to waitress and that I really needed to earn more money than I would busing tables. [The manager] explained that he was in need of a busperson and not another waitperson, but that I had served them well the s u m m e r before and so he 'd be willing to pay me [more money per hour] to bus. [He] also [said] any time he needed a replacement waitperson I could do it. We both ended up compromising: [the manager] monetarily and me in that I worked a less desirable job. With [a higher wage], double shifts now and again, and waiting here and there it worked out just fine.

An even rarer occurrence is the complete capitulation of management. One such case involved a male stock clerk working in a small grocery store who had a conflict with his employer concerning his job assignments. He was constantly called away from his work to assist in other areas, which meant he rarely had time to complete his stockroom duties. As a result, he was often verbally reprimanded for not performing his job properly. He discussed the matter with his parents and several other employees before approaching management. After he described the problem, his supervisor claimed responsibility and promised to rectify the situation. Conditions changed almost immediately. This type of resolution is uncommon: Em- ployers rarely admit they are wrong.

More common is the following type of confrontation. A male salesclerk who was unhappy with the way he was treated by his supervisor describes his at tempt to change the situation:

If I did something, it was never completely correct for her [the supervisor, an assistant manger] . . . . She didn't like me because she felt I was disruptive to the store and lazy. Initially, I worked harder to get her to leave me alone. When this didn' t work, 1 confronted her to question her about it. She told me that it was her job to make sure everything was done perfectly, and until they were, she would continue to pester me. When I confronted the head manager , she told me that it was a problem that would have to be worked out between the assistant manager and myself.

The problem persisted until he left the job one month after the confrontation.

A waiter's at tempt at negotiation ended unsuccessfully as well. One morning when scheduled to work a double shift, the employee woke up ill and phoned his manager to let him know he could not come in to work.

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He was told, however, to "show up or be fired." Reluctantly, the angry employee went to the restaurant. As he explains:

[When I got to work] I went back to his [the head manager 's] office and told him that I was mad because I was really sick but he didn't believe me . . . . I was going to have to either go to work or quit. I decided to work . . . . For the rest of the day 1 said nothing to the head manager and he said nothing to me. I stayed mad at him for a couple of days and just pretty much ignored him . . . . There was no formal way of complaining so I did a lot of informal complaining. Eventually the anger wore off and things were back to normal . . . . Nothing more was said o f the whole thing. I knew I was not in a position where I had a lot of say in what went on. If I had I probably would have been fired, Eventually, it was like the whole thing never happened.

Confrontation can backfire. A male warehouse worker stated why he or his fellow employees would not attempt to negotiate with their supervisor:

Very few [employees] would confront [the boss] directly and state their complaint. This was primarily because one employee who did just that was fired by [the boss] on the scene.

This fear is apparently present among other employees as well and may explain why many are averse to conflictual encounters with their employers.

Resignation

Ending employment with the organization is another popular way (23%) of handling grievances. Individuals occasionally quit on the spot, without voicing their complaints. More likely, however, resignation follows active measures for managing conflict. A case involving a woman working as a hostess in a seafood restaurant provides an illustrative example. After being assigned to work what she considered too many consecutive hours she approached some of her co-workers:

I talked to several other hostesses and some close waiter friends about my problem • . . and the general consensus was that I should talk to the manager in charge of our schedule and tell him my problem . . . . W hen I talked to the manager , he wouldn' t give in the least little bit . . . . After all the giving in I did, I quit.

A male working in the promotion department of a marketing firm handled his grievance in a similar way. The employee was concerned that he had not received his first paycheck:

When I called my manager to see what the problem was she said it was my fault, 1 had not filled out the papers correctly [for the company 's payroll department]• I believed the problem was . . . her [not] telling me how to fill them out correctly. Eventually I got my check, and also had her explain the procedure again. For the second time, I wasn't paid. This time I filled the form out correctly. I asked her what the deal was this time. Now she says there 's a lack of manpower. Ultimately,

Forms of Employee Resis tance 35

I concluded she was an ass, [the company] was unorganized, and that the job wasn' t worth these problems, so I got another job ]without receiving another paycheck].

Resignation, like most acts of social control by temporary employees, is usually an individual act. There were, however, a couple of instances where a group of disgruntled employees collectively resigned. One involved a group of cutlery salesmen who quit in response to what they claimed was constant harassment by their supervisor. In another case a male working at a pizza restaurant and several of his co-workers, who were angry that they had not received their promised raises, resigned en masse when they found out a store manager had been taking money from their paychecks.

Toleration

Some grievances (18%) are never expressed in an outward manner. In these instances, the aggrieved party decides to take no action whatsoever and simply tolerates the grievance. A waitress who claimed she had her tips taken one evening by her supervisor responded in a way that was representative of a number of aggrieved employees:

I was mad . . . but l never really did anything about it. 1 just ignored it. 1 figured since I was only going to be working there a few months , there was no sense in causing a lot of trouble . . . . Of course I complained and bitched at home, but it was never resolved at work and it remained in the back of my mind the whole time that I worked there.

Another case handled similarly involved a salesperson working at a mod- erately sized retail establishment. The employee was upset over what she believed was management's rude treatment of customers. She considered talking with several other employees about the issue but decided it was not worth pursuing. As she explains:

Ultimately, I guess the problem was handled by ignoring it. Nothing had changed until the time I left about one month later [at the end of the summer] . . . . My conflict was unresolved.

Toleration is arguably more prevalent than the data collected in this study suggest. Individuals apparently tolerate much of what they consider deviant behavior on the part of others (see Felstiner, 1974; Baumgarmer, 1984b, 1988; Black, 1990:58-60). It is perhaps so common that people are not aware of the extent to which they ignore grievances altogether. If so, studies of conflict management that rely on self-reported accounts of behavior (as this study does) may underestimate how often people tolerate offensive acts.

Aggrieved employees less frequently resort to several tactics other than those described above. These behaviors are discussed below.

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Theft

Some employees (7%) who believe they are mistreated will appropriate company property to express their discontent. An aggrieved hotel desk clerk, for example, stole food and other supplies as a "wage sup- plement." A cashier at a large drug store who claimed he was given the least desirable work tasks took various products in response to his grievance. A clerical assistant working at an engineering firm discovered he was paid considerably less than people with similar responsibilities. After discussing the problem with management and reaching no solution, he took matters into his own hands:

1 occasionally swiped some computer disks and small office supplies for personal use, but I felt, and stilt ['eel, that I deserved them.

Theft is used by subordinates to sanction superiors in other settings as well (see Baumgartner, 1984a; Tucker, 1989). The purpose of engag- ing in this activity is to punish the offender or collect what the aggrieved believes is appropriate compensation. This tendency to "take matters into one's own hands" by inflicting punishment or seeking restitution appears to be a relatively common feature of social control from below (Baumgartner, 1984a; Black, 1984a).

Sabotage

Another method of voicing discontent used on occasion by student employees (5%) involved the deliberate destruction of company property (on sabotage as social control, see Baumgartner, 1984a:310-312). A male construction worker, for example, describes how he and several other individuals let management know they were upset with not receiving a promised wage increase:

We would abuse our tools so they would break, or charge more stuff than we needed at supply stores around town and keep some of the stuff for ourselves such as small tools, hoses, lumber, etc. We believed that by increasing the cost and decreasing the profit on jobs, the president would get our message loud and clear.

Employees can sabotage their employer in ways that do not involve the destruction of physical property. In several cases, disgruntled parties "bad mouthed" their employer to customers. The results of such actions can damage the company's product as much, if not more, than the destruction of material resources. Some employees are obviously aware of this.


Noncooperation

A number of employees (5%) respond to perceived injustices by not performing their required tasks. One incident involved a male stockroom worker at a retail store who claimed he was paid less than others in similar positions. After an unsuccessful attempt to discuss the matter with his supervisor, he decided to deal with the conflict in his own way"

I didn't really want to quit so I goofed off a lot. I didn't do anything unless I was specifically asked to. [When working] at night I would listen to music for hours and do nothing . . . . If I was goofing off and saw the manager, I would act as if I was really doing something.

A female salesclerk, who was not given a raise as promised, responded in a similar fashion:

At first I did nothing . . . . As time went by, my work started to slack off. I did less and less every day. And I really did not feel guilty, because I thought the company should give me more for my work . . . . I began to care less and less about my work. I would come in late on Fridays, call in sick when I did not feel like coming in, I would take longer lunch breaks when my manager was not there, and I would socialize with other employees on company time.

Noncooperation can be used in any setting where a superior depends on the labor of the subordinate (see Baumgartner, 1984a:312-316). Yet to be effective, the subordinate must deprive the superior of a service that is not easily replaceable (see Roy, 1952; Mechanic, 1962; Kanter, 1977). The labor of the temporary employee generally involves little specialized skill, and he or she is easily replaced. As a result, this method rarely convinces employers to address the employee grievances.

Collective Action

Most grievances are individual. When temporary employees do have common complaints, they rarely act jointly to address their grievances (2%). One case where employees did take collective action involved three females working in the sales department of a clothing store. After several new employees were hired at higher wages, the three decided to pursue their grievance:

We first approached the assistant manager . . . to see if we had a real claim. We talked with her [the assistant manager] because she was our friend and would be truthful with us, and she was. [The assistant manager] acted as our liaison to our manager. She briefed [the manager] about the situation and our feelings and arranged a meeting with her. The fact that we had worked there [at the clothing store] the longest period of time and were still being paid less than everyone else angered us . . . . we said in no uncertain terms that we would quit if we did not

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receive sufficient raises . . . . [The manager] decided to give us twenty percent raises to equalize everyone's wages because she could not afford to lose all three of us.

Unified efforts such as this are not common, however. Most aggrieved employees handle problems on their own.

Formal Complaints

Some organizations have established formal procedures that allow employees to seek redress. In some settings they are very elaborate, de- signed to model a legal system (Scott, 1965; Ewing, 1989; Edelman, 1990). Most employees in this study (82%), however, claim their organization had no formal grievance channel or at least they were not aware of any. Among those who did have knowledge of and access to formal procedures, only one used them to pursue a grievance. The case involved a female salesclerk who had not received a mandatory six-month raise. The company, a clothing store chain, permit ted aggrieved employees to complete a complaint form that would be sent to a regional office and reviewed by a personnel committee. After an unsuccessful a t tempt to talk with her supervisor about the matter , she decided to file a formal complaint. The salesclerk did not receive a response to her complaint, but she did receive a raise shortly thereafter.

Law

None of the aggrieved employees in the study took legal action in response to their problems. Two mentioned they considered seeking legal recourse before ultimately choosing not to. In one of these cases, a sales- man for a small home appliance company did not receive a commission for a number of large sales. After confronting the owner several times, he and another employee with a similar grievance resigned. The aggrieved parties talked with one another about pursuing legal action, but never did. The other case also involved a male who had a dispute over pay. In this instance, the employee, who was a cook for a chain restaurant, claimed he was paid almost one dollar an hour less than promised. He tried speaking to his supervisor about the issue, but was unsuccessful. Next, he talked to his family. As he explains:

My dad wanted me to go in and take them to court or something. I also told a good friend of mine who has a high position in a private corporation and had Lots of friends who were lawyers. We were going to go in with a couple of lawyers and threaten my managers with a lawsuit.


But the employee decided against this course of action. Instead, he toler- ated the problem until a new supervisor was hired, who eventually settled the wage discrepancy.

Violence

Violence aimed at individuals (rather than property) was never employed as a conflict-handling strategy. There were several instances where aggrieved employees threatened to become violent, but these threats were never carried out. In one case, a cashier in a large grocery store had a conflict with management over a scheduling problem. The employee was reprimanded for not showing up for work on what he believed was his day off. During the reprimand, the employee was tired of what he claimed was verbal abuse from his supervisor:

I finally told him [the supervisor] that if he wanted to talk calmly about it [the problem] that I would do so. If he wanted to fire me, I said, that was fine, I would be quitting in two weeks anyway. I then informed him that he would incite me to physical violence (I was much bigger than he) if he did not stop yelling at me. At this point, he responded by intbrming me that a written reprimand would appear in my record. The incident ended with him fuming and me proceeding with my normal workday.

DISCUSSION

Employees in this study tend to pursue justice in a nonconfrontational fashion. When an individual turns to others for assistance in the handling of a grievance, the conflict usually dissipates rather than escalates. When an employee confronts management, he or she is usually unsuccessful in getting the problem resolved, but rarely pursues the issue further. Resig- nation involves abandoning the conflict and fleeing the setting rather than actively seeking redress. Toleration entails inaction with regard to the grievance. The covert tactics used on occasion--theft , sabotage, and noncoop- e r a t i o n - are also relatively tame when used by temporary employees, and they are nonconfrontational as ,,,,'ell. Concerning student employees in particular, these findings may seem surprising. Because students are not as dependent on their jobs as older employees in both temporary and more permanent positions, we might have expected them to be more aggressive since they have less to lose. However, that is apparently not the case.

What explains this propensity to refrain from aggressive measures? It may be tempting to point to the nature of the grievances encountered by temporary employees. In explaining the absence of law, for instance, one

40 Tucker

might claim that the complaints concern trivial matters that are not subject to legal recourse. This would be a mistake, however. Many of the grievances concern issues that could in theory become lawsuits, including those involving pay, disciplinary action, sexual harassment, and racial discrimination. There are in fact numerous accounts of employees in contemporary America taking employers to court over such matters (see Rapoport and Zevnik, 1989). Fur- thermore, employment taw has expanded its scope considerably in the last few years, allowing workers to take legal action for grievances of all sorts, many of which may seem insignificant. The following, for example, is a list of recent employee lawsuits filed in the United States (Rapoport and Zevnik, 1989):

A left-handed female cashier was told by her employer that she must use her right hand to operate a newly installed cash register. She filed a lawsuit claiming she was discriminated against because she was left-handed. She was awarded $100,000.

A computer manager in California fired for dating a competitor sued his employer and received a $300,000 award.

A man working in an office job in Missouri sued his employer for not segregating him from employees who smoked.

A twenty-five year old female receptionist was fired because her chest was so large that it allegedly distracted other employees. After a successful lawsuit, she was awarded $2,000 in back pay and the company was ordered to give her the job back.

If the severity of the offense does not seem to explain how justice is pursued, what does? The theory of social control claims that how grievances are handled depends greatly on the social environment in which they occur, including the relationship between the aggrieved party and the alleged offender (see generally Black, 1984b). Nonconfrontational modes of conflict management have been found to be most characteristic of transient settings where members are loosely connected to one another and to the collective itself (Baumgartner, 1988; see also Black, 1990:49-53; Horwitz, 1990: chap. 6). Re- straint has also been found to be common when individuals have conflicts with their superiors (Black, 1990:58-60; Horwitz, 1990: chap. 6). Because temporary employees find themselves in circumstances characterized by both transiency and subordination, they appear especially likely to refrain from aggressively pursuing grievances against their employers.

Transiency hinders the development of confrontational social control in several ways. For one, it allows aggrieved employees, knowing they will depart the organization at some time in the near future, to endure un- pleasant experiences. It is simply not worth exerting energy on matters that will disappear in the normal course of events anyway. Besides, if the problem is unbearable, the option of departing prematurely and securing employment elsewhere is often available.


Short-term membership also precludes the accumulation of grievances, which often leads to more confrontational forms of social control. Unlike those in long-standing relationships, temporary employees generally do not have the chance to collect much damaging information on their employing organization nor are they prone to be victims of succes- sive offenses. Employers thus benefit from the fact that people every- where are more likely to treat leniently offenders without a known history of deviance (see Baumgatner, 1988:94).

Confrontation is further discouraged in transient settings by the absence of strong alliances (see Baumgartner, 1988:97-98). Most temporary employees work closely with others of similar age and social back- ground, and therefore have access to a number of potential supporters. The extent to which others lend assistance, however, depends on the s t rength of their ties to the aggrieved employee (see Black and Baumgartner, 1983). Because relationships between temporary employees are necessarily short-lived, they rarely develop to the point where an individual is willing to contribute time or resources to a fellow employee's cause. As a result, support offered by other employees is usually limited either to giving advice on how to address conflicts or to providing moral support.

While impermanence is the most salient feature of the relationship, the subordinate position of most temporary employees also helps stifle more aggressive responses. Apart from its other drawbacks, social infe- riority limits the options one has when pursuing grievances. It is well known, for example, that people rarely use legal recourse against superiors, particularly when the offending party is an organization (Black, 1976: chaps. 2 and 5). Negotiation, another confrontational strategy for handling conflict, is also uncommon among people who have grievances with those of higher status (Black, 1990:53-56; Horwitz, 1990). Subordi- nates simply lack the resources to participate as equals in a form of social control that requires bargaining and compromise. In some cases, they may attempt to confront their adversaries but, as was found in this study, such efforts rarely lead to negotiated solutions. Lower status parties often drop their grievances or pursue less direct approaches.

In summary, the strategies of conflict management used by temporary employees reflect the relationships they have with their employers and co-workers . Like o thers in similar social e n v i r o n m e n t s - - including such diverse groups as hunter-gatherers, suburbanites, and consumers in market soc ie t i e s - - they tend to respond to grievances by doing nothing or departing. Addressed below are possible implications of such nonconfrontational means of protest on the future of organizational life.

42 Tucker

CONCLUSION

If the growth of temporary employment continues, we might expect the patterns of social control found in this study to increase in practice. Indeed, it appears that employees in the United States are ever less willing to aggressively pursue grievances against their employing organizations. Wildcat strikes and violent confrontations, for example, are much less common than earlier this century (Edwards, 1979). Employees are also less likely to participate in formally organized efforts aimed at addressing workplace grievances. This tendency is reflected in the steady decline in union membership over the last 50 years. In 1945, more than 35% of the work force was unionized (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1975); today less than 17% of American workers belong to labor unions (U.S. Department of La- bor, 1992).

A number of explanations have been put forth to account for the decline in organized labor (for a review, see Goldfield, 1989). One focuses on the relocation of industrial activity to the southern United States, a re- gion supposedly hostile to labor unions (Bluestone and Harrison, 1982). Another points to changes in the occupational structure; in particular, the increase in the proportion of white-collar employees, a segment of the work force considered to be difficult to organize (Freeman and Medoff, 1983). The decline has also been traced to the government's tendency to support laws unfavorable to union formation (Weiler, 1983). Bureaucratic ineffi- ciency and corruption on the part of unions themselves have also been blamed (Widick, 1975), as have corporate antiunion efforts, including the hiring of consultants that specialize in defeating union-organizing drives (Goldfield, 1989).

All these explanations ignore the possible consequences of changes in the employment relationship on the organization of employees. The present research, by contrast, suggests that the decrease in organized labor may be associated with the growth of temporary employment in modern society. Employees may be less willing to mount organized efforts of resistance because the social conditions of the workplace are no longer condu- cive to collective confrontation. Grievances common to a large number of employees simply do not develop in settings where the employees constantly change. Instead, individuals must fend for themselves, without group support, and they are not likely to vigorously pursue their grievances.

We might expect firms to regard the undermining of collective action as a benefit of temporary employment. Yet the advantages of a nonunified work force might be offset by the disadvantages of an uncommitted work force. Because they are more willing to tolerate their grievances or find other firms to meet their needs rather than exert time or energy to resolve


their conflicts, temporary employees tend to seem apathetic, unwilling to take a stand. They are more likely to choose what Hirschman (1970) calls the "exit" option when dissatisfied with the performance of their organization than to stay with the organization and express "voice." Exit involves abandoning the problem and making no effort to better the organization. Voice, on the other hand, represents an attempt to improve the organization. So despite its apparent economic benefits, temporary employment may ultimately reduce organizational efficiency by creating conditions that stifle active expressions of employee resistance.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The following people made helpful comments on previous drafts: M. P. Baumgartner, Donald Black, Mark Cooney, John Herrmann, Ping Kuan, Stacie McCurnin, Calvin Morrill, Joseph Michalski, and three anonymous reviewers.

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Documents

Everyday forms of employee resistance