rick's analysis of a national sample of workers,3 and from Mr. Herrick's separate study of union representatives, managers, and workers. Findings from Mr. Herrick's studies had been distributed to the conference participants in advance, but unfortunately were not discussed in any detail at Williamsburg.

But these data and those from Mr. Sheppard's research showed far more dissatisfaction among younger and better educated workers, but the data could not answer definitively the question of whether young people today are more alienated from work than young people in the past. Mr. Herrick's study showed that three times more respondents under age 30 expressed dissatisfaction with work than did those over age 44. This finding does suggest some basic change, and the notion of cultural change is further supported by the fact that blacks under age 30 were by far the most dissatisfied subgroup while blacks over age 44 were among the most satisfied.4

In general, conference participants tended to be unimpressed with survey findings; they preferred to rely more on their selective personal experiences and deep-rooted convictions based on their conflicting "wills to believe." This seemed to stem less from a refusal to face the facts than from any difficulty in making inference from survey data. To know whether real change has been taking place or whether the kinds of differences reported are new versions of long-established patterns (e.g., the old versus the young), one would need longitudinal studies rather than "snapshot" surveys at a particular point in time. For example, does the seemingly lower dissatisfaction of older workers mean a real sense of being better off, or as Jerome Rosow (Assistant Secretary of Labor, now of Standard Oil of New Jersey) suggested, does it mean resigning one's self to one's lot in life as one grows older? And if the latter, what is the total social cost of such resignation?

Mr. Rosow: I wouldn't say the workers get more satisfied with age

I'd say they get less dissatisfied. That's a rather important distinction. People are adaptable to life circumstances.

3Ibid.

This book contains the highlights of the survey conducted for the U.S. Department of Labor by the Survey Research Center of The University of Michigan. See Survey of Working Conditions, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment Standards Administration, August 1971.

4These are from The University of Michigan nationwide sample, consisting of a mix of occupations, sex, race, and region. In the Sheppard study, consisting exclusively of white male union members (nearly all blue-collar), only 34 percent of workers under 30 were satisfied most of the time with their jobs in contrast to 48 percent of those 30-54, and 64 percent of those 55 and older.

The Upjohn Institute studies had included analysis of the types of jobs held by respondents as well as their age, seniority, income, union activity, and other characteristics. Mr. Sheppard found that the older workers in dull, unchallenging jobs were the most likely to say that if they had the chance they would retire immediately, or leave and go to a better job. And Mr. Herrick's studies show that workers themselves tend to say that their work fulfillment needs improvement more than their pay, while union leaders have the opposite opinion.5

So at least three questions were raised by the survey findings but could not be answered by them:

1. Who is dissatisfied?

2. What are they dissatisfied about?

3. Are these dissatisfactions new and pressing, or merely different versions of long-standing issues on the industrial scene?

Mr. Maccoby said that, though he himself believes a cultural shift is taking place "because even when income is at stake, people demand more now," it is difficult to tell what is going on from the survey findings alone. Any survey data such as these at a time of rapid historical change have to be looked at carefully. It's hard to tell if we're seeing a difference at different points in the life cycle, or an historical change.

The Effects of Occupational Change

Robert Schrank of The Ford Foundation (a former blue-collar worker) listed a number of ways in which, as he sees it, worker attitudes today reflect a deep cultural change rather than a less fundamental shift. There has been, for one thing, a trend away from craft and industrial occupations toward service jobs. There is a rising level of expectations: In the 1930's, one might have felt lucky just to have a job since others were waiting at the plant gates to take one's place; now people demand more. The civil rights revolution has perhaps led to a feeling that all minorities should get special consideration, and everyone is a member of some minority group. As a result, many younger workers, instead of staying on the job and fighting management, may elect to stay away (play hooky) or quit if they find job conditions unacceptable.

Acceptance of welfare is now a real though unattractive alternative to work. Furthermore, it is getting harder in many instances to know what work is and what the job consists of. Many workers carry over thoughtways derived from the assembly-line era, but in highly automated plants

"Sheppard and Herrick, op. cit., Chapter 12.

they are tending machines rather than operating them. Automation, from the point of view of management, has also been seen as one way of dealing with worker dissatisfaction and resulting productivity problems. Some managers, commented Judson Gooding of Fortune, feel that what the country needs to "solve" this problem is a good dose of unemployment to reduce workplace disruptions because "the new generation has had it too good." Yet recently at one major auto company, 4,000 new hires in a year's time never even stayed through the first day on the job, and this at a time when local unemployment rates were between 8 and 9 percent. Mr. Sheppard's view was that "this wouldn't have happened in the thirties-these 4,000 left because of the nature of the job. I don't want to downplay the issue of unemployment, but something else is going on."

That "something else," Mr. Gooding remarked later, is a movement for self-determination:

This is the movement of the decade. Students, priests, diplomats, and soldiers have pushed for it, and workers want it now.

But that this is "something new" was sharply challenged by other participants:

Mr. Fishman: There's the implication here that the older workers were a bunch of docile dolts. Who do you think organized the unions in the thirties? It was the guys who were then young. The revolt then took the form of organizing the union. In the auto unions, at least, the whole struggle begun then continues today. It's a desire on the part of the worker to democratize the workplace. He wants to have more of a say over the conditions that exist.

But from the point of view of the young, yesterday's militants may look like part of today's Establishment.

Mr. Gooding: The current UAW members, many from different parts of the country and from different races, don't dig the leadership that came in in the heroic times.

Mr. Sheppard felt that the discussions had helped to confirm what earlier research by himself and others had shown.

The kind of job a guy has makes a difference. Within each wage level, jobs that offer less autonomy and less challenge have negative consequences for the worker and for society. High wages alone won't solve this problem.

Therefore, Mr. Sheppard continued, what is happening in the world of work should be of concern not only to management and union leadership but to people in their roles as citizens. Management should be concerned because those in noninvolving jobs tend to have lower productivity, leave

the job more readily, and perhaps have a greater tendency to file grievances if they don't leave their jobs. Unions need to pay attention to the problem created by the long history of work simplification (and/or Taylorism) because the people in the most dead-end, least fulfilling jobs are also those least favorably inclined toward their union leadership. And citizens need to be concerned because it is these same workers who are "less trusting in the social order and less confident about their own impact on government decisionmaking." Mr. Sheppard then stated the case even more strongly:

Responsible men and women, apart from their roles as employers or union leaders, should be concerned about the role of work experience in the development or reinforcement of such beliefs [about what is wrong with the society and what ought to be done about it], even if job traits do not appear to affect productivity or union attachments.

The Work Itself: Focus on Individual Jobs

The work systems of mass production industry and large-scale clerical operations have in the main been designed to maximize productivity and quality at minimal cost by tediously detailed design of the workflow and the greatest possible fragmentation of individual jobs at each stage. Thus larger numbers of boring, dead-end jobs were created with little opportunity for growth or learning. The system worked as long as people could be found to perform such jobs, but now this is becoming more difficult.

Mr. Sheppard: The educational level has been going up, and meanwhile jobs either have not been enriched to keep pace or have been even further simplified. Therefore we're imposing more meaningless jobs on people less willing to stand for this.

Or, as Robert Ford of AT&T said more pointedly:

We have run out of dumb people to handle those dumb jobs. So we have to rethink what we're doing.

Some efforts have been made in recent years to reverse this trend toward fragmentation of tasks in the hope that higher motivation, and hence lower costs and higher work quality and productivity, can be obtained by making the work itself more responsible and more varied, with more opportunities for growth and learning. These initiatives (they can hardly yet be called a trend or a movement) are often described as job enrichment or job enlargement. At Williamsburg several such programs were described and to some extent discussed. The most time was devoted to activities in the telephone companies.

Work Itself Program in the Bell System

The job redesign activities to promote "motivation through the work itself," initiated by AT&T, have the longest history of any program of this type more than a decade and have probably affected the jobs of more than 10,000 workers in a score of operating companies. Robert Ford reported some highlights from the 20 separate efforts that have been undertaken and some principles of job enrichment through collaborative redesign that these experiences have tested and confirmed. His book, Motivation Through the Work Itself, is now the source for many new ideas,6

Efforts were directed to a variety of technical customer service and lower level management operations in which there were significant investments (in terms of numbers of people employed) and to work problems such as erratic productivity, high turnover, and high rates of error. The making of telephone directories was used as an illustration. Where a number of small books had to be produced for individual towns in one company's service area, the women doing the work had never had responsibility for a total book. The jobs were redesigned so that one worker had complete responsibility for compiling the listings, making changes, and checking for errors. There had been 3.97 errors per hundred listings under the old method; with the job redesigned to increase the scope of the work and its responsibility, no errors were found after 30 days.

In another situation, payroll accounting and keypunching, similar dramatic results were obtained. The key feature in deciding upon and implementing changes was to involve the workers themselves and their supervisors in the redesign process, through what came to be called “green light sessions." Diagnosis and consultative help of a detailed and skillful type is needed, but the consultant cannot institute change from the top down if he expects it to "take," Mr. Ford said.

The same principles were followed in work with equipment installers, customer service representatives, engineering designers, and, most recently, telephone equipment makers at Western Electric: redesign of the workflow and the content of individual jobs to give more variety, more control over the product, and more responsibility; a collaborative approach in determining the details of redesign; and emphasis on improving the content and arrangement of the work itself, rather than on human relations training or counseling.

In touching on these examples, Mr. Ford emphasized the principles of job enrichment technique that have evolved as a result of the telephone company experience. Among these principles are:

"New York: American Management Association, 1969.