Oshawa autoworkers
Subtitle: social integration and oppositional class consciousness among the unionized workers of General Motors
By: by Reuben N. Roth.
Publisher: University of Toronto
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Number of pages: 271
Subjects: Automobile industry workers -- Labor unions -- Ontario -- Oshawa.; Working class -- Ontario -- Oshawa.; Proletariat -- Ontario -- Oshawa.; Class consciousness -- Ontario -- Oshawa.
Description: Many social theorists (Goldthorpe, Lipset, Giddens, Hout, Brooks and Manza) have portrayed members of the Western industrial working-class as accommodative and resistant to a class-based social revolution. They suggest that an affluent proletariat has seen its oppositional class-consciousness subverted and transformed by the 'cash nexus' into various forms of social integration. With reference to Mann's (1973) measures of class-consciousness typologies and Livingstone and Mangan's (1996) study of Hamilton steelworkers, I explore expressions of working-class consciousness among organized workers at one of Canada's largest industrial union locals, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Local 222 at General Motors, in Oshawa, Canada. I accomplish this via an examination of the existence and degree of working-class imagery, class identity, and oppositional working-class consciousness among this group of workers on the basis of measured responses to a survey questionnaire (N=102), in-depth interviews, and participant observation. My thesis asserts that Oshawa autoworkers' material advantage is insufficient to transform their proletarian consciousness. I have found that among Oshawa autoworkers there is a shared view of Canadian society as class-based, a clear working-class self-identification and measurable forms of oppositional working-class consciousness.
Notes: Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 231-251).
Table of contents: title: Chapter One; title: Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1; title: Chapter Two; title: A Review of the Theory and Literature................................................................................16; title: Chapter Three; title: Descriptive Outline of General Motors Oshawa and CAW Local 222  .................................68; title: Chapter Four; title: The Method and Design of the Research ...........................................................................103; title: Chapter Five; title: Class Imagery and Identity Among Oshawa Autoworkers ................................................136; title: Chapter Six; title: Oppositional Class Consciousness  ....................................................................................179; title: Chapter Seven; title: The Relationships Among Class Imagery, Class Identity and Oppositional; title: Class Consciousness.........................................................................................................  205; title: Chapter Eight; title: Concluding Remarks ........................................................................................................  216; title: Bibliography ....................................................................................................................  231