IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v33y2019i1p174-183.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

‘Going Underground’: A Tube Worker’s Experience of Struggles over the Frontier of Control

Author

Listed:
  • Emma S Hughes

    (Bangor University, UK)

  • Tony Dobbins

    (Bangor University, UK; University of Birmingham, UK)

  • Stephen Murphy

    (London Underground, UK)

Abstract

Mainstream media representation of London Underground (LU) workers typically foregrounds their alleged militancy, greed and negligence towards the travelling public. This knee-jerk tendency obscures the voices, expressions and experiences of workers themselves. This article enriches public sociology by giving Stephen, a Tube driver and former LU station worker, a platform to share his vivid story. Stephen’s voice reveals deep sociological insights into the realities of workplace struggles over the shifting ‘frontier of control’ at LU, and graphically captures uneven and fluid patterns of individual/collective resistance to restructuring and ‘modernization’. His lived experiences of managerial control and worker autonomy, interfacing with different degrees of alienation, new technology and customer engagement, have changed over time as ‘passengers’ become ‘customers’ and ‘give and take’ employment relations dwindle.

Suggested Citation

  • Emma S Hughes & Tony Dobbins & Stephen Murphy, 2019. "‘Going Underground’: A Tube Worker’s Experience of Struggles over the Frontier of Control," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 33(1), pages 174-183, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:33:y:2019:i:1:p:174-183
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017018758215
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017018758215
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0950017018758215?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Thompson & Diane van den Broek, 2010. "Managerial control and workplace regimes: an introduction," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 24(3), pages 1-12, September.
    2. Tony Dundon & Tony Dobbins, 2015. "Militant partnership: a radical pluralist analysis of workforce dialectics," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 29(6), pages 912-931, December.
    3. Knut Laaser, 2016. "‘If you are having a go at me, I am going to have a go at you’: the changing nature of social relationships of bank work under performance management," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 30(6), pages 1000-1016, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Paul Edwards & Andy Hodder, 2022. "Conflict and control in the contemporary workplace: Structured antagonism revisited," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(3), pages 220-240, May.
    2. Elena Baglioni, 2022. "The Making of Cheap Labour across Production and Reproduction: Control and Resistance in the Senegalese Horticultural Value Chain," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 36(3), pages 445-464, June.
    3. Alex Veen & Tom Barratt & Caleb Goods, 2020. "Platform-Capital’s ‘App-etite’ for Control: A Labour Process Analysis of Food-Delivery Work in Australia," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 34(3), pages 388-406, June.
    4. Balihar Sanghera, 2018. "Contributive Injustice and Unequal Division of Labour in the Voluntary Sector," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 23(2), pages 308-327, June.
    5. Simon Schaupp, 2022. "Algorithmic Integration and Precarious (Dis)Obedience: On the Co-Constitution of Migration Regime and Workplace Regime in Digitalised Manufacturing and Logistics," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 36(2), pages 310-327, April.
    6. Alex J Wood, 2018. "Powerful Times: Flexible Discipline and Schedule Gifts at Work," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 32(6), pages 1061-1077, December.
    7. Catherine Casey & Helen Delaney, 2022. "The effort of partnership: Capacity development and moral capital in partnership for mutual gains," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 43(1), pages 52-71, February.
    8. Afshin Omidi & Cinzia Dal Zotto, 2022. "Socially Responsible Human Resource Management: A Systematic Literature Review and Research Agenda," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-20, February.
    9. Arianna Tassinari & Vincenzo Maccarrone, 2020. "Riders on the Storm: Workplace Solidarity among Gig Economy Couriers in Italy and the UK," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 34(1), pages 35-54, February.
    10. Sharon C Bolton & Knut Laaser, 2020. "The Moral Economy of Solidarity: A Longitudinal Study of Special Needs Teachers," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 34(1), pages 55-72, February.
    11. Dyson, Simon M. & Atkin, Karl M. & Berghs, Maria J. & Greene, Anne-Marie, 2021. "On the possibility of a disabled life in capitalist ruins: Black workers with sickle cell disorder in England," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 272(C).
    12. Sunyu Chai & Maureen A. Scully, 2019. "It’s About Distributing Rather than Sharing: Using Labor Process Theory to Probe the “Sharing” Economy," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 159(4), pages 943-960, November.
    13. Acerbi, Alberto & Sacco, Pier Luigi, 2021. "The self-control vs. self-indulgence dilemma: A culturomic analysis of 20th century trends," OSF Preprints xgqt5, Center for Open Science.
    14. Atte Vieno, 2023. "‘It’s as if I’m Worth Nothing’—Cost-Driven Restructuring and the Dignity of Long-Term Workers in Finland’s State-Owned Postal Service Company," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 187(1), pages 17-31, September.
    15. Abigail Marks & Esme Terry & Jesus Canduela & Arek Dakessian & Dimitris Christopoulos, 2023. "Feminized cultural capital at work in the moral economy: Home credit and working‐class women," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 1-17, January.
    16. Emma Hughes & Tony Dobbins & Doris Merkl-Davies, 2022. "Moral economy, solidarity and labour process struggle in Irish public transport," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 43(1), pages 146-167, February.
    17. Xiaotian Li, 2023. "Managerial Technique and Worker Subjectivity in Dialogue: Understanding Overwork in China’s Internet Industry," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 37(6), pages 1699-1716, December.
    18. Rana S. Roshdy & Zhou Erhua, 2020. "Perceived value of ride-hailing providers:The role of algorithmic management, customer dysfunctional behavior and perceived injustice," International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 9(7), pages 53-65, December.
    19. Knut Laaser, 2019. "‘Customers were not objects to suck blood from’: Social relations in UK retail banks under changing performance management systems," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(5-6), pages 532-547, November.
    20. Pedro Mendonça & Dragoș Adăscăliței, 2020. "Trade Union Power Resources within the Supply Chain: Marketisation, Marginalisation, Mobilisation," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 34(6), pages 1062-1078, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:33:y:2019:i:1:p:174-183. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.