GLOBALIZATION, CAPITAL FLIGHT, AND THE SHOP-FLOOR - UNDERSTANDING THESTRIKE OF 79

This ethnographic study illuminates the consciousness of workers at a medium-size production plant by placing it in social-historical contex t. The strike was a critical turning point in the plant, as qualitativ e change took place in the social relations of production from the ear ly 1970s through the 1990s. Throughout the strike, workers' definition s of the situation were based on assumptions consistent with the relat ions of production that had emerged in the relative prosperity of the postwar era, the so-called new social contract. In fact, capital's com mitment to those arrangements had faded. The decisions of ITT manageme nt during the period reflected the emerging conditions of globalizatio n and restructuring and a new, more coercive era. The development of t he strike, and particularly its aftermath, demonstrates the validity o f this definition of the situation. The study is based on participant observation data, collected over a fourteen-year period, from 1977 to 1991.