We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
STATUS VALUES AMONG RAILROADMEN.
- Authors
Bodnick, David
- Abstract
The article makes a description of contrasting behavior differences between three categories of railroad employees. It is based upon an observational study made of these workers in the New Haven terminal of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad during the summer of 1938. The study grew out of an experimental attempt to check ethnological techniques by employing them in the observation of subcultural groups within contemporary urban society. The ethnic background seems to be important in the drives for status and in the incentives that play a part in job satisfaction. The men in train and engine service present a different picture from that of the clerks. Their pay at the start is far higher than that reached by the clerk who has put in many years of service. Their promotion to better paying jobs that carry a good deal of status is almost assured in the normal course of time. Despite the fact, then, that the average trainman may grumble about his habitual lack of money, he is well aware of the fact that he is far better paid than he would be if he were not working on a railroad. Owing also to the fact that the majority of the trainmen on the New Haven have seniority rights of more than twenty-five years, their educational level is not a high one, since to the boy of sixteen who applied for work in 1910 or thereabouts an ability to read and write was considered education enough.
- Subjects
RAILROAD employees; LABOR incentives; WORKING class; OCCUPATIONAL prestige; JOB satisfaction; RAILROAD employees' wages
- Publication
Social Forces, 1941, Vol 20, Issue 1, p89
- ISSN
0037-7732
- Publication type
Article