"The men make it seem like a secret society..." The struggle for control over 'direct inputting' of classified advertising in the New Zealand newspaper industry

Abstract

This paper draws on a detailed empirical study of the New Zealand newspaper industry undergoing technological transformation to illustrate why an analysis of the labour process which adopts the classic Marxist problematic, class-in-itself and class for-itself, is limited. Instead the paper uses a 'relational' analysis (see Elbaum et al., 1979; Stark, 1980; Hill and Novitz, 1985) to show that answers to questions about control in the workplace must be sought by -analysing gender as well as class relations, and the complex interaction between the two.