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Resistance, struggle and effort bargaining are important components of everyday life at the workplace. Yet the topic of worker resistance has been given a very limited role in our theoretical models of the workplace. As a result, the study of worker resistance has remained conceptually underdeveloped. In this paper, I develop a model of worker resistance which conceptualizes four basic agendas of resistance: deflecting abuse, regulating the amount and intensity of work, defending autonomy and expanding worker control through worker participation schemes. I argue that these four agendas of worker resistance parallel forms of the organization of the labor process as characterized by Edwards (1979) and others, with deflecting abuse being most typical of direct control, regulating the amount and intensity of work being most typical of technical control, defending autonomy being most typical of bureaucratic control, and manipulating participation opportunities being most typical of worker resistance under modern participative organizations of work. Agendas of worker resistance, however, are not reducible to forms of the organization of control at the workplace and each agenda may emerge, to differing degrees, under any given form of labor control. The proposed parallelism between agendas of resistance and forms of labor control allow the development of hypotheses about both current and future developments in labor control and worker resistance.

This essay is a response to the call for a discussion about future trends in sociology by focusing broadly on the sub-discipline of work and employment. In doing so the piece directly engages with earlier interventions made by John Scott (2005) and Gayle Letherby (2005) in Sociological Research Online. It examines the current state of the sociology of work by charting its foundation and subsequent development. It suggests that there is currently a problem in the area caused in part by intellectual trends and fragmentation. It argues that those sociologists working in the field need to engage collectively in a reflective process to refocus the subject combining elements from its 'golden age' as well as from more contemporary sources.

This article explores the experiences of the institutionalization and crisis of the sociology of work in Poland by analyzing the narratives of the doyens of the sociology of work in the country. It is argued that the institutionalization of sociology of work in the 1960s and 1970s reflected the requirements of the socialist industrialization of the country and its crisis (lasting from the end of 1980s) has political and economic roots related to systemic transformation. Simultaneously, some parallels between the situation of the sociology of work before and after 1989 are noted, including the challenges of cooperation between sociologists and industry. The empirical data in the article come from the research project carried out the Sociology of Work Section of the Polish Sociological Association based on the narrative interviews with the academic sociologists of work and plant sociologists who began their careers in the period of state socialism in Poland.