THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF Bottor of $Iitlos;opt)p IN PSYCHOLOGY

Influence of certain personality variables and organizational characteristics on perceived quality of work life _ a study of industrial workers

Efforts to humanize work are part of the broad worldwide concern for a better quality of life. On the shop floor and at the bargaining table, these efforts cover safety and health, improved systems of remuneration, job security, and better welfare provisions. Proposals to humanize work run the gamut of employer-employee relations from the early demand for "industrial democracy" first coined by Beatrice and Sydney Webb to the demand for worker representation on companies' boards of directors and for workers' control or self-management. More recently they have ranged to a demand for restructuring and reorganizing work to relieve the worker from the deadening impact of monotonous, repetitive, and boring work and pressures on the assembly line. A previous Monthly Labor Review article described efforts to make work more meaningful through worker participation in management decisions.1 This report describes attempts to restructure and reorganize work in several Western European nations and focuses on the role unions have played in these efforts.

Joseph Mire

Papers

Improving Working Life--The Role of European Unions.