Il "berretto dell’operaio" e il "cappello dell'ingegnere" Organizzazione del lavoro, direzioni aziendali e operai di mestiere nei cantieri navali di Brema

The research intends to offer the perspective of an organic study of the history of production, union trades and society in River Weser shipyards, which raised and developed around the city of Bremen. The selected time span is the decade going from the outbreak of World War I and the ultimate post-inflationary stabilization in 1924. Five thematic issues are taken into consideration in order to analyse the development of productive forces, and the forms of worksmen subjectivity and of labour conflicts: the reinforcement of management executives as a direction organ in work socialization; factory discipline as an instrument for the conformance of workers behaviour to the demands of the production process; razionalization, meaning a process of transformation of professions and crafts and of the connection between planning and realization; the form and structure of salary, considered in a double perspective, as job payment and as the primary matter of contention in factory conflicts. The fifth point concerns the forms of organization of the labour movement. In an attempt to analyse the formation of workers' councils and the practices of conflict, in strong and constant relation with the previous thematic issues, the dissertation tries to shed light on both the continuity of organizational forms, due to craftsmen's perduring centrality, and the emergence, especially in the vision of workers' councils, of stances concerning workers' control on production.