ABSTRACT
Three significant elements in the worker’s judgement of his situation at work have been discussed so far. It appears that the worker’s final judgement of his task may depend on the task’s being clean, or independent or complete, or on some combination of these: at all events, the judgement made is made to some extent by reference to the task itself, or the worker’s present situation at work. In the same way, the worker’s judgement of his pay may depend on whether or not he is paid something (of whatever kind) above the local official base rate, for little or no extra individual effort; and his judgement of his bosses in general may depend on whether his immediate boss is cooperative or bossy, as he himself describes his behaviour. These two judgements, equally, are to some extent made by reference to the work situation directly, whether to the pay system or to the behaviour of the immediate boss. The same cannot be stated for the worker’s judgement of his fellow-workers; this may depend on the detailed behaviour of the person’s workmates, but the evidence is insufficient to establish any such dependence. Lastly, the worker’s judgement of his pay may depend also on his judgement of what it must be used for (i.e. the number of his dependents); and this judgement is of one element in his whole situation or set of engagements as a person, but is not a judgement of his work situation at all.
