This paper examines the community situation of shipyard workers on Tyneside, certain
aspects of their orientations to work and general social perspectives, and the relationship of
these to each other and to the structure of social relations at work. In terms of their
community situation shipyard workers would seem to come close to Lockwood's traditional
proletarian type of worker. There is evidence to suggest, however, that these workers' social
perspectives are not at all clearly traditional proletarian. The explanation for this is found, at …

as follows:(a) Occupational diversity. The very diverse skilled tasks which need to be carried
out to construct a ship have not been broken down to be performed by semiskilled
operatives. On the other hand considerable specialization has taken place so that about 2o
different trades are involved in production (excluding specialist sub-contractors) as well as a
number of different types of semi-skilled workers and labourers. In practice many of the
skilled trades are internally differentiated so that members of them are doing completely …