A culture of reconciliation: talking about wages in a Czech factory context

The aim of this study is to examine the processes of sense-making around wages among working-class employees in a factory setting. Based on long-term participant observation and semi-structured interviews, the study finds a ‘culture of reconciliation’ characterized by wage inequalities, which are considered functional and structured around work specialization or gender. Workers accept personal responsibility for their wages, while management views market forces as decisive and immutable. I draw on research regarding silence in organizations and conceptualizations of working-class habitus. I use these concepts to shed light on the nature of contemporary labor markets, focusing on the intersection of their global and situational specificities. I argue that meaning-making about wages is a multilayered process that involves – explicitly, but predominantly implicitly – actors occupying markedly different positions of power, as well as the structural processes that shape the settings these actors inhabit. I argue that recognition, respect, and remuneration are closely interconnected.