Industrial Work as an Entrepreneurial Strategy

In his classic study, Japanese Blue Collar, Robert Cole (1971: 15) states that the search for security among workers is universal and that the way workers strive to achieve that goal has different consequences in different societies. This article describes how Taiwanese workers pursue security and the attendant social consequences. My observations are based on a year's field work during 1978-1979 in Yingge, a town of 37,000 about 40 kilometers southwest of Taibei. I also worked for seven weeks in a small spinning and dyeing factory in Luzhou, a Taibei suburb. During my stay in Yingge, I interviewed 78 factory owners and 60 male workers. Informal contacts with workers were more extensive. Because most of the factories in Yingge employ fewer than 100 workers, my experience is primarily with workers and owners in the small-scale sector.' Such enterprises are ubiquitous in Taiwan, making up over 90% of all manufacturing enterprises (see Table 1).