Blue-Collar and Healthy Worker Identities: How Parallel Ideal Worker Identities Sustain Unobtrusive Control on the Shop-Floor

Abstract

This study examines employees at a metal fabrication plant and their experiences with a workplace wellness initiative, which included on-site CrossFit classes. Interviews with 16 workers and participant observation revealed d/Discourses that rationalized worker compliance and resistance to the wellness initiative. Through a discourse tracing analysis, the authors propose the novel concept of parallel ideal worker identities to describe how organizational d/Discourses (de)valued (a) blue-collar worker and (b) “healthy worker” identities. These d/Discourses created resistance to the wellness initiative because they made salient how the organization privileged the “healthy worker” identity over the traditionally constructed blue-collar worker identity through unobtrusive control.