Stress among Blue Collar Workers: A Case Study of the Steel Industry Available to Purchase

Are the sources and effects of executive stress echoed down the line on to the shopfloor of manufacturing industry? Should the researchers into the “stress‐chains” at managerial level turn their attention to the investigation of stress and stress‐reduction among blue‐collar workers? How far it can be done, and how parallel are the problems on each level, are questions which British industry might well concentrate upon to a greater extent than is evident from a review of the literature on stress over the last 5–10 years. This article describes recent work by the authors into the nature and effects of chains of stressors on the shopfloor which could be argued to be holding back real growth in the UK's manufacturing potential, chiefly through the diversion of energy for human growth into over‐concentration on factors leading to dissatisfaction at work.