Working sober

Americans assume that workers do not drink on the job and that, if they do, it is because they suffer from alcoholism rather than because they are conforming to occupational expectations. William J. Sonnenstuhl disagrees. He contends that some occupational cultures encourage heavy drinking. Moreover, his research suggests that the sense of community which motivates drinking can also sometimes inspire workers to break the pattern and work sober. Sonnenstuhl surveys drinking patterns in specific occupations, including construction, the military, railroading, and journalism, asking why such patterns have resisted efforts by both management and labor to curtail drinking from colonial times to the present. He documents the experience of workers who build tunnels and underground systems in New York City, in an occupation that traditionally encouraged its members to drink together both on the job and off. Known as sandhogs, they do strenuous, dirty work deep underground, where one worker dies for every mile of tunnel dug. In conversations with Sonnenstuhl, the sandhogs explain how they drank to sustain their courage, to show their camaraderie, and to celebrate their survival. . In recent years, sandhogs have transformed their culture, supporting each other in sobriety through their own alcoholism program, in which the union served as a crucial agent of change. For these workers, drinking on the job has virtually disappeared. On the basis of their experience, Sonnenstuhl advocates a paradigm of cultural transformation to supplement the medical model of curing addicted individuals.