Lean Production and Neo-liberal Crisis. A Comment on “Working Conditions within Italian FCA Group Plants” by Matteo Gaddi

Paul Stewart

doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11295

Authors

Paul Stewart Department of People, Organizations and Society, Grenoble École de Management, 38000 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1994-1102
Paul Stewart is a Senior Research Professor Sociology of Work and Employment, Department of People, Organizations and Society, Grenoble École de Management, Grenoble, France. He has been researching the impact of lean production on automotive workers for over two decades, working with assembly workers and UNITE at national and plant level. He is a member of UNITE the union and a delegat, comité d'entreprise at GEM. He is also a member of the Critical Labour Studies network. He is co-author of We Sell Our Time No More (Pluto Books), a critical sociology of the struggles of car workers against lean production in the UK automotive industry. He was editor of the British Sociological Association's journal Work, Employment and Society (2001-2004), comité de redaction de Nouvelle Revue de Travail (Paris), and Capital and Class.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11295

Keywords:

Lean Production, Control-Subordination, Workplace-Wellbeing, Neoliberalism, Union-Social Strategies

Abstract

In addressing Matteo Gaddi’s prospectus on working life and labour relations in the Italian FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles) Group, this paper considers a range of responses common to labour organizations in the automotive sector internationally. These include embracing them entirely, or engaging with them robustly in an attempt to change them. This has typically required the union to think outside the framework of straightforward opposition, going beyond seeing lean as a management fad or just a simple change in production requirements. The argument is made that lean, in addition to being understood as a manufacturing strategy, is also a managerial ideology developed in a period of neoliberal transformation. In consequence, quality of working life issues attendant on the supposed misapplication of lean are here understood as being critical to capital’s labour control strategies. Moreover, since lean is also part and parcel of wider societal change, it is argued that the union could consider developing, via network research, a bench marking agenda of workplace health & safety and worker wellbeing. This can be a means by which “health and sickness dumping” are refracted back to the firm rather than supported through social wage.

References

Benanav, A. (2019). Automation and the Future of Work. New Left Review, 119, 5–38. https://cominsitu.files.wordpress.com/2019/12/aaron-benanav-automation-and-the-future-of-work-1-nlr-119-september-october-2019.pdf

Berggren, C. (1988). “New Production Concepts” in Final Assembly. The Swedish Experience. In B. Dankbaar, U. Jurgens, & T. Malsch (Eds.), Die Zukunft der Arbeit in der Automobilindustrie. Berlin: WZB.

Berggren, C. (1993). The end of history?. Work Employment and Society, 7(2), 163–188. https://doi.org/10.1177/095001709372001

Berggren, C. (1995). Japan as number two: Competitive problems and the future of alliance capitalism after the burst of the bubble economy. Work, Employment and Society, 9(1), 53–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/095001709591003

Boyer, R., & Freyssenet, M. (2000). The Productive Models: The Conditions of Profitability. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Brenner, M. D., Fairris, D., & Ruser, J. (2004). “Flexible” work practices and occupational safety and health: Exploring the relationship between cumulative trauma disorders and workplace transformation. Industrial Relations, 43(1), 242–266. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0019-8676.2004.00325.x

Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) (1990). Workplace Issues, Work Reorganization: Responding to Lean Production. Willowfield, Ontario: CAW research and Communications Departments.

Carter, B., Danford, A., Howcroft, D., Richardson, H., Smith, A., & Taylor, P. (2013). “Stressed out of my box”: Employee experience of lean working and occupational ill-health in clerical work in the UK public sector. Work, Employment & Society, 27(5), 747–767. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017012469064

Charron, E., & Stewart, P. (Eds.) (2004). Work and Employment Relations in the Automobile Industry. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Durand, J.-P. (2007). The Invisible Chain: Constraints and Opportunities in the New World of Employment. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Fucini, J., & Fucini, S. (1990). Working for the Japanese. New York: The Free Press.

Gaddi, M. (2020). Working Conditions within Italian FCA Group Plants. Sociologica, 14(2), 273–292. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11391

Garrahan, P., & Stewart, P. (1992). The Nissan Enigma: Flexibility and Work in a Local Economy. London: Mansell.

Gerpisa (1993). Trajectories of automobile firms. Proceedings of the Group for the Study of the Auto Industry and its Employees. Paris: University d’Evry-Val d’Essone.

Graham, L. (1995). On the Line at Subaru-Isuzu: The Japanese Model and the American Worker. Ithaca, NY: ILR/Cornell University Press.

Jurgens, U., Malsch, T., & Dohse, K. (1993). Breaking from Taylorism: Changing Forms of Work in the Automobile Industry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kenney, M., & Florida, R. (1991). Transplanted Organisations: The Transfer of Japanese Industrial Organization to the US. American Sociological Review, 56(3), 381–398. https://doi.org/10.2307/2096111

Kenney, M., & Florida, R. (1993). Beyond Mass Production: The Japanese System and Its Transfer to the US. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Milkman, R. (1991). Japan’s Californian Factories. Labour Relations and Economic Globalisation. Los Angeles: Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California.

Parker, M., & Slaughter, J. (1988). Choosing Sides: Unions and the Team Concept. Boston: South End Press.

Rinehart, J., Huxley, C., & Robertson, D. (1997). Just Another Car Factory: Lean Production and Its Discontents. Ithaca: ILR Press.

Smith, T. (2000). Technology and Capital in the Age of Lean Production: A Marxian Critique of the “New Economy”. New York: SUNY Press.

Stewart, P., Richardson, M., Danford, A., Murphy, K., Richardson, T., & Vass (2009). We Sell Our Time No More. Workers’ Struggles Against Lean Production in the British Car Industry. London: Pluto Press.

Stewart, P., Mrozowicki, A., Danford, A., & Murphy, K. (2016). Lean as ideology and practice: A comparative study of the impact of lean production on working life in automotive manufacturing in the United Kingdom and Poland. Competition and Change, 20(3), 147–165. https://doi.org/10.1177/1024529416636192

Williams, K., Haslam, C., Williams, J., Cutler, T., Adcroft, A., & Johal, S. (1992a). Against lean production. Economy & Society, 21(3), 321–354. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085149200000016

Williams, K., Haslam, C., Adcroft, A., & Johal, S. (1992b). Factories or warehouses. Mimeo.

Williams, K., Haslam, C., & Williams, J. (1992c). Ford versus “Fordism”: The beginning of mass production? Work Employment and Society, 6(4), 517–555. https://doi.org/10.1177/095001709264001

Williams, K., Haslam, C., Adcroft, A., & Johal, S. (1993). The myth of the line: Ford’s production of the Model T at Highland Park, 1909–16. Business History, 35(3), 66–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/00076799300000087

Womack, J. P., Roos, D., & Jones, D. T. (1990). The Machine That Changed The World. New York: Rawson.

Lean Production and Neo-liberal Crisis. A Comment on “Working Conditions within Italian FCA Group Plants” by Matteo Gaddi

Authors

DOI:

Keywords:

Abstract

References

Downloads

Published

How to Cite

Issue

Section

License

Information

Make a Submission

Current Issue