Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
This edited volume provides the first comparative cross-national study of U.S. and Canadian Labor relations in Japanese North American auto transplants, Japanese joint ventures with the Big Three automakers, and Saturn, the Japanese-style GM auto plant.
In this edited volume, U.S. and Canadian political scientists, sociologists, and labor educators contribute to the debate of the crisis of the Fordist regime of mass production and its implications for organized labor. They present the first comparative cross-national study of the labor relations in Japanese North American automobile transplants, Japanese joint ventures with the Big Three automakers, and Japanese-style General Motors auto plants. They specifically focus on the challenges the Japanese lean production model has posed to North American auto labor's organizing, collective bargaining, and shop floor representation experiences and how the United Auto Workers and the Canadian Auto Workers have responded to these challenges. The authors point to the pressing need for the North American labor movement, whose legal rights are rooted in a mass production regime, to rethink its interests and goals if it is to successfully confront the formidable obstacles presented by a changing international and hemispheric political economy increasingly dominated by Japanese lean production practices.
"I like the sustained and well-documented critique of the pro-management perspective of advocates of 'lean production' and Japanese management; the use of solid evidence such as worker surveys and participant observation; the theoretical unity around the ideas of Gramsci on cultural hegemony and the contradictions of mature capitalism; and the comparison with Canadian unions and politics." — Susan B. Hansen, University of Pittsburgh
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Building Other People's Cars: Organized Labor and the Crisis of Fordism
Ernest J. Yanarella and William C. Green
PART I THE CRISIS OF FORDISM
Theoretical, Legal, and Strategic Challenges for Organized Labor
Lean Production, Labor Control, and Post-Fordism in the Japanese Automobile Industry
Carl H. A. Dassbach
The UAW and CAW Under the Shadow of Post-Fordism: A Tale of Two Unions
Ernest J. Yanarella
PART II THE CRISIS OF FORDISM ON THE SHOP FLOOR
Four Case Studies
The Myth of Egalitarianism: Worker Response to Post-Fordism at Subaru-Isuzu
Laurie Graham
UAW, Lean Production, and Labor-Management Relations at AutoAlliance
Steve Babson
CAW, Worker Commitment, and Labor-Management Relations Under Lean Production at CAMI
James Rinehart, David Robertson, Christopher Huxley, and the CAW Research Team on CAMI
Worker Training at Toyota and Saturn: Hegemony Begins in the Training Center Classroom
Ernest J. Yanarella
PART III BEYOND THE CRISIS OF FORDISM
The Role of Organized Labor
The Transformation of the NLRA Paradigm: The Future of Labor-Management Relations in Post-Fordist Auto Plants
William C. Green
New Dimensions for Labor in a Post-Fordist World
Donald M. Wells
Bibliographic References
Index