We Sell Our Time No More

Vicki Wass, Tony Richardson, Ken Murphy, Andy Danford, Mike Richardson, Paul Stewart

Description

This is the story of workers' struggles in the British car industry, from the Second World War until today.



Told from the viewpoint of the workers, the book chronicles how they responded to a variety of management and union strategies, from piece rate working, through measured day work, and eventually to 'lean production' beginning in the late 1980s.



Focusing on two companies, Vauxhall-GM and Rover/BMW, this book shows how they developed their approaches to managing labour relations. It highlights the success of various forms of struggle to establish safer and more humane working environments, as well as their failures.
Foreword

1. Understanding the Lean Automobile Industry

2. The Pre-history of Lean Production: Employee Relations in the British Automobile Industry since the Second World War

3. From 'Embrace and Change' to 'Engage and Change': Trade union renewal and new management strategies

4. Striking Smarter and Harder: the new industrial relations of lean production? The 1995-96 Vauxhall Dispute

5. Abridged version of a roundtable discussion on lean production (The 'Sandcastle' Liverpool TGWU office)

6. Rover-BMW: From Rover Tomorrow to the Longbridge closure and the bitter fruits of Lean Production

7. Lean Production: From 'Engage and Change' to Endless Change

Conclusion

Appendices - workplace surveys

References

Index

Sujets

• Automobile Industry
• Industries
• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• Sociology
• Automotive industry
• General officer
• Manufacturing
• Economics
• Business
• General
• Labor
• Industrie

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849644228
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 10 Mo

Extrait

Stewart 01 prelims.qxd 08/05/2009 09:58 Page i
WE SELL OUR TIME NO MOREStewart 01 prelims.qxd 08/05/2009 09:58 Page iiStewart 01 prelims.qxd 08/05/2009 09:59 Page iii
We Sell Our Time No More
Workers’ Struggles Against
Lean Production in the
British Car Industry
Paul Stewart, Mike Richardson, Andy Danford,
Ken Murphy, Tony Richardson and Vicki Wass
with John Cooper, Tony Lewis, Gary Lindsay,
Mick Whitley, John Fetherston, Steve Craig, Pat Doyle
and Terry Myles (members of the Auto Workers’
Research Network)Stewart 01 prelims.qxd 08/05/2009 09:59 Page iv
First published 2009 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Paul Stewart, Mike Richardson, Andy Danford,
Ken Murphy, Tony Richardson and Vicki Wass 2009
The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of
this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 2868 3 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 2867 6 Paperback
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and
manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental
standards of the country of origin. The paper may contain up to
70% post consumer waste.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by
Curran Publishing Services, Norwich
Printed and bound in the European Union by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and EastbourneStewart 01 prelims.qxd 08/05/2009 09:59 Page v
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xii
Abbreviations and acronyms xiii
1 Understanding the Lean Automobile Industry 1
Introduction 1
Lean Production: the Context and the Promises 2
Lean Production for Whom? 8
Objectives of the Book 13
2 The Prehistory of Lean Production: Employee Relations
in the British Automobile Industry since the Second
World War 16
Introduction 16
Regimes of Control: From Piecework to Measured Day
Work 19
Contemporary Contrasts and Continuities 20
Bargaining in the Context of Conflict and the Importance
of the Local Agreements 22
Wages, Unions and Conflicts in the British System 26
Regimes of Control: Measured Day Work and the Rise of
Lean Production 34
3 From ‘Embrace and Change’ to ‘Engage and Change’:
Trade Union Renewal and New Management Strategies 38
Introduction 38
Industrial Relations Without Industrial Relations? 39
Data and Method 41
Union Responses in Each Company 43
Rover: ‘Embrace and Change’ 44
Vauxhall: ‘Engage and Change’ 46
The Experience of NMTs on the Shopfloor: An
InterCompany Comparison 49Stewart 01 prelims.qxd 08/05/2009 09:59 Page vi
vi CONTENTS
The Acceptance of NMTs on the Shopfloor: An
InterCompany Comparison 56
Concluding Remarks 59
Appendix: Explanatory variables 62
4 Striking Smarter and Harder: The New Industrial
Relations of Lean Production? The 1995–96 Vauxhall
Dispute 64
Management Misjudges the Shopfloor 67
Confronting Lean: Laying the Basis for Union Advance 70
Conclusion 79
The Fight to Control Lean Production 80
Addendum: Data Summary 84
5 Round Table Discussion on Lean Production 90
Introduction 90
Lean Production 98
Lean and Outsourcing 100
Union, Shop Stewards and Lean: Capturing Hearts and
Minds 107
Comments from Ken Murphy 120
Comments from John Cooper 125
Comments from Gary Lindsay 126
6 Rover-BMW: From Rover Tomorrow to the Longbridge
Closure and the Bitter Fruits of Lean Production 129
Introduction 129
The Recent Origins of the Crisis: Lean Production and
the Rise of a New Management Regime 131
The Background to the Implementation of Rover
Tomorrow 131
Rover Tomorrow 135
Implementation of Rover Tomorrow 139
The 1998 Cowley Agreement 142
The Working Time Account 143
A New Model, the Rover 75 143
The Longbridge Crisis, October 1998 144
Implementation of the 1998 Agreement 146
Crisis 2000 – What Future for Longbridge? 149
The Demonstration for Longbridge, 1 April 2000 152
The Union Position Changes 155Stewart 01 prelims.qxd 08/05/2009 09:59 Page vii
CONTENTS vii
7 Lean Production: From ‘Engage and Change’ to Endless
Change 159
Introduction 159
Embedding Lean Production at Vauxhall-GM,
1989–2001 163
GM’s Project Olympia 2001, BMW and Partnership 168
Worker Attributes 171
Workplace Stress 184
Conclusion 196
Appendix: Project Olympia Framework Document 197
Conclusion: Lean Production and the Individualisation
of Workplace Stress: the New Class Struggle from Above 201
Worker and Union Responses to Lean 208
Challenging Lean Production as a Strategy and Ideology 209
Appendices:
1 Survey of Car Workers by the TGWU and Cardiff
University Trade Union Research Unit
(Questionnaire 1996) 214
2 Workforce Survey on Workplace Issues 219
3 Working on the Line ‘After Fordism’: A Diary 223
Notes 229
Bibliography 240
Index 252Stewart 01 prelims.qxd 08/05/2009 09:59 Page viii
‘A Reporter in the back of the room leaned forward and, quoting
Smith, hollered: “how can the elimination of 30,000 jobs
IMPROVE job security?” Hey, this hack was on the beam. Even the
Rivethead hadn’t caught how hopelessly inane this statement had
been. Remaining completely stone-faced, Roger Smith glanced at the
reporter and reasoned: “For those who are left, their jobs will
become that much more secure.” Ouch …. For those who are left.
That sounded awful damn grim for a solution that was intended to
come off as some form of reassurance. It was entirely possible that
Roger Smith had missed his calling in life. He could have been an
ambassador to Ethiopia: “A food shortage, you say? Noo problem.
Simply exterminate the vast proportion of your population, stack
‘em out of view where they won’t upset anyone’s appetite and,
PRESTO!, vittles aplenty for THOSE WHO ARE LEFT.”’
(pp. 114–15)
‘The messages [on the electronic message boards] ranged from corny
propaganda (… QUALITY IS THE BACKBONE OF GOOD
WORKMANSHIP!) … to motivational pep squawk (A WINNER
NEVER QUITS AND A QUITTER NEVER WINS) to brain-jarring
ruminations (SAFETY IS SAFE).’
(p. 160)
‘We kept waiting for another phrase to come along ….The message
blazed on brightly like some eternal credo meant to hog-tie our
bewildered psyches. The message? Hold on to your hardhats, sages. The
message being thrust upon us in enormous block lettering read:
SQUEEZING RIVETS IS FUN! Trust me, even the fuckin’
exclamation point was their own.’
(p. 160)
from Ben Hamper, Rivethead: Tales from the assembly line (1992)Stewart 01 prelims.qxd 08/05/2009 09:59 Page ix
PREFACE
As we write, the world is experiencing the first major crisis of the new
capitalism. The precipitous collapse of the Soviet economy in the
1980s, immortalised by the image of the fall of the Berlin Wall, has
been taken to presage the rise of the new capitalism. This new form of
capitalist development has been characterised by the international
preeminence of financial strategies of accumulation which have depended
upon a range of social, political and economic relationships, which are
sometimes summed up by the term globalisation.
While lean production can be separated in a number of respects
from these latest developments, it is also indelibly tied to the
trajectory of the current crisis. This is because it allows capital to attempt
to displace cost and risk onto labour, just as it seeks to displace cost
and risk onto suppliers. Of course, no one would argue that lean
production created the current crisis, but it is nevertheless one
element in the neoliberal paradigm of business organisation, even if
its origins lie outside neoliberalism. At minimum it is a tool adopted
and adapted by organisations as they strive to control both their
external and internal environments. We would not go further and
argue that it can be used to define the current political economy of
neoliberalism. Then again, we cannot deny that workers in late
neoliberalism have seen ever-increasing areas of their work and
private lives delineated by the rhetoric of the lean society. But what
is lean production?
Originating in the Toyota production system, lean has been used
by pro-business commentators as justification for both material and
organisation changes, and ideological assault upon organised
labour. It includes the ideological notion that there is one best way
to work and to produce goods and services, and that those who
employ it, or work under it, will work ‘smarter not harder’. Setting
aside hotly disputed questions regarding its claims to a
revolutionary distinctiveness which can solve the problems of a decline in the
profitability of capitalism, its adherents have identified a number of
what they take to be its critical organisational features, deriving
from the Toyota production system. According to lean’s advocates,Stewart 01 prelims.qxd 08/05/2009 09:59 Page x
x PREFACE
where companies adopt these, at least the groundwork for success
will have been laid. These features comprise:
• continuous improvement – or kaizen, to use the Japanese term –
to product design and production
• pro-company forms of worker involvement (teamworking and
team leaders)
• elimination of waste (waste-muda), aided by kaizen but also
involving the just-in-time delivery of external and internal stock
(kanban – management of stock flow).
The elimination of waste is to be achieved in a variety of ways, as our
book highlights, but for the present waste can be defined as those
activities that do not add value to the product. This invariably means,
in large measure, workers’ time. Workers’ time is the space people
utilise at work for respite and regeneration, and it is, we insist,
indelibly tied to workers’ health, well-being, and to th