4. Industrial Adjustment and Industrial Relations in the Automobile Industry

2019 ◽  
pp. 103-135
Keyword(s):  
Automobile Industry ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Industrial Adjustment

Whose Hard Times?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lu Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Labor Force ◽  
Automobile Industry ◽  
Joint Ventures ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Shop Floor ◽  
Temporary Workers ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
Chinese Automobile Industry ◽  
New Generation

This chapter carries out an in-depth analysis of the transformation of China's automobile industry and its labor force over the past two decades, with particular attention on how shop-floor, national, and global processes interact in complex ways to produce the specific industrial relations and dynamics of labor unrest in the Chinese automobile industry. It argues that the massive foreign investment in China's auto sector through joint ventures and the increased scale and concentration of automobile production have created and strengthened a new generation of autoworkers with growing workplace bargaining power and grievances. However, the acute contradictory pressures of simultaneously pursuing profitability and maintaining legitimacy with labor have driven large state-owned automakers and Sino-foreign joint ventures to follow a policy of labor force dualism, drawing boundaries between formal and temporary workers. While formal workers enjoy high wages, generous benefits, and relatively secure employment, temporary workers suffer comparatively low wages, unsecure employment, and heavier and dirtier job assignments. Temporary and other low-wage autoworkers have also become the main source of militancy in the auto industry.

The German Automobile Industry in Transition

1997 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-247
Author(s):  
Michael Schumann
Keyword(s):  
Automobile Industry ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Work Organization ◽  
Team Work ◽  
Job Descriptions ◽  
Product Strategy ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Strong Focus ◽  
Work Autonomy

This paper describes the new approaches the German automobile industry has developed during the last four years. It deals with product strategy, production concepts, work organization, industrial relations and technology. In the automobile industry, team concepts and groupwork have been the most important innovations in increasing efficiency. There are two fundamentally different approaches to team work The concept of ‘structurally conservative groupwork’ is a more or less modernized version of Taylorism. The job descriptions of production workers remain narrow, there is not much work autonomy and no reprofessionalization. By contrast, ‘structurally innovative groupwork’ builds on the specific assets of the German industrial order: the tradition of craft work (Facharbeiter), the strong focus on qualified, self-directed work, and the consensus orientation in the field of industrial relations.

scholarly journals Industrial Relations and Productivity in the U.S. Automobile Industry

1987 ◽  
Vol 1987 (3) ◽  
pp. 685 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry C. Katz ◽  
Thomas A. Kochan ◽  
Jeffrey H. Keefe ◽  
Edward Lazear ◽  
George C. Eads
Keyword(s):  
Automobile Industry ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
The U.S

French multinational companies, new state regulations and changes in the employment relationship during the crisis

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Violaine Delteil ◽  
Patrick Dieuaide
Keyword(s):  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Automobile Industry ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Employment Relationship ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Economic Regulation ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Eastern European Countries

On the basis of a survey conducted in three French multinational corporations in the automobile industry that have set up production facilities in central and eastern Europe, this article examines some of the major changes in the employment relationship that have taken place in the rather specific economic context of the second half of the decade after 2000. Two main propositions are put forward and discussed: the first relates to the rise of a ‘management-led social dialogue’ as the outcome of an increasingly close meshing of corporate industrial strategies, human resource policies and the management of industrial relations at the local level; the second relates to the emergence of a ‘Porterian state’ playing a role of, on the one hand, mediator in the effort to build some ‘labour-management compromises’ for coping with the crisis and, on the other hand, promoter of new forms of socio-economic regulation requiring new institutional complementarities. The analysis, developed on the basis of a comparative approach – i.e. France versus the central and eastern European countries – is rounded off by an examination of the place and role of the European Union in these changes.

scholarly journals Industrial Relations in the U.S. Automobile Industry: An Illustration of Increased Decentralization and Diversity

1997 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry C. Katz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Automobile Industry ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Work Organization ◽  
Auto Industry ◽  
Employment Relations ◽  
World War ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Contingent Compensation ◽  
The U.S

This paper traces the evolution of employment relations in the U.S. auto industry over the post World War II period with particular emphasis on recent developments. There is a strong movement toward growing variation in employment relations within both the assembly and parts sectors of the auto industry. Variation appears both through the spread of more contingent compensation and team systems of work organization. There is also wide variety across plants and industry segments in basic employment systems including low wage, human resource, Japanese-oriented, and joint team-based approaches. Declining unionization is a particularly strong influence in the parts sector although nonunion operations have now spread to the assembly sector. While these trends are well illustrated by developments in the auto industry, they are trends common to other parts of the U.S. economy.

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