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Confronting Change
Auto Labor and Lean Production in North America
Second edition

Edited by Steve Babson and Huberto Juárez Núñez 		Autoworkers find themselves in a rapidly changing world as transnational corporations seek new forms of work organization and new boundaries for a North American auto industry. Inside the factory, management pursues new models of "lean production" that require workers to produce more with less—less time, less support, less material—in an atmosphere of accelerated and intensified labor. Outside the factory, "freetrade" policies and regional investment strategies widen the reach of transnational corporations, creating new opportunities in Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. for pitting worker against worker in a mutually destructive competition for jobs. In Confronting Change, researchers from a diverse range of universities and unions explore the impact of these changes on work and workers. The case studies and analyses show the wide range of potential outcomes as workers struggle to become actors, rather than victims, in the emerging North American auto industry. "This book provides a path-breaking analysis of the forces reshaping the global automobile industry in general and the continental industry in particular. It combines first-rate scholarship about lean production in Canada, the United States, and Mexico with an original, important perspective about the alternatives available. The comparative focus the book presents could redefine thinking and future research in this area. This book is a must-read for those concerned with where the automobile industry is headed in North America." —Harley Shaiken, University of California, Berkeley
 
Published by the Autonomous University of Puebla and the Labor Studies Center at Wayne State University

$24.95s paper / ISBN 0-8143-2819-9

450 pages / 6 x 9

1999 (1998)

For sale only in Canada, The United States, and the Philippines