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Lean Work
Empowerment and Exploitation in the Global Auto Industry

Edited by Steve Babson 		Lean Work examines the controversial Japanese model of "lean production" and its impact on work and workers in the global auto industry. Lean production is said to replace the narrowly specialized and repetitive jobs in mass production with teams of cross-trained workers who are empowered to rotate tasks and improve the system.
Measuring these claims of a humanized work process against the available evidence from auto companies around the world, Lean Work provides a comparative focus rarely found in standard accounts of the "new factory." Contributing authors from North America, Europe, and Asia, offer a unique perspective for evaluating the "lean" workplace. Focusing on the shop-floor perspective of workers, they present new and important evidence drawn from in-depth case studies, surveys, structured interviews, and participant-observer data.
 		"A terrific book, a first-rate collection of essays that examine critically, and from several different points of view, the relationship between 'lean production' and true worker empowerment. There are few more important issues in the modern workplace."—Lowell Turner, Cornell University

"Unlike much of the literature on this topic, Lean Work places the implications of 'lean production' for workers and their unions at the center. It deserves attention from anyone concerned about the future of the automobile industry."
—Ruth Milkman, UCLA
 
$39.00s paper / ISBN 0-8143-2535-1

368 pages
37 tables and figures

1995