Manufacturing Change: A Two-Country, Three- Industry Comparison

Abstract

There are three broad explanations for why workers adapt, or fail to adapt, to technological change in the workplace. The adversarial perspective holds that employment security produces resistant workers, and conversely that insecurity assures efficiency in adapting a workforce to technological and organizational changes. Institutionalists argue the opposite, emphasizing that secure workers have little to fear from change. Finally, a neo-corporatist variant sees managers and powerful trade-union leaders as capable of successfully negotiating industrial changes, independently of rank and file preferences. In this paper we explore these explanations via interview data collected from managers and trade unionists (or labour representatives) from Canada and Sweden. Our focus is on three industries - pulp and paper, steel and telecommunications equipment. Analyses deal with specific questions associated with the introduction of new equipment and technology, attempts to introduce organizational restructuring, and experiences with layoffs. We further examine respondents' comments on obstacles encountered during the change process, including the reactions, conflicts and grievances of the rank and file workers at their plants, mills and factories. On the whole, the results of our interviews with respondents at seventy-three plants in our three-industry two-country comparison seem to contradict the strict adversarial theory. While our data provide some evidence in favour of the institutionalist perspective, the neo-corporatist arguments found the most support. Swedish trade union leaders were viewed by managers, and viewed themselves, as more positively disposed to change than either their Canadian counterparts or workers in either country