The Effects of Flexible Specialization on Industrial Politics and the Labor Market: The Motion Picture Industry

Abstract

The authors, citing historical and statistical evidence spanning three decades, examine how the transition to flexibly specialized production organization in the motion picture industry has changed the distribution of work and wages and the definition of skills. One important result of that process has been the emergence of a new form of intra-occupational labor market segmentation, based much less on differences in hourly wage rates than on differential access to hours of work. Also, the reorganization of the production process has altered the relative bargaining power of employers and workers and of different groups within the industry work force, resulting in increased conflict among segments of the work force and a strengthening of employers' bargaining power vis-à-vis industry unions.