A Good Job is Hard to Find: U.S. and Mexican Autoworkers in the Global Economy

For generations, the auto industry has been a model for high-wage secure, industrial employment, with the auto worker emblematic of the blue-collar middle class. Even with the declining fortunes and near collapse of U.S. domestic automakers, the auto industry continues to offer among the most sought-after opportunities for blue-collar employment, maintaining its status as a key driver of economic development. In both the U.S. and Mexico, politicians scurry to offer automakers incentives to build new plants or save aging ones. And the reason is clear. Regardless of location, firm, or union status, auto work provides a stable source of income unmatched by other manufacturing or service-sector jobs.

Still—as this analysis of my fieldwork at three General Motors (GM) assembly plants in Wisconsin, Texas, and Silao, Mexico shows—the value of those jobs has declined. Decades of policies associated with globalization have weakened labor in both industrialized and developing countries. As a result, the pace of work has intensified while wages and benefits have declined. This reality, that even the best jobs are getting worse, highlights a concern far broader than the need to halt the proliferation of sweatshops in the global economy. It points to the need for a new model of globalization that shores up, rather than undermines, traditional labor relations institutions.

Lean Production and the Intensification of Work

Post-Fordist scholars of workplace change claim that globalization has spread manufacturing systems that improve working conditions by reorganizing workers into teams and reengaging their intellects, all the while improving efficiency and product quality. However, evidence from these plants confirms the fears of critics that, rather than empowering workers, lean production has merely intensified the pace of work in the auto industry.

Each of the three plants I studied was under orders to implement a common Global Manufacturing System (GMS) based on the lean production system that GM learned from Toyota at New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI), the two automakers' joint venture in Fremont, California. The GMS incorporated into workers' jobs all the key characteristics of lean production: standardization of work, teamwork, Andon systems to allow workers to stop the assembly line, and employee participation programs to solicit ideas for improving the system.

However, the only component being fastidiously implemented at each of the plants was the meticulous standardization and intensification of work. Each factory mapped the steps of the production process to be performed, and the order in which they had to be completed. Line operators were then expected to repeatedly perform their jobs as choreographed. The goal was to keep each assembly worker busy for fifty-five seconds of each minute with as much work as could be squeezed into that time.

The GMS was implemented far more thoroughly in Silao than in the U.S. In Silao, teams of six workers rotated through a series of jobs and administrative tasks under the guidance of a quasi-supervisory team leader responsible for managing all the team's work. However, in both Janesville (Wisconsin) and Arlington (Texas) each worker performed the task at one designated work station. And though team coordinators in Arlington assumed a small portion of their Silao counterparts' responsibilities, in Janesville they served mostly to spell workers who needed an unscheduled break.

The style and extent of teamwork practiced at each plant affected the Andon system, which is meant to allow workers with a problem to signal for assistance and halt production if need be. In Silao, the entire team converged on the worker to quickly group problem solve, address the problem, and typically resume production within a matter of seconds. In Arlington, team coordinators responded to the Andon system, addressed the problem, and alerted a supervisor if necessary. In Janesville, however, workers mostly ignored the Andon system to avoid being scolded by supervisors for slowing production.

These differences among the plants suggest that both proponents and critics of team-work may be overstating its impact on workers within lean production. Lean enthusiasts cast teamwork as a boon for workers, making their labor more...