Your search
Results 10 resources
-
Did workplace characteristics, such as the degree of mechanization or the level of managerial control, systematically influence occupational mortality rates in France at the beginning of the 20th century? Data from an early 20th-century study of occupational mortality in France lead us to conclude that long hours of work, under conditions where labor had limited control of the pace of work, represented the most serious occupational risk facing early French workers. The effect of long hours of work on mortality dwarfed the impact of either mechanization or size of establishment.
-
The article reviews the book, "Breaking from Taylorism: Changing Forms of Work in the Automobile Industry," by Ulrich Jurgens, Thomas Malsch and Knuth Dohse.
-
The article reviews the book, "Cooperation and Conflict in Occupational Safety and Health: A Multination Study of The Automotive Industry," by Richard E. Wokutch.
-
The article reviews the book, "Worker Protection, Japanese Style : Occupational Safety and Health in the Auto Industry," by Richard E. Wokutch.
-
The introduction of mass production transformed many skilled tasks into repetitive and monotonous jobs. In industries such as automobiles, the workforce remained predominantly male despite contemporary assessments that women could efficiently do many of these jobs. This article explores why. It is argued that employers such as Ford concluded that the conversion of labor time into effort would be more difficult in a mixed-gender workforce. The paper shows how Ford developed a fraternalist labor strategy, a men's club, whose objective was to accommodate men to monotony and maximize labor productivity.
-
The article reviews the book,"Markets, Firms, and the Management of Labour in Modern Britain," by Howard F. Gospel.
-
We present some survey results on the preferences of workers for a coop as opposed to a private buy-out if faced with the closure of their workplace. Although there has been quite a lot of theoretical discussion of this issue there is relatively little empirical evidence. Although hedged about by reservations we conclude that the principal factor that determines preferences are the‘job risk’ characteristics of the coop and the privately owned firm. To a very large extent a worker will prefer the coop to a private buy-out if it leads to increased job security and if the coop is considered to be viable. We also find that workers expected that everyone would work harder in the coop and that this, together with increased shop floor control of production, was expected to lead to higher earnings. Significantly, however, these expected differences in the work/earnings trade-off between the coop and the privately owned firm did not lead workers to prefer one to the other.
-
This paper examines the relationship between new forms of work organization and worker empowerment from the perspective of workers. The data is drawn from a survey of 5,635 Canadian automobile workers. Workers were asked questions about their work-load, health and safety conditions, empowerment, and relations with management. It examines what it is like to work in plants organized according to the principles of lean production and compares empowerment in lean plants and traditionally organized plants.
-
Benchmarking is being used extensively in management's drive to achieve ‘world class’ levels of performance. The majority of benchmarking studies have little if anything to say about working conditions or the tradeoffs between productivity improvements and the conditions of working life. This article is based on a study which focuses on working conditions as described by workers, raising questions about the tradeoffs betwcen work reorganization and the quality of working life under Lean Production. The results, based on a survey of 1670 workers at 16 different companies, suggest that work life under Lean Production has not improved. Compared with workers in traditional Fordist style plants, those at Lean companies reported their work load was heavier and faster. They rcported work loads were increasing and becoming faster. They reported it was difficult to change things they did not like about their job and that it was becoming more difficult to get time off. While our survey results suggest that working in traditional Fordist plants is far from paradise, they also suggest that working in Lean plants is worse. At a minimum, our results should be viewed as a wake-up call to those who have painted a positive picture of work under Lean Production.
-
The shift towards the internal responsibility system and the mandating of Joint Health and Safety Committees in the early 1980s represented a radical departure in terms of how health and safety were regulated in the workplace. This paper examines the effectiveness of this institutional change using firm level data provided by the Worker's Compensation Board on lost time accidents from 1976 to 1989. It finds that where management and labour had some sympathy for the co-management of health and safety through joint committees, the new system significantly reduced lost-time accident rates. At workplaces where either labour or management resisted the spread of co-management the mandating of committees appears to have little effect on lost-time accident rates.
Explore
Resource type
- Journal Article (10)