| This dissertation focuses on rank and file automobile workers and their responses to the postFordist “cooperative philosophy.” The “cooperative philosophy” refers to workplace cooperation, quality of work life circles, and the team management concept—often called jointness programs—which were implemented in the 1980s. These types of programs were designed to create a work place in which management and labor work together to build the best product possible.; In my dissertation, I question whether cooperation programs have empowered workers in terms of their specific jobs. I also query as to whether cooperation has been successful in decreasing other types of work related tensions, such as racism. Though I interviewed and surveyed auto workers with many views on cooperation, I focused on those with dissident views. That is, I focused on rank and filers who offered critiques of both management and the International and local UAW. I chose to focus on dissidence within the UAW because mainstream literature on cooperation largely ignores this segment of the labor force.; My research explores the postFordist work environment through the eyes of production workers. I believe it is essential to examine new work processes designed to “empower” rank and filers from the perspective of rank and filers. The data for this research comes from interviews I conducted and surveys I distributed at two GM auto assembly plants—the Buick City Complex in Flint, Michigan, and the Boxwood Road Plant in Wilmington, Delaware. In total, I interviewed 32 automobile workers (16 from each plant), and collected over 200 surveys (approximately 100 from each plant). These data were collected in 1999.; I believe it is important to systematically study programs which are touted to increase general employee work place satisfaction within the context of reality. By this I mean that the refrain “Increasing employee satisfaction with their work environments is imperative from a business perspective,” is nice to hear, but we need to ask what specific types of programs managers and industrialists implement to actually decrease problems workers experience on the shop floor, both in terms of job-specific and work-related stress. Because a percentage of work related stress is rooted in issues of race (Goldfield, 1997), this dissertation has two foci. First, I evaluate production employees' analyses of jointness programs. Second, I evaluate how successful cooperation programs have been in ameliorating racial tension on the shop floor. |
