Voting for Ford: Industrial Democracy and the Control of Labour

Abstract

‘There has never been such complete democracy in the management of industrial establishments as exists in our shops.’ F.W. Taylor [1]

A Political Technology of the Body: How Labour Is Organized Into a Productive Force

“…And we should note that the criticism by Marxists that Foucault cannot explain resistance to power deflects attention from a glaring deficiency of labour process analysis at the heart of much Marxist work since the 1980sᎏ its failure to explain the dual nature of production, i.e. the coexistence of creation and alienation, empowerment and repression, cooperation and ( resistance Cressey & MacInnes, 1980;Burawoy, 1985;Cohen, 1987, ) 29 1989 . Foucault's dual sided disciplinary power explains precisely this.…”

“…It is notable that labour process analysis found great difficulty explaining this ''dual character'' of production, i.e. the coexistence of ( empowerment and repression, creation and alienation Cressey & ) MacInnes, 1980;Edwards, 1986 and this did much to discredit its ( central concept, ''control'' Burawoy, 1985;Cohen, 1987;Cohen, 1989; ) Marsden & Townley 1995 . This depiction of the internal relations between abstract labour and productive '' forces'' establishes that labour is not simply ''controlled'' into a productive power: it is organized into ( one, with the aim of increasing its efficiency ''productive with minimum ) waste or effort'' .…”

Contradictions at Work: A Critical Review

“…The much cited contradiction between control and consent states that employers have to control their employees while simultaneously requiring their co-operation and goodwill. At the same time, employees depend on their employers for an income but also have an interest in resisting their subordination (e.g., Cressey and MacInnes 1980;Edwards 2003;Hyman 1987). 8 Although this formulation of the problem has a certain dialectical elegance I would argue that it suffers from three major weaknesses.…”

Vying for Hearts and Minds: Emotional Labour as Management Control

“…In practice, the control relationship between manager and employee is ambivalent (Brown, 1992). Managers cannot exert comprehensive and absolute control over what employees do and still extract maximum benefit from their labour (Cressey and Macinnes, 1980). Workers in even the most menial jobs exercise some initiative and discretion, and managers want to channel these actions to achieve managerial goals (Bendix, 2001 ).…”