Just Another Car Factory?: Lean Production and Its Discontents - Hardcover

Rinehart, James; Huxley, Christopher; Robertson, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801433738 ISBN 13: 9780801433733

Publisher: ILR Press, 1997

Synopsis

This study of CAMI Automotive, a unionized joint venture between General Motors and Suzuki, is the most comprehensive ever undertaken of a lean production plant. James Rinehart, Christopher Huxley, and David Robertson address a topic that has inspired fierce debate in industrial relations, sociology, labor studies, and human resource management.

Heralded as a model of lean production when it opened in 1989, CAMI promised workers something different from traditional plants―a humane environment, empowerment, and cooperative labor-management relations. However, the enthusiasm workers felt during the orientation and early phases of production steadily declined, as did their involvement in participatory activities. Workers came to describe CAMI as "just another car factory." Union challenges and shopfloor resistance to key elements of the lean system grew, capped by a five-week strike in 1992. The authors attribute workers' disillusionment to lean production itself rather than to North American managers' inadequate implementation.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

This Study of CAMI Automotive, a unionized joint venture between General Motors and Suzuki, is the most comprehensive ever undertaken of a lean production plant. James Rinehart, Christopher Huxley, and David Robertson address a topic that has inspired fierce debate in industrial relations, sociology, labor studies, and a human resource management.

About the Author:

James Rinehart is Professor of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario. He is the author of The Tyranny of Work: Alienation and the Labour Process.

About this edition

• Publisher: ILR Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0801433738
• ISBN 13: 9780801433733
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264