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The New Fordism in Canada: Capital's Offensive, Labour's Opportunity
Authors
Keywords
Fordism; Industrial relations; Canada
Document Type
Article
Abstract
The breakdown in the links of mass production and mass consumption poses problems throughout the advanced industrial world. In each nation-state the ensuing struggles will take different forms. In postwar Canada, the link between mass consumption and mass production did not lead to the same kind of trade union participation in decision-making as it did in much of Europe. Workers were unable to establish embedded rights of worker participation. What was known as the fordist model in Europe did not have deep roots in Canada. Canadian workers are now being attacked by employers whose bargaining powers were never seriously blunted, aided by a state which has never had to accord even a junior partnership role to organized labour. The arrival of the new technologies is not likely to lead to more enriching work or better pay conditions for much of the workforce given the logic of the imperatives of an export-led growth economy in which state planning takes the form of encouraging private ordering. This paper concludes by looking at some ways by which Canadian workers may be able to resist the downward pressure on wages and working conditions created by employers seeking to take advantage of their newfound power.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Citation Information
Drache, Daniel and Glasbeek, Harry J.. "The New Fordism in Canada: Capital's Offensive, Labour's Opportunity." Osgoode Hall Law Journal 27.3 (1989) : 517-560.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.60082/2817-5069.1786
https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol27/iss3/3
POST FORDISM - THE TRANSITION FROM MASS SCALE PRODUCTION TO SMALL SCALE CUSTOMIZATION.
Post Fordism is the successor of the Fordist era, which was charecterised by large scale production of standardized homogenous commodities and rightly named after Henry Ford, who introduced the assembly line mode of production. Though the wages and quality of life of the factory workers improved considerably, the fordist mode of production was rigid, expensive and wasteful. Due to high levels of supervision, monotony and lack of autonomy of the workers, they suffered from low self esteem and despised the work they did, leading to growth of trade unionism and frequent lockouts and strikes. From the 1970’s onwards, economic crises in the west, new technologies and the opening up of the world market made it difficult to sustain Fordism, giving rise to the post Fordist model of work.
Post Fordism is characterized by group production or quality circles, where groups of five to fifteen highly skilled and professional workers (core workers) meet regularly and decide on matters of design and production. The positive effects of group production can be the acquisition of new skills, use of creativity and innovation, reduced managerial supervision, greater autonomy and sense of pride in the goods one produces. However, studies have shown a number of negative consequences such an increase in supervision by peers, competition among workers leading to stress and working over time.
Flexible production and mass customization are important changes in the worldwide production processes. While Fordism concentrated on mass scale production of standardized goods, they were unable to produce small orders of good let alone goods specifically made for individual customers. Mass customization has changed the way firms and companies operate.There is a greater dependence on information and technology and computer based knowledged. Now many companies wait for the order, then assemble it and finally dispatch it. This is called ‘Just in time’ production, where production takes place only when the order is placed. This is very good for the economy because it encourages consumption, as the customer is now spoilt for choice and never content. The worker feels a sense of control and creative satisfaction but simultaneously works under great pressure resulting from the need to coordinate the complex production processes carefully and produce results quickly.
Changes in industrial production include not only how the goods are produced but also where these good are produced. The creation of giant super powers such as multinational companies (MNC’s) has exemplified the ugly side of post Fordism. Production is now dominated by giant retailers such as American retailer Wal-Mart, which buys products from manufacturers who in turn arrange to have their products made by independently owned factories. In clothing manufacturing, for example, most manufactures do not employ any garment workers at all. Instead, they rely on factories around the world to make their clothing, which they sell in departmental stores and retail outlets. Clothing manufacturers do not own any of these factories and therefore are not responsible for the conditions under which work is done. The retailers and manufacturers are only interested in paying the lowest wage possible. Two third of all the clothing made in the USA is made in countries such as India, Bangladesh and China where the workers are paid a fraction of the US wages under the most inhumane and harshest of work conditions(Applebaum and Bonacich,2000)
Post Fordism has led to inequalities within the firms between the core workers, who are highly skilled, well paid and enjoy job security and other benefits and the peripheral workers who are usually part time casual workers who are poorly paid and enjoy very few benefits. Large scale firms only transfer the production to small scale firms when the production load is high, leading to lack of work in the smaller firms when the load of production is less. Trade unionism and worker rights have weakened as the workers feel less integrated and united. People usually start off their career by working in paid or unpaid part time or full time internships and the age at which one gets a stable, full time job is much higher than it used to be. One has to be properly trained and qualified to get a job. MNC’s invest in only those countries that sell cheap labour. If a country has nothing to sell, it does not exist in the world market.
Though a number of flaws of the Fordist era were eliminated by the emergence of post Fordism,we can see that this mode of production too came with its set of drawbacks. This new set of transformations, which has to do with the establishment of global markets, new technology and the incorporation into the world economy of new areas and the increasing competitiveness of the firms within and across nations, is impacting and overturning existing patterns of division of labour, power and inequalities and markets.
Surveillance Capital and Post-Fordist Accumulation: Towards a Critical Political Economy of Surveillance-for-Profit
Main Article Content
Abstract
This article presents a critical political economy of contemporary surveillance-for-profit. The article makes the central argument that surveillance capital emerged out of the contradictions of capitalist accumulation and remains subject to the imperative of accumulation for the sake of ever more accumulation. Platforms constitute the infrastructure and surveillance provides the instrument for the expropriation-accumulation-commodification of user-generated data. Firstly, the article maps how surveillance capital valorizes. Surveillance capital derives surplus value from expropriation rather than exploitation in a strict Marxian sense. Secondly, the article shows that surveillance capital is far from unique in its expropriation of both resources and labor. Indeed, capitalist accumulation has always entailed both expropriation and exploitation. Thirdly, the article argues that while surveillance has always been a key tool for shaping capital-labor relations, surveillance capital as such first emerged under Fordism and has now become an integral part of a Post-Fordist mode of flexible accumulation that is based on the expansion and intensification of forms of surveillance that arose in response to the requirements and contradictions of earlier modes of capitalist accumulation. The article concludes that Post-Fordist flexible accumulation in general and surveillance capital’s valorization in particular may end up producing a crisis of effective demand, as workers who are subject to increasing precariousness and disposability may no longer have the income to consume the commodities on whose sale surveillance capital ultimately depends.
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