ABSTRACT
Current upheavals in the auto industry typify how labor organizations are being put on the defensive by changes in global economic relations. These changes have an impact on new developments in the labor process, where there are many prescriptive strategic prognoses for labor union participation. Purveyors of the new consensus invariably hold independent unions responsible for complicity with management in the errors of Fordist companies. By Fordist we mean not just mass production for mass markets, but also the corporate decision-making ethos premised on two separate interests—those of management and those of labor.
