ABSTRACT
The most important processes involved in manufacturing motor cars are casting, forging, machining, pressing, the welding or assembly of parts into sub-components and vehicles, and painting. In fact these processes have experienced widely differing rates of technical change and are spread out at very different stages on the road to ‘full automation’—in which, with a handful of planners, repairmen and monitors, the process runs itself. In total mechanization—rather than increased employment of labour—has probably made an even greater contribution to the growth of the motor industry’s output since the war than it did before it. Perhaps the most obvious background circumstance to the car workers’ condition since the war has been the rapid growth of production. So it seems reasonable to inquire how far the strains of increasing output, and especially the demands or effects of fast-rising productivity, have themselves contributed to labour unrest in the car firms.
