ILPC 2027

In the last two decades the trend towards lean and flexible production has been almost universal in manufacturing. Firms increase their product variety to meet shifting customer demands; and buffers and lead times are minimized to reduce the capital stock. In general, across almost all sectors production systems are more closely linked to instantaneous demand. Evidence suggests that the crisis in 2008 and 2009 has functioned as a catalyst for the further diffusion of lean and flexible production systems. It was a near-universal lesson during the crisis that large stocks of manufactured goods represent significant risks for a firm’s profitability – the thousands of new cars waiting for buyers next to American highways being the most prominent example. 

Lean and flexible production does not only require the respective organizational concepts and technological systems, it also calls for a flexible workforce. On the one hand, the combination of high product variety and short lead times increase the requirements of functional flexibility in the labour process. On the other hand, the availability of labour has to be similarly regulated with the fluctuations of production volume. Sociologists have frequently pointed out that the use of labour power in capitalist democracies is not a mere administrative challenge; rather employers are dependent on some degree of voluntariness, and thus on a labour force accepting the requirements of flexible and lean production. 

Research on the transformation of welfare programmes has focused on the production of a new flexible labour force. Influenced by E.P. Thompson and Foucault, critical analysts have pointed out that a primary aim of the almost universal ‘workfare’ schemes and activation policies is the construction of a flexible labour force accepting precarious work conditions and continuous transitions between unemployment and the low-wage sector. In contrast, the ‘factory’ has hardly been analysed as a site of the production of a flexible labour force. The aim of the paper is to address this perspective. Using both qualitative and quantitative evidence from an ongoing project in the German car industry, the paper explores the effects of the crisis on the subjectivity of labour and asks: Are the work orientations including the perceptions of flexible work changing? How do workers in general perceive the firm’s demand for flexibility? Do workers merely internalize the verdict of flexible work or do they set boundaries to the firm’s increasing demands of labour flexibility?  More than 50 qualitative interviews conducted in autumn of 2009, at the peak of the crisis, and a workforce survey (n>1.500) carried out in summer 2010 in a traditional location of the German car industry reveals that the effects of long lasting short-term work, new requirements of spatial mobility and extraordinary working-time flexibility are on the minds of the workers.