Book Review New Worlds Of Work.varieties Of Work In Car Factories In The Bric Countries.pdf

Book Reviews

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begs the question whether a closer relationship could stem the tide of union decline and voter disenfranchisement from left-of-centre parties. MARK BERGFELD Queen Mary University of London New Worlds of Work: Varieties of Work in Car Factories in the BRIC Countries by ¨ Ulrich Jurgens and Martin Krzywdzinski. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016, 368 pp., ISBN: 9780198722670, £55.00, hardback.

New Worlds of Work examines the organisation of work in auto companies in Brazil, Russia, India and China (the so-called BRIC countries), refreshingly moving beyond previous research on employment relations and work in the auto industry that predominantly focused on Western countries and Japan. However, production and employment levels have stagnated or declined in these old industrial centres in the 21st century, while they have strongly grown in the BRIC countries, and China has become the largest auto producing country, making this book a timely contribution to understanding contemporary employment relations and work organisation in the auto industry. The empirical research undertaken for this book is superb. The authors and their collaborators in each of the countries conducted 353 interviews, focusing on Toyota and Volkswagen, as well as one home-grown car producer respectively. The core empirical chapters focus on a number of substantive aspects of work – recruitment and vocational training, employee development, pay systems, work organisation and industrial relations – and compare developments and outcomes between companies within and across countries. Each of these chapters consists of four country case studies, which are based on the research across the companies. These empirical chapters are clearly structured and easily accessible. The country case studies have succinct summaries and the overall conclusion delivers the main findings and comparative lessons. The five empirical chapters are independently suitable for teaching in comparative employment relations, international HRM and international management at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Theoretically, the book returns to the convergence debate that has been considered in the literatures on employment relations, international management, lean production, high performance work systems and work organisation. It inquires as to what extent global production and manufacturing systems can be implemented in different countries and examines constraining factors such as national institutions, historical legacies and culture. The convergence and divergence arguments have come in ebbs and flows and early seminal accounts emphasized industrialization as a driving force for the convergence of management and work organisation (Kerr et al. 1962). However, detailed country studies by institutionalists pointed to continuing diversity across countries (Dore 1973; Streeck 1992). These institutionalist accounts were challenged though by sweeping globalisation and lean production convergence ¯ arguments (Womack et al. 1991; Omae 1999). More differentiated arguments were developed subsequently, whereby the French research group GERPISA (Groupe d’Etude et de Recherche Permanent sur l’Industrie et les Salari´es de l’Automobile) argued that new hybrids emerged when production systems met foreign conditions (Boyer 1998); while Katz and Derbyshire (2000) observed a ‘converging divergence’,  C 2017

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British Journal of Industrial Relations

pointing to the same diverging employment patterns within countries that, however, emerged across a wide range of countries. ¨ Jurgens and Krzywdzinski’s book is the most important contribution to the convergence debate since the early 2000s. Drawing on their unparalleled empirical work, the authors detail to what extent multinational companies (MNCs) were able to implement their global production system, work organisation principles and employment relation standards across countries. The authors express surprise by the degree to which Toyota and VW were able to implement their training system, pay principles, employee development and shop-floor organisation in a very similar fashion across the BRIC countries. In this sense, MNCs seem to have more degrees of freedom to implement standardized work and production systems across borders than was recognised in previous institutional or cultural literatures. The crucial differences are not within MNCs across countries but between companies as Toyota and VW pursue distinct work and production strategies. Most importantly, Toyota and VW have different approaches with regards to labour representation. Toyota seeks to keep unions at arm length, while VW attempts to implement variations of the German works council system across the world. In the area of labour representation differences between countries remain the strongest due to different labour laws, union traditions and historical legacies. Despite these differences in the functioning of employment relations, they only marginally influence the implementation of global work and production standards. The book also contributes to the literature on high-road versus low-road work, examining the impact of MNCs and whether they contribute to an upgrading or deterioration of working standards in BRIC countries. For examining this, the authors develop the notion of ‘worlds of work’. The main focus is on the shop floor realities and work outcomes, but one of the introductory chapters goes beyond this and also considers the life of car workers outside of the factory. Even though these empirical stories are rather brief, they provide interesting insights into the lives of car workers in BRIC economies. Auto-workers are described as being part of an emerging middle-class. They benefit from extensive training provision and, compared to the predominant service sectors in these countries, receive high wages and have stable employment contracts. However, to what level this translates into decent living standards depends very much on the socialeconomic context, in particular housing and commuting seem to crucially matter. The interviewed car workers in Brazil owned their mortgage-free house and conveniently lived in close proximity to the plants, while living standards for Chinese and Russian auto workers was worse through the lack of affordable housing and lengthy commutes. Further, auto workers in the BRIC countries operate in booming markets, which result in regular overtime and extra-shifts, resulting in higher incomes and less family time. Overall, the book is cautiously optimistic that auto plants contribute to the upgrading of work in BRIC countries. Hereby, the extensive investments of MNCs in training and development of employees are crucial. Interestingly, training is not only organized within companies, but MNCs such as Volkswagen collaborate with public bodies and training institutions and help them to develop and upgrade. This collaboration is certainly beneficial for VW, but in the process valuable knowledge, standards and expertise are transferred to public training institutions, contributing to economic development in the BRIC countries. Despite these positive MNC contributions, I was left wondering to what degree the examined MNCs outsource work and if exploitive work practices can be observed at suppliers and within close by supplier parks, but this was beyond the scope of the study.  C 2017

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Book Reviews

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Overall, New Worlds of Work is a wonderful addition to comparative research in work and employment relations, making important contributions to the convergence ¨ and low road versus high road employment relations debates. Jurgens and Krzywdzinski use a bottom-up approach, building a strong foundation through impressive empirical research on the shop floor realities and work organisation in the BRIC countries and then they move upwards to develop carefully calibrated generalizations. The result is a fine-grained, in-depth analysis of contemporary worlds of work, which will stay with us and enrich academic debate for years to come. MARCO HAUPTMEIER Cardiff University

References Boyer, R. (1998). Between Imitation and Innovation: The Transfer and Hybridization of Productive Models in the International Automotive Industry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dore, R. P. (1973). British Factory, Japanese Factory: the Origins of National Diversity in Industrial Relations. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Katz, H. C. and Darbishire, O. (2000). Converging Divergences: Worldwide Changes in Employment Systems. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kerr, C., Dunlop, J. T., Harbison, F. H. and Myers, C. A. (1962). Industrialism and Industrial Man: The Problems of Labor and Management in Economic Growth. London: Heinemann. ¯ Omae, K. (1999). The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy. New York: HarperBusiness. Streeck, W. (1992). Social Institutions and Economic Performance: Studies of Industrial Relations in Advanced Capitalist Economies. London: Sage Publications. Womack, J. P., Jones, D. T. and Roos, D. (1991). The Machine That Changed the World: How Japan’s Secret Weapon in the Global Auto Wars Will Revolutionize Western Industry. New York, NY: Harper Perennial. Surviving Job Loss: Papermakers in Maine and Minnesota, by Kenneth A. Root and Rosemarie J. Park. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, Kalamazo, MI, 2016, 251 pp., ISBN: 9780880995085, $19.99, paperback. In Surviving Job Loss: Papermakers in Maine and Minnesota, Kenneth Root and Rosemarie Park present an in-depth comparative analysis of dislocated workers in down-sized paper mills owned by the Verso Corporation in Sartell, Minnesota, and Bucksport, Maine, USA. The downsizings took place in 2011 and the negative impact of these layoffs (which saw 169 workers let go from the Sartell mill and 151 workers from the Bucksport mill) was amplified by a fatal explosion and fire at Sartell soon after. The accident led to Verso permanently closing the facility and 280 subject to redundancy. This is the context in which Root and Park begin their analysis, focusing on how the job loss affected the dislocated paper mill workers in terms of their family and social life, mental and physical health and financial status. Root and Park gathered the bulk of the primary data for their analysis from 10-page questionnaires that were distributed to displaced workers from Sartell and Bucksport.  C 2017

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