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| Title: | What is Fordism? Restructuring Work in the South African Metal Industry |
| Authors: | Maller, Judy Dwolatsky, Barry |
| Year: | 1993 |
| Periodical: | Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa |
| Issue: | 22 |
| Pages: | 70-86 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | South Africa |
| Subjects: | labour work organization iron and steel industry Development and Technology Economics and Trade Labor and Employment |
| External link: | https://d.lib.msu.edu/tran/222/OBJ/download |
| Abstract: | A framework for understanding contemporary changes in the nature of work is provided by the fordist/postfordist model (named after Henry Ford) which argues that fordism can no longer sustain high rates of productivity under changing conditions of accumulation and is rapidly giving way to new methods of production, patterns of consumption and relations of global domination. Although useful in identifying linkages between the labour process and other areas of economic, social and political life, the concept of fordism has obscured much of the complexity within national economies. In this paper, the authors investigate empirically the precise nature of the labour process in the metal industry of South Africa. They argue, firstly, that the literature which posits a sudden rupture between fordism and postfordism cannot account adequately for the restructuring of work in this industry whose labour process demonstrates many important continuities. They also argue that the notion of fordism (and 'racial fordism) has been unproblematically applied to South African manufacturing and does not adequately grasp the nature of its labour process, skewed as it has been by racial patterns of consumption. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |
