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[...] the most important effect of the hypermobility of capital on labor movements is not so much its direct impact on workers, but its indirect impact. In this view, the hypermobility of capital has weakened de facto state sovereignty . And as states become incapable of effectively controlling flows of capital, their capacity to protect their citizens' livelihoods and other workers' rights; including the welfare state and substantive democracy, also declines (Tilly 1995; Castells 1997: 252-4, 354-5). States that insist on maintaining expensive social compacts with their citizens, including their working classes, risk being abandoned en masse by investors scouring the world for the highest possible returns. From this perspective, the most consequential aspect of the "race to the bottom" takes the form of pressure on states to repeal social welfare provisions and other fetters on profit maximization within their borders. The rocky debut of the new European currency (the Euro) has been taken as one example of this process, with European countries being "punished" for failing to dismantle social protection schemes at a sufficiently rapid pace to suit a hypermobile capital.
Contentions about the state of world labor are based on assumptions about the impact of contemporary globalization on workers' bargaining power. A useful starting point for differentiating types of workers' bargaining power is Erik Olin Wright's (2 000: 962) distinction between associational and structural power. Associational power consists of "the various forms of power that result from the formation of collective organization of workers" (most importantly, trade unions and political parties). Structural power, in contrast, consists of the power that accrues to workers simply from their location ... in the economic system." Wright further divides "structural" power into two subtypes. The first subtype of structural power (which we shall call marketplace bargaining power) is the power that "results dIrectly from tight labor markets." The second subtype of structural power (which we shall call workplace bargaining power) is the power that results "from the strategic location of a particular group of workers within a key industrial sector." Marketplace bargaining power can take several forms including (1) the possession of scarce skills that are in demand by employers, (2) low levels of general unemployment, and (3) the ability of workers to pull out of the labor market entirely and survive on nonwage sources of income.8 Workplace bargaining power, on the other hand, accrues to workers who are enmeshed in tightly integrated production processes, where a localized work stoppage in a key node can cause disruptions on a much wider scale than the stoppage itself. Such bargaining power has been in evidence when enture assembly lines have been shut down by a stoppage in one segment of the line, and when entire corporations relying on the just-in-time delivery of parts have been brought to a standstill by railway workers' strikes.
If the hypermobility of capital is widely seen as having undermined marketplace and associational bargaining power, related "post-Fordist" transformations in the organization of production and labor process are widely seen as having undermined labor's workplace bargaining power. Thus, subcontracting and other forms of vertical disintegration are seen as having reversed the historical trend toward increased workplace bargaining power that was brought about through the spread of Fordist systems of mass production. Fordism tended to dramatically increase workplace bargaining power by increasing the vulnerability of capital to workers' direct action at the point of production. To be sure, continuous flow production (including the assembly line) tended to decrease labor's marketplace bargaining power by homogenizing and deskilling industrial work and by making it possible (indeed preferable) to draw on latent reserve armies of labor with little or no industrial experience. Moreover, continuous flow production tended to weaken associational power by bringing into the proletariat "a mass of unorganized workers" who could not be easily absorbed into the existing artisanal unions or left political parties.
[...] we can draw on Immanuel Wallerstein's notion that historical capitalism is characterized by a "system-level problem." That is, profits can be made - even with the partial de-commodification of labor and the establishment of expensive social contracts - as long as those concessions are made to only a small percentage of the world's workers. As Wallerstein put it, with reference to the post-Second World War social contracts: "One could cut in several-hundred-million western workers and still make the system profitable. But if one cut in several billion Third World workers, there would be nothing left for further capital accumulation" (1995: 25).
[...] The U.S. labor movement's success in having open immigration outlawed in the 1920s set the stage for the stabilization of the U.S. working class and contributed to the subsequent CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) victories in the 1930s. At the same time, however, this U.S. labor movement "success" shut off what had been an essential social safety valve for Europe in the nineteenth century. It thereby transformed the terrain on which workers' movements operated in Europe and, according to E. H. Carr (1945), helped set the stage for the defeat of European labor movements and the rise of fascism.
On December 30, 1936, workers occupied General Motors' Fisher Body Plants No. 1 and No. 2 in Flint, Michigan. By March 12, 1937, General Motors (GM; the United States' largest industrial corporation with vast financial resources and a network of anti-union spies) was forced to capitulate and sign a contract with the United Auto Workers (UAW). This was the beginning of a flood of strikes that brought unionization to the mass-production industries of the United States, at a time of both high unemployment (i.e., weak market-based bargaining power) and feeble labor organization (i.e., weak associational power).
A key to the UAW's success was labor's workplace bargaining power: the ability of the workers to exploit their position within the complex division of labor characteristic of mass production. The Flint sit-down strike that paralyzed GM's Fisher Body plant was planned and executed by a "militant minority" of autoworkers who by "unexpectedly stopping the assembly line and sitting down inside the plant ...catalyzed pro-union sentiment among the vast majority of apathetic workers" (Dubofsky and Va n Tine 1977: 255). The strike wave demonstrated the limits of the assembly lines' technical control of the workforce: a relatively small number of activists could bring an entire plant's production to a halt. As Edwards (1979: 128) put it, "[technical] control linked the entire plant's workforce, and when the line stopped, every worker necessarily joined the strike."
For several decades following the CIO victories, three employer responses - relocation of production (disinvestment in union strongholds), process innovations (mainly automation), and "political exchange" (the promotion of "responsible" unionism and the repression of "irresponsible" unionism) - progressively undermined the structural strength of U.S. labor in general, and autoworkers in particular. When a new upsurge in rank-and-file unrest at the end of the 1960s (symbolized by the "Lordstown Blues") pushed the UAW back toward confrontational tactics with "Operation Apache" (a campaign of short, small, but highly disruptive strikes), the automakers abandoned the promotion of "responsible unionism" and pursued geographical relocation and automation of production with a newfound zeal.
During a 1990 strike at the Hyundai Group, auto assembly-line workers described the following incidents:
"Only a small number of [Hyundai Motor] workers were blocking the road at first [in solidarity with striking Hyundai shipyard workers] ", said Roh Sang Soo, a young assembly line worker...."Then the police threw teargas into the compound while we were working. We could not work. ...I was on the Excel line at the time. I smelled the teargas. I came out of the plant and joined the demonstration" ....Those who came to work the next day again got teargassed. "We couldn't work because of the gas", said assembly line worker Lee Sang Hui. "If one person cannot work, the whole line stops. I just joined the demonstration and sang songs and clapped. "
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The Japanese auto makers brought to these sites many of the organizational practices of automobile production in Japan. These practices spread still further as U.S. and Western European automobile firms responded to the Japanese competitive threat by selectively emulating Japanese organizational practices. Thus, in the 1980s, flexible work rules, just-in-time delivery systems, teamwork, quality circles, and a move away from vertical integration toward the extensive use of subcontracted inputs (outsourcing) were widely adopted. There was, however, a crucial difference between the original Japanese model and that adopted by the U.S. and Western European multinationals. That is, the latter did not promise job security to their core labor force. In other words, the cost-cutting measures of ]apanese lean production were adopted without the related employment policies. This model might thus be labeled "lean and mean" (cf. Harrison 1997). In contrast, the original "Toyotist" model - which offers employment security to a core labor force in exchange for cooperation, but at the same time creates a large buffer of less privileged workers without the same rights and benefits - might be labeled "lean and dual." The difference between these two models, we will argue, is crucial to understanding the dynamics of contemporary labor unrest in the world automobile industry.
Through the 1990s, the lean-and-mean version predominated. Whereas Japanese multinationals operating in core countries tended to implement the homegrown model (Florida and Kenney 1991: 390- 1), U.S . corporations have generally taken the lean-and-mean road, as have Japanese producers operating in Southeast Asia and Latin America. Deyo (1996a: 9) argued that "authoritarian politics and repressive labor regimes" are characteristic of the main sites of industry expansion in low-wage countries. In Thailand, Mitsubishi has not extended employment guarantees to its core workforce (Deyo 1996b: 145-6). In Korea, the domestic auto producers (except Kia) continue to pursue a low-wage, high-turnover strategy of mass production and an anti-union and autocratic managerial style (Rodgers 1 2 On the U.S. automobile industry's emulation of Japanese production methods, see among others Abo (1994). And in China, "layoffs are becoming a painful reality" as the central government promotes a "leaning-out of the industry" in an effort to bring labor productivity in Chinese automobile factories in line with the standards set by international "market rule" (Treece 1997c). Likewise, Japanese transnationals in Mexico are employing traditional Fordist techniques; they have found it "economically rational to place a heavier emphasis on low wages, even if the consequent high turnover disrupts quality circles and other lean production techniques" (Shaiken 1995: 248-9, 254).
Yet, to the extent that the main trend in the world automobile industry is toward lean-and-dual production, then the most likely sites of future autoworker labor unrest will be among the lower-tier workers in the subcontracting system. Yet, in these sites, strong grievances do not go hand in hand with strong workplace bargaining power. Moreover, while upper-tier workers are likely to have strong workplace bargaining power, they are also likely to have fewer grievances, and at the same time they are likely to be physically and psychically separated from lower-tier workers with greater grievances and less structural power. And with the "leaning" of the industry, primary-sector workers will account for a tiny fraction of the automobile (and overall) working class. Finally, the distribution of upper- and lower-tier (secure and insecure) workers is likely to correspond to and reinforce the core-periphery geographical divide as well as to overlap with differences in ethnicity, place of residence, and citizenship - with important implications for world labor politics.