Just-in-time and Social Relations in the Auto-component Industry

In recent years considerable attention has been directed towards changes that have been occurring within the impact of JIT production on the labour process. Much of this debate has been hinged around attempts to contain and secure the increased vulnerability and dependency the utilisation of JIT creates for capital. As such attention has been focused on the increased opportunities for tightening the control aspects of the labour process, highlighting the increased opportunities for All of these developments have been well documented and have tended to dominate the research agenda on the impact of JIT in motor manufacturing. This paper has no intention to 'claim novelty' with relations to this debate. However, despite the burgeoning literature on changing patterns of work organisation and labour relations in the automobile industry, which continues to operate under the umbrella of 'Japanisation' (Oliver and Wilkinson, 1992), little attention has been focussed on the impact of JIT on the auto-component workers. In response, therefore, the aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate on the new management techniques by addressing the analysis on the auto-component workers. In doing this, it will focus on the impact of JIT on the integrated supply chain, rather than limiting the research agenda to the restructuring process into either car assemblers or auto-component factories treated as separate entities. The focus of this paper will be to offer an analysis concerned with the implications for labour emanating from the introduction of JIT system in the supply chain of the car-seats at the Fiat car plant in Melfi, in Southern Italy. Reporting the results of this empirical research the paper discusses questions relating to the introduction of JIT in the autocomponent manufacturing as the growth of new partnership-based union approaches and the impact of JIT on workers in the supply chain, and their subjective views on it. At the Fiat car plant in Melfi the process of rationalisation involves labour and production reorganisation in the car assembler and in its relations to suppliers. The factory is characterised by the integration of Operational Units (Unità Operativa) which are organisationally separated into teamwork called Elementary Technology Unit (Unità Tecnologica Elementare or UTE). Beyond the factory, the integration is pursued through the JIT inter-connections of macro production cells