The Politics of New Technology

Abstract

A recent article explains how one of the most militant workforces in the country, car workers at British Leyland's Longbridge plant, came to have its spirit of resistance broken. There are several reasons: the failure to mobilise members in response to the sacking of the union convenor late in 1979, the aggressive management tactics of Michael Edwardes, mass unemployment, the combativity of the Thatcher government. However, what the authors of this New Society piece single out as 'the real turning point' was the introduction of new technology which forced on the unions 'flexibility' by deskilling jobs, massively increasing output, and introducing an electronic information network called Machine Monitoring System that resulted in much greater surveillance of individual employees.