Implementing Automation: The Shopfloor Politics of Technological Change in the Canadian Aerospace Sector

Abstract

What are the social processes of integrating new production technologies into existing work processes? How do management and trade union approaches shape the implementation and debugging of new technologies on the shopfloor? Drawing on the industrial relations literature on debugging and four cases of technological change at a major Canadian aerospace manufacturer, I develop a theoretically grounded typology of social patterns of implementation that explains how managerial and union approaches shape the deployment of new technology in the workplace. Managerial strategic choices are shaped by business requirements for control of the labour process and the development of the productive forces. In navigating these pressures, managers may choose to integrate workers into the implementation process or impose change with little or no worker involvement. Unions face a choice between engaging in the processes of technological change on the shopfloor to shape the trajectory of change or remaining disengaged at the point of production and prioritising interventions at other levels, such as formal bargaining. Cross-classifying these approaches generates four distinct types of implementation process each with varying implications for the speed of rollout, the productivity gains realised from a particular technological change, and the autonomy of workers under their new work process. This model reflects the highly contingent and continually shifting dynamics of technological change within the workplace and highlights the limitations of models which generalise patterns of conflict and compromise across entire industries or workplaces.