‘Some feckin’ jump like’: Fordism and Ford workers in Ireland

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the experiences of Irish workers employed in the Ford Marina Plant, Cork, Ireland between 1917 and 1932. The piece reconstructs how workers in Cork, unused to modern factory employment, adapted to Fordism. It begins with an overview of the ideology of Fordism and how it was implemented in Cork and then proceeds to examine the difficulties experienced by craft and agricultural workers in adapting to a modern factory environment as well as other features of Fordism, such as the strict discipline of the firm and the company’s severe attitude towards trade unions. Finally, the article analyses resistance among the workforce to management authority, placing these in their broader context. Throughout, the article makes extensive use of later oral testimony, the social memory of the workforce and reading against the grain of official documents to reconstruct the experiences of workers whose own testimony is no longer available.