Labor's power and industrial performance: Automobile production regimes in the United States, Germany, and Japan.

摘要

This thesis analyzes industrial relations and industrial performance in the automobile industries of the United States, Germany, and Japan from the 1950s to the early-1990s. It develops an analytic framework for comparing the production regimes of advanced capitalist countries, and a typology of production regimes based on the form and scope of labor's inclusion in corporate decision making.;Two basic types of contemporary production regimes are identified. In segregation regimes labor's redistributive interests (wages and benefits) are included in corporate decision making through collective bargaining, while its productivist interests (employment, training, skills) are not. In integration regimes labor's redistributive as well as productivist interests are included in corporate decision making, either through codetermination ("representative integration," Germany) or through lifetime employment guarantees ("incorporative integration," Japan). It is argued that the (relative) integration of capital's and labor's interests in corporate decision making facilitates the (relative) integration of their functions in production, and results in a more equitable as well as more efficient production regime.;The thesis is tested through a comparison of the institutional structures of the three regimes, as well as of quantitative indicators of substantive outcomes of these regimes for labor's fortunes (compensation and employment security) and for industrial performance (auto reliability ratings and auto balance of trade). It is shown that the auto industries of Germany and Japan have performed better than that of the United States both in terms of labor's fortunes but also in terms of industrial efficiency. This gap has narrowed since the mid-1980s, in response to the institutional reforms in the United States auto industry that have transformed it in the direction of an integration regime.