I. Introduction

1. The automobile in American myth and reality
2. The early history of the automobile
3. The Five Dollar Day: Fordism, Taylorism, and Americanism
4. The "labor problem" and the early struggle for unionization
5. Vanishing alternatives to the auto: where did all the electric trolleys go?

Readings:

• Animated Car Crash #1: http://www.nealadams.com/carcrash.html
• Animated EvilKenevil #2: http://www.stickdeath.com/flashers.htm
• "Notes to Cronenberg’s ‘Crash": http://www.flf.com/crash/allnotes.htm
• Jane Holtz Kay, Asphalt Nation, chs. 7 and 8.
• Fordism and Americanism: http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/soc/courses/soc2r3/gramsci/gramfor.htm
• Antonio Gramsci, "Americanism and Fordism," Selections from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 277-318.
• Ernest J. Yanarella and William C. Green, "Building Other People’s Cars: Organized Labor and the Crisis of Fordism," North American Auto Unions in Crisis: Lean Production as Contested Terrain, introduction.

Video: "Crash" (excerpts) — UK onsite class only.

II. The Big Three Automakers in the American Century

1. The rise of the Big Three: market saturation and Sloanism
2. The making of a branch plant economy in Canada: the case of the auto industry
3. The car culture in a hypermobile, individualistic society
4. The UAW, the Wagner Act, and the NLRA paradigm: the post-war "historic peace" between management and labor
5. The crystallization of the auto-highway-petroleum(-rubber) complex in the fifties
6. Modern times: work rationalization and worker alienation--the case of Lordstown
7. The impact of the automobile on North American habits, folkways, and behavior at mid-century

Readings:

• Kay, Asphalt Nation, 9 and 10.

Film: "Modern Times" — UK onsite class only.

III. The Failure of Success: Fordism in Crisis and Transition

1. Running on empty: OPEC and the oil shocks of the seventies
2. Hard times and managerial drift in the American auto industry
3. Divergent labor responses to economic crisis and corporate challenge: the UAW vs. its Canadian wing
4. The challenge of the compacts: the auto industry and the rising sun of Japan
5. Complacency in the management ranks: Chrysler's bailout, GM's rude awakening, and Ford's recovery
6. The failure of state policy: protectionist threats, voluntary quotas, and the rise of the transplants
7. The UAW under siege: from adversarial unionism to labor-management cooperation

Readings:

• Kay, Asphalt Nation, chs. 11 and 12.
• Sam Gindin, "Breaking Away: The Formation of the Canadian Auto Workers," Studies in Political Economy, 29 (Summer 1989), 63-89.

Film: "Roger & Me" — UK onsite class only.

IV. The "Post-Fordist" Challenge of Japan and Japanese Production Methods

1. From Fordist mass production to post-Fordist lean production?
2. The components of flexible or "lean" production: economies of scope, team concept, continuous improvement, just-in-time delivery, multiskilled workers, and integrated assembly and parts production
3. Post-Fordism, neo-Fordism, hyper-Fordism, crypto-Fordism?
4. The Japanese production system: lean or mean production?
5. The Japanese keiretsu structure Americanized

Readings:

• Japanese Auto Industry Timelne: http://www.japanauto.com/about/hjai_toc.html
• Flink, The Automobile Age, ch. 13.
• Carl H.A. Dassbach, "The Social Organization of Production, Labor Control, and Post-Fordism in the Japanese Automobile Industry," in Green and Yanarella, eds., North American Auto Unions in Crisis, ch. 1.
• Ernest J. Yanarella, "The UAW and CAW Under the Shadow of Post-Fordism: A Tale of Two Unions," in Green and Yanarella, eds., North American Auto Unions in Crisis, ch. 3.

Videotape: Frontline Special — UK onsite class only.

V. Japanese Automobile Investment as an Economic Development Strategy in the U.S. and Canada

1. Sub-national governments as last entrepreneurs: incentive packages and the rise of the entrepreneurial state
2. Patterns of auto industrial recruitment in the U.S. and Canada
3. Forms of public opposition to Japanese auto recruitment: the case of Georgetown/Toyota
4. Learning from Japan: GM's Poletown and Saturn projects

Readings:

• H. Brinton Milward and Heidi Hosbach Newman, ""State Incentive Packages and the Industrial Location Decision," in Ernest J. Yanarella and William C. Green, eds., The Politics of Industrial Recruitment, pp. 23-51.
• Ernest J. Yanarella and William C. Green, "Community, Labor, and Environmental Participation in Industrial Recruitment: East Asian Automobile Investment in Canada in Comparative Perspective, Economic Development Quarterly, Vol. 7 (May 1993), 140-159.
• Ernest J. Yanarella and Herbert G. Reid, "Problems of Coalition Building in Japanese Auto Alley: Public Opposition to the Georgetown/Toyota Plant," in Yanarella and Green, eds., The Politics of Industrial Recruitment, pp. 153-173.

Film: "Poletown Lives" — UK onsite class only.

VI. Between Fordism and Post-Fordism: Comparative Auto Union Responses to the "Post-Fordism"

1. The American model of conflict and accommodation
2. The Canadian model of conflict and struggle
3. The West German model of democratic corporatism
4. The Japanese model of enterprise unions and managerial hegemony

Readings:

• Lowell Turner, "Industrial Relations and the Reorganization of Work in West Germany: Lessons for the U.S.," in Lawrence Mishel and Paula Voos, eds., Unions and Economic Competitiveness, 217-246.
• Lowell Turner, "Three Plants, Three Futures," Technology Review, Vol. 92 (January 1989), pp.38-45.

VII. East Asian Transplants, Organized Labor, and the Future of the North American Auto Industry

1. Japanese production methods and auto assembly plants transplanted: the U.S., Canadian, (and British) experiences
2. Comparative perspectives on unionized vs. nonunionized transplants in the U.S. and Canada
3. Worker training in theory and practice: UAW vs. CAW

Readings:

• Laurie Graham, "The Myth of Egalitarianism: Worker Responses to Post-Fordism at Subaru-Isuzu," in Green and Yanarella, eds., North American Auto Unions in Crisis, ch. 3.
• Steve Babson, "UAW, Lean Production, and Labor-Management Relations at Auto-Alliance," in Green and Yanarella, eds., North American Auto Unions, ch. 4.
• James Rinehart et al., "CAW, Worker Commitment, and Labor-Management Relations Under Lean Production at CAMI," in Green and Yanarella, eds., North American Auto Unions in Crisis, ch. 5.
• Ernest J. Yanarella, "Worker Training at Toyota and Saturn: Hegemony Begins in the Training Center Classroom," in Green and Yanarella, eds., North American Auto Unions in Crisis, ch. 6.

VIII. The Future of the Automobile, the Future of the American Auto Industry

1. Ecological cost accounting: alternatives to the automobile?
2. The automobile culture from the Model T to the hypercar: cultural, social, and other rigidities impeding transportation alternatives
3. The auto industry, union labor, and the North American Free Trade Agreement: the prospects for a solidarity strategy for North American labor
4. Alternative scenarios for the future the North American auto industry and union labor

Readings:

• Kay, Asphalt Nation, chs. 2, 6, 13-18.
• RMI Hypercar Strategy: http://www.hypercar.com
• Reinventing the Wheels: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96apr/oil/wheels.htm
• Toward a Radical Transformation of the Automobile: http://www.ef.org/essays/essay.cfm?essayID=56&page=1
• Dassbach--Where is the North American Auto Industry Headed: http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/EJS/vol1.001/dasshtm.htm