Production Politics and Flexible Manufacturing in the South Wales Motor Components Sector

This paper focuses on restructuring in eleven first‐tier suppliers in the South Wales motor components sector and examines the influence of production politics, including plant‐local labor market relations, on the implementation of flexible manufacaturing during the 1980s. Although industrial geographers have recognized the role of recruitment and training in the restructuring of the spatial division of labor they have tended to focus primarily on the role of new firms operating at “green field” sites and view this process as functional to the needs of capital. However, the argument of this paper will be that while new forms of work organization are influenced by the technical and commercial possibilities of new technology and markets, the form of work organization cannot simply be “read off” from the macro‐economic level, but will be partially determined by existing spatiallyuneven social relations of production.