Implementing automation: a study of the shopfloor politics of technology change in the Canadian aerospace sector

This study examines how varying managerial and trade union strategies shape different social patterns of workplace technological change through a comparative study in the Canadian aerospace sector. Recent advances in technologies such as internet enabled devices, data storage, advanced robotics, and additive manufacturing, among others, have spurred a renewed interest in technology change in the workplace among social scientists. Previous research demonstrates that a key moment in workplace technological change occurs in the implementation and debugging phase, when workplace actors negotiate how a technology will be deployed on the shopfloor. Despite many studies in the labour process and industrial relations traditions examining the implementation of new technologies on the shopfloor, a theoretical framework for grasping the social patterns of debugging has remained lacking. This thesis develops such a framework through the comparative study of four technological changes at two factories operated by a Canadian aerospace firm and thus deepens our understanding of how workplace actors can shape the trajectories of technological change.
\nI explain the observed variations in patterns of implementation through an examination of actor strategies. Here, managerial strategies are defined as a relationship between forcing and fostering while trade union strategies are categorised according to the presence or absence of a considered, timely, and organised union response. Cross classifying managerial and union strategies gives rise to the central theoretical contribution of this study: four social patterns of implementation and debugging each with implications for speed of rollout, efficiency improvements, and worker autonomy. First, a managerial forcing strategy and a developed union strategy produces a contested pattern of implementation characterised by a relatively slow rollout, limited efficiency gains, and limited but generalised worker upskilling. Second, a managerial forcing strategy in the absence of a developed union strategy results in a unilateral pattern of implementation associated with a rapid rollout, managerial satisficing on efficiency gains, and limited worker autonomy. Third, a co- ordinated pattern is the result of a developed union strategy in the context of managerial fostering and produces a steady rollout of the new technology with observable efficiency gains and high levels of worker autonomy. Finally, a co-opted pattern arises from managerial fostering in the absence of a developed union strategy with a rapid rollout, limited efficiency improvements, and isolated worker empowerment at managerial discretion.

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