Technological Choice

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Excerpt from Technological Choice: Obstacles and Opportunities for Union-Mangement Consultation on New Technology: February 1988 Over the past decade, efforts to reverse the decline in manufacturing productivity have stimulated rapid increases in the sophistication of production technologies. Though often conceded as necessary in light of increased global economic competition, technological change nonetheless creates serious tensions in an already troubled system of labor-management relations. Tensions are building in several directions. Many union members see new technology as a threat to job security and skills and are pressing their leaders to include technology as part of the package of issues over which union leaders should negotiate (Parker 1985, Slaughter 1983, Shaiken 1985).Many union leaders are now haunted by concessions (particularly in the area of job structures and work rules) that were granted to employers during the recent recession and are attempting to reconsolidate their influence in the workplace (Kuttner 1986, Hershizer 1987, Solomon 1987, Cornfield 1987, Kochan and Piore 1985).Employers may be attracted by the lure of substantial reductions in labor cost and by the negotiating leverage to be gained from new equipment and processes, but they cannot ignore the human resource and industrial relations impacts of indiscriminate adoption of new technology (Beer, etal 1985). As some companies have discovered, headlong rushes into untried technologies, or trying too much at once, can lead to painful results (cf., Liker, Roitman and Roskies 1987), many more have come to realize that the benefits of new technology cannot be fully realized without the right combination of equipment, skills and people (Davis and Taylor 1976, Walton 1981, 1987). About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.