Globalization and the Politics of Production: General Motors? ?Global Manufacturing System? in Mexico and Wisconsin.

Through a comparison of two auto plants assembling Chevy Suburbans, one in Janesville, Wisconsin and the other in Silao, Mexico, this paper offers an examination of the ways local ?politics of production? shape the shop floor implementation of what General Motors envisions to be a universal ?Global Manufacturing System?. In Silao, an eight-year-old greenfield site, GM has been able to introduce GMS holistically, precisely because the automaker took pains to craft a local politics of production predicated on the assumptions of, and supporting, the company?s ideal factory regime. In Janesville, an eighty-year-old brownfield site, GMS has been adopted piecemeal, with those elements that do not square with plant?s traditional factory regime either not introduced, or warped through the local politics of production. Since both these factories are situated within the North American auto industry, which has undergone a restructuring that places it at the forefront of globalization, and the company, product, and even the corporate vision of the manufacturing system are identical, this study is able to address the influence workers and their unions in these plants have over the implementation of these global trends in their workplaces, as well as the reasoning behind the approaches they adopt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]