Replies: "Better times" cannot sustain stock prices

[Larry Haiven]

I've been reading the points made about global dispersal of production
facilities with interest.  While this development would seem to decrease
the reliance of capitalists on the cooperation of workers in a single
enterprise or location, there is another, quite opposite effect at play.

Take the North American auto industry, for example - an example of widely
dispersed sourcing and production.  Problem is, when workers down tools in
a plant in Toledo, Ohio or St. Therese, Quebec the entire continental
industry can grind to a halt rather than a single plant.

There are two problems presented here: first is continental (or global)
integration which places individual plants in a web of production; second
is "just-in-time" techniques, which do away with inventories and make even
small work disruptions more calamitous for the firm(s).

We need to look at these things dialectically.  Within every phenomenon is
the seed of its opposite.  I'm not saying my point overrides the effect of
global disaggregation, but it may limit the extent to which one can speak
of "substantial reorganization of production."

Larry Haiven, Associate Professor
Dept. of Industrial Relations & Organizational Behaviour
College of Commerce
University of Saskatchewan
25 Campus Drive
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
CANADA S7N 5A7
Tel. (306) 966-8451
Fax. (306) 966-8709
Email: haiven at commerce.usask.ca