HIGH-PERFORMANCE ORGANIZATIONS AND EMPLOYMENT FLEXIBILITY - A CASE-STUDY OF IN-SITU CHANGE AT THE POWELL RIVER PAPER-MILL, 1980-1994

Throughout virtually all mass production industries in North America, including the Canadian newsprint industry, a significant theme of rest ructuring involves a transition from 'Fordist' to more 'flexible' meth ods of production and employment. In this paper, shifts towards smalle r, more flexible employment conditions are assessed from the perspecti ve of a model of 'high-performance organizations'. In this model, empl oyment flexibility is defined in terms of the blurring of the boundari es between management and workers and by continual investment in skill promotion in the pursuit of a polyvalent workforce. In practice, such issues are subject to labour-management bargaining, the outcomes of w hich are uncertain. Empirically, this paper provides a case study of b argaining over employment flexibility, specifically at the Powell Rive r paper mill, to assess the extent to which the standards of the high- performance model are being achieved.