WORKER RESISTANCE AND TAYLORISM IN BRITAIN

Worker resistance and employer conservatism in Britain are said to hav e combined to retard British economic development and frustrate the em ergence of modem managerial structures based on Taylorism and/or Fordi sm. However, the notion of worker resistance is a deeply unsatisfactor y one because it fails to distinguish different forms of resistance an d their implications for the labour process. And if British employers were slow to abandon older tools and techniques, they nevertheless did so. Worker resistance secured better terms and conditions of employme nt but was incapable of altering in any fundamental way the new method s of organizing work and managing production.