Labour markets, flexible specialization and the new microcorporatism - Thecase of Canada's major appliance industry

"High performance" management systems in unionized workplaces have the pote ntial to create a more microcorporatist industrial relations system in Cana da. Increasing interfirm and intrafirm competitiveness, combined with restr atification of internal and external labour markets, promote a deepening of "core" workforce dependency on employers. Microcorporatist tendencies refl ect more active worker cooperation in achieving management productivity, qu ality and flexibility goals. Analysis of development of these tendencies in the major appliance industry suggests that microcorporatism has contradict ory implications. In one direction lies the displacement of both "social mo vement" unionism and social democratic labour politics by a local-centred u nionism that is increasingly captured by the logic of market competition. I n a second direction Yes a logic of greater worker resistance related to in creased worker control of labour processes.