Paradoxes of internationalization: British and German trade unions at Ford and General Motors 1967–2000 9781526129970

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Paradoxes of internationalization

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Critical Labour Movement Studies Series editors John Callaghan Steven Fielding Steve Ludlam

Already published in the series

Jenny Andersson, Between growth and security: Swedish social democracy from a strong society to a third way John Callaghan, Steven Fielding and Steve Ludlam (eds), Interpreting the Labour Party: approaches to Labour politics and history Aaron Edwards, A history of the Northern Ireland Labour Party: democratic socialism and sectarianism Andrew Gamble, Steve Ludlam, Andrew Taylor and Stephen Wood (eds) Labour, the state, social movements and the challenge of neo-liberal globalisation Dianne Hayter, Fightback! Labour’s traditional right in the 1970s and 1980s Jonas Hinnfors, Reinterpreting social democracy: a history of stability in the British Labour Party and Swedish Social Democratic Party Ben Jackson, Equality and the British Left: a study in progressive political thought, 1900–64 Leighton James, The politics of identity and civil society in Britain and Germany: miners in the Ruhr and South Wales 1890–1926 Declan McHugh, Labour in the city: the development of the Labour Party in Manchester, 1918–31 Stephen Meredith, Labour’s old and new? The parliamentary Right of the British Labour Party 1970–79 and the roots of New Labour Jeremy Nuttall, Psychological socialism: the Labour Party and qualities of mind and character, 1931 to the present Lucy Robinson, Gay men and the left in post-war Britain: how the personal got political

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Paradoxes of internationalization British and German trade unions at Ford and General Motors 1967–2000

Thomas Fetzer

Manchester University Press Manchester

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Copyright © Thomas Fetzer 2012

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The right of Thomas Fetzer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN

978 0 7190 8097 5 hardback

First published 2012 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or thirdparty internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Action Publishing Technology Ltd, Gloucester

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Contents

Series editors’ foreword Acknowledgements List of abbreviations

1

2

page vii ix xi

Introduction

1

German and British trade unions at Ford and General Motors: the local and national contexts

7

Geocentric internationalization: a new challenge for German and British trade unions at Ford and General Motors

29

3

Internationalization and the paradox of economic nationalism

51

4

Internationalization and the paradox of domestic trade union practices

106

Internationalization and the paradox of cross-border trade union cooperation

160

Conclusions

191

5

References Index

197 219

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Series editors’ foreword

The start of the twenty-first century is superficially an inauspicious time to study labour movements. Political parties once associated with the working class have seemingly embraced capitalism. The trade unions with which these parties were once linked have suffered near-fatal reverses. The industrial proletariat looks both divided and in rapid decline. The development of multi-level governance, prompted by ‘globalisation’ has furthermore apparently destroyed the institutional context for advancing the labour ‘interest’. Many consequently now look on terms such as the ‘working class’, ‘socialism’ and ‘the labour movement’ as politically and historically redundant. The purpose of this series is to give a platform to those students of labour movements who challenge, or develop, established ways of thinking and so demonstrate the continued vitality of the subject and the work of those interested in it. For despite appearances, many social democratic parties remain important competitors for national office and proffer distinctive programmes. Unions still impede the free flow of ‘market forces’. If workers are a more diverse body and have exchanged blue collars for white, insecurity remains an everyday problem. The new institutional and global context is moreover as much of an opportunity as a threat. Yet, it cannot be doubted that, compared with the immediate post-1945 period, at the beginning of the new millennium, what many still refer to as the ‘labour movement’ is much less influential. Whether this should be considered a time of retreat or reconfiguration is unclear – and a question the series aims to clarify. The series will not only give a voice to studies of particular national bodies but will also promote comparative works that contrast experiences across time and geography. This entails taking due account of the political, economic and cultural settings in which labour movements have operated. In particular this involves taking the past seriously as a way of understanding the present as well as utilising sympathetic approaches drawn from sociology, economics and elsewhere. John Callaghan Steven Fielding Steve Ludlam

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Acknowledgements

The writing of this book has been a slow and often interrupted process, in the course of which I have accumulated many debts. In particular, I would like to thank all those who have offered ideas, critical comments and suggestions, which have helped me to clarify my thinking. Many colleagues have commented on conference papers and seminar presentations that explored some ideas of this book, and equally many have been happy to engage in informal exchange over coffee or beer. I could not possibly name everyone but I would be remiss not to mention at least the following: Stefan Berger, Helen Callaghan, Jürgen Feick, Ian Greer, Béla Greskovits, Mark Hall, Richard Hyman, Alexandra Janovskaia, Gregory Jackson, Achim Kemmerling, Lucia Kureková, Kristin Makszin, Paul Marginson, Guglielmo Meardi, Jan-Henrik Meyer, Kim Christian Priemel, Vera Šc´epanovic´ and Steven Tolliday. Robin Bellers has helped to correct my English-language deficiencies. I would also like to thank the many trade union activists and managers in Britain and Germany I had the chance to interview, who, moreover, often helped me in tracing important local collections of documents. I owe gratitude to the staff at Manchester University Press for their patience and professional guidance. In financial terms, I gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the Marie Curie Intra-European fellowship programme for postdoctoral researchers. This book is dedicated to my parents for their love and never fading support and encouragement.

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Abbreviations

AEEU AEU AR ASE BA BL BR CAITS DATA DGB

Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union Amalgamated Engineering Union Aufsichtsrat [supervisory board] Amalgamated Society of Engineers Betriebsausschuss [plant committee] British Leyland Betriebsrat [works council] Centre for Alternative Industrial and Technological Systems Draughtsmen’s and Allied Technicians Association Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund [Confederation of German trade unions] EC European Community EEC European Economic Community EETPU Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union EFTA European Free Trade Association EMF European Metalworkers’ Federation EU European Union EWC European works council FDI foreign direct investment FoE Ford of Europe FRG Federal Republic of Germany GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade GBR Gesamtbetriebsrat [central works council] GDR German Democratic Republic GLC Greater London Council GM General Motors HQ headquarters HR human resources HRM human resources management ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade Unions IGM Industriegewerkschaft Metall [metalworkers’ trade union]

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xii

ILO IMF KBR MEP MNC MP MSF NJNC NUVB OECD TASS TGWU TIE TUC UAW UN VW WA

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List of abbreviations

International Labour Organization International Metalworkers’ Federation Konzernbetriebsrat [group works council] Member of European Parliament multinational corporation [UK] Member of Parliament Manufacturing, Science and Finance National joint negotiation committee National Union of Vehicle Builders Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Section Transport and General Workers’ Union Transnational information exchange Trades Union Confederation United Automobile Workers United Nations Volkswagen Wirtschaftsausschuss [economic committee]

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Introduction

A study of British and German trade unions at Ford and General Motors (GM) in the last three decades of the twentieth century – many readers will perhaps expect this to be a book about local union activism and workplace relations in a male and blue-collar-dominated manufacturing industry, which more than any other stood for the growth model of the Trente Glorieuse – before being challenged by the rise of environmentalism and a ‘post-Fordist’ service economy.1 However, such expectations will be disappointed, although not, I hasten to add, because I consider this traditional approach old-fashioned or obsolete.2 They will be disappointed because the book is not so much concerned with Ford and General Motors as two of the world’s largest automobile firms, but with Ford and General Motors as two of the world’s largest multinational firms. This is not merely a difference of labels, but a difference of analytical perspective. It means looking at Ford and GM not primarily as exemplifying the increasingly embattled situation of a specific industry, but as representing a form of corporate organization, which – while historically reaching back to the nineteenth century (see Wilkins, 1991; Jones, 2005) – has grown exponentially since the 1960s (see Dicken, 2007; Dunning and Lundan, 2008), and which is widely perceived as heralding the shift from an ‘age of territoriality’ to a new era characterized by the growing significance of cross-border flows and networks (Maier, 2000). That multinational corporations (MNC) have come to acquire such prominence in public and academic debate is not only due to their massive growth in size and numbers, but also to their innovative corporate strategies, in particular with regard to what business scholars refer to as ‘geocentric’ reorganization (Perlmutter, 1969), that is, the creation of integrated cross-border networks of production coordinated by regional or even global management hierarchies (see Rugman, 2005). The cases under review here have epitomized this trend since 1967 (Ford) and 1973–74 (General Motors), when they set out to standardize vehicle models and to integrate the production facilities of national subsidiaries across Western Europe. From the late 1980s, both firms even made ambitious,

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if only partly successful attempts towards global standardization (‘world cars’) and the rationalization of production across continents.3 It is the trade union responses to precisely these processes that the book seeks to analyse and explain, tracing the changes between the late 1960s and the early twenty-first century, as well as the similarities and differences between the British and German cases. More specifically, the book discusses three key issues: first, the impact of the ‘geocentric’ shift on national allegiances of British and German unions; second, the consequences of this shift for domestic practices of interest representation; and third the question of whether new corporate structures and strategies led British and German trade unions to cooperate more actively with their counterparts abroad. Internationalization and industrial relations: a brief literature review In a wider scholarly context, the book lies at the intersection between labour and industrial relations4 studies, and the vast literature concerned with processes variously referred to as ‘internationalization’ (Goldmann, 2001), ‘transnationalization’ (Bruszt and Holzhacker, 2009) or ‘globalization’ (Held and McGrew, 2003; Scholte, 2005).5 Over the last two decades, this ‘cross-over’ has inspired a great deal of research of a highly interdisciplinary nature. In the field of contemporary industrial relations, this is expressed in the explosion of studies about industrial relations and trade unionism at the European (see for example Keller and Platzer, 2003; Bieler, 2006; Erne, 2008, Waddington, 2010) and global (Müller et al., 2004; Croucher and Cotton, 2009; Bieler and Lindberg, 2010) levels. Leading scholars in the field have reconceptualized industrial relations as ‘multi-level governance in the making’ (Marginson and Sisson, 2004), and there is now even a market for textbooks on ‘international employment relations’ (see Bamber et al., 2004). The literature about industrial relations in multinational firms has also been growing exponentially (see Almond and Ferner, 2006; Marginson and Meardi, 2010). Labour historians, against the backdrop of programmatic calls for a ‘transnational labour history’ (van der Linden, 2003), have recently also shown more interest in cross-border issues, expressed in a growing literature on the history of European and international trade union organizations (see Gobin, 1996; Carew et al., 2000), as well as in more focused studies on trade unions’ role in the Cold War (see MacShane 1992; Angster, 2003), in the process of European political integration (Pasture, 2005; Mittag, 2009) and in the regulation of crossborder migration dynamics (Penninx and Roosblad, 2000). The field has been further enriched by the work of sociologists, political scientists and economic geographers who have made interesting contributions to the analysis of trade union responses to economic internationalization (see for example Herod, 1997; 2001; Harrod and O’Brien, 2002). Particularly noteworthy is Beverly Silver’s influential study Forces of Labor (2003), which examines the relationship between labour militancy and the successive spatial shifts of global industries since the late nineteenth century.6

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While the book can thus build on an extensive and impressive body of literature, there are also a number of shortcomings and gaps in the available scholarship. First, there is a need to better bridge historical and contemporary approaches. Labour historians rarely engage with the debates among contemporary industrial relations scholars, while the latter usually show little interest in developments prior to the late 1980s. In the case of trade unions in multinational firms, labour historians tend to concentrate on descriptive accounts of union responses to internationalization in specific companies (see for example Knox and McKinlay, 1999, 2010). Contemporary scholars, on the other hand, take the 1990s as their ‘obvious’ starting point – the European works council literature (Kotthoff, 2006; Whittall et al., 2007; Waddington, 2010), for example, has so far completely ignored the earlier debates about ‘transnational industrial relations’ during the 1970s (Flanagan and Weber, 1974; Kujawa, 1975), which were themselves embedded in the emerging broader public and academic discussion about the nature, impact and regulation of multinational firms (see Safarian, 1993; Muchlinski, 1999). Inspired by a recent renewed emphasis on historical change among political economists (see Streeck, 2009; Thelen, 2009), the book thus makes a case for a more historically grounded analysis of trade union politics in multinational companies. This also helps to shed new light on contemporary developments. On the one hand, in line with much recent historical writing on the 1970s as the ‘dawn of a new age’ (see Jarausch, 2008; Ferguson et al. 2010), it contributes to the study of longer-term continuities, the ‘imprints’ of which are still discernible in the early twenty-first century. On the other hand, as will become clear in the individual chapters, the book also helps to historicize contemporary developments through the analysis of change over time. As a second main contribution, the book adds to existing scholarship by dealing with the issue of national identity and allegiance. This is a question that has played an important role in broader debates on internationalization and globalization (for overviews, see Goldmann, 2001: ch. 5; Scholte, 2005: ch. 7), but has been neglected by industrial relations and trade union scholars’ treatment of internationalization processes. ‘Nationalism’ and ‘(re-)-nationalization’ are at times used as proxy ‘labels’ to characterize Eurosceptic trade union attitudes and strategies (see for example Erne, 2008), but there is no serious engagement with the nationalism literature. In fact, scholars of post1945 West European industrial relations and trade unionism have generally shown little interest in nations and nationalism as objects of enquiry – except for territories (e.g. Catalonia, Scotland, Northern Ireland) with secessionist movements (see Pasture and Verberckmoes, 1998). Building on the recent ‘renaissance’ of studies on ‘economic nationalism’ (see Helleiner and Pickel, 2005) and historians’ debates on the relationship between nationalism and internationalization (see Conrad, 2006; Trentmann, 2008), the book contributes to filling this gap and, at the same time, helps to better connect labour studies to the ‘mainstream’ transnational history (see Osterhammel, 2001; Patel, 2005) and internationalization/globalization literatures.

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Third, the book takes issue with a tendency for polar juxtapositions in the industrial relations literature on internationalization. This has been expressed in decade-long debates about whether the growth of trade and cross-border capital flows has entailed (or will entail) the cross-border convergence of domestic practices and institutions, and whether or not it has led (or is likely to lead) to a shift of regulatory power from the national to the international level. In the specific case of trade unions, such controversies have been particularly vivid (see Smith, 1999; Koch-Baumgarten, 2006). I will deal with these issues in more detail in chapters 4 and 5 but the main point of criticism should be stated upfront, namely that such juxtapositions are unable to account for the many ambiguities of internationalization processes and frequently end up in rather sterile battles about what constitutes the ‘dominant trend’ and whether glasses are better described as half full or half empty. The book associates itself with the work of those scholars – within and outside the industrial relations community – who emphasize the simultaneity of seemingly contradictory developments, that is, the paradoxes of internationalization (see for example: Sorge, 2005). Arguments and structure of the book The book deals with three such paradoxes of internationalization in the case of British and German trade union politics at Ford and General Motors. First, I argue that internationalization reinforced rather than weakened national identities and allegiances – it can, in this sense, be usefully described as a process of inter-nationalization. While at odds with claims about the globalization-driven waning of nations and nationalism (see Hobsbawm, 1990), this argument builds on a rich body of scholarship on the symbiotic relationship between nationalism and internationalization over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Indeed, as Scholte points out, ‘inter-national relations have provided a core dynamic for the construction of nations themselves’ (2005: 148). International organizations have helped to entrench nationality as a universal principle of political and social organization (see Mayall, 1990), while a variety of international arenas – from global markets to world exhibitions and international sporting events (Hayward, 1995; Roche, 2006; Bairner, 2001) – have served as platforms for national rivalries. At the same time, increased contact with the ‘foreign’ world has often heightened rather than reduced the awareness of national distinctiveness – whether in the form of delimitation from the ‘Other’ or aspirations to ‘learn from rivals’ (see Aust and Schönpflug, 2007). Drawing on Billig’s Banal Nationalism (1995), the book analyses this paradoxical dynamic in the case of British and German trade unions at Ford and GM between the late 1960s and the early twenty-first century. It demonstrates that internationalization induced trade unions – in different ways in the two countries – to frame their everyday concerns and aspirations in terms which reflected nationalist rhetoric, in particular with regard to the three dimensions of national identity, national autonomy and national unity (see Smith, 2001). I

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also demonstrate how this rhetoric changed over time until – by the late 1990s – it had acquired an additional European dimension. The book’s second paradox relates to British and German trade unions’ domestic practices of interest representation. It is inspired by recent scholarly attempts to go beyond the long-standing debate about internationalization as a driver of cross-country convergence of national industrial relations systems, which have highlighted that ‘convergence’ and ‘path dependence’ can be conceptualized as complementary rather than as polar opposites (see Streeck, 2009: ch. 12), and that more attention needs to be paid to country-specific, nonconvergent change (Streeck and Thelen, 2005; Thelen, 2009). I argue that internationalization made German and British trade union practices at Ford and GM more similar in some respects (e.g. new emphasis on monitoring of corporate strategies), while it simultaneously contributed to the re-creation (rather than the mere reproduction) of diversity between (and also within) the two countries because internationalization processes affected national subsidiaries in different ways and interacted differently with the specific national and local contexts. Convergence dynamics became stronger over time but cross-national diversity remained important still in the 1990s. Trade unions’ cross-border cooperation initiatives constitute the third and last paradox of the book. Here, the analysis builds on approaches that see such cooperation not primarily rooted in idealistic notions of international workingclass solidarity, but rather – analogous to international relations regime theory (see Krasner, 1983) – in trade unions’ interest to fend off threats to domestic employment and wage standards, which arise from a growing cross-border interdependence of bargaining (see Koch-Baumgarten, 1999, 2006). I argue that at Ford and GM locational competition for investment – rather than being an ‘impeding factor’ – was paradoxically the most important precondition for the emergence of cross-border cooperation initiatives, and it was only when investment competition appeared to have significant negative effects on domestic employment standards that such initiatives stood a chance of success during the 1990s. At the same time, however, the interest-driven nature of cooperation initiatives inherently limited their scope. Still by the early twenty-first century, successful cooperation in European works councils provided little more than ‘safety nets’ for domestic bargaining. The outline for the rest of the book is as follows. The first two chapters provide the contextual framework for the analysis. Chapter 1 places the case study into the national and local historical contexts. It describes the development of the British and German automobile industries over the post-1945 period, provides the necessary background about the national industrial relations and trade union contexts in both countries, and introduces the reader to the specific company-level industrial relations settings at Ford and General Motors. Chapter 2 reconstructs the development of ‘geocentric’ internationalization strategies at Ford (from 1967) and GM (1973–74) and analyses the main challenges this entailed for German and British trade unions. Chapters 3 (internationalization and economic nationalism), 4 (internationalization and

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domestic trade union practices) and 5 (internationalization and cross-border trade union cooperation) respectively engage in the detailed analysis of the three above-mentioned paradoxes. Each of the chapters starts with the discussion of the available literature and conceptual considerations, followed by a detailed analysis of the case studies. The concluding chapter provides reflections about the broader implications of the findings and makes suggestions for future research. Notes 1 The literature on industrial relations in the automobile industry is vast. For comparative studies, see for example Tolliday and Zeitlin (1987), Katz and Darbishire (2000) and Charron and Stewart (2004). For post-war developments in the UK, see for example Turner et al. (1967), Tolliday ( 1985), Marsden et al. (1985) and Lyddon (1996); for those in Germany, see Streeck (1984), Jürgens (1998), Pries and Hertwig (2005). 2 There has been much controversial debate about the ‘crisis’ of labour history and industrial relations as academic disciplines during the last two decades – see for example Darlington (2009) and Kirk (2010). 3 These transformations are discussed in more detail in chapter 2. 4 The term ‘industrial relations’ is used here in its conventional meaning as the system of relationships between workers, trade unions, employers and the state concerned with rules pertaining to labour aspects of production (Zeitlin 1987: 159). 5 I have opted for the ‘internationalization’ label, which, throughout the book, is used as a shorthand expression for corporate processes of ‘geocentric’ reorganization. The geographically confined scope of the book ruled out the use of ‘globalization’, while the emphasis on the question of national allegiances made ‘internationalization’ a more appropriate term than ‘transnationalization’, which in most contemporary accounts is associated with the idea of ‘transcending’ nations and nation-states (see Osterhammel, 2001; for a different view, see Patel, 2005). 6 I will discuss Silver’s arguments in more detail in chapter 4.

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1 German and British trade unions at Ford and General Motors: the local and national contexts

This chapter outlines the contextual framework, within which German and British trade union politics at Ford and General Motors evolved between the late 1960s and the early twenty-first century. The chapter starts with a brief sketch of the post-war development of the British and German automobile industries, followed by a synthetic overview of the development of the two national industrial relations systems and the description of the specific trade union and industrial relations patterns at Ford and General Motors. The British and German car industries in the post-1945 period In Britain and Germany, like in other Western European countries such as Italy, France or Belgium, the automobile industry became one of the crucial sectors of post-1945 national economies (see Laux, 1992). With the breakthrough to mass car ownership across Western Europe, the industry expanded enormously and made a major contribution to GDP growth, employment creation, tax revenues and regional development. The importance of the sector was perhaps best expressed in the widespread perception of large domestically owned car firms as ‘national champions’ (see Hayward, 1995), a label that was equally applied to Volkswagen (VW) in Germany (see Tolliday, 1995; Rieger, 2009), as to British Leyland (BL) in the UK (Whisler, 1999). However, beyond these basic similarities, developments in the two countries were very different. In the UK, the motor industry epitomized the country’s turbulent post-1945 economic history (see Pollard, 1982; Crafts and Woodward, 1991; Owen, 2000). The industry started out as the European market leader in the immediate post-war period, due to buoyant demand and the absence of competition in the war-damaged continent. But already by 1956, UK production volumes fell behind those in Germany, followed by slipping behind France (Church, 1995: 46–9). Between the mid-1960s and 1973, the

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industry stagnated in terms of absolute output levels, and at a time of dynamic worldwide growth this entailed a declining British share of global car production. As a consequence, there was a first major wave of restructuring. Ford and GM/Vauxhall had had a UK production base since the inter-war period (see below), but the takeover of Rootes by Chrysler (1964/7) now brought the third US multinational to Britain. Not least in response to this, the British government sponsored the merger of all remaining indigenous firms to form the British Leyland Motor Corporation (BL) in 1968 (see Hodges, 1977: 204–10; Wilks, 1984: 91–8). Yet, regardless of this restructuring, decline accelerated in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, which entailed the state takeover of the bankrupt ‘national champion’ BL. Chrysler also had to ask for a government bailout and subsequently sold its UK subsidiary to Peugeot in 1978 (see Whisler, 1999: 111–29). Only Ford UK survived the crisis reasonably well but even in Ford’s case, output levels remained below the 1972 peak (Tolliday, 2003b: 119, 131). By the early 1980s, the annual output of the industry had fallen to less than one million vehicles – about half the level of 1972 (Church 1995: 48–9). At the same time, automobile exports dropped to insignificant volumes, while imports reached staggering levels of close to 60 per cent of the overall market – more than double the rates in Germany and France (Tolliday, 2003b: 131). By the mid-1980s, employment had plummeted, too – at BL alone, the failure of product-led recovery and a new emphasis on cost-cutting went hand in hand with a 50 per cent cut of the workforce between 1979 and 1985 (Williams et al., 1994: 152–3). Recovery did not set in before the late 1980s and it remained limited – national aggregate car output in the late 1990s was still slightly below the 1972 peak. There was a further massive shift in the composition of the industry. British Leyland was split into different divisions and privatized in 1987/8, but the car divisions’ decline continued under the new Rover brand owned first by British Aerospace, and from 1994 by BMW (see Whisler, 1999: ch. 10). At the same time, the three Japanese firms, Nissan, Toyota and Honda, became major new producers in the UK, and their growing output offset the ultimate decline of the former ‘national champion’. As the new Japanese transplants were designed to supply markets across Western Europe, the industry also became a major exporter again (Loewendahl, 2001: 171–4). On the other hand, the share of imports on the UK market continued to climb – by the 1990s, ‘the once powerful imperative to “Buy British” had lost its force’ (Tolliday, 2003b: 83). Compared to this unstable pattern, the evolution of the German motor industry was much more continuous and successful in the post-1945 period (see Bauer, 2008) – reflecting the country’s much-vaunted export-led economic ‘miracle’ (see Abelshauser, 2004; Prollius, 2006). Ever since 1956, the Federal Republic maintained its position as the leading European car producing country, and, next to Japan, the country was also the most successful automobile exporter in the world. If BL has been regarded as the quintessential representation of ‘British decline’, Volkswagen (VW) has often seemed to epitomize the FRG’s success story (Wellhöner, 1996; Rieger, 2009).

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Beyond this general pattern of success, two periods can be distinguished. Until the late 1980s, German automobile production and employment grew steadily, punctuated only during the recession periods in 1967, 1974–75 and 1979–80. Importantly, in contrast to the UK, the industry managed to adapt comparatively well to the changing circumstances after the 1973 oil shock. By the late 1970s annual output stood at around four million vehicles – four times the British level (Nunnenkamp, 2005: 41). The second oil crisis brought a temporary setback but thereafter production and employment growth resumed – even if at less impressive rates than in the pre-1973 period (ibid.: 56). Indicative of this path of steady growth, major instances of corporate restructuring were rare. To be sure, Volkswagen acquired a number of smaller firms like NSU (Neckarsulmer Motorenwerke) and Auto-Union (which merged to form the Audi brand), and the company underwent a crisis when the Beetle had to be replaced in the early 1970s (see Tolliday, 1995). But all this was nowhere near the turbulences in the UK, and the industry’s structure – dominated by the ‘Big Five’ (VW, Ford, Opel, Daimler-Benz, BMW) – remained essentially unaltered. From the late 1980s, a number of significant changes occurred. For one thing, production growth slowed down significantly in the wake of the reunification boom and the subsequent recession in 1992–93, which, taken together with the growing use of labour-saving technologies, created employment security problems (Nunnenkamp, 2005: 56). At the same time, triggered by harsher competition and the market opening in many parts of the world, the Germanowned firms (VW, BMW and Daimler-Benz) quickly turned into highly internationalized firms who built up numerous production facilities abroad and ventured into strategic cross-border alliances: Volkswagen acquired the Seat, Skoda, Bentley and Bugatti brands, BMW took over Rover and Rolls-Royce, while Daimler entered into a risky and ultimately short-lived merger with Chrysler (see Pries, 1999). By the late 1990s, aggregate output in German firms’ foreign subsidiaries even started to exceed the level of German car exports (Nunnenkamp, 2005: 43). It is beyond the purpose of this book to engage in detail with the debate about the causes for the relative success/decline of the German and British motor industries.1 Suffice it to say that studies of the two ‘national champions’, British Leyland and Volkswagen, tend to suggest that any account needs to take into consideration issues of production systems (manufacturing efficiency; shopfloor management), as well as market-related factors (model policies, distribution systems, differences in market access due to belated UK entry into the European Economic Community) and the broader macroeconomic environment (e.g. government policies). Moreover, the different historical legacies also need to be kept in mind – while VW was created from scratch during the Nazi era, BL emerged as a badly brokered merger of several previously independent firms (Reich, 1990; Tolliday 1995). Regardless of the merits of different approaches in the decline/success debate, it is of crucial importance for this book that industrial relations played a

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prominent role in the debate. This was particularly visible in the UK where labour–management relations, strikes and the ‘trade union question’ became key aspects of the ‘British decline’ controversy (Tomlinson, 2000). In Germany, conversely, co-determination and industrial unionism were frequently praised as core components of ‘Modell Deutschland’ during the 1970s (see Esser, 1982), while the more critical reassessments of this model during the 1990s also had an important focus on allegedly necessary industrial relations reforms (Streeck, 2009: ch. 14). The post-war performance of the Ford and GM subsidiaries in Germany and Britain, though with a degree of deviation until the mid-1960s, was embedded in the overall trends of the national industries. The relative position in the two countries was quite different, though – in Germany, the GM subsidiary Opel was much stronger than Ford, while the pattern was exactly the opposite in the UK. General Motors acquired its British subsidiary Vauxhall in 1925, and embarked on a significant expansion after the Second World War, first at the traditional site at Luton (North London), and from the 1960s through the establishment of a new production complex at Ellesmere Port, close to Liverpool. Annual production rose from 80,000 units in 1950, to more than 300,000 vehicles in the late 1960s when Vauxhall employed more than 30,000 workers (Holden, 2003: 178). Yet, these figures were far below those of Opel in Germany, a company which GM had equally taken over in the inter-war period (see Kugler, 1985). Initially focused on the traditional Rüsselsheim plant (close to Frankfurt), GM investments later also led to the establishment of new production sites at Bochum (assembly and components) and Kaiserslautern (components) – by the late 1960s, the Rüsselsheim plant alone employed more workers than the Vauxhall sites taken together (Herber, 2002: 16). Ford, by contrast, gave preference to its British subsidiary for a long time. Partly this was a legacy of the inter-war years when the company had built a large manufacturing complex at Dagenham (East London) destined to become the ‘Detroit of Europe’ (see Tolliday, 2003a: 160–6). Dagenham expanded rapidly after 1945, and in the late 1950s capacity was further increased through a new production site at Halewood (Liverpool) and a variety of smaller plants. Ford Germany (Fordwerke) with its centre at Cologne remained the ‘junior partner’ despite the establishment of a second manufacturing site at Saarlouis. Still in 1968, more than a decade after the British car industry had been overtaken by its German counterpart in production terms, Ford UK accounted for more than half of the company’s European vehicle output (Tolliday, 2003b: 144). From the late 1960s, developments fell fully in line with overall industry trends: output in the German Ford and GM subsidiaries grew strongly until the late 1980s (interrupted by the recessions in 1974–75 and 1980–81) although – in contrast to the German-owned firms – employment levels started to stagnate already during the 1980s.2 In the 1990s, Fordwerke and Opel then suffered from falling market shares in Europe (see Bordenave, 2003), which also translated into significant employment cuts. In the case of Ford, for example, the head-

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count level declined from 50,000 in 1990, to 38,000 at the turn of the century (Thomes, 2003: 174). In the UK, Vauxhall experienced a rapid decline from the early 1970s, which accelerated between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s. By then, annual output had fallen below 100,000 vehicles. Between 1979 and 1982 alone, the number of Vauxhall employees was reduced from 33,000 to 20,000 (Holden, 2003: 208). From this very low point output levels then increased until the late 1980s, but the process came to a halt during the 1990s as Vauxhall had to share the burden of falling GM sales in Europe (ibid.: ch. 10). In the case of Ford UK, the fall of output levels was not as severe, but nonetheless very significant. Compared to the post-war peak in 1972, production figures had nearly halved by the mid-1980s, and the overall headcount was reduced from 76,000 to 58,000 between 1979 and 1983 (Tolliday, 2003b: 119, 143). As in the case of Vauxhall, there was a temporary improvement in the latter half of the 1980s, but this was followed by stagnation during the 1990s – with the exception of component manufacturing such as engines (ibid.:109–11). It is beyond doubt that this evolution needs to be understood against the backdrop of the more general competitive strengths and weaknesses of the British and German motor industries in the post-1945 period. At the same time, however, deliberate corporate policies also played a role. In the case of Ford, for instance, there is evidence that the company consciously exploited the British industrial crisis in the mid-1970s to reduce its manufacturing presence in the UK – without a compelling competitive need to do so (Tolliday, 2003b: 95). And, as we shall see in more detail in chapter 2, such choices were often closely associated with the internationalization of corporate structures and strategies. British and German industrial relations in the post-1945 period The post-1945 development of British and German trade unions and industrial relations at once reflected broader European trends and country-specific patterns. As is well known, the recognition of trade unions as ‘estates of the realm’ in Western European societies was a long and drawn-out process, which, to different degrees in different countries, had started between the midnineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see Geary, 1989; Berger and Broughton, 1995). After 1945, union movements had come to be nearly universally perceived as indispensable to sustain the post-war compromise of growth, full employment and welfare state development, which was to shield the continent at once against a repetition of the catastrophes of the 1930s and the danger that workers succumbed to the appeal of communism (Sassoon, 1996: 137–66). However, a number of factors confined union power until the 1960s, among them persistent unemployment, the dominant emphasis on reconstruction sacrifices, and the still vivid memories of the Great Depression, which all limited worker aspirations (Eichengreen, 2007: 218–19). By the mid-1960s those restrictions had disappeared. With reconstruction completed, full employment achieved and 1930s memories fading away through

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generational change, worker expectations rose, boosting trade union membership numbers, as well as unions’ bargaining power and their role in the political arena (see Sassoon, 1996: 357–82). Between 1968 and 1973 a strike wave swept across Western Europe, which entailed a significant upswing of wage levels (see Crouch and Pizzorno, 1978). Britain and the Federal Republic led the way – in both countries the ratio of organized workers peaked in 1979–80 at slightly above 50 per cent (UK) and a little below 40 per cent (FRG) respectively (Ebbinghaus and Visser, 2000: 63), while trade union leaders, against the backdrop of the electoral dominance of SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) and the Labour Party, achieved unprecedented influence in government decision-making. A 1977 Gallup poll found more than half of Britons believing Jack Jones, leader of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU), to be more powerful than the prime minister, while at around the same time conservative media in the Federal Republic warned against the alleged danger of a ‘trade union state’ – indicative, if exaggerated images of union strength during this period (see McIlroy and Campbell, 1999: 113–19; Schneider, 2000: 370–3). Employers and governments reacted alarmed, yet, anxious to contain inflation, they more than ever sought trade union cooperation to deliver wage restraint in exchange for improved workplace rights and welfare entitlements. What social scientists dubbed as ‘neo-corporatism’ became the Western European hallmark of the period – even more so after 1973, when the oil crisis slowed down growth and heightened inflationary dynamics (Schmitter and Lehmbruch, 1979).3 Trade unions, while being put on the defensive by the crisis of Keynesianism and the return of unemployment, were still considered as crucial for macroeconomic stability – a view which appeared vindicated as much by the ‘success stories’ of corporatist bargaining in some countries as by its failure in others (Sassoon, 1996: 449–55). The apogee of trade union power during the 1970s was followed by the ‘resurgence of labour quiescence’ (Shalev, 1992) in Western Europe during the 1980s and 1990s. If full employment had helped union growth earlier, the return and persistence of mass unemployment at average rates of near 10 per cent across the region (Sassoon, 1996: 450) now put organized labour on the defensive again. This was compounded by the continued shift of employment from manufacturing to services – the bulk of job cuts occurred in trade union strongholds – and the growing number of workers with part-time and temporary employment contracts who were difficult to recruit. Moreover, the political ‘climate’ became harsher, too. The rise of monetarism made trade unions appear less indispensable in the fight against inflation, while a stronger focus on budget consolidation pre-empted many of the unions’ welfare state and labour market policy initiatives. The new neoliberal Zeitgeist weakened employer commitment to collective regulation, reinforced by and reinforcing a new trend to harness individual employee efforts through ‘human resource’ management strategies (see Martin and Ross, 1999). Against this backdrop, union membership levels – albeit to different degrees

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and with a few exceptions – started to display a downward trend across Western Europe (Ebbinghaus and Visser, 2000: 63). In Britain and Germany, density rates had fallen back to below 30 per cent by the late 1990s (Waddington, 2003: 220; Dietrich, 2003: 650). A drop in strike activity, though clearly visible only from the mid-1980s, indicates a similar trend with regard to bargaining strength and militancy (see Bordogna and Cella, 2002). While reflecting broader Western European trends, German and British trade unionism and industrial relations also developed in country-specific ways in the post-1945 period. In particular, any observer must be struck by the contrast between relative stability in Germany and radical change in the UK: by the end of the twentieth century, despite some signs of erosion during the 1990s (see Streeck, 2009, chs. 2 and 3), the two main pillars of the German post-war industrial relations system were still in place, namely statutory co-determination (Mitbestimmung) at plant and enterprise levels, and a relatively centralized system of collective bargaining (Ebbinghaus, 2000). In the UK, by contrast, collective bargaining was first radically decentralized from industry to the company level, and, from the 1980s, it diminished in importance altogether. At the same time, the traditional emphasis on non-legalistic, ‘voluntarist’ labour–management relations was effectively abandoned (Davies and Freedland, 1993; Howell, 2005). Britain Few UK observers would have predicted such radical changes in the early postwar years when many praised the ‘maturity’ of British industrial relations institutions, which had evolved in a slow and incremental fashion for a long time (see Fox, 1985: 362–71). To start with, Britain’s labour movement had grown ‘organically’ in successive waves, starting with the formation of nationwide craft societies of engineers, builders and printers in the mid-nineteenth century, followed by industry-based federations (e.g. in the coal and textile sectors) and, in the early twentieth century, by large ‘general unions’, which recruited across different occupations and industries. After 1945, the strong growth of white-collar and staff associations added a further layer to this complex configuration, which was only loosely bound together by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) as overarching national confederation (see Price, 1986; Fraser, 1999; Reid, 2004). As Hyman has pointed out, this process had a ‘sedimented’ character, not only in structural terms (the addition of ever new layers without major reorganization created a fragmented web of overlapping recruitment areas),4 but also with regard to ideology, as older craft traditions lived on in the later waves of unionization (2001: 72–3). Moreover, Britain had a long-established system of industry-level bargaining, whose origins went back to the late nineteenth century (see Howell, 2005: ch. 3) and which was further strengthened in the early post-war period: in the 1950s, about three-quarters of workplaces were covered by industry bargaining, and the system also spread to the growing public sector (ibid.: 89–93). Finally, there was the old ‘voluntarist’ tradition, which had equally emerged in the late nineteenth century (see Kahn-Freund, 1979; Fox, 1985). It has often

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wrongly been equated with a general absence of state interference in industrial relations (Howell, 2005). In fact, the real core of voluntarism was much narrower, namely the absence of a comprehensive body of collective labour law: in contrast to most other industrialized countries, there were no positive rights to unionize, to bargain and to strike – yet neither did the law erect statutes prescribing the conduct of collective negotiations and industrial disputes. In addition, collective-bargaining agreements were not legally enforceable. No ‘peace obligation’ existed that could prevent employers or unions from challenging negotiated terms during the lifetime of an agreement. The regulation of strikes was ‘negative’, granting workers and their representatives blanket immunity from prosecution under common law. No statutory employee representation system (e.g. works councils) existed to circumscribe industrial disputes in the workplace (see Davies and Freedland, 1993: 11–23; Deakin and Wilkinson, 2002). However, these time-honoured institutions came under growing pressure from the 1960s onwards. For one thing, employers in the fast-growing ‘Fordist’ sectors (not least the motor industry) increasingly questioned a system that provided little help to constrain workplace conflicts, the number of which had crept up since the late 1950s (for the motor industry, see Turner et al., 1967). Dispute procedures in the framework of industry bargaining were cumbersome to operate, and the absence of legal sanctions for wildcat strikes was increasingly seen as a liability (Howell, 2005: 96). At the same time, the post-war spread of workplace bargaining and shop stewards in these ‘Fordist’ sectors (see Zeitlin, 1980; Tolliday, 1985) nurtured a shift towards more militancy within the union movement, indicated by the election of more radical leaders in several major TUC affiliates in the late 1960s (Richter, 1973: 113–18). These conflicts were magnified by the sluggish growth performance of the British economy. On the one hand, this performance narrowed the margins for acceptable compromises at a time when worker expectations rose and organized labour’s industrial strength reached its post-war zenith. Tripartite arrangements between government, employers and trade unions were frequently upset, most importantly due to ad hoc government measures to address balance-of-payment crises (see Middlemas, 1990). On the other hand, as indicated earlier, sluggish growth gave rise to a controversial debate about ‘British decline’ (Coates and Hillard, 1986), in which industrial relations problems were often portrayed as the ‘British disease’ and root cause of the country’s predicament. Trade unions, in particular, were frequently accused of inhibiting productivity growth through restrictive practices and strikes, while, at the same time, pushing up inflation through ‘irresponsible’ wage claims (see Tomlinson, 2000: 55–8). Against this backdrop, British industrial relations became highly conflictual between the mid-1960s and the late 1970s, which is most clearly reflected in comparative strike statistics: between 1967 and 1979, the number of days lost due to labour disputes in the UK was about ten times higher than in Germany, and it also rose much more strongly in comparison to the respective figures

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during the two first post-war decades (McIlroy and Campbell, 1999: 122; Schneider, 2000: 586). At the same time, this conflictual pattern was also expressed in a multitude of controversies about the reform of industrial relations, which raged since the Labour government’s appointment of a Royal Commission under Lord Donovan in 1965. The fate of voluntarism was most disputed, staunchly defended by the trade unions and a number of influential academics (see Lewis, 1983), yet increasingly attacked by employers and political leaders. While the 1968 report of the Donovan commission came out in defence of the traditional system, governments nonetheless decided to take action: attempts to ‘legalize’ British industrial relations featured in the Labour cabinet’s reform agenda ‘In Place of Strife’ in early 1969 and, in a much more comprehensive form, in the conservative Industrial Relations Act 1971. The core of both schemes was to grant unions a statutory recognition procedure, and other rights, in return for accepting limits on their strike immunities (Howell, 2005: 128), but both ultimately failed due to trade union resistance (Jenkins, 1970; Taylor, 1996). By 1974, the return of a Labour cabinet led to the repeal of conservative legislation, and the government also mandated a commission under Lord Bullock to consider the appointment of workers’ representatives to company boards. However, the latter initiative was derailed by employer opposition and indifference from a majority of trade unions (Atenstedt, 1987). Successive governments also experimented with income policies but this was hardly more successful than legal reforms. Whether introduced by Labour (1966–69, 1975–78), or conservatives (1972–74), they all followed a similar ‘cycle’ of initial acceptance and subsequent breakdown. The key problem was that income policies were too little embedded into broader corporatist ‘package deal’ arrangements, and even when they were, e.g. in the case of the 1974 ‘Social Contract’, the ‘contracting parties’ were subsequently unable to ‘deliver’ – governments because they backtracked on investment and welfare promises in the face of balance-of-payment problems, trade unions because of the incapacity of leaderships to effectively enforce adherence to pay norms among the rank and file. Indeed, strikes against pay restraint led to the downfall of the Heath and Callaghan governments in 1974 and 1979, respectively (Panitch, 1976; Taylor, 1999). The only tangible result of reform debates was a decentralization of collective bargaining – the only issue on which there was broad tripartite agreement. The shift from industry to company-level bargaining was first advocated by the Donovan report in 1968, and it was continuously encouraged by subsequent governments. Employers needed shop stewards as local ‘managers of discontent’ – especially after the failure of the anti-strike legislation of the early 1970s – while trade unions could use decentralization as a tool to enhance recruitment and internal union democracy (Undy et al., 1981). However, unwittingly, bargaining decentralization further heightened rather than reduced workplace conflicts. It multiplied bargaining arenas and thus undermined the effectiveness of government income policies. Moreover, decentralization nurtured a

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defensive sectionalism with regard to pay differentials, particularly under the conditions of galloping inflation after 1973 (Pollard, 1982: 113–18). Conflictual dynamics were brought to a head in the strike wave of the ‘Winter of Discontent’ in 1978/79, which paved the way for the subsequent conservative election victory (McIlroy and Campbell, 1999: 116–18) and thus reopened the question of legalization in a radical way. Margaret Thatcher’s perhaps most cherished objective was to bring trade unions under the control of the law, and the broader economic and social context considerably facilitated the task: compared to their European counterparts, British unions registered a particularly steep decline of membership and bargaining power, not least as a result of a singularly pronounced deindustrialization trend (Nolan and Slater, 2003: 74), which pushed up unemployment far beyond the Western European average (Lyddon, 2007: 342). Taking advantage of, and at the same time, reinforcing this union weakness, successive Tory governments embarked on a radical reform of industrial relations. Advancing step by step, this legislative onslaught focused on the restriction of strike immunities, the anchoring of financial union liability for workplace disputes, and state control over internal union governance (see Davies and Freedland, 1993: ch. 9). Legislation was backed up by confrontations with unions in the public sector, notably in the case of the miners’ strike in 1984–85 (Lyddon, 2007: 351–5). The conservative reform agenda of the 1980s and 1990s went far beyond that of Heath in the early 1970s. It aimed not merely at a new legal framework to bring down the number of strikes, but at the marginalization of unions and collective bargaining altogether (Howell, 2005: ch. 5). Most employers were initially sceptical about such radicalism, yet as time passed without major labour conflict they turned into staunch defenders of the new system. De-emphasizing collective bargaining was in line with management strategies to increase workforce flexibility and to create new tools of direct communication with employees, e.g. quality circles and problem-solving groups (Howell, 2005: 165–9). If outright de-recognition of unions was rare, bargaining procedures were ‘streamlined’ in many firms, and this frequently included the creation of non-union-based and management-controlled forms of consultation. As a result, collective bargaining coverage of workplaces nearly halved between the early 1980s and the late 1990s (Brown et al., 2003: 199). The arrival of ‘New Labour’ in 1997 brought some modest corrections. While the Blair government refused to repeal most conservative industrial relations legislation, it set out to complement the legal framework with a series of rights for workers and unions, e.g. by introducing minimum wages, and by reinstating a statutory procedure for union recognition. Responding to European Union legislation, the government also created a legal framework for employee consultation, which for the first time brought works council-type bodies into British industrial relations (see Dickens and Hall, 2003). In fact, these government measures were partly the result of trade union lobbying. British unions, faced with a permanent weakening of their positions,

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had partly reversed their attitudes towards industrial relations law since the mid-1980s, as they started to advocate positive legal rights for British employees (Howell, 2005: 170–3). Initially this reorientation was slow and strongly contested, but it gained ground in the late 1980s because of the increasing dominance of a cooperative, ‘new realist’ current in the TUC and because expectations for the repeal of conservative legislation appeared ever more remote (see Marsh, 1992: 199–203). Even left-oriented unions were increasingly forced to acknowledge the limits of a purely voluntarist approach, although they questioned the ‘new realist’ emphasis on ‘social partnership’ (Waddington, 2003: 234–8). Certain aspects of the new rights-based approach, in particular the issue of statutory works councils, remained controversial within the TUC throughout the 1990s (see Hyman, 1996; Kelly, 1996); sceptics feared that a second, rival channel of employee interest representation (on the basis of general workforce elections) would ultimately weaken the trade unions. Official TUC documents advocated a compromise ‘single channel plus’ solution, which accepted a second channel in principle, but insisted that employee representatives in works councils should be elected by trade union members rather than through workforce ballots (Waddington, 2003: 234–5). Germany Compared to these turbulent ‘swings’ in the UK, the post-1945 development of German industrial relations was much more continuous – while sharing broader Western European trends, shifts were far less radical and far-reaching than in Britain. This was so despite the fact that German post-war industrial relations started out with a much stronger rupture due to the traumatic experiences of national socialism, war and Allied occupation. Institutionally, the first post-war years produced the pillars that were to remain the basic characteristics of the German system for the rest of the twentieth century: a unitary trade union structure made up of an umbrella confederation, the Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB) and a limited number of industry-based federations, statutory co-determination (Mitbestimmung) through works councils (at factory level) and representation in supervisory boards (enterprise level), and a centralized and highly legalized system of collective bargaining (see Berghahn and Karsten, 1987). To be sure, many elements of the system were connected to pre-1933 patterns. Co-determination, for example, had roots reaching back to the late nineteenth century, and the basic features of the Works Council Act of 1952 clearly resembled the legislation adopted in the Weimar Republic (see Teuteberg, 1961). Yet, the new provisions for worker representation on company supervisory boards (particularly in their advanced ‘parity’ version in the iron and steel industries) went much beyond previous standards (see Dartmann, 1996). Industrial unionism and industry bargaining had likewise never been a general norm before 1933 (see Schönhoven, 1987: chs. 3 and 4). In terms of actor strategies, the break with the past was still stronger. Already

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before 1933 there had been an ‘enlightened’ faction among German employers, but it was only after 1945 that the idea of partnership with workers and trade unions became dominant, as paternalist anti-union positions were discredited by the experience of Nazism (Berghahn and Karsten, 1987: 167–87). On the trade union side, reformism had been strong in Germany since the late nineteenth century, but syndicalist and communist currents had been powerful minorities during the inter-war period, while many works councils saw their role as part of a more general working-class agenda to achieve ‘economic democracy’ (see Plumpe, 1999). After 1945, the creation of a unitary union movement – including the former Christian organizations – not only strengthened the reformist camp, but also implied a conscious move towards cooperative strategies in response to the class conflicts during the late Weimar Republic, which in the eyes of many had helped to pave the way for Hitler (Hyman, 2001: 115–21). The shift was accentuated by the Cold War context – the East German experience discredited class struggle approaches, while many unions in the FRG purged union bureaucracies of communist influence (see Schmidt, 1970). The combination of these institutional and ideological factors held labour–management conflict much more in check than in the UK. The codetermination system, in particular, provided a stable institutional framework to negotiate workplace change outside the dynamic of conflictual collective bargaining: councils had extensive consultation and some negotiation rights but could not resort to strikes because they were legally bound by the principle of ‘collaboration in mutual trust’ (‘vertrauensvolle Zusammenarbeit’) with the employer (Streeck, 1994). Moreover, the dynamic economic development made it comparatively easier for German employers and trade unions to achieve compromise settlements, while success in export markets inspired collective pride as a symbol of the country’s post-war return to ‘normality’ (see Rieger, 2009) and thus provided a powerful additional ‘glue’ for social partnership (Esser, 1982). As a result, the ‘conflictual turn’ of the late 1960s was much less pronounced than in Britain. To be sure, triggered by widespread unofficial strikes in September 1969 (see Birke, 2007), German unions turned to a more assertive bargaining style, while generational change in many works councils led to a stronger emphasis on workplace mobilization (see Kotthoff, 1994). Yet, while this meant a shift away from the ‘works community’ ideology and towards an understanding of co-determination as the institutionally ‘enforced’ mutual accommodation of conflicting interests – soon dubbed ‘conflictual cooperation’ (see Müller-Jentsch, 1999) – it still contrasted with the traditional British emphasis on employers and unions as ‘the two sides of industry’ (Hyman, 2001: 119–20). Domestic debates about legal reforms of industrial relations were also less controversial than in the UK. German employers and conservatives did increasingly complain about trade union power in the mid-1970s and likened the FRG to a ‘trade union state’ (see Schneider, 2000: 346–9) – yet these complaints were

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associated with a principled defence of free-enterprise liberalism and not, in crucial contrast to the UK, with the country’s economic performance. Indeed, reform debates concentrated on the question of whether and how to extend codetermination and thus organized labour’s voice, and not, as often in Britain, on how to restrict union influence. These reform debates culminated in two pieces of legislation. On the one hand, the 1972 amendment to the Works Constitution Act gave works councils enhanced co-determination rights, for example with regard to hiring, shorttime and overtime work, and it also expanded consultation prerogatives prior to corporate restructuring. On the other hand, the 1976 Mitbestimmungsgesetz (codetermination law), following lengthy negotiations between unions and employers and between the government coalition parties (social democrats and liberals), mandated a reform of supervisory board co-determination. The compromise provided for numerical parity on supervisory boards in firms with more than 2,000 employees, while giving the capital side the final right to decision in cases of stalemate (see Berghahn and Karsten, 1987: 106–28). The other major bone of contention in Britain, wage policy, was also less controversial in the FRG. Certainly, many in the trade unions felt uneasy about organized labour’s participation in the government-sponsored ‘Konzertierte Aktion’ (KA) since 1967, precisely because of the latter’s interference with collective-bargaining autonomy. There were many heated debates within the DGB, and union attitudes grew more critical over time, culminating in withdrawal from the KA after the employers’ legal challenge to the new co-determination law in 1978 (see Schneider, 2000: 370–4). Yet, despite much rhetoric to the contrary, and with the important exception of the militant period between 1970 and 1973, German unions showed a remarkable degree of restraint in their wage-bargaining policies (see von Beyme, 1990). What made the crucial difference to the UK was that corporatist arrangements were more comprehensive, including discussions of industrial, social, fiscal and monetary policies, and that they were not upset by sudden shocks (e.g. balance-of-payment crises). As Sassoon has put it with some exaggeration: ‘Everyone had a role. Banks lent money. Trade unions moderated wage claims. The Bundesbank kept the Deutschmark both stable and undervalued, thus helping exports. The government . . . kept in touch with industrialists and trade unionists, bankers and research institutes. Priorities were established . . . and specific policies formulated . . . This was “organized capitalism” at its best’ (1996: 511). Importantly, too, there was no UK-style decentralization of collective bargaining in the FRG. There were left-wing initiatives in this direction within many unions, particularly marked within the metalworkers’ union IG Metall (see Koopmann, 1979). However, nothing came of these initiatives. German employers were strongly opposed because, unlike their British counterparts, they already disposed of conflict-restraining structures at the plant level – the works councils – which allowed them to ‘neutralise the workplace’ (Sisson, 1991: 260). At the same time, there was no support on the part of trade union

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leaderships. In the case of IG Metall, for example, a decision to give more facilities to plant delegates (Vertrauensleute) stopped short of granting these stewards a meaningful role in bargaining processes. Indeed, when decentralization demands became more radical in the early 1970s, the union leadership used appeals to organizational unity, as well as agenda management tricks to defeat them (see Koopmann, 1979). If the ‘conflictual’ turn of the 1970s was much less marked in the FRG than in Britain, German unions were also less severely hit by the neoliberal shift of the 1980s – it was only after the double ‘shock’ of reunification and the 1992–93 recession that their positions significantly weakened (Streeck, 2009: 46–9). As in Britain, the 1980s witnessed a growth of unemployment rates but the figures remained below the Western European average (Sassoon, 1996: 450). The shift in employment structure from manufacturing to services proceeded, yet it did so at a comparatively moderate pace until German reunification (Abelshauser, 2004: 307). Politically, times also became rougher, as the new conservative-led government embarked on a neoliberal economic policy reform agenda from 1982 and downplayed the previously close government–union consultations (see Prollius, 2006: 207–16). However, in complete contrast to the UK, there were no open attacks on the traditional industrial relations framework. These comparatively ‘friendly’ circumstances allowed German trade unions to keep membership losses within limits during the 1980s. Aggregate numbers fluctuated around the level achieved in the late 1970s, which, given the growth in the labour force, translated into a slight decline in density (Ebbinghaus and Visser, 2000: 63). Industrial strength was also less negatively affected than in Britain. Certainly, as unemployment rose, works councils in many firms were put on the defensive, and most of them, in line with social partnership traditions, broadly accepted such schemes and concentrated on the cushioning of social consequences, for example through early retirement and retraining measures (Mertens, 1988). Wage militancy also declined – the wage share of West Germany’s GDP continuously dropped during the 1980s (Schneider, 2000: 391). On the other hand, however, the massive mobilization for working time reduction in 1984 represented a rather impressive show of strength, as metalworkers and printing unions achieved a breakthrough towards the thirty-five-hour week; even if, in return, they had to accept increased flexibility for employers in the implementation of working time arrangements at the company level (see Hemmer et al., 1990). In the 1990s, German trade unions then came under much stronger pressure. The combined effect of German reunification and the 1992–93 recession pushed up unemployment to double-digit levels, and economic difficulties were compounded by the belated ‘catch-up’ with Western European deindustrialization trends (Nolan and Slater, 2003: 74). At the same time, intensifying international market competition and the opening up of a large low-wage area east of the former Iron Curtain triggered uncertainty and much public

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controversy about the future of ‘Standort Deutschland’ (‘production location Germany’) and its social market economy model (Hyman, 2001: 132–3). Industrial relations institutions also came under more critical scrutiny. Stiffer competition made employers seek a stronger emphasis on cost control, which implied pressure on established wage levels and working conditions. Moreover, in a complete reversal of their earlier positions, employers now advocated a decentralization of collective bargaining, and they received support from governments and the jurisprudence of labour courts. Industry-level bargaining agreements increasingly contained so-called ‘opening clauses’, which allowed firms to derogate from sectoral standards in the face of adverse economic circumstances (see Rehder, 2003: ch. 7). At the same time, co-determination institutions – in particular board-level participation – were increasingly scrutinized with regard to their effects on economic performance. These circumstances could not but negatively affect German trade unions. Membership levels sharply declined after 1992 (Streeck, 2009: 47). Unlike their UK counterparts, German unions still did not face a radical onslaught on industrial relations institutions, yet while industry bargaining remained formally in place, its coverage shrank significantly, as did the share of private sector workplaces with elected works councils (ibid.: 39). Moreover, both at industry and company level, concession bargaining to ensure future employment security became the norm. Strike levels outside the public sector fell to extremely low levels (Dribbusch, 2007: 282–5). Whether or not these trends constituted an erosion of Germany’s industrial relations system remained controversial (see Hassel, 1999; Klikauer, 2002). In comparison to the UK, continuities with the post-war settlement were still strong by the late 1990s. Yet, few doubted that German union positions had been significantly weakened. Industrial relations and trade unions at Ford and Opel/Vauxhall Post-1945 trade union patterns and labour–management relations at Ford and Opel/Vauxhall were shaped by the broader national frameworks, but also by local and firm-specific developments. In the UK, organization patterns followed the multi-unionism prevailing in the British motor industry (see Turner et al., 1967: 192–223) – yet in different ways. At Ford, there were two large blue-collar unions, the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU, later AEF/AUEW/AEEU)5 with a recruitment focus on skilled workers, and the Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU), which dominated among semi-skilled and unskilled workers.6 AEU and TGWU coexisted with a multitude of smaller craft associations; the number of unions rose from initially ten in 1944 to more than twenty in the 1960s and 1970s, before the merger wave of the 1980s and 1990s brought the number down radically. At Vauxhall, in contrast, there were only three recognized unions, AEU, TGWU and the electricians’ union ETU/ETTPU (until its merger with the AEU in 1992). In both companies, in addition, white-collar employees had their own unions for most of the post-1945 period, the Draughtsmen’s and Allied Technicians Association (DATA, later TASS) for

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designers and technicians (see Foley, 1992), and ASSET (later ASMTS), a trade union for clerical and supervisory staff. Both unions merged in 1988 to form Manufacturing, Science, Finance (MSF). In 2001, the divide between blue- and white-collar representation was overcome with the merger between AEEU and MSF that created AMICUS.7 Multi-unionism was to some extent neutralized in collective-bargaining procedures through the creation of national joint negotiation committees (NJNC), comprising representatives from all (manual or staff) unions. These committees, dominated by national unions’ headquarter officials, became the most important bargaining arenas at Ford UK and Vauxhall (Tolliday, 1991). At the local level, ‘shop stewards’ were the voice of trade unionism in the workplace. They were elected directly by a group of workers, and were responsible for dealing with day-to-day grievances arising in their sections. From their midst, they elected plant ‘conveners’ to represent union members in plant-level consultation bodies. Conveners were also part of the national negotiating committees – at Vauxhall throughout the post-1945 period, at Ford from 1968 onwards (Tolliday, 1991: 83–5; Holden, 2003: 131–4). Labour–management relations reflected broader national trends, yet, again, they also developed quite differently in the two firms. Under the influence of the American parent company’s long-standing hostility to trade unions, Ford procrastinated in recognizing unions and for a long time refused to directly bargain with local shop stewards – an attitude which left a legacy of frustration and antagonism, exacerbated by frequent conflicts between shop stewards and NJNC union officials (Tolliday, 1991: 83–9). There were two major confrontations as early as 1956/7 and 1962/3, both of which were ultimately settled with the assistance of the government (ibid.: 90–3). Trade union membership grew rapidly – by the mid-1960s, blue-collar workers were organized to nearly 100 per cent (Turner et al., 1967: 195). Against this backdrop, the Europe-wide ‘conflictual turn’ of the late 1960s was particularly pronounced at Ford UK. Wage militancy was the most important aspect, expressed in a union campaign for wage parity with Chrysler and British Leyland plants in the Midlands, which culminated in a near 30 per cent wage rise breakthrough after ten weeks of strike in 1971 (see Mathews, 1972). Moreover, crucially nurtured by the support of the new left-wing leaderships of AEU and TGWU, shop steward struggles over work standards and line speeds became much more widespread, as did disputes about grading grievances and lay-offs. Many British Ford trade unionists also actively participated in the resistance against Labour’s ‘In Place of Strife’ in 1969 and the conservatives’ Industrial Relations Act 1971 (see Tolliday, 1991: 94–100). Militancy declined somewhat in the mid-1970s due to recession and initial union support for the Labour governments’ ‘Social Contract’. Moreover, Ford UK management took some steps to mitigate antagonism through the enhancement of shop stewards’ roles and a series of agreements on dispute procedures, work standards and employee consultation. However, the new language of cooperation often stood in sharp contrast to continued confrontation at

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shop-floor level, where uncompromising management attitudes still provoked walkouts and at times even violent riots (Tolliday, 1991: 98–100). In the late 1970s, Ford was drawn into a new spiral of conflict emanating from the failure of the Labour government’s income policy, which translated into a host of sectional conflicts about pay differentials and a nine-week-long wage dispute in 1978 (Friedman and Meredeen, 1980: 247–52). At Vauxhall, the longer-term legacy effects were quite different. Vauxhall had acquired the status of being the conflict-free spot in the motor industry in the 1950s and 1960s, primarily due to the traditionally low militancy in the Luton area and a rather ‘enlightened’ approach to labour management. The company did not resist trade union recognition in the 1940s and gave labour matters serious attention, expressed not least in the set-up of a so-called Management Advisory Committee (MAC) as a regular forum of labour–management consultation (Holden, 2003: 117–34). The first serious wave of labour unrest did not occur before 1966–67, eventually sweeping aside the MAC and heralding a more conflictual pattern of trade unionism – Vauxhall labour representatives now joined their Ford counterparts in the campaign for parity with Midlands wage rates. The opening of the Ellesmere Port plant in an area with long and militant trade union traditions further fuelled the ‘conflictual turn’. Nonetheless, Vauxhall remained less troubled by industrial disputes than Ford, and its approach to labour questions continued to be cooperative, e.g. with regard to the involvement of shop stewards in bargaining procedures and the anticipation of lay-off disputes through a relatively generous payment scheme (Holden, 2003: 204– 6). That labour conflicts multiplied in the late 1970s (see Marsden et al., 1985: 131) primarily reflected the broader national context, namely frustration about government income policy and the ever-increasing concern with pay differentials. Events culminated in a long and chaotic pay strike in 1979.8 Mirroring the earlier differences between the two firms, the ‘resurgence of labour quiescence’ (Shalev, 1992) in the 1980s and 1990s also played out in different ways. At Vauxhall, the less antagonistic legacy of labour relations became further accentuated by the desperate commercial situation of the company, which entailed a quick drop of dispute levels in the early 1980s (Marsden et al., 1985: 131). In the case of Ford, on the other hand, the shift of attitudes was slower and much more contested, in part also due to the company’s better financial situation. Ford management continued to convey ambiguous signals arising from the labour implications of new automated technology and from the lessons the company drew from its study of Japanese work organization. On the one hand, the Japanese experience was seen as indicating a greater need to assert managerial authority, best expressed in attempts for the introduction of a new disciplinary code in 1980. On the other hand, the increased need for quality production induced the company to increase individual worker responsibility for performance, hence the launch of initiatives for ‘employee involvement’ (see Starkey and McKinlay, 1994). Dispute levels, against this backdrop, declined

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only slowly. At Halewood, for example, the number of stoppages fell from 116 in 1980 to 73 in 1982, but then to a mere 12–13 in the late 1980s (Darlington, 1994: 219). From the late 1980s, union–management relations then turned into a sustained pattern of cooperation in both firms. This did not mean a complete absence of conflict. At Ford, a two-week-long pay strike occurred in 1988, while sectional walkouts still caused disruption in the Halewood plant in the early 1990s (ibid.: 222–4). In 1995, successful strike ballots in both firms led to public speculation about a ‘return of the 1970s’.9 Yet, these were exceptional moments. Overall, the number of disputes further decreased, and both companies strove to become models of a new ‘social partnership’ approach that advocated union–management collaboration to improve cost competitiveness and employee well-being – expressed in agreements such as Vauxhall’s 1997 ‘Working together to win’, or in initiatives like Ford’s new jointly run industrial-training scheme (see Katz and Darbishire, 2000: 104–10). In the German Ford and GM (Opel) subsidiaries, too, post-1945 industrial relations and trade union patterns were shaped by the broader national context and company-specific features. Given the country-wide structure of industrial unionism, a single organization – Industriegewerkschaft (IG) Metall – had a near monopoly of interest representation,10 yet unionization proceeded differently. Opel’s main production site in Rüsselsheim (close to Frankfurt/Main) had been a stronghold of the metalworkers’ union in the pre-1933 period (see Kugler, 1985), and this tradition ensured that the majority of Opel workers became members of the new IG Metall soon after 1945 (Bettien, 1982: 336). At Ford, by contrast, unionization remained low for a long time – by 1960 the rate stood at less than 10 per cent – due to works council corruption scandals, political infighting within the local IG Metall and Ford’s comparatively generous wages and working-time patterns (see Wittemann, 1994: 131–43). Following a major organizing drive at Cologne in the first half of the 1960s, however, unionization rates quickly converged with the overall industry standard (see ibid.: 233–4) – by the 1970s, IG Metall density rates in the sector already stood at around 70 per cent (Streeck, 1984: 9). In both firms, the works councils – elected separately in each location (Cologne-Niehl, Saarlouis and some smaller locations at Ford, Rüsselsheim, Bochum and Kaiserslauten at Opel)11 – came to be dominated by IG Metall delegates, although the IGM share in works council elections varied between locations and fluctuated between 55 per cent and 85 per cent throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.12 There was also a great deal of political infighting within both company-level IG Metall organizations. At Ford, this primarily affected the Cologne plant, where the organizing drive of the early 1960s entailed an abrupt generational change in the composition of the works council and also the emergence of rival factions. This was compounded by ethnic tensions between German and Turkish Ford workers, which culminated in violent clashes in the so-called Türkenstreik in September 1973 (see Hunn, 2002) and thus created additional divisions in the works council: from 1975, works

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council elections featured separate ‘Turkish lists’. In the case of Opel, the 1975 works council election saw a stand-off between two rival IG Metall factions at Rüsselsheim (see Neugebauer, 1996: 20–4), while infighting along a political left–right cleavage persisted at Bochum throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. As for collective bargaining, both firms became part of industry-level negotiations between the regional metal employers and IG Metall (e.g. Nordrhine-Westphalia for Ford Cologne and Hesse for Opel Rüsselsheim); in the case of Ford, this was a drawn-out and contested process, which dragged on until 1963 (see Wittemann, 1994). Yet, beyond their membership in regional IG Metall bargaining commissions – in line with broader industry trends (Streeck, 1984: 35–6) – Ford and Opel works councils also frequently engaged in a ‘second round’ of bargaining at the company level. In fact, such supplementary bargaining acquired more importance from the late 1960s. The Ford and Opel works councils not only successfully pressed for ‘top-ups’ on industry-level wage increases, but also achieved a host of new fringe benefits, from additional bonuses and holidays, higher shift and overtime premiums, to extra breaks for production workers and discounts on company car purchases. To support bargaining positions, employee mobilization was stepped up. Given the more conflict-restraining industrial relations context, this was less radical than in Britain, but nonetheless clearly discernible: embedded in the country-wide increase of wildcat strikes after September 1969 (see Birke, 2007), the Ford and Opel works councils now repeatedly orchestrated short, ‘spontaneous’ walkouts to press their demands. At Ford, this dynamic reached its high point between 1969 and 1971 and became more muted subsequently due to the disastrous experience of the 1973 Türkenstreik. At Opel, by contrast, wildcat walkouts reached their peak in the second half of the 1970s.13 The more assertive use of co-determination rights was also noteworthy. On the one hand, Ford and Opel works councils now frequently pursued matters through to arbitration by a specific conciliation committee (Einigungsstelle), and they also directly appealed against management decisions in labour courts.14 On the other hand, the legal requirement for management to obtain works council consent for overtime was often used as a bargaining lever (for Opel, see Streeck, 1984: 118–24). As in the UK, initiatives were not limited to questions of wages and benefits. The Ford works council, for example, although ultimately without success, pressed for new regulations for the determination of line speeds and manning levels, while its Opel counterpart fought a drawn-out battle for the set-up of a special fund to compensate workers during temporary lay-offs.15 Interventions on the broader industrial relations scene further added to the picture. Ford and Opel delegates regularly pressed for higher settlements in regional bargaining commissions and also urged a broader reform of IG Metall bargaining strategies towards a greater emphasis on decentralized, company-level negotiations.16 From the early 1980s, the situation of German Ford and Opel trade unionists became much more difficult, although they were not as hard hit as their counterparts in the UK. Against the backdrop of an emerging downward trend

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of headcount levels, earlier agendas to improve wages and employee welfare were now supplanted by employment security concerns. In 1980, the Opel works council leader could still celebrate the achievement of longer rest breaks; three years later, he complained that ‘social investments’ to improve working conditions had become a victim of adverse economic circumstances.17 The earlier militant calls for a decentralization of IG Metall bargaining structures fell silent. However, differences between the two firms continued to be important – works council politics remained more assertive at Opel than at Ford. This was expressed, for example, in a determined campaign for an agreement to protect Opel workers from the rationalization effects of labour-saving technologies18 and the continued emphasis on the offensive use of legal rights, including arbitration procedures. While there was a growing emphasis on informal ‘behind the scene’ lobbying at Ford, Opel works council representatives continued to use public interventions in the media to press demands; in 1983, Opel’s CEO complained about ‘long lasting public discussions of internal company affairs’ which had created a negative image of Opel as a conflict-riven firm.19 The relationship between works councils and IG Metall leadership also developed quite differently in the two firms in the 1980s and 1990s. In continuity with the 1970s, Opel trade union representatives remained often in the forefront of broader debates within IG Metall, while their Ford counterparts now adopted a ‘low profile’. In 1984, tellingly, the direct involvement of Opel trade unionists in IG Metall’s thirty-five-hour campaign20 contrasted with a passive attitude at Ford, where the works council agreed to the anticipation of paid holidays during the strike (Fetzer, 2003: 409–11). In subsequent years, a similar difference was discernible in contrasting patterns of participation in the short IG Metall ‘warning strikes’.21 While internal works council debates at Opel had to be frequently resolved through IG Metall headquarter ‘arbitration’, Ford works council politics became increasingly decoupled from national union objectives. Conclusion This chapter has demonstrated that British and German trade unions at Ford and General Motors were affected by a number of similar economic and industrial relations trends but that they also faced quite different contextual conditions between the late 1960s and the early twenty-first century. The contrasting developments of the British and German automobile industries, the institutional and ideational differences between national trade union and industrial relations systems, and the considerable variations in company-level industrial relations patterns posed different challenges and provided different opportunities and resources to address these challenges. Embedded in these complex patterns, British and German trade unions came to be confronted with an additional challenge from 1967 (Ford) and 1973–74 (GM): geocentric internationalization. The next chapter now looks in detail at

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how these internationalization processes unfolded in the two countries and companies, and which consequences this entailed for British and German trade union perceptions.

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Notes 1 The literature on British decline is much larger than that about German success. For an overview of the former, see Church (1995). 2 IG Metall, ‘Automobilindustrie-Beschäftigungsperspektiven in den 90er Jahren’, 1 June 1989, Archiv IG Metall Frankfurt/M. (hereafter AIGMF), ‘Vorstand April–Juni 1989’. 3 For a critical assessment, see Therborn (1987). 4 Trade union numbers are the clearest illustration of this pattern. While there were 40 unions in the FRG in 1950 (rising to 72 in 1995), of which a dozen organized 86 per cent of all members, the comparable figure for Britain stood at 732 (falling to 238 in 1995) – see Ebbinghaus (2000: 316); Ebbinghaus and Waddington (2000: 740). 5 The AEU, itself the successor of the century-old Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE), changed its name several times, into AEF in 1967 and AUEW in 1970, as a result of mergers, before reverting to its original title in 1986. In the early 1990s a further merger with the electricians’ union, EETPU, formed the AEEU. 6 Until the 1960s there was a sizeable third organisation, the National Union of Vehicle Builders (NUVB), which by 1970 was absorbed by the TGWU. 7 In 2007, AMICUS and TGWU merged to form UNITE. 8 ‘Firm hit by union action’, Luton News, 23 June 1977; ‘Pickets at plants’, Luton News, 13 September 1979. 9 ‘Car strikes’, Autocar, 6 December 1995. 10 The only significant rival, the Deutsche Angestellten-Gewerkschaft, had pockets of membership among white-collar workers. At Opel, especially at Rüsselsheim, the Christian Metalworker Federation (CMV) also had a certain small-scale following (Herber, 2002). 11 Since the late 1960s, in addition, there was a so-called Gesamtbetriebsrat (central works council), which was made up of representatives from works councils in the different locations. 12 For Opel, see Herber ( 2002). For Ford, see for example ‘Ford-Arbeiter mit halber Million DM zu Aufsichtsräten getrimmt’, Kölner Express, 25 January 1978; ‘IG Metall bleibt die stärkste Kraft’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 23 June 1997. 13 For Opel, see Neugebauer (1996: 24–5). For Ford, see for example, ‘Gebt uns mehr Lohn’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 3 March 1970; ‘Das ist eine Riesenschweinerei’, Der Spiegel, 13 July 1970. 14 Interview by the author with Günther Middell and Peter Nottelmann, former HRM staff, Fordwerke AG, 5 September 2003; interview by the author with Richard Heller, former works council chairman, Adam Opel AG, 12 February 2003. 15 For Ford, see Günter Tolusch, ‘Entwurf Perspektivpapier IG Metall Verwaltungsstelle Köln’, March 1973, Archiv der sozialen Demokratie (hereafter AdsD), Bestand IG Metall, Abteilung Organization, O 669. 16 ‘Betriebsräte von Ford und Opel an einem Tisch’, Neue Rhein Zeitung, 30 November 1968; Industriegewerkschaft Metall, Protokoll des 10. ordentlichen Gewerkschaftstages der IG Metall für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 27. September–2. Oktober 1971,

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Paradoxes of internationalization pp. 180–1, 217; Industriegewerkschaft Metall, Protokoll des 12. ordentlichen Gewerkschaftstages der IG Metall für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 18–24 September 1977; pp. 295–303. ‘Erreichte Erholzeit entspricht etwa 600 Arbeitsplätzen’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 22 April 1980; ’Rechenschaft Betriebsversammlung’, 29 September 1983, Archiv Gesamtbetriebsrat Adam Opel AG (hereafter AGBRO), ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1981–’. ‘Rationalisierungsschutz: Licht am Ende des Tunnels?’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 22 December 1983. ‘Rede des Generaldirektors der Adam Opel AG, Herrn Beickler, zur Betriebsräteversammlung’, 25 October 1983, AGBRO, ‘Betriebsräteversammlung 1983’. ‘Heller ist für Betriebsbesetzungen’, Main-Spitze, 26 June 1984. ‘Bei Ford Streik in der Frühstückspause’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 10 March 1987.

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2 Geocentric internationalization: a new challenge for German and British trade unions at Ford and General Motors

Strictly speaking, Ford and General Motors had ‘internationalized’ their operations ever since they started their investment in Europe in the early twentieth century (see Bordenave and Lung, 2003). However, European subsidiaries had a great deal of autonomy for most of their existence until the 1960s. It was only then that ‘geocentric’ internationalization started to take shape (first at Ford, and from 1973–74 at GM) through product standardization, the build-up of multi-site production networks and the establishment of independent European management structures; from the late 1980s, European networks also became more integrated into global corporate structures and strategies. In the first part, this chapter traces the development of geocentric internationalization processes and highlights the different ways in which these processes affected the German and British Ford and GM subsidiaries. In the second part, the chapter examines the challenges that internationalization posed for British and German trade unions, and the concerns it triggered among labour representatives. While similar in their focus on employment security and industrial relations issues, these concerns varied between the two countries and significantly changed over time. Geocentric internationalization at Ford and General Motors (1967–2000) The history of Ford and GM investment in Europe is much older than the time period covered in this book – in the case of Ford the origins can be traced back to 1911 when the firm opened a first small assembly plant in Manchester (see Wilkins, 1964: 47–51). By the outbreak of the Second World War, both companies had established a massive presence on the European continent. Ford had constructed a large manufacturing complex at Dagenham (East London) and created sizable additional production capacities in Germany (Cologne) and France (in joint venture with Mathis), as well as smaller assembly facilities in

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Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark (see ibid.: 97–144). General Motors had taken over Opel in Germany and Vauxhall in Britain and had opened assembly plants in Belgium, Denmark and Switzerland (Dassbach, 1989: 206–19). However, there were hardly any moves towards geocentric internationalization. In the case of Ford, headquarter direction from Detroit was strong until the 1920s, but the subsequent rise of nationalism and protectionist trade policies forced the company to allow a growing degree of autonomy for national subsidiaries. Ford also had to abandon ambitious plans for a pan-European production network centred on the new Dagenham site as the ‘Detroit of Europe’ (see Tolliday, 2003a: 158–66). In the case of GM, subsidiary autonomy reflected a conscious strategy, which transposed the firm’s domestic approach of internal corporate competition between brands to the overseas operations – significantly, unlike Ford, GM chose to acquire the established Opel and Vauxhall brands, rather than creating facilities from scrap (Bordenave and Lung, 2003: 54–5). Unsurprisingly, this ‘multi-domestic’ pattern was reinforced during the Second World War when the German and British Ford and GM subsidiaries contributed to war production on opposing sides (for Ford, see Tolliday, 2003a: 166–8). After the war, again, there was little immediate change. Ford and GM subsidiaries had regular reporting obligations to Detroit but ‘otherwise their industrial behaviour was hardly distinguishable from local carmakers’ (Bordenave and Lung, 2003: 54). The German and British subsidiaries competed independently from each other, and, except in their respective country, also against each other (for Ford, see Tolliday, 2003a: 179–82). GM, again, showed little interest in the cross-border integration of its European facilities, while Ford, despite serious reflections about integration plans, was hampered by adverse circumstances – initially by the continued national trading restrictions and exchange controls, later by British–German management rivalries and the unresolved question of British membership in the European Economic Community (EEC), which placed a heavy tariff burden on collaborative ventures (see ibid.: 184–8). Against this backdrop, and despite an emerging trend towards pan-European rationalization among US multinational firms since the mid-1960s (see Jones, 2005: 92–100), change came rather unexpectedly – though it was by no means surprising that it initially only occurred at Ford: in June 1967, Henry Ford II told an improvised gathering of British and German managers that he intended to radically reorganize the firm’s European operations through the creation of a new holding company, Ford of Europe (FoE) – national subsidiaries were to retain their legal status as independent entities but were supposed to coordinate their activities at the European level. Predictably, reorganization entailed a massive upheaval of personnel and fierce German–British battles for the leadership of new divisions and the allocation of responsibilities (see Tolliday, 2003a: 190–3). The core of reorganization was that Ford’s European operations were inte-

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grated in terms of product development, manufacturing and sales. In product development, the two centres in Dunton (UK) and Cologne-Merkenich (Germany) were reorganized into new European groups subdivided along functional lines. For example, chassis engineering for future European vehicles was concentrated in Germany, while engine development was to be carried out in the UK. By 1972, following difficult early years of transition, Ford had a largely standardized European vehicle range featuring the Escort, Capri, Cortina/Taunus and Consul/Granada models. This was complemented by the small Fiesta in the mid-1970s (Tolliday, 2003a: 190–201). For the manufacturing of this new vehicle range, Ford created a panEuropean production network, which implied the integration of existing facilities as well as the opening of additional plants in various countries. Next to the traditional multi-plant manufacturing sites at Dagenham and CologneNiehl and the older small assembly and component production units, Ford had already opened additional plants at Halewood (close to Liverpool) and Genk (Belgium) in the early to mid-1960s. In the early 1970s, this was complemented by a second German assembly facility at Saarlouis and a new ‘Iberian pillar’, which partly reversed Ford’s earlier departure from France and Spain (see Loubet and Hatzfeld, 2003; Estape-Triay, 2003): At Valencia, the company established a massive complex for vehicle assembly and engine production, while a new transmission plant was opened close to Bordeaux (Bonin, 2003). In the UK, a major new engine plant was opened at Bridgend in the late 1970s. The FoE concept integrated these production locations through specialization and a network of cross-border deliveries. Depending on production runs and plant size, specialization oscillated between single and multiple sourcing. The high-volume models Cortina/Taunus, Escort and Fiesta were simultaneously produced in several locations until the late 1980s – the Cortina/Taunus range at Dagenham and Cologne-Niehl, as well as at Genk, the Escort at Halewood, Saarlouis and (later) Valencia, the Fiesta at Valencia, Saarlouis (later replaced by Cologne) and Dagenham. On the other hand, manufacturing of the upmarket Granada/Consul (later Scorpio) range was from early on concentrated at Cologne-Niehl (Tolliday, 2003a: 224–6). Powertrain operations displayed a similar pattern; identical engines and transmissions were frequently manufactured at two or more different locations, while in some cases specific plants (e.g. Bordeaux for automatic transmissions) became the sole supplier for the whole European network. On top of this, there were extensive flows of parts and components across borders – from press panels to axles and wheels (Mathews, 1972: 26–8). As for marketing, the German and British subsidiaries, instead of selling cars independently from each other, now represented FoE exclusively in some countries while being barred from sales in others (Harbridge House Europe, 1984: parts VI, VII). To ensure continuous cross-border coordination between subsidiaries, the new FoE headquarters was set up at Warley (Essex). Headed by a chairman directly reporting to Detroit, FoE was subdivided in functional divisions (product development, manufacturing, finance, etc.) with their own vice-

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presidents, who were given oversight of the planning and implementation of subsidiary operations. FoE’s organizational chart encompassed all Ford personnel in Europe; subsidiary managers – while still accountable to national board members – were now also required to report to ‘their’ relevant FoE division (see Bordenave, 2003: 269–75). Many difficulties notwithstanding, this transformation of Ford’s European operations was by and large completed by the late 1970s, and was followed by a period of consolidation. Despite much public speculation about new Ford plants in Portugal, Austria and other European countries, the company focused on the development of its existing facilities – indeed, some smaller assembly plants (e.g. in Cork and Amsterdam) were closed down in the early 1980s (see de Goey, 2003). Given the firms’ less centralistic corporate culture, General Motors management was initially highly sceptical of Ford’s European experiments. However, by the early 1970s, Detroit started to be concerned about the low profitability of its international operations, which contrasted with Ford’s more dynamic development, and it was against this backdrop that GM hesitantly started to follow Ford’s example of cross-border rationalization in Europe (see Doz, 1980: 1–4). Yet, GM’s shift to geocentric internationalization was not only belated, but also less radical. Pan-European restructuring was a drawn-out process, which was not completed before the second half of the 1980s. Initially, the new strategy, approved by GM’s headquarters in November 1973, was by and large confined to the achievement of more coordination between the German and British subsidiaries Opel and Vauxhall. In product development, design and engineering – contrary to Ford – a clear split was made: the responsibility for passenger cars was concentrated in Germany, while Vauxhall assumed full control over commercial vehicle development, to be marketed under the ‘Bedford’ brand across Western Europe. As for cars, the aim was to retain the German and British brands and model variations. However, below the surface of styling differentiation, car bodies, parts and components were to become more similar (ibid.). In the area of manufacturing, too, GM continued to lag far behind Ford. Until the late 1970s, there was no real pan-European production network. In the car sector, Vauxhall started to adopt some Opel derivatives (e.g. Ascona – sold as Cavalier in the UK) with cosmetic styling differences, and, therefore, production patterns at Luton and Ellesmere Port became somewhat more similar to those at the main German plants at Rüsselsheim and Bochum. However, this was confined to one part of assembly operations, as car component manufacturing became increasingly concentrated in Germany (Holden, 2003: 206–12). The coordination of activities was done in a decentralized way (mostly from the Opel headquarters at Rüsselsheim) – no separate European management structure was created. The breakthrough to geocentric internationalization at GM occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s. GM embarked on a massive capacity expansion programme in Europe, and new manufacturing complexes were set up in

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Vienna (engines and transmissions) and Zaragoza/Cadiz (Spain), complemented by additional component facilities in France. The older GM plant at Antwerp (Belgium) was extended as well. Connected to this expansion, GM made a quantum leap in its policy of cross-border rationalization: new vehicles (Ascona/Cavalier, Astra, Corsa and Omega (from 1986) were designed as European or even world cars and manufactured with numerous standardized parts and components. This entailed not only an increase in cross-border deliveries – the new Austrian engine plant supplied assembly facilities across the continent – but also the ‘catching up’ with Ford’s pattern of multiple parallel sourcing: by the late 1980s, the Ascona range was simultaneously produced at Rüsselsheim, Luton and Antwerp, the Astra at Ellesmere Port, Zaragoza and Bochum, and the Corsa at Zaragoza and Bochum. Powertrain production underwent a similar transformation, as engine plants in Vienna, Bochum and Kaiserslautern now even faced competition from GM plants in Japan and Australia (see Düe and Hentrich, 1981: 25–9). In 1986, moreover, GM finally also set up a European headquarters in Zurich (Switzerland), which consolidated and further deepened pan-European rationalization. By the late 1980s, patterns of geocentric internationalization had thus converged considerably, and the process then further accelerated during the 1990s. At the same time, a number of new differences between the two companies emerged. A first important development was the completion of the single European market in the late 1980s (see Garrett and Weingast, 1993), which encouraged Ford and GM to go further in pan-European sourcing strategies. Competition between plants intensified, as investment allocation processes were reorganized as formal ‘tenders’, while the number of European Ford and GM locations continued to grow. Following the fall of the Iron Curtain, GM established new assembly plants in Eisenach (former East Germany) and Gliwice (Poland), as well as a new engine factory in Hungary. GM’s merger with Saab also added a Swedish component (assembly at Trollhättan) to the picture. Ford was more cautious but also set up new factories in Romania and Turkey (Bordenave and Lung, 2003). Importantly, and to some extent reversing the earlier trend, locational competition now became stronger at GM where it was not uncommon that three or more plants vied against each other (Hancké, 2000). In the case of Ford, change was rather in the opposite direction. The production of the Sierra (successor of Cortina/Taunus) was centralized at Genk in 1989, and the number of Fiesta and Escort (later Focus) locations was reduced from three to two in the late 1990s (Tolliday, 2003b: 101–8). From the late 1980s, in parallel to the deepening of pan-European rationalization, GM and Ford also started to integrate European operations more into global corporate structures. But, again, there were important differences. Ford started out with a highly ambitious scheme to integrate European and North American operations through joint product platforms and the creation of a new transatlantic divisional structure; FoE prerogatives were curtailed. In 1994, Ford brought out its first real ‘world car’, the Mondeo, manufactured identically at

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sites in Europe (Genk) and North America. However, against the backdrop of commercial flops and much internal infighting, corporate globalization was partly reversed in the late 1990s – the FoE headquarters (transferred from Warley to Cologne in 1997) reacquired most of its earlier functions (Bordenave, 2003: 295–7, 307–10). In the case of GM, on the other hand, corporate globalization accelerated from the mid-1990s. All new car models were developed on ‘global platforms’, which were designed to rationalize the various model ranges sold by GM brands throughout the world. Here, too, the process was contested within the company, illustrated most drastically in the open conflict between Detroit and Opel/GM Europe in 1997 (Rehder, 2003: 179–81). Yet, unlike at Ford, there was no radical reversal of policy. Moreover, GM invested heavily in the new growth areas outside the triad countries. The company engaged in joint ventures in Russia and China, and took over the Korean manufacturer Daewoo. As a consequence, GM’s traditional European operations not only lost part of their autonomy, but also declined in relative terms (Bordenave and Lung, 2003). German and British subsidiaries within the geocentric networks The British and German Ford and GM subsidiaries were quite differently affected by geocentric internationalization. Between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, internationalization reinforced the contrasting domestic industrial developments – Fordwerke and Opel turned out to be ‘winners’, whose share of European production and investment grew considerably at the expense of Ford and GM plants in the UK. In both firms, these trends were expressed in a series of crucial investment and trading decisions. Ford of Europe opted for a massive expansion of production capacity on the continent in the late 1960s (especially at Saarlouis), while earlier plans for a new body and assembly plant in Britain were shelved in 1970. In 1973–74 and 1979–80, the UK subsidiary was again marginalized in FoE capacity expansion programmes. For example, the allocation of Fiesta manufacturing was concentrated in Saarlouis (later Cologne) and the new Valencia plant, while Dagenham was confined to pure assembly for the British market (Tolliday, 2003a: 214–20). Export market rationalization likewise favoured the German subsidiary, which acquired the exclusive supply of the fast-growing EEC markets, whereas Ford UK export sales were increasingly limited to the markets in the much smaller European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and the former Commonwealth. The export share of Ford UK output fell from 45 per cent in 1968/9 to little more than 20 per cent in the early 1980s, although this was partially offset by growing exports of components, in particular engines (ibid.: 109–12, 139). In direct contrast, the equivalent German figures grew from 44 per cent in 1967, to more than 65 per cent in 1981–83 (Thomes, 2003: 174). Furthermore, from 1975, enabled by British accession to the EEC, Ford UK started to import vehicles from continental plants for sale on the British market.

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Over time, these ‘tied imports’ grew from less than 10 per cent of Ford sales in the UK, to a staggering level of roughly 40 per cent of these sales in the early 1980s (Tolliday, 2003b: 139, 146). Next to Belgian and Spanish plants, the German Ford subsidiary was the main beneficiary of this shift. It should be emphasized that these corporate strategies did not merely respond to overall industrial developments. In fact, FoE took advantage of the crisis in the UK motor industry to slowly escape from its British locations. As one study put it: ‘The bankruptcy of British Leyland presented Ford of Europe with its greatest single opportunity to reduce its dependence on UK plants . . . Ford of Europe simply elected to resource cars from Germany in lieu of increasing production in the UK’ (Harbridge House Europe, 1984: VIII–10). In the case of General Motors, the German–British contrast was still more pronounced because, as we saw earlier, Opel had already developed more dynamically than Vauxhall in the first two post-war decades. From 1973–74, European rationalization reinforced this pattern. Opel had to abandon its small commercial vehicle division to the benefit of Vauxhall, but this was a marginal sacrifice in comparison to the enormous benefits that accrued to the firm as GM’s undisputed European passenger car centre. All research and development and the bulk of powertrain operations were concentrated in the German Opel plants at Rüsselsheim, Bochum and Kaiserslautern (Dassbach, 1989: 442–5). The establishment of new GM plants in Spain, France and Austria in the late 1970s brought more competition for the German locations but this did not alter Opel’s dominance within GM’s European network. Indeed, Detroit now entrusted Opel with the coordination of all European GM operations.1 For Vauxhall, the impact of geocentric internationalization was rather different. On the positive side, reorganization allowed the company to upgrade its ageing car model range without costly investment programmes, which a lack of profits and GM engagement had earlier prevented. On the other hand, Vauxhall was locked into the role of Opel’s ‘junior partner’, as the allocation of commercial vehicle development and production soon turned into a major liability (Holden, 2003: 217–18). On the car side, all new car models were Vauxhallbadged Opel designs with cosmetic styling differences and other engine types. The Vauxhall passenger car plants at Luton and Ellesmere Port turned into pure assembly units confined to the supply of the British market. Vauxhall car exports declined from around 80,000 units in 1974 to virtually zero in 1983 (ibid.: 208). At the same time, the share of British-sourced components in Vauxhall cars also decreased dramatically, and there was a steep rise in ‘tied imports’ from continental GM plants. In the early 1980s, Vauxhall’s car production barely reached the level of 100,000 units per year, which amounted to less than half of the company’s UK sales in those years (ibid.). Indeed, only the middle-class Ascona/Cavalier and Astra were produced in the UK, while all top-range models, as well as the new small car Corsa, were directly imported from GM factories in Germany, Belgium and Spain (ibid.: 206–7). Between the mid-1980s and the late 1990s, Ford UK and Vauxhall stabilized

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their relative positions within the international groups. In part, this was due to public uproar about tied imports from the mid-1980s, triggered, for example, by an influential pamphlet by Daniel Jones from Sussex University (Jones, 1985). The arrival of Japanese transplants in the UK made the import issue still more salient, as the government concluded an agreement with Nissan that prescribed a minimum of 60 per cent local content in the cars produced at its new UK site in Sunderland (Tolliday, 2003b: 98–9). Against this backdrop – and in light of a more favourable exchange rate – Ford and GM reduced tied import levels, which helped to stabilize output and employment in the British Ford and GM plants. At Vauxhall, for example, production volumes doubled to about 200,000 in 1988–89 (Whisler, 1999: 381). In the first half of the 1990s, this was followed by the resurgence of exports – for the first time in two decades British Ford and Vauxhall plants supplied large volumes of cars to continental European markets. In the case of Ford, this went hand in hand with a significant upgrading of export-oriented engine production at Dagenham and Bridgend (Tolliday, 2003b: 102–5). However, there was no reversal of hierarchy. Recovery in the UK was limited and the British subsidiaries were still very much in the role of ‘junior partners’; British production plants remained generally smaller than those on the continent, and they were often confined to the assembly of a single model (e.g. Ford Fiesta at Dagenham, Vauxhall Astra at Ellesmere Port). Ford UK’s share of European output, for example, stabilized at around 20–25 per cent in the late 1980s, and it remained at this level for most of the 1990s (ibid.: 144). In the German subsidiaries, the situation became more difficult than during the 1970s not only because of the limited resurgence in the UK, but also because of the additional competition from the new Ford and GM facilities in Southern and (later) Eastern Europe. From the mid-1980s, there were repeated threats of losing specific activities, from car assembly (Opel Rüsselsheim), to engine and transmission operations (Opel Kaiserslautern and Ford Cologne), and product development responsibilities (Ford Cologne-Merkenich).2 Yet, despite some occasional slippages, the German subsidiaries retained their role as dominant ‘players’ in both firms. Ford Germany’s share of overall European output, for example, stabilized at around 60 per cent in the late 1980s, and it hovered around this figure throughout the 1990s (Tolliday, 2003b: 144). Events around the millennium were to confirm these hierarchies, as UK plants bore the brunt of Ford and GM cutback programmes in the face of a persistent problem of overcapacity. In 1997, Ford discontinued Escort assembly at Halewood and concentrated the production of the successor model Focus at Saarlouis and Valencia. The Halewood plant narrowly survived the crisis through a shift to Ford’s newly acquired luxury-brand Jaguar (ibid.: 102, 105–6). The ‘big bang’ then came in 2000: Ford closed its traditional Dagenham assembly plant, concentrating Fiesta production in Cologne and Valencia. Employment losses were only marginally offset by increased engine production. A few months later GM discontinued vehicle assembly at Luton to single-source production of the new Vectra (successor of the Cavalier) at Rüsselsheim (ibid.:

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108; Holden, 2003: 218–26). As a result, both firms entered the new millennium with a production geography that had its clear centre in Germany, while British operations played a yet more marginal role.

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Internationalization as a new challenge for German and British trade unions Given the nature of companies and industry, international issues had played a certain role for German and British trade union policies at Ford and General Motors long before the time period covered in this study. US ownership and control had been a structural factor of influence as early as the inter-war period (for Opel see Kugler, 1985), and this influence was also intermittently discernible in the first post-war decades. In the case of Ford, for example, interventions from Detroit informed union positions at the time of the buyout of British minority shareholders in 1960 (see Fetzer, 2005: 62–77), or in the negotiations about the German subsidiary’s participation in industry bargaining in 1962–63 (see Fetzer, 2010a: 181–6). However, it was only with the shift to panEuropean company structures and strategies that internationalization became a permanent and salient concern for labour representatives in Germany and the UK. Notwithstanding a common focus on employment security and industrial relations, trade union perceptions of internationalization were quite different in the two countries and companies. Internationalization, trade unions and employment security From a trade union perspective, one crucial concern about geocentric internationalization was that it allowed Ford and GM to relocate capital and production – and hence employment – more easily across borders. To be sure, as many scholars rightly insist (see Dicken, 2007: 150–3), relocation options for multinational firms are usually restricted by the ‘sunk costs’ of past investment, as well as by the importance of specific national markets for commercial success and the need to avoid upsetting national public opinions and governments. Even at the beginning of the twenty-first century, scholars warn against the exaggeration of relocation dynamics (Galgóczi et al., 2006). The incidence of relocation also varies across sectors, and the automobile industry – given its highly capital-intensive mode of production – is not among the sectors that are most prone to a quick ‘spatial fix’ (see Meardi et al., 2009). In the cases of Ford and GM, too, the above-mentioned ‘gravity shift’ from Britain to Germany was a slow process, which resulted from the strategic placement of new investment rather than the outright relocation of existing facilities. Still by the mid-1980s, the commercial importance of the UK market, a lingering ‘Buy British’ mentality among fleet customers and the sensitivity of the issue of ‘tied imports’ in public debates placed important limits on relocation strategies. As Tolliday puts it with regard to Ford: ‘Ford of Britain’s position in the international division of labour of Ford of Europe locked it into a role as a limited production base that Ford of Europe did not want to build up, but could not close down’ (2003b: 99).

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Regardless of these limits, however, as we have seen earlier, geocentric internationalization did entail significant cross-border shifts of production capacity at Ford and General Motors. And these shifts also translated into significant changes in employment patterns, as can be easily illustrated by a glance at Ford UK and Ford Germany payroll figures between 1960 and 2000: fifteen years after the end of the war, Ford employed more than twice as many workers in the UK than in Germany who produced 70 per cent of Ford’s European car output. At the beginning of the new millennium this relationship had been reversed (Tolliday, 2003b: 142–3; Thomes, 2003: 172–4). Moreover, beyond actual relocation processes, internationalization brought a new sense of uncertainty about how company strategies might potentially affect future employment prospects. On the one hand, it created a new anxiety about ‘losing out’ vis-à-vis other locations in terms of investment and production. Product standardization meant that production volumes were no longer ‘guaranteed’ by virtue of a distinct range of car models. On the other hand, internationally coordinated allocation decisions became associated with uncertainties about future market trends. Plants could be confronted with the ‘unlucky’ situation of being saddled with a badly selling vehicle, which could translate into short-time work or redundancies. It should not come as a surprise then that the implications of internationalization for employment security became a key trade union concern at Ford and GM. Yet, importantly, this concern varied over time, as well as across the two countries and companies. Until the late 1970s, disquiet and protests often remained short-lived because – with the exception of the 1974–75 recession period – internationalization was not accompanied by headcount reductions. Employment growth was uneven yet significant: Ford UK recorded a 20 per cent headcount increase between 1967 and 1979, while the German subsidiary grew at more than double this rate (Tolliday, 2003b: 143; Thomes, 2003: 174). Even at Vauxhall, a temporary drop in 1974–75 was followed by a moderate increase in the second half of the 1970s (Holden, 2003: 208). Against this backdrop, acute trade union anxiety about employment security was only expressed in intermittent ‘intervals’ and often subsided as quickly as it emerged. Unsurprisingly, such expressions were more frequent in the UK and emerged earlier at Ford than at Vauxhall.3 In terms of specific concerns, there were major differences between the two countries. In the UK, labour representatives were at first primarily worried about the relative slippage of British subsidiaries in terms of investment and exports. At Ford, for example, complaints about the decline of European exports started as early as the early 1970s, not least against the backdrop of the UK’s imminent entry into the EEC. Union documents pointed out that ‘Ford workers would be exposed to greatly increased home market penetration from Common Market producers . . . while there was a great gap where the compensatory major increase in sales to the Common Market should be.’4 After the 1973 oil crisis, concerns intensified. Union representatives complained about outdated machinery, the lack of investment to increase

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assembly capacity and, increasingly also about the growth of ‘tied imports’. In 1978, a TGWU document presented detailed calculations about the downward trend of Ford investments between 1971 and 1976, culminating in the claim that the company ‘was manifestly failing to develop’.5 At Vauxhall, perceptions were somewhat more ambiguous, as pan-European rationalization started at a time when Vauxhall’s commercial position was very weak after a string of six loss-making years (Holden, 2003: 204). Against this backdrop, many union representatives acknowledged that internationalization provided a short-term ‘lifeline’ even if this meant sacrificing Vauxhall’s autonomy. A company letter to the local Luton MP in July 1975 captured the atmosphere: ‘We are left with the impression that the shop stewards accepted the rationale of the programme even if they felt a certain sadness about it.’6 At the same time, internationalization was frequently denounced as ‘Opelization’, a criticism that primarily focused on the rundown of Vauxhall’s car-related product development, the decline of export sales and the growth of tied imports. There was a widespread suspicion that GM planned to turn Vauxhall into a UK sales agency for Opel. Subsidiary managers registered that union representatives were ‘desperately worried’ about the long-term future of employment at Vauxhall.7 In the German subsidiaries, employment security concerns were not only less widespread but focused on more specific aspects of corporate strategy. At Ford, there was disquiet about FoE’s model and marketing policy, which was perceived to be too much tailored to the British market, while neglecting the sales potential in the FRG. In fact, Ford’s market share in Germany declined from 16 per cent to 10 per cent between 1969 and 1974 (Thomes, 2003: 174), and this trend was widely associated with FoE’s standardization in the German automobile press.8 From a trade union point of view, this appeared to endanger long-term job security in the production plants even if these losses were – for the time being – compensated for by growing exports.9 The 1974–75 recession accentuated such anxieties, while Ford’s major new investment projects in Spain and France also led to some unease about the creation of ‘overcapacities’, which could precipitate a similar job crisis in the future.10 In the case of Opel, employment security concerns remained at first little connected to GM’s pan-European reorganization. Works council documents record a few instances in which this connection was made – for example, against the backdrop of optimistic growth forecasts for the commercial vehicle sector, there was some regret about the loss of Opel’s small-truck programme.11 However, this was overshadowed by a number of broader issues, in particular a strong union concern about the employment effects of slower car demand growth and of technology-driven rationalization.12 From 1977, Opel works council representatives voiced occasional disquiet about company plans to relocate specific component production units to France and Yugoslavia, but these relocation measures were on a minor scale. More serious concerns only started to emerge with GM’s 1979 expansion programme, in particular with regard to the new manufacturing complex in Spain.13

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The early 1980s then brought a major turning point in all four firms. This was due to the further development of geocentric company strategies which now coincided with mass redundancies (1980–81) and, subsequently, in crucial contrast to the second half of the 1970s, with a further, if uneven, downward trend of headcount levels. In the UK, cutbacks were radical; between 1979 and the late 1980s Ford UK employment levels dropped by more than one-third and those at Vauxhall by nearly half (Tolliday, 1991: 104: Holden, 2003: 208). In contrast, the two German subsidiaries only recorded headcount reductions of between 15 and 20 per cent (Thomes, 2003: 174; Herber, 2002: 19, 22). Clearly, this reversal of earlier employment growth was not caused by internationalization alone – in large part it reflected wider industry trends, in particular the slowdown of European car demand growth, heightened competition and the acceleration of technological rationalization in response to the ‘Japanese challenge’ (Starkey and McKinlay, 1994). Yet, internationalization now did frequently become associated with acute employment problems. Union reactions to the 1980–81 recession, for example, were dominated by concerns about internationalization. In Germany, works councils protested against expansion plans in Spain (Opel) and Portugal (Ford) at a time of domestic job cutbacks.14 In the UK, in continuity with the late 1970s, the focus was more narrowly on the issue of tied imports, the further growth of which was perceived as outrageous against the backdrop of mass redundancies.15 Internationalization – if it had not caused the market downturn – appeared to aggravate the consequences of recession. The impact of internationalization was most direct when European reorganization schemes affected employment in specific locations. British trade unions were more hard hit in this respect, particularly so in the case of General Motors. The further downgrading of Vauxhall within GM’s European and global production network led to a great deal of trade union dismay, especially because of the shift to pure assembly without local component manufacturing, and because the new small Corsa vehicle was not even to be assembled in the UK.16 Moreover, actual assembly volumes in Luton and Ellesmere Port were so low that total closure became a realistic scenario. Trade union representatives worried that ‘in some years there may be no more Vauxhall’.17 In comparison, the situation at Opel was far less dramatic, even though the acceleration of internationalization had effects there, too. In 1980, for example, the new global distribution of engine production led to serious cutbacks at Rüsselsheim. In the second half of the 1980s, following the creation of the GM Europe headquarters in Zurich, works council concerns intensified, notably with regard to small-scale relocations to Spain and a possible (yet later averted) relocation of mid-range Ascona assembly.18 In the case of Ford, German–British differences were now less strong than in the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, for example, Ford’s publicly aired intention to reduce European manufacturing capacity by 20 per cent, triggered simultaneous ‘job scares’ in British and German Ford locations, particularly with regard to the future allocation of Fiesta production.19 Likewise, the company’s global

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reorganization of engine manufacturing pitched the Dagenham and Cologne plants (and trade union organizations) against each other in bids to secure future investment (see Tolliday, 2003b: 110). Yet, at Ford, too, British trade unions faced job crises more frequently and on a larger scale, including several closures of smaller production units at Dagenham and the near constant threat to shut down the Halewood assembly plant (see Darlington, 1994: 212–13). In the German subsidiary, the most dramatic threats came in 1985 when a FoE plan to discontinue the operations of the Merkenich product development centre was only narrowly averted.20 In the 1990s, employment security concerns became still more pronounced. Taken together with a saturated Western European car market, further heightened competition and the decline of Ford and GM market shares, the acceleration of European (and now also global) rationalization created almost permanent pressure on employment in Western European plants. Headcount levels fell further even if to different degrees: Vauxhall’s labour force had already been cut heavily during the 1980s, and additional job losses now remained moderate and below the levels in German Opel plants, where a further 20 per cent headcount reduction took place in the course of the decade (Holden, 2003: 217; Herber, 2002: 23–5). At Ford, employment levels in the German and British subsidiaries had been roughly equal at about 48,000 in the late 1980s, but subsequent reductions pushed it below 30,000 in the UK, while Fordwerke figures still remained above 40,000 in the late 1990s (Tolliday, 2003b: 143; Thomes, 2003: 174). Beyond actual figures, internationalization further magnified trade union uncertainty about future employment prospects, as the introduction of internal ‘tenders’ for new investment made the survival of plants regularly hang in the balance. Moreover, pan-European or even global exercises of ‘restructuring’ threatened further workforce reductions. Most importantly, at Ford and GM alike, British and German assembly plants were more than once threatened with total closure.21 While common experiences of restructuring and the frequent exposure to closure threats thus made the focus of union concerns more similar in the two countries and companies, some important German–British differences remained. In the FRG, Opel labour representatives ‘caught up’ with their Ford counterparts in terms of disquiet about the model and marketing policies of international company headquarters.22 In Britain, trade union concerns shifted away from tied imports and now focused on the vulnerable position of British locations due to their small size and their status as single-model production units. These protests culminated in the millennium year in the wake of the closure of the Dagenham and Luton plants.23 Internationalization, trade unions and industrial relations Next to employment security, geocentric internationalization also posed a new challenge to trade unions’ industrial relations policies. Importantly, this was not because of deliberate attempts for a wholesale cross-border harmonization of

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industrial relations practices and procedures (see Kujawa, 1971) – as in most other multinational firms (see Dunning and Lundan, 2008: ch. 13), personnel and labour affairs formally remained among the most decentralized areas of corporate decision-making. However, internationalization had crucial indirect effects, as industrial relations in national subsidiaries became more interdependent and more influenced by pan-European (or later global) coordination. As a former Ford UK manager put it in 1980: ‘No senior executive in Ford of Britain or Ford of Germany would consider implementing a major policy change without first seeking policy review and concurrence by Ford of Europe . . . Ford of Europe is constantly at hand with the sort of advice which carries all the force of a binding instruction and the sanctions to back it up’ (Friedman and Meredeen, 1980: 40). For trade unions, this entailed new challenges. Most importantly, the companies’ enhanced capacities to switch investment between locations also strengthened management’s voice in collective-bargaining processes, as threats to relocate capital and jobs could be linked to pressure on trade unions to agree to productivity drives and/or labour cost reductions. Union negotiators’ positions were further complicated by the uncertainty about the credibility and seriousness of relocation threats – a situation that can be likened to the position of national governments under conditions of ‘regime competition’ (see Dicken, 2007: 240–3). Moreover, there were the effects arising from the strengthening of international management structures. On the one hand, increased cross-border management coordination could pre-empt traditional domestic procedures and delay negotiations in subsidiaries. As in other multinational firms (see Bomers, 1976; Enderwick, 1985), Ford and GM trade unions were faced with increasingly opaque and remote decision-making structures that could dilute their domestic influence capacities. On the other hand, and increasingly so from the late 1980s, direct headquarter initiatives to advance a set of human resource practices presented an additional challenge.24 Internationalization also made industrial relations in different national subsidiaries more interdependent. Collective-bargaining outcomes and strikes in one subsidiary could have considerable repercussions in others. At the same time, internationalization opened up a new space for the observation of foreign industrial relations and trade union practices (Fetzer, 2005: 16–17). Crucially, these various challenges unfolded quite differently in the two countries and companies, as they interacted with the specific local and national industrial relations contexts. This was particularly so in the period up to the early 1980s. In the case of Ford UK, management initiatives for concession bargaining already dominated trade union concerns. Since 1968–69, Ford regularly resorted to investment boycott threats as a bargaining tool – during the 1971 strike, for example, Henry Ford II flew in personally to declare that Ford was to ‘disassociate completely from the British source with its untold labour problems’ (in Mathews, 1972: 138). To be sure, such threats could not be taken at face value but they could also not be ignored, not least because events at Ford

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were extensively covered in the national media and repeatedly discussed in the House of Commons.25 Even the Prime Ministers, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, publicly exhorted the trade unions not to imperil the future of British operations within Ford’s new European network (Fetzer, 2005: 140–2, 156–8). To back up investment boycott threats, Ford developed techniques of European efficiency comparisons, which became a permanent management negotiation device. On the one hand, there was the question of strike losses. Frequent wildcat disputes in the UK, so the argument ran, prevented the company from using its equipment as Ford companies could do abroad. The other problem was labour productivity. Ford inundated the unions with comparative figures of how many more men it took to build a car in Britain due to higher manning levels, job demarcation practices, and inefficient use of working time (see Beynon, 1984: ch. 11). This pressure resonated with and fed into broader national debates: several motor industry inquiries of the mid-1970s drew on efficiency comparisons between Ford plants in different European countries, which were portrayed as illustrations of how bad industrial relations contributed to Britain’s relative economic decline (Friedman and Meredeen, 1980: 245–6). Given the prominence of wildcat strikes in these management assessments, Ford UK also launched initiatives for institutional change, partly inspired by the examples of the more ‘orderly’ German and US systems. As the former Ford UK labour director Paul Roots put it: ‘In Britain Ford tried for a long time to persuade British unions to act like American unions . . . After the creation of Ford of Europe, we also started to look at German industrial relations’ (1984: 15–16). One idea, which was brought up frequently in this respect, was to induce British unions to better ‘police’ their members, for example through an agreement to replace wildcat strikers by groups of volunteers.26 Moreover, Ford also lobbied for legislation to restrict trade union strike immunities. In the eyes of many trade unionists, Ford even attempted to set a precedent for legislation in February 1969, when the company sought a court injunction against a strike call by the two largest unions, TGWU and AEU, on the grounds that they had illegally repudiated a previously negotiated agreement (Friedman and Meredeen 1980: 226–8). The link to the parallel debates about the Labour government’s reform agenda ‘In Place of Strife’ was obvious – a company press statement declared: ‘If ever a government needed to be impressed about the urgency of making unions honour agreements and keeping their members under control, then the time is now’ (ibid.: 262). Ford lost the court case but continued to lobby for legislative change. In 1970–71, company officials encouraged Prime Minister Heath to pursue his US-inspired reform plans (Fetzer, 2005: 164). It was only after the Labour government’s 1974 repeal of Heath’s Industrial Relations Act that Ford abandoned the ‘legal route’ to reform (Friedman and Meredeen, 1980: 236–7). Compared to Ford UK, developments at Vauxhall were less dramatic even if management agendas to ‘catch up’ with efficiency levels in continental GM plants did appear from 1974.27 In 1976, for example, senior company managers

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lectured the unions about the gap between Opel and Vauxhall assembly performance and requested changes to manning levels and work standards, and a more flexible system of in-plant employee mobility.28 However, for a variety of reasons, these issues never became as important as in the case of Ford UK. For one thing, European reorganization coincided with the near bankruptcy of Vauxhall, and it was the latter issue that dominated company agendas in bargaining processes. At the same time, the more limited degree of European rationalization restricted the scope for cross-border efficiency benchmarking as a bargaining tool. Given its marginal industrial position, the company was also less involved in the broader national debates about industrial relations reform. Finally, the less confrontational style of industrial relations at Vauxhall also needs to be factored in. Strikes played a less important role in Vauxhall efficiency shortfalls – it was only between 1977 and 1979 that the company temporarily caught up with dispute levels at Ford (Marsden et al., 1985: 131) and that, as a result, Vauxhall managers started to be seriously concerned about the ‘policing’ of wildcat strikers by the trade unions.29 If concession bargaining was less significant at Vauxhall than at Ford UK, it was by and large irrelevant in the two German subsidiaries until the early 1980s – apart from some marginal exceptions like the abortive 1973 Fordwerke management initiative to reduce the annual summer holiday from four to three weeks.30 This British–German contrast was not so much the result of the structural differences between industrial relations systems, than of the different standing of national subsidiaries. Quite simply, Fordwerke and Opel were perceived to ‘deliver the goods’ in terms of efficiency. Indeed, Henry Ford II repeatedly praised German workers and labour relations – much to the dismay of Ford works council representatives.31 In the late 1970s, in the wake of several appreciations of the Deutschmark, Fordwerke and Opel managers complained occasionally about German labour costs,32 but this did not translate into bargaining pressure. The absence of management attempts to alter industrial relations arrangements was a further notable contrast to the UK. There was occasional grumbling about the costs of participation in industry bargaining, but the rationale for this participation, isolation against direct IG Metall strike attacks, was not seriously questioned.33 In the case of Ford, this was not least a lesson from the turbulent events leading up to the firms’ accession to the regional employer association in 1963 (see Wittemann, 1994). Moreover, while Fordwerke and Opel joined an American chamber of commerce lobby against the 1976 reform of supervisory board co-determination (see Bamberg et al., 1989: 252), their opposition was not one of principle. Indeed, the Fordwerke chairman went on record in favour of parity co-determination in the mid-1970s, even though he emphasized that worker representatives should not include external trade union delegates.34 Against the backdrop of an upswing in demands for ‘industrial democracy’ across the continent and at the EEC level (see Höland, 2000), FoE recommended that its German subsidiary join employer lobbies to prevent radical

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reform, but otherwise concluded that ‘the movement towards co-determination in Europe is accelerating fast and is inevitable’.35 While concession pressure was thus much more prominent in Britain, union concerns about the industrial relations implications of international management structures played a greater role in the FRG. British Ford and Vauxhall shop stewards occasionally voiced complaints about the new remoteness of corporate decision-making, but this remained marginal in view of a dominant focus on immediate workplace issues.36 In Germany, on the other hand, internationalization had a number of ‘collateral’ effects, which seriously upset established industrial relations procedures. This was particularly discernible at Ford, where the creation of FoE represented a considerable constraint on works council codetermination rights related to manpower planning. Ford of Europe monitoring of national headcount levels and budgets triggered repeated works council complaints that German management was no longer ‘master in its house’. This was accentuated by the posting of foreign managers who spoke little German and were unfamiliar with the complicated legal requirements of co-determination.37 At the same time, the creation of FoE entailed problems of access to strategic management decision-making processes.38 In the case of Opel, such problems were initially less salient – in fact, complaints about the remoteness of corporate decision-making, which had intermittently been voiced during the 1960s in relation to interference from Detroit,39 became less frequent after 1974. From the late 1970s, however, the growing Europeanization of GM investment patterns started to cause works council concerns about the challenges this posed to the effectiveness of codetermination – it came as a true shock for Opel labour representatives that the company’s supervisory board had been completely bypassed in the decisionmaking about GM’s 1979–80 expansion programme.40 Intra-subsidiary interdependence of industrial relations and trade union practices also entailed rather different perceptions in the two countries. While curiosity in foreign industrial relations models generally increased, the focus of attention differed due to domestic contexts. In the UK, against the backdrop of relative economic decline and a vivid domestic debate about industrial relations ‘imports’, Ford and Vauxhall trade unionists were primarily interested in crossborder wage and working-time comparisons and in the benefits and drawbacks of German-style co-determination (Passingham and Connor, 1977). In the FRG, particularly in the case of Ford, the cross-border repercussions of strikes represented the dominant concern, as production interruptions due to delivery shortages from the UK repeatedly threw thousands of employees temporarily out of work.41 From the mid-1980s, British–German differences became less marked. The country-specific observation of foreign industrial relations institutions declined, as recurrent employment crises overshadowed all other concerns. At the same time, in both firms, there were now regular management initiatives that envisaged similar changes to employment practices across the continent, for example increased job flexibility and ‘quality circles’. Ford of Europe’s ‘After

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Japan’ programme, for example, was implemented in Ford facilities across the continent (see Starkey and McKinlay, 1994). In the 1990s, a new series of programmes aimed at the introduction of teamwork and other ‘lean’ production methods, best illustrated by GM’s attempt to use the NUMMI (New United Motor Manufacturing) joint venture with Toyota in the United States as a blueprint for change in Europe (see Katz and Darbishire, 2000: 199–204). Most importantly, heightened investment competition between locations entailed a higher incidence of management attempts for concession bargaining in the British and German subsidiaries alike; in fact, union representatives in European Ford and GM locations were at times faced with similar management demands, in particular with regard to working-time flexibility. At GM, for example, following reforms of shift work in the Antwerp and Zaragoza plants in 1986–87, British and German trade unionists came under strong pressure to follow suit (see Mueller and Purcell, 1992). In the 1990s, this dynamic became still more pronounced. On the one hand, as a result of the formalization of ‘tenders’ for new investment, Ford and GM trade unionists from different European locations were often simultaneously faced with concession-bargaining pressure (see Zagelmeyer, 2001). On the other hand, independently of concrete project tenders, a new type of ‘domino bargaining’ emerged, in which local or national managers approached union representatives to conclude ‘competitiveness pacts’ to enhance future allocation chances, which, in turn, entailed similar pressure in other countries. In both firms, several such ‘domino’ bargaining ‘rounds’ occurred between 1997 and 1999 (Fetzer, 2005: 330–8). Despite these growing similarities, however, the impact of internationalization still remained shaped by country- and company-specific circumstances. In the UK, in continuity with the 1970s, productivity was still the key issue. Ford and GM managers conceded that the productivity gap between British and continental plants had become narrower, but the overall verdict remained that UK plants still had ‘a long way to go’. By the late 1980s, FoE still considered Dagenham and Halewood as ‘problem plants’, with frequent schedule shortfalls and poor assembly quality (Tolliday, 2003b: 101–2), while leading GM Europe managers described UK productivity as a ‘far cry’ from those in the Belgian and German factories.42 Management attempts to address the ‘productivity problem’ focused on the traditional issues of work practices and wildcat strikes. In both firms, there were determined management efforts to align manning levels and task times with those in continental Ford and GM plants and to remove a range of ‘restrictive practices’, notably the traditionally more rigid demarcations between jobs and trades (for Ford, see Tolliday, 1991: 105f.). As for wildcat strikes, Ford UK and Vauxhall made little use of the new instruments provided by conservative industrial relations legislation, yet the less union–friendly political and economic environment encouraged company-level experimentation. At Vauxhall, for example, management requested trade unions adopt written codes allowing for the replacement of wildcat strikers by volunteers in the mid-1980s.43 Following

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Nissan’s 1985 example (see Bassett, 1986: 148ff.), both firms also made attempts to introduce new institutional structures. At Vauxhall, a strike-preventing system of compulsory arbitration was established in a new van plant run cooperatively with the Japanese firm Isuzu, and management later tried to extend this scheme to other parts of Vauxhall operations.44 Ford had similar plans for a new electronics component plant but abandoned them in the face of trade union resistance.45 From the mid-1990s, management pressure also extended to requests for pay restraint. Vauxhall management agendas to secure investment for the 1998 Vectra replacement in Luton, for example, included demands for a below-inflation wage settlement and lower rates for newly hired employees (Arrowsmith, 2002). Yet productivity drives still remained more important. At Ford, negotiations about a ‘Modern Operating Agreement’ at Dagenham and a new ‘Halewood Charter’ to secure production of Ford’s newly acquired luxury brand, Jaguar, all focused on measures to enhance efficiency – from flexible overtime working and mobility between jobs, to the revision of work standards (Tolliday, 2003b: 107–8). German Ford and Opel trade unionists, on the other hand, were primarily confronted with management demands to reduce labour costs, which by the late 1980s were routinely backed up by detailed cost comparisons between European Ford and GM locations. A 1987 Ford management memo claimed that higher German labour costs led to a penalty of ‘several hundred dollars per unit’ in comparison to production of an identical vehicle in Spain.46 One consequence of this was that Ford and Opel management launched a wave of cost structure reviews in relation to specific business units, which were to be outsourced if costs could not be brought down sufficiently. For the works councils, this implied a choice between further headcount reduction and cost-cutting exercises, which, particularly in the case of Opel, led to many protests.47 More importantly, German Ford and Opel trade unionists now faced nearly constant management pressure for concessions in terms of wages and fringe benefits. In the case of Ford, this was already discernible in the negotiations to implement the 1984 and 1987 industry agreements, as Ford management attempted to neutralize the cost effects of working-time reduction through cutbacks of company-specific fringe benefits.48 In 1985, more drastically, the threat to relocate the product development division to Britain was used to obtain works council concessions in terms of labour cost reductions.49 Pressure magnified during the 1990s against the backdrop of the unfolding ‘Standort Deutschland’ debate. Throughout the decade, negotiations about new investment focused primarily on management demands to limit wage increases and reduce a range of fringe benefits such as overtime premiums, holiday and Christmas bonuses, or pension entitlements (for Opel, see Schulten et al., 2007). By the late 1990s, internationalization-driven cost pressure had become an endemic condition.

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Conclusion As this chapter has shown, geocentric internationalization posed a series of significant new challenges for British and German trade unions at Ford and General Motors. Union concerns broadly focused on the consequences of internationalization for employment security and industrial relations. Yet, given the different local and national contexts, and the varying ways in which internationalization affected British and German Ford and GM subsidiaries, these concerns found different expressions in the two countries and companies, and they also considerably changed over time. Based on this analysis of the unfolding of internationalization, it is now time to shift our attention to the ways in which British and German trade unions reacted to the new challenges. As outlined in the introduction to the book, the subsequent chapters will address three key issues in this regard, namely the impact of internationalization on national allegiances of British and German unions (chapter 3), the consequences of internationalization for domestic practices of interest representation (chapter 4), and the question whether new corporate structures and strategies entailed a greater emphasis on cross-border trade union cooperation (chapter 5). In each chapter, the case study analysis will be preceded by a brief conceptual introduction. Notes 1 ‘Opel investiert über eine Milliarde’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 7 April 1979. 2 ‘Ford beabsichtigt Personalabbau in europäischen Werken’, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 1 February 1985; ‘Opel bald nicht mehr “made in Germany”?’, Main-Spitze, 12 April 1990. 3 For Ford UK, see for example ‘Ford jobs probe backed by MPs’, Dagenham Post, 14 June 1972; for Vauxhall, see ‘Investment – the recipe for recovery’, Luton News, 14 August 1975. 4 ‘Supplementary notes on motor industry, with special reference to Ford claim’, [January 1971], Archive Trade Union Research Unit, Ruskin College Oxford, ‘Ford claim 1970’. 5 ‘Trade union presentation on Ford’s Annual Report 1977’, 21 April 1978, Modern Records Centre (hereafter MRC), MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 36/2. 6 Letter from G. E. Moore, Vauxhall Motors, to D. Madel (MP South Bedfordshire), 24 July 1975, Archive Vauxhall Motors Ltd, HRM department (hereafter AVMHRM), ‘Transfer/movement of work’. 7 ‘Vauxhall men’s worries grow’, Luton News, 19 June 1975. 8 See for example, ‘Ford Köln in der Krise’, Auto, Motor und Sport, 17 February 1968. 9 ‘Fehlgriffe am laufenden Band’, Manager Magazin, 9/1973. 10 ‘Niederschrift über die Betriebsversammlung in der Produktentwicklung’, 24 June 1974, 9 December 1974, Archive Betriebsrat Fordwerke AG, Produktentwicklung, (hereafter ABRF-P), ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1974’. 11 ‘Protokoll der Sitzung des Wirtschaftsausschusses’, 15 January 1975, Archive Gesamtbetriebsrat Adam Opel AG (hereafter AGBRO), ‘Wirtschaftsausschuss 2/1972–3/1975’. 12 ‘Opel rationalisiert Arbeitsplätze weg’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 2 September 1976.

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13 ‘Sorge um Arbeitsplätze wächst ständig’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 14 July 1979. 14 ‘Opel-Metaller sehen Zeit zum Handeln gekommen’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 10 November 1980; ‘Ruf nach Staatshilfe’, Berliner Morgenpost, 9 July 1980. 15 ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 26–27 March 1981, 23 July 1981, MRC, MSS 126/TG/3, Sack 117/2; ‘Synopsis of JNC meeting held on 21 January 1981’, AVM-HRM, Box 4. 16 ‘Key points from the meeting with national officers’, 20 February 1981, AVM-HRM, Box 4. 17 ‘Vauxhall unions link up to face crisis’, Luton News, 30 October 1980. 18 ‘Protokoll der Betriebsratssitzung’, 21 December 1989, AGBRO, ‘Protokolle Betriebsratssitzungen ab Januar 1989’. 19 ‘Ford beabsichtigt Personalabbau in europäischen Werken’, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 1 February 1985. 20 ‘Niederschrift über die Sitzung mit den Betriebsausschüssen der Betriebsräte Niehl/Deutz und Produktgruppe’, 16–17 September 1985, Archiv Fordwerke AG, HRM department (hereafter AFAG-HRM), ‘Restrukturierung’. 21 For Ford, see ‘Britischen Fordwerken droht die Schließung’, General-Anzeiger Bonn, 21 August 1992; ‘Werkschließung: Trotman lässt Ford-Arbeiter zittern’, Kölner Express, 13 December 1996; for GM, see ‘Opel: Sozialabbau roter Faden’, MainSpitze, 16 July 1993; ‘Special Meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 19 March 1998, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 7. 22 ‘Opel bald nicht mehr “made in Germany”?’, Main-Spitze, 12 April 1990; ‘Rechenschaftsbericht BR-Versammlung’, 6–8 November 1996, AGBRO, ‘GBRKonferenzen 1993–97’. 23 Joint Hourly and Staff Union Dagenham campaign group, ‘Open letter to all our members’ [2000], Archive AMICUS Dagenham (hereafter AAMICUS-Dag); ‘Minutes of a special meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 12 December 2000, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 7. 24 See for this aspect more generally, Almond and Ferner (2006). 25 HC, Parliamentary Debates, 1960–2000, Fifth Series, vol. 795, cols. 1288f.; vol. 797, cols. 905f.; vol. 815, cols. 238f. 26 The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1974–5, vol. 1, pp. 248–9. 27 See ibid.: 327ff.; ‘Investment – the recipe for recovery’, Luton News, 14 August 1975. 28 ‘Minutes of the meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 13 February 1976, AVM-HRM ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 2. 29 ‘Minutes of the meeting of Vauxhall JNC’, 27 February 1981 (ibid.: vol. 3). 30 ‘Niederschrift über die Betriebsversammlung’, 10 September 1973, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1973’. 31 ‘Niederschrift über die Betriebsversammlung’, 29 November 1971, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1971’. 32 See for example ‘Verbund für die ganze Welt’, Manager Magazin, 5/1978. 33 ‘Ford Germany membership in employer association’, 6 June 1984, AFAG-HRM, ‘Quo vadis’. 34 ‘Cologne oder Köln’, Auto, Motor und Sport, 22 December 1976. 35 ‘Codetermination in Europe and its probable impact on Ford’ [April 1974], AFAGHRM, ‘Ford of Europe’. 36 The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, London 1975, vol. 2, p. 191.

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37 ‘Protokoll der Vertrauensleutesitzung Ford’, 23 February 1970, Archiv IG Metall Cologne (hereafter AIGMC), ‘Ford 1969/70’. 38 ‘Niederschrift über die Betriebsversammlung’, 4 December 1972, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1972’. 39 ‘Bericht des Betriebsratsvorsitzenden Paul Lorenz Rüsselsheim’, 16 September 1969, AGBRO, ‘Betriebsrätevollkonferenz 1969’. 40 ‘Steigende Beschäftigung ein Trugschluß’, Main-Spitze, 17 July 1979; ‘Mitbestimmungsrecht verdient den Namen nicht’, Main-Spitze, 3 November 1980. 41 ‘Protokoll der Sitzung des Betriebsrates Köln-Niehl’, 4 March 1969, Archiv Gesamtbetriebsrat Fordwerke AG (hereafter AGBRF), ‘BR Protokolle vom 15.10.68 bis 25.3.69’; Der Saarländische Arbeitnehmer [May 1973] (ibid., ‘Flugblätter’). 42 ‘GM planning shake-up at Belgian plant’, Financial Times, 5 December 1986. 43 ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford Joint National Negotiating Committee’, 24 November 1980, 17 June 1981, MRC, MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 117/2; ‘Notice on behalf of the TGWU shop stewards committee Ellesmere Port’, 12 November 1985, Archive TGWU Liverpool (hereafter ATGWU-Liv), ‘Disputes/shift guarantee’. 44 Centre for Alternative Industrial and Technological Systems (CAITS), ‘Trade union responses to new managerial initiatives: the new V 6 engine plant agreement, Ellesmere Port, Vauxhall Motors’, [March 1990], ATGWU-Liv. 45 ‘Ford offer glimmer of hope for Dundee’, The Guardian, 26 March 1988. 46 ‘Letter Fordwerke AG to Verband der Metallindustrie Nordrhein-Westfalen’, 27 February 1987, AFAG-HRM, ‘Tarifrunde 1987 Umsetzung’. 47 ‘Gegen weitere Auslagerungen’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 26 November 1986. 48 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung IV. Quartal 1984’, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Jan 83’; ‘Bericht des GBR für Betriebsversammlungen’, [1987], AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N von Januar 1987 bis 11/89’. 49 ‘Niederschrift über die Sitzung mit den Betriebsausschüssen der Betriebsräte Niehl-Deutz und Produktgruppe, 16/17 September 1985’, AFAG-HRM, ‘Restrukturierung’.

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Internationalization and the paradox of economic nationalism

Nations and nationalism have not featured prominently in the work of labour historians and industrial relations scholars concerned with the post-1945 period in Western Europe. None of the three major interpretative approaches – unitary, pluralist and radical (see Edwards, 2003) – has paid much attention to nationalism, and, unlike in the case of other previously marginal themes (e.g. gender and immigration), this general lack of interest has not changed significantly since the 1990s. ‘Nationalism’ and ‘(re-)nationalization’ are at times used as proxy ‘labels’ to characterize Eurosceptic trade union attitudes and strategies (see, for example, Erne, 2008), but these studies lack any serious engagement with the nationalism literature. Where such engagement exists, it is usually confined to the analysis of very specific cases, namely those of European territories (e.g. Catalonia, Scotland, Northern Ireland, etc.) with secessionist movements (see Pasture and Verberckmoes, 1998). That this ‘state of the art’ contrasts with a voluminous literature dealing with labour movement nationalism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see, for example, Berger and Smith, 1999; Kirk, 2003), is of course little surprising. What is surprising, however, is that post-1945 labour historians and industrial relations scholars have been entirely unreceptive to recent innovative approaches in nationalism studies, which have focused on the reproduction of nationalism in contemporary Western societies and the associated dynamics of appropriation of nationalist language and symbolism by different social groups and the populace at large (see Özkirimli, 2000: 199–203). Drawing on Billig (1995), this chapter contends that trade unions can be conceptualized as actors who contribute to the reproduction of nationalism through the ‘banal’ everyday framing of concerns and aspirations in terms which reflect traditional rhetoric of nationalist ideology. Following Anthony Smith’s influential definition, nationalist ideology is understood as embodying a set of three core ideals, namely national identity, autonomy and unity (2001: 24–8). In line with scholarship on contemporary nationalism (see, for example, Finlayson, 1998; Edensor, 2002), trade union appropriations of nationalist rhet-

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oric are assumed to be context specific and changing. It is further assumed that these appropriations reflect engrained, taken-for-granted ‘ideological habits’ (Billig, 1995: 6), but also, to different degrees, more instrumental strategies to legitimize specific trade union interests. The chapter’s main argument is that internationalization – as exemplified in the cases of Ford and General Motors – can paradoxically reinforce rather than diminish the significance of such banal nationalist rhetoric. Before proceeding to the case study analysis, this argument will now first be elaborated at the conceptual level. Internationalization and nationalism: the scholarly debate A cursory glance at the vast literature on nationalism and internationalization/ globalization (see Scholte, 2005: ch. 7) is sufficient to realize that the chapter’s argument is fundamentally at odds with an influential interpretation that associates economic internationalization processes with a general weakening of nationalism. Eric Hobsbawm was among the first to express this view. In Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (1990), he contended that nationalism had declined as a ‘major vector of historical development’ since the 1960s, not least because economic internationalization – chiefly expressed in the growing power of multinational firms – had undermined the territorially bounded character of national economies and the autonomous capacity of nation-states to regulate these economies. Hobsbawm’s theme was subsequently echoed in many variations, all of which shared a similar emphasis on the alleged end of the ‘age of territoriality’ (Maier, 2000) brought about by the rise of cross-border flows and networks, which, in turn, had deprived nationalism of its most important ‘nurturing’ resource: (nation)-state sovereignty (Held and McGrew, 2000: 17). Moreover, internationalization is also often perceived as having entailed the erosion of national cultural specificities due to the cross-border spread of technologies, production and consumption habits (‘Coca-Colonization’), as well as the ‘hybridization’ of national identities as a result of large-scale cross-border migration flows (see Bhabha, 1990). Clearly, these arguments capture important historical changes, particularly in the case of post-1945 Western Europe. Few would dispute that the transformation from emigration to immigration societies has challenged traditional notions of national identity in the region (see Cesarini and Fulbrook, 1996). Likewise, market liberalization and the growth of supranational European institutions have significantly curtailed the ability of Western European governments to autonomously regulate their economies since the 1960s (Ambrosius, 2001), which has made it much more difficult to appeal to ‘classic’ notions of national economic autonomy. However, as many critics have pointed out, it is not convincing to equate these important changes with a general weakening of nationalism. One can usefully distinguish between two types of counter-arguments, the first of which derives from the assumption that Hobsbawm and other ‘globalists’ exaggerate the perva-

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siveness of the impact of internationalization. Most prominently, this view is associated with the work of Anthony Smith (1995, 2007). Smith concedes that Western European nations – as political as well as cultural communities – have come under considerable stress in the post-1945 period, and he admits that nationalism, except for non-state nations such as Catalonia or Scotland, ‘has clearly abated . . . in its strong form’ (2007: 29). Yet, new forms of European and/or cosmopolitan identities have remained weak and have not been able to displace the appeal of national allegiances (Smith, 1995: chs. 1 and 5). Western European nation-states may have lost some of their autonomy in economic policy-making, but it is misleading to speak about a demise of the nation-state (see Campbell, 2004). Not only was this autonomy circumscribed prior to 1945 (Ambrosius, 2001), but, more importantly, state power greatly expanded after the Second World War in areas such as education, culture and social welfare (Smith, 2007: 25), and it has shown few signs of globalization-driven erosion (for welfare, see Pierson, 1996). At the same time, internationalization processes have done little to undermine the cultural resources of nationalism, which are not dependent on state power and may, indeed, be strengthened in response to weaker political nationalism (Smith, 1998: 177–9). National myths and symbols, while having lost much of their sanctity, are still ‘flagged’ continuously in a banal, everyday sense (see Billig, 1995). Notions of national community continue to be reproduced, in part in response to the new challenges of multicultural immigration societies (Smith, 2007: 22–7). Valid as these arguments are, it is a different, second type of objection to ‘globalist’ claims that is of much more importance for the purpose of this book, namely that it is altogether mistaken to conceptualize the relationship between internationalization and nationalism in a dichotomous, ‘zero-sum’ way. Such a view fails to acknowledge that nationalism and the national principle have crucially informed inter-national relations since the nineteenth century (Mayall, 1990; Geyer and Paulmann, 2001), and that, at the same time, internationalization processes have often shaped and transformed (rather than undermined) notions of national identity, autonomy and unity (Shulman, 2000). Put simply, nationalism may in part have persisted because of, rather than despite, internationalization processes. We should thus not only ask how nationalism has contained internationalization thanks to its symbolic resources and the bureaucratic inertia of the nation-state, but also how internationalization itself has helped to perpetuate and transform nationalism. It is precisely this latter perspective that has inspired the recent revival of research on ‘economic nationalism’ after a long period of relative neglect by political economists and nationalism scholars alike (Crane, 1998).1 In particular, the revival sought to overcome an earlier routine equation of ‘economic nationalism’ with mercantilist and protectionist state policies (see, for example, Gilpin, 2001: 13–15) in favour of a more generic conceptualization that does not juxtapose nationalism and economic liberalism (see Helleiner, 2002). There are naturally many differences between individual authors, but most contemporary scholars of economic nationalism assume that ‘national identity and economics

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are closely and significantly related, and that globalization processes may in fact reinforce rather than weaken these relationships’ (Pickel, 2005: 1). For example, such processes may heighten concerns for the protection of national culture and tradition (Goff, 2005), but they may also provide new opportunities for ‘nation branding’ as a sales strategy on world markets (see Kühschelm, 2010). International tourism, rather than deterritorializing hosts and guests alike, may in fact contribute to the reimagining of national history, memory and material culture (Zuelow, 2007). Building on these insights, the next section seeks to systematically map out this paradoxical symbiosis of internationalization and economic nationalism. The section considers the fundamental ontological dimension underlying this paradox, and I will draw on the earlier distinction between the three nationalist core concerns: national identity, autonomy and unity. The paradox of internationalization and economic nationalism The symbiotic relationship between internationalization and economic nationalism is most easily discernible at the ontological level. Economic nationalists hold that nations – rather than individual consumers or firms – are the ‘base units’ of economic life (Helleiner, 2002), and this belief has been crucially ‘nurtured’ by internationalization – from the nineteenth century the world economy came to be perceived as an arena of competition between distinct national economies (see Greenfeld, 2001). Nairn (1975) exaggerated when he pointed to the international economy’s ‘uneven development’ as the ultimate cause of modern nationalism. Yet, there can be little doubt that a national framing of economic thinking has been encouraged by this dynamic – expressed as much in outbursts of pride among ‘frontrunners’, as in the ‘catch up’ rhetoric in ‘laggard’ countries – and the widespread complaints about ‘unfair competition’ and ‘economic exploitation’ (Crane, 1998: 68–9). The post-1945 period witnessed a radical transformation of this pattern, which, in Western Europe at least, eliminated the earlier aggressive and militarist connotations. But the ‘competition between nations’ rhetoric persisted in a banal, everyday sense reminiscent of international sporting events – perhaps best expressed in the celebration of ‘national champions’ as firms that symbolically ‘carry the national flag into the internationally competitive arena’ (Hayward, 1995: 2). Indeed, the rhetoric appeared to become still stronger from the 1990s when accelerated economic internationalization triggered a frenzy of public debates about ‘national competitiveness’, while social scientists diagnosed the emergence of a new type of statehood: the ‘competition state’ (Czerny, 2007). Crucially for the purpose of this study, the automobile industry has been a model case of this dynamic – the international performance of car companies has been widely regarded as mirroring national achievement or failure (Edensor, 2002: 122). And, equally important, the ‘competition between nations’ rhetoric also came to inform the competition between subsidiaries of multinational firms (see, for example, Kristensen and Zeitlin, 2005).

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Britain and Germany – if in different ways – exemplify these post-1945 trends. In the UK the perceived underperformance of British firms on international markets triggered a controversial ‘British decline’ debate that lasted throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s (see Tomlinson, 2000). Conversely, pride in the Federal Republic’s celebrated post-1945 ‘economic miracle’ was primarily underpinned by the strong export performance of the new West German economy (see Esser, 1982; Müller, 2005), which became a powerful symbol of re-emerging national self-confidence, as well as of the longing for a peaceful return to the ‘international family’ (Rieger, 2009). It was not until the 1990s that this pride started to be questioned in a major debate about the country’s alleged loss of international competitiveness (see Abelshauser, 2004, 436–53). Turning to the three nationalist core values, it is useful to start with national identity. That economic activity expresses a nation’s ‘character’ has been a staple of nationalist rhetoric since the nineteenth century, as has the converse argument that new economic challenges ‘require’ radical changes of that ‘character’ (Helleiner, 2002). Unsurprisingly, societal appropriations of this rhetoric have always been context and actor specific, and have often been highly contested. The locus classicus is of course the industrialization debate, which preoccupied elites in numerous countries from the mid-nineteenth century, and which witnessed the clash between industrial and agrarian notions of national economic identity (Crane, 1998: 70–2). Internationalization has often crucially nurtured notions of national economic identity. On the one hand, it has offered an arena for the outward projection of such identities – as early as the nineteenth century, this dynamic is easily discernible in the popular rhetoric of Britain as a ‘free trade nation’ (Trentmann, 2008), or in the emerging discourse on ‘quality work made in Germany’ (Conrad, 2006: ch. 6). After 1945, the creation of new international and supranational institutions offered opportunities for the ‘uploading’ of national economic identities – from the strong US imprint on the Bretton Woods system (Mayall, 1990: 89–91), to the successful ‘export’ of Germany’s monetary ‘stability culture’ to the EU level in the 1990s (Müller, 2005). On the other hand, and more important for the purpose of this study, international market performance of national firms has frequently been seen as an important ‘test’ for the appropriateness of national values and practices. World market leadership could give a powerful boost to established notions, while perceived decline could trigger domestic ‘need for renewal’ debates (for Japan, see Hall, 2005). As already emphasized, such debates must be conceptualized as a contest between multiple and often contrasting voices. Comparative assessments of economic performance are always open to interpretation, and analyses of underlying causes for ‘underperformance’ are likely to diverge in line with group-specific interests and assumptions. Invoking international market performance as a ‘test’ for the nation was often an important means to question or justify specific national practices – and to denounce the strategies of domestic opponents (Geyer and Paulmann, 2001).

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This dynamic has been reinforced by the fact that international economic integration also enabled frequent cross-border comparisons of socio-economic practices, which made actors more aware of the specificity of domestic patterns (Muhs et al., 1998). In turn, such comparisons could fuel national rhetoric in the form of conscious distancing (‘Othering’), or in the advocacy of (selective) institutional ‘imports’ to learn from foreign counterparts and rivals. The literature on these internationalization dynamics concentrates on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but there is little reason to doubt the continued salience of such processes in the post-1945 period, even if they lost much of their earlier aggressive edge. And, prima facie, Germany and the UK appear to provide good examples if, again, in rather different ways. At the heart of the above-mentioned ‘British decline’ debate of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s lie contrasting assessments about ‘what was wrong’ with the UK’s economic culture – from an alleged lack of ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ to a supposedly damaging ‘adversarial pluralism’ – and controversies about the ways in which a selective appropriation of foreign practices could possibly remedy these problems (see Coates and Hillard, 1986). Conversely, the notion of ‘soziale Marktwirtschaft’ (social market economy), while being a rather bizarre mix of liberal and corporatist economic ideas, became a source of post-1945 German national identity, not least because it was perceived to have reconciled economic efficiency and social welfare and peace, and thus to have provided the foundation of German firms’ success in world markets. By the late 1970s, indeed, German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt ‘found it expedient to introduce “Modell Deutschland” into the German and international political language’ (Streeck, 2009: 113). And it was precisely when that success seemed less guaranteed than in the past that a more critical debate emerged in the 1990s, which revolved around the question whether the country needed to shift towards a more liberal ‘Anglo-Saxon’ approach to economic activity (ibid.: ch. 14). The nationalist concern with national autonomy has had a strong economic dimension ever since Alexander Hamilton’s advocacy of protective tariffs in the late eighteenth century – and its character as a defensive response to international economic integration is too well known as to require much elaboration (see Kofman, 1997). Clearly, however, this is a rhetoric which radically changed in the post-1945 period, both with regard to the perceived underlying purposes and the advocated instruments. The military-driven autarchy prescriptions of the inter-war period disappeared, and, the classic argument of ‘infant industry protection’ lost much of its appeal, at least in Western Europe, in part because of the liberal international and supranational (EC/EU) regulatory regime, which first outlawed many traditional instruments such as tariffs, and then, from the late 1980s, also those related to the national control of cross-border capital flows (see Ambrosius, 2001). Yet, this did not mean the end of the national economic autonomy rhetoric, not only because liberalization processes did not proceed without resistance, but, more importantly, because the rhetoric itself shifted to more subtle varieties, for example the promotion of domestically owned ‘national champions’

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in ‘strategic’ sectors – often directly triggered by the advance of multinational (especially US-owned) firms in such sectors (Servan-Schreiber, 1967). Still today, not least in the automobile industry, public procurement policies are widely used to help domestic firms, and we continue to witness examples of national governments trying to prevent foreign takeovers of domestic firms (Duso, 2007). ‘Patriotic consumption’ remains an observable if underresearched phenomenon (see Frank, 1999). At the level of multinational firms, ‘national autonomy’ has naturally always been more circumscribed, yet scholars have observed conflicts between headquarters and subsidiary management over the degree to which national affiliates could make their own decisions (Kristensen and Zeitlin, 2005). Again, post-war Britain and Germany exemplify these trends in different ways. In the UK, despite the country’s long-standing tradition as the champion of free trade (Trentmann, 2008), a protectionist autonomy rhetoric crept into public debates from the late 1960s onwards, spurred not least by the widespread perception of economic ‘decline’. And it was the left that was most vocal in this respect, expressed in drawn-out Labour Party debates about the UK’s membership in the EEC and about the so-called ‘Alternative Economic Strategy’, with its focus on import controls, nationalizations and planning agreements with large multinational firms (Callaghan, 2000). While these debates had ultimately little influence on government policies even under the Labour Prime Ministers, Wilson and Callaghan (1964–70, 1974–79), they remained on the agenda until the Labour Party abandoned its Euroscepticism in the late 1980s (see Minkin, 1991). In the FRG, in contrast, protectionist ideas remained unpopular throughout the post-1945 period, not least because of the experience of the export-led ‘economic miracle’ and because of the much stronger political commitment to European integration (see Spohn, 2002). This widely shared liberal attitude, however, did not exclude a different notion of national economic autonomy, which has often been referred to as ‘Germany Inc.’: the continued esteem, many Allied anti-cartel campaigns notwithstanding, for network coordination among economic actors under informal guidance from the three major banks, designed, in part, to ensure domestic control over large industrial firms (see Höpner and Krempel, 2004). The protective dimension of ‘Germany Inc.’ was intermittently highlighted when stakeholders jointly prevented foreign takeovers of firms considered to be ‘strategic’ – in the automobile sector notably Volkswagen and Daimler-Benz (see Reich, 1989; Bailey et al., 1994: 91–105). In the 1990s, commitment to ‘Germany Inc.’ weakened in line with the more general liberalization trend, although the degree of that weakening remains a matter of scholarly dispute (see Höpner and Jackson, 2001). National unity, the third nationalist core ideal, is usually linked to the economic sphere with reference to unified national markets and economic relations between ‘homeland’ and diaspora (Shulman, 2000: 371). Yet, while this is of little relevance for the purpose of this book, economics can be connected to national social cohesion in other ways, most importantly by conceptualizing the

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distribution of economic benefits and burdens as a crucial dimension of national unity. There are many historical and contemporary examples of how national debates about these issues have been affected by a country’s integration into the international economy; indeed, the very question of whether a country should follow the path of integration has often triggered arguments about domestic social cohesion. Economic internationalization could be perceived as a new challenge that ‘required’ a national ‘closing of ranks’, or, at the other extreme, it could entail the questioning of national unity itself (see Abdelal, 2005). Post-war Germany and Britain, with slight exaggeration, can be seen as close to these two opposite logics. In the FRG, the ideological hegemony of the ‘Exportnation’ concept carried a strong connotation of national unity: success on international markets required concerted efforts from all social groups – from firms, banks and employer associations, trade unions, the Bundesbank, research institutes, as well as from local and federal governments (see Esser, 1982). In the UK, on the other hand, the ‘British decline’ debate was not merely an academic exercise to single out problematic factors of the country’s supposed ‘economic culture’. Behind the competing claims often lay concrete accusations of who was to blame for the nation’s backsliding in international economic ‘league tables’, and who was thus culpable of having ‘failed the nation’ because of self-interested strategies at the expense of national unity (see Tomlinson, 2000). Economic nationalism and economic patriotism Next to the ‘revival’ of research on economic nationalism, recent years have also witnessed the emergence of a cognate new term: ‘economic patriotism’. First used by then French Prime Minister, de Villepin, in 2005, the term has attracted growing academic interest not least in response to the massive state interventions associated with the recent global economic crisis (Carayon, 2006; Virassamy, 2008; Clift and Woll, 2012). ‘Economic patriotism’ scholars incorporate many of the conceptual innovations of recent writing on economic nationalism, in particular the rejection to confine the object of analysis to protectionist policies. Drawing on Helleiner (2002), much emphasis is placed on the importance of a ‘liberal economic patriotism’, and on the associated assumption to see internationalization and economic patriotism as symbiotic, rather than dichotomous. In fact, Clift and Woll (2012) go even further. For them, economic patriotism arises primarily from the incongruity between a highly integrated international economy and the narrower territorial boundaries of communities – a ‘mismatch’ that provides a constant incentive for economic actors to discriminate in favour of territorial ‘insiders’. Most of the emerging economic patriotism literature focuses on public policy and shows little interest in the broader rhetoric dimension of the phenomenon (for an exception, see Callaghan and Lagneau-Ymonet, 2012). On the other

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hand, however, there is one important innovation in comparison to the economic nationalism framework, namely the conceptualization of patriotism as a multilevel phenomenon, which is equally discernible at the level of subnational (local), national and supranational (e.g. European) communities (Clift and Woll, 2012). Put differently, economic nationalism (or ‘national economic patriotism’) is here just one among several possible patriotisms – depending on circumstances, the ‘mismatch’ between economic and community boundaries may equally entail the accentuation of local or supranational allegiances. This is an important insight, which needs to be taken seriously. For one thing, scholars of nationalism remind us that ‘on an everyday basis, most people always feel smaller loyalties more intensely than nationalism’ (Strikwerda, 1997: 18). In the case of trade unions, indeed, local allegiances crucially informed outlooks and strategies throughout the post-1945 period – witness the debates about ‘factory consciousness’ and ‘Betriebsegoismus’ (plant egoism) among British and German industrial relations scholars during the 1970s and 1980s (Batstone, 1984; Kotthoff, 1994). Since the late 1980s, on the other hand, trade union discourses started to reveal a growing European attachment. Against the backdrop of an emerging wider discourse on ‘European competitiveness’ (see Rosamond, 2002), this was expressed in the widespread, if vague, union advocacy of a ‘European social model’ (Hyman, 2005). In methodological terms, these reflections suggest that the analysis of national trade union rhetoric needs to be put into the context of possible other patriotic reference frames and also needs to explore connections between local, national and supranational frames of allegiance. Therefore, while the bulk of the chapter will deal with expressions of banal economic nationalism, the concluding section will return to the question of the relationship between economic nationalism and multilevel economic patriotism. Internationalization, economic nationalism and trade unions at Ford and General Motors The study of British and German trade unions at Ford and General Motors between the late 1960s and the early twenty-first century provides rich insights into how internationalization processes can paradoxically strengthen banal forms of economic nationalism. Strikingly, national references were virtually absent from trade union rhetoric in both countries and companies prior to the geocentric reorganization of corporate structures, but they became (and remained) very prominent thereafter. That they emerged earlier at Ford (from late 1960s) than at GM (from the mid-1970s) precisely mirrored the difference in internationalization trajectories between the two firms. To be sure, this rhetoric had its ebbs and flows, and it did not displace other reference frames, in particular a strongly entrenched localism, which continued alongside and, frequently, in conjunction with economic nationalism. We shall also see that this was a union-specific form of economic nationalism. German and British labour representatives ‘appropriated’ many classic nationalist topoi

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but they did so in ways that focused on their pragmatic employment and industrial relations concerns. Moreover, given the contrasting and changing national and company contexts, this dynamic played out differently over time and in the two countries. The remainder of the chapter reconstructs this process by focusing on the four components identified earlier: competition between nations, national identity, national autonomy and national unity. Internationalization and competition between nations The paradoxical impact of internationalization was perhaps most clearly discernible in a new ubiquitous trade union rhetoric that likened locational contests for production and investment to inter-national competition. At Ford, this rhetoric emerged shortly after the creation of the Ford of Europe (FoE) holding company in 1967, and it was dominated, from the outset, by the theme of ‘national victimhood’ – invariably, trade unions considered geocentric reorganization to operate to the detriment of ‘their’ national subsidiaries, and/or suspected that it would do so in the future. In the product development division, the ‘frontrunner’ of reorganization, the British white-collar union DATA saw a ‘Germanisation’ of passenger car design and alleged that ‘tremendous pressure is being exerted . . . by Ford of Germany to secure German manufacture of Ford of Britain cars’.2 The works council in the product development centre at Cologne-Merkenich followed suit with repeated complaints about the relocation of specific departments to ‘England’ and the associated loss of ‘German prerogatives’.3 In the manufacturing division, model standardization also induced an upsurge of national rhetoric. Merseyside shop stewards expressed grave concern about ‘the future developments of our Halewood plants, and Ford of Britain in general’, while also complaining about Ford’s ‘increasing use of German component vendors at the expense of British firms and British labour’ (Beynon, 1973: 180–1). At Cologne-Niehl, the works council threatened to disrupt the assembly of ‘English gearboxes’ into ‘German vehicles’ if jobs were to be cut in ‘German plants’.4 The subsequent three decades were to prove that this would not remain an ephemeral phenomenon – if anything, the rhetoric of inter-national competition became stronger and it spread to General Motors, too, even if, given the available alternative framing of the company names ‘Vauxhall’ and ‘Opel’, it became less pervasive there. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, competition for production volumes and investment was still routinely referred to as an international battle; in 1987, the Ford Germany works council leader likened investment competition to an ‘economic war’ between the British and German subsidiaries.5 At Vauxhall, trade union representatives complained that GM investment programmes came ‘at the expense of the UK’ and that GM was ‘using Britain as a mere top-up for its European operations’.6 Opel works council leaders vowed ‘to safeguard the future of German locations’.7 The spatial horizon of the competition rhetoric widened in line with the extension of the two firms’ production geographies. By the 1990s it not only

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referred to direct German–British ‘contests’ and to competition with the Ford and GM plants in Belgium and Spain, but, increasingly also to perceived threats from new company locations in Eastern Europe.8 What accounts for this extraordinary upsurge of national rhetoric? To begin with, as pointed out earlier, the nineteenth-century imagination of world markets as arenas of competition between nations, purged of imperialist connotations, had persisted into the post-1945 period. The performance of automobile firms, in particular, was now widely regarded as mirroring national achievements or failures, not least in Germany and the UK: if British Leyland was often considered as the quintessential representation of British industrial decline, Volkswagen seemed to epitomize the Federal Republic’s economic success story (see Whisler, 1999; Tolliday, 1995). Yet, while this provided a conducive context for national framing, it did not make much impact on union rhetoric prior to the late 1960s (Ford) and mid1970s (GM).9 Only then, did corporate internationalization turn inter-national competition into a company affair, as rivalries about projects and production usually involved units and plants located in different countries rather than those within the same state: Halewood was pitched against Saarlouis and Valencia, Rüsselsheim against Luton and Antwerp. Ford and General Motors thus seemed to ‘mimic’ – en miniature – the competition between national economies, and, as a result, local interests came to be frequently expressed in national terms. References to specific plants and locations did not disappear but became embedded in a wider (inter-)national framework, in which local and national rhetoric could be used interchangeably or even in a ‘mixed’ form – Ford Saarlouis works council leaders, for example, often highlighted the importance of investment competition between ‘Saarlouis’ on the one hand, and ‘Spain’ and ‘England’ on the other.10 Localism that was ‘uncontaminated’ by national rhetoric could still be discerned – yet by and large confined to contexts of allocation competition between locations within the same country. This was most prominent in the case of Opel where the engine plants at Rüsselsheim, Bochum and Kaiserslautern were at times still pitched against each other in competitions for investment during the 1980s and 1990s. Rüsselsheim works council leaders could rail as much against GM’s expansion in Spain and Austria as against relocations within the FRG.11 The upsurge of national rhetoric not only affected trade unions. Media reporting on Ford and GM throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s was strongly coloured by the notion of inter-national competition, in 1971, for example, the Daily Mirror organized a comparative performance test between a British-made and a German-made Ford Capri, including a repair shop check in ‘neutral’ Switzerland.12 Among Ford and GM managers, too, national rivalries were frequently on display, not least as a result of haggling over European leadership and responsibilities (for Ford, see Tolliday, 2003a: 179ff.). At Ford, informal national networks of managers emerged within the functional divisions of the new FoE holding (Harbridge House Europe, 1984: VIII-9). Trade union rhetoric was embedded in this wider context, but had a specific

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focus throughout the period under review. While internationalization raised concerns about future career paths among subsidiary managers and about the balance of payments among government ministers, trade unionists focused on the consequences for employee welfare. Job security was the most important issue, and, given the growing employment crisis in both countries and companies in the 1980s and 1990s, it is not surprising that national rhetoric became stronger rather than weaker over time. Likewise, national rhetoric related to the cross-border distribution of profits – expressed in both countries and companies – reflected primarily pragmatic concerns: on the one hand, the profitability of national subsidiaries remained a key parameter determining the scope for wage increases. On the other hand, and increasingly so during the 1980s and 1990s, commercial losses incurred by a national subsidiary could translate into headcount and cost-cutting measures. Against this backdrop, British shop stewards were as concerned as German works councillors that potential profits were not ‘illegitimately’ diverted to other countries by unfavourable allocation decisions, and that actual profits were used to reward ‘British’ or ‘German’ workers rather than to finance investments abroad or to cover losses incurred by another national subsidiary.13 If broader concerns were articulated, this often had a strategic purpose. It was no coincidence, for example, that British unions pointed to the negative impact of Ford and GM strategies on the country’s balance of payments in appeals to parliamentary committees and public opinion during the 1970s, while this issue featured much less prominently in negotiations with management.14 In its basic contours, the notion of inter-national competition showed a remarkable degree of continuity in trade union rhetoric – and it did so in Britain and Germany alike. However, the concrete expressions varied over time and across the two countries and companies. It is to this variation that the analysis now turns. Britain In a long-term perspective, the central theme of British unions’ inter-national competition rhetoric was the successive downgrading of the role of UK subsidiaries within the international Ford and GM networks, which culminated in the closure of the traditional Dagenham and Luton assembly plants in the year 2000. However, the precise framing of this theme changed significantly over time. Until the late 1970s, the focus was on the shift in the relative balance of production volumes and investment, as well as on the shrinking scope for exports by Ford UK and Vauxhall. Already prior to the oil crisis, Ford Halewood shop stewards expressed anxiety about ‘the balance of power and control shifting away from Ford of Britain’ (Beynon, 1973: 181), while their Dagenham counterparts asked the government ‘to call a halt on Ford’s policy to transfer work from Britain to Germany’.15 TGWU wage claims of the early 1970s, submitted on behalf of all blue-collar unions, denounced corporate restrictions of Ford UK export markets as a ‘recipe for unemployment of British workers’.16

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The most radical rhetoric came from the left-leaning technicians’ union, DATA (later renamed TASS), which warned against a ‘German take-over of Ford of Britain’.17 In many cases, union rhetoric was ‘propped up’ with references to wider ‘national interests’ – Halewood shop stewards’, typically, criticized Ford policies as ‘detrimental to the balance of payments of this country’ and raised the question of ‘what return the British taxpayer is getting on the government grants that have been made to Ford’ (ibid.). In the wake of the oil crisis, the tone became still harsher, as expressed in a Ford shop stewards’ document submitted to a 1975 parliamentary inquiry: ‘Why was the light car [Fiesta] allocated to Germany and Spain when Ford of Britain had traditionally produced this range of cars since the 1930s? Why, in any case, was a brand new plant built in Spain, partly on British-generated profits, when it was Henry Ford II who confessed that his Dagenham River plant was the “cess-pit of Europe”’?18 A TGWU analysis of Ford UK’s 1977 annual report denounced an alleged company master plan to ‘move towards assembly of cars in Europe, away from Britain, leaving Britain to concentrate on components and commercial vehicles’ – a plan that unions would oppose ‘not just in the interests of their members but in the interests of our national economy’.19 At Vauxhall, too, the left-wing DATA/TASS was in the forefront of protests against European rationalization measures in the mid-1970s; the rundown of car design and engineering and the partial shift towards the assembly of Vauxhall-badged Opel derivatives were seen to come ‘at the expense of Vauxhall employees and the national interest’.20 Vauxhall shop stewards complained about the loss of ‘British component manufacturing’ and the new corporate restrictions of Vauxhall exports to the continent.21 National ‘victimhood’ rhetoric was coupled to complaints about the ‘unfair’ nature of management’s cross-border labour productivity benchmarking. Ford and, to a lesser degree, Vauxhall labour representatives argued that the higher productivity of continental plants primarily reflected higher levels of capital assets. As one Ford shop steward put it in 1975: ‘if a Ford worker in Germany can feed in sixty sheets of metal into a press and in Dagenham he can only feed in forty-five due to age and speed of the press, who is the more productive?’22 Between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, a major shift occurred. The earlier emphasis on Britain’s ‘investment gap’ continued to inform trade union rhetoric,23 but ‘victimhood’ became now predominantly defined in narrower terms, namely with regard to the growth of ‘tied imports’ from German, Belgian and Spanish Ford and GM factories. From a British trade union perspective, tied imports were unfair because they violated the principle that domestic plants should supply ‘their’ respective home markets. Ford union documents pointed to the much lower level of tied imports in Germany, arguing that ‘equal treatment’ would translate into 8,000 new jobs in British plants.24 At Vauxhall, the combination of low assembly volumes and a rapidly growing UK market share triggered union outrage about the use of the British market ‘to prop up the Germans’, which was ‘contrary to the best interests of trade union members and the British industry’.25 There was also indignation about the fact that

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continental Ford and GM plants were ‘allowed’ to sell in the British market where car prices were traditionally higher than in other European countries (Tolliday, 2003b: 98). In 1982, typically, a Vauxhall union representatives argued that continental GM plants ‘were benefiting from the substantial profit margins of the UK market’ and, hence, ‘were operating to the detriment of British work people’.26 Between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, there was yet another transformation. The appeal of protectionism waned within the British labour movement, while Ford and GM, encouraged by the export-based strategies of the new Japanese transplants, reinserted UK plants into export roles as part of more pan-European (and partly global) sourcing strategies. Against this backdrop, the emphasis on tied imports slowly gave way to a broader concern about the vulnerable position of British Ford and GM locations. Ford’s decision to remove Sierra production from Dagenham in 1989, for example, was condemned as a ‘national scandal’ not only because of the resulting growth of tied imports, but also because it would turn Dagenham into a single-model (Fiesta) plant with an uncertain future.27 Restrained by slight UK position gains during the first half of the 1990s, this rhetoric took centre stage in 1997–98 when closure threats at Halewood, Dagenham and Luton coincided with long-term investment promises for Ford and GM plants on the continent. The 1997 Ford union wage claim denounced the ‘unfair and unacceptable discrepancy’ between headcount losses in the German and British subsidiaries over the last two decades, concluding that ‘we are being treated as the scapegoats of Europe’.28 Contrary to the 1970s, British unions no longer contested the legitimacy of productivity comparisons but argued that ‘British workers were as good as anyone in Europe’.29 These arguments were given dramatic reinforcement by the decisions to close the Luton and Dagenham plants in 2000 – despite interim agreements that had guaranteed their survival into the twenty-first century. Time and again, Ford and Vauxhall union representatives pointed out that the companies were ‘betraying British workers’ because they had reneged on earlier agreements and because Dagenham and Luton had been more profitable than comparable plants on the continent.30 TGWU officers accused Ford and GM of having resorted to a ‘British solution to a European problem’.31 Germany Given the focus on ‘victimhood’ and ‘unfairness’ in inter-national competition rhetoric, it should not come as a surprise that this rhetoric was less widespread in the German Ford and GM subsidiaries until the early 1980s. As we have seen, in both cases, FRG operations were able to considerably push up their relative shares of European output during the 1970s. Nonetheless, at least in the case of Ford, German labour representatives did start to harbour a number of grievances about European reorganization, which lent themselves to be expressed in national terms. For one thing, there was the special case of the product development division, where the frequent relocation of departments caused regular

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disquiet. In 1975, works council representatives found it ‘untenable that more and more responsibilities have been transferred to England’; in 1978 they requested that ‘know-how developed by Germans should not be diverted to Dunton’.32 Here, again, we can see how references to locations (Dunton/ Merkenich) were now used interchangeably with national rhetoric. Beyond the special case of product development, inter-national competition rhetoric was nurtured by the growing sense of uncertainty about the commercial implications of allocation decisions, which invited conspiracy theories about ulterior ‘anti-German’ motives. Moreover, ‘unfairness’ claims could also be confined to a very short time horizon, such as in 1974 when the central works council lamented that ‘we in Germany are supposed to cut twice as many whitecollar jobs’.33 Arguments about ‘German profits’ were also occasionally discernible: in 1972, for example, the European holding was accused of withholding Christmas bonus payments because Fordwerke profits had been ‘illegitimately’ used to cover the 1971 deficit of the British subsidiary.34 Ford’s strong commercial focus on the UK and the resulting ‘bias’ of European model and marketing policies were frequently condemned as a ‘neglect of German interests’. In 1973, the central works council leader pointed to the Escort where the German share of development had allegedly only consisted in ‘minor corrections of English mistakes’.35 One year later, oil crisis and recession led to concerns about a ‘frightening drop of sales on the German market’ because ‘we are forced to accept models that do not at all correspond to the German taste’.36 By the early to mid-1980s the situation changed significantly. In parallel to slower demand growth and accelerated technological rationalization, German Ford and Opel plants now also came under stronger locational competition pressures, which entailed a widening of inter-national competition rhetoric. Unsurprisingly, union standards of ‘unfairness’ were rather different from those in the UK – given the dominant position of German subsidiaries in Ford’s and GM’s European networks they usually relied on status quo considerations. Objections to Ford and GM expansion plans in the early 1980s, for example, drew on the simple argument that expansion could negatively affect the ‘traditional’ German plants. Likewise, in the second half of the 1980s, Ford and Opel works councils resisted all attempts to alter the existing European distribution of assembly volumes.37 Opposition against government subsidies for investment projects in other European Ford or GM locations ‘fitted’ into this status quo pattern, even if, in the case of Ford, this was at odds with works council lobbies for investment grants from the regional government in NordrheinWestphalia.38 The Opel works council leader, Richard Heller, warned against the ever more pervasive pattern of intra-subsidiary competition, orchestrated by ‘international capital that knows neither mother tongue nor fatherland’.39 In the 1990s, against the backdrop of closure threats and concomitant Ford and GM investments in Eastern Europe, the rhetoric further radicalized. According to the Opel works council leader, ‘German locations were generating profits, which were splashed elsewhere’ and could thus not be used for investments in the ‘traditional locations’; he likened Opel to a man ‘who builds new

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houses for all his brothers and sisters . . . so that he has nothing left for himself’.40 New plants in Poland, Russia, China, and elsewhere were not only a drain on Opel resources but directly ‘endangered German locations’.41 In a similar vein, Ford works council documents constantly railed against an alleged bias in the determination of transfer prices, which hurt profits in the FRG – Ford Germany had become the ‘cash cow for Europe’.42 Alongside this radicalization of inter-national competition rhetoric, German labour representatives also started to attack cross-border benchmarking processes, and they did so in a way that was a mirror image of British unions’ opposition to productivity comparisons in the 1970s. Faced with growing pressure to reduce labour costs, German works council representatives routinely invoked ‘superior German quality and productivity standards’ to argue against headcount reductions and cost-cutting. At Ford, in fact, this was very much in evidence as early as the 1980s. Protests against the relocation of product development in 1985, for example, relied on detailed British–German comparisons of engineering workloads and warranty costs to ‘prove’ higher German productivity.43 By the early 1990s, Opel unionists had ‘caught up’ and also stressed the value of ‘German quality’, while pointing to the allegedly greater incidence of quality defects in Belgian, British and Spanish plants.44 If the general thrust of works council rhetoric was similar, there were also a number of interesting differences between Ford and Opel. In terms of intensity, the Opel labour representatives were not ‘in the same league’ as their Ford counterparts, which primarily reflected the latter’s further growing suspicions about the role of the FoE holding. Beyond the earlier criticism of a ‘British bias’ in the model and marketing policy, FoE was now constantly accused of discrimination against the German subsidiary, for example through the ‘manipulation’ of cost calculations for investment projects and hidden strategies to relocate production from Germany to the UK. Works council documents railed against the ‘machinations of the English Ford of Europe mafia’ and ‘nationalist English power games at the expense of German jobs’.45 Moreover, inter-national competition rhetoric was extensively deployed to enhance works council legitimacy vis-à-vis the workforce. Works council election campaigns systematically addressed the issue throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 1987, for example, employees were asked to support the works council in its attempts to ‘secure the future of the German Fordwerke AG beyond the year 1990 . . . against the permanent and massive attacks . . . by the European management’.46 Left-wing dissenters criticizing such national rhetoric were derided for their alleged lack of realism and experience.47 Such highly instrumental usage was rare in the case of Opel, even if, here too, left-wing minorities denounced works council leaders for deliberately ‘hyping’ the importance of locational competition through the use of national rhetoric.48 Criticism of European GM organization for alleged ‘political discrimination’ against Opel could be harsh,49 but did not reach the Ford level. In the 1990s, moreover, the new Eisenach plant in East Germany gave national rhetoric a peculiar twist. Works council representatives echoed widespread debates among

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Opel unionists that Eisenach had been financed from ‘West German profits’ and ‘West German tax money’ – a miniature version of critical contemporary debates about the ‘cost burden’ of German reunification. Frequently, Eisenach was likened to GM’s other investments in Eastern Europe – it unfairly deprived the ‘traditional’ plants of necessary resources, while parallel production of the same model (Corsa) and low East German wages endangered employment and established work standards in the ‘old’ FRG.50 It was only by the end of the 1990s that this East–West refraction of inter-national competition rhetoric slowly receded into the background. Internationalization and national identity Internationalization accentuated economic nationalism among Ford and GM trade unionists not only because it entrenched notions of ‘competition between nations’, but also because it reinforced national identity rhetoric. Again, that rhetoric was union specific; while at times touching on wider aspects of imagined ‘national economic cultures’, it focused on industrial relations as the ‘subculture’ of most immediate concern for organized labour. As geocentric internationalization unfolded, references to ‘British’ or ‘German’ industrial relations models abounded, nurtured, on the one hand, by direct challenges arising from the internationalization of corporate structures and strategies, and, on the other hand, from intensified observation of foreign practices by Ford and GM trade unionists themselves.51 Union rhetoric reflected normative beliefs about what constituted ‘good’ industrial relations practice, as well as concerns about the ‘effectiveness’ of national systems in delivering beneficial outcomes. However, in both countries, the balance between these arguments shifted from a predominant emphasis on normative issues up to the late 1970s, towards a focus on the contribution of industrial relations to economic competitiveness during the 1990s. Clearly, this mirrored the more general ‘defensive shift’ of West European trade unionism in the late twentieth century. At the same time, there were important British–German differences. In the Federal Republic, national identity rhetoric displayed a great deal of continuity in its emphasis on the defence of traditional ‘German’ industrial relations institutions – qualified, during the period up to the mid-1970s, by occasional reflections about useful lessons to be learned from foreign practices. In the UK, in contrast, a similarly defensive pattern up to the late 1970s later gave way to a new rhetoric that attacked important aspects of British industrial relations as damaging the nation’s economic prospects. In the following, these countryspecific patterns will be analysed in more detail. Britain In the UK, up until the late 1970s, national identity rhetoric primarily emerged in response to new management techniques of cross-border productivity comparisons and the broader ‘British decline’ debate. Strictly speaking, these

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were, of course, plant-to-plant comparisons, yet more often than not they were presented in an inter-national format: why did it take more hours and workers to build a similar vehicle in ‘Britain’ than in ‘Germany’? Whether in companylevel negotiating committees or in hearings of parliamentary commissions, Ford and, to a lesser extent, Vauxhall union representatives were confronted with this question and with claims that connected the ‘British productivity gap’ to labour issues – from ‘overmanning’ to ‘restrictive practices’ and, most importantly, strikes.52 During the 1971 Ford strike, the company’s UK Managing Director, William Batty, declared that ‘the British disease is the instant strike and the cure is to stop it’ (Mathews, 1972: 128). At least in the case of Ford, management attempts to address the ‘strike problem’ explicitly drew on foreign models – there were many attempts to induce British unions to ‘police’ members in similar ways as in the USA or in Germany (Roots, 1984: 15–16). In 1969, moreover, in a frontal challenge to British voluntarism, Ford turned to the courts to have a bargaining agreement declared legally enforceable (Friedman and Meredeen, 1980: 223f.). These company-level developments were embedded in broader debates, especially in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when voluntarist British exceptionalism ‘had become a matter for self-questioning instead of self-congratulation’ (PhelpsBrown, 1983: 172). Tory Prime Minister, Edward Heath, explicitly stated that he wanted to ‘modernize’ British unions along the lines of their German and US counterparts (Taylor, 1999: 153–4).53 Against the backdrop of these developments, trade union representatives deployed national identity rhetoric in defence of British workers and their own practices, connected to an alternative interpretation of ‘British decline’. Ford, in particular, became a micro-level ‘battleground’ of the decline debate during the 1970s. In the unions’ reading, the UK productivity gap had little to do with labour problems but was essentially due to an investment gap. The core problem was the comparatively low amount of ‘power at the elbow of the British workers’ because per capital asset levels were far higher in the German Ford and GM subsidiaries – ‘the British workers are asked to work harder to make up for the lack of investment’.54 These arguments echoed a well-rehearsed centre-left interpretation of ‘British decline’ (see Coates, 2000: 46–52), as did the additional point that low investment, in turn, reflected deliberate corporate strategies and the failure of government policy rather than the inefficient use of productive capacity. While dividend greed had long held back investment volumes at British Leyland, the problem of the US-owned firms was that European and global strategies came at the expense of investment in UK subsidiaries. This was all the more problematic since Britain was ‘the only major industrial state where the industry is dominated by foreign-owned companies’.55 If workers could not be blamed for ‘British decline’, neither could industrial relations and strikes. Here, identity rhetoric took a normative turn, expressed, for example, in frequent denunciations of Ford as a company that wanted to introduce ‘alien’ industrial relations practices in its UK subsidiary. Indeed, it

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was not least the Ford example that prompted trade unions to make recognition of ‘British’ industrial relations practices one key demand of their general policy towards multinational companies (Gennard, 1971: 23f.). Given the praise of foreign unions by managers and conservative politicians, it was perhaps not surprising that British unions should also start to invoke ‘British’ traditions in delimitation from the practices of their German and US counterparts. This was not always outspoken and also varied in degree – few were as radical as a communist Ford NJNC delegate likening German unionism to ‘Dr Ley’s labour front’,56 or went as far as the left-leaning white collar union TASS, which saw Britain as the model in a worldwide struggle for industrial democracy that foreign trade unions ought to emulate.57 Yet, when TGWU leader Jack Jones elaborated on the ‘weakness’ of US and continental trade unions at TUC Congresses in the early 1970s,58 he must have expressed a view that was widely shared among British Ford and Vauxhall trade unionists, too. In fact, these delimitations were not just a reaction to attacks by domestic ‘enemies’. They also reflected more frequent observations of German union practices, which – in a dynamic of ‘Othering’ – reinforced the commitment to ‘British’ traditions. In the case of Vauxhall, for example, this dynamic was clearly discernible in the shop stewards encounters with their Opel counterparts from 1973. As aptly summarized by the Anglican church organizer of the meetings, Vauxhall shop stewards ‘tend to react to those elements of the German system, which would be weaknesses if they were in Britain’.59 The works council system, in particular, was singled out for criticism because of its legal constraints and the inbuilt social partnership orientation; frequently the Opel works council was likened to the defunct Vauxhall MAC.60 In comparison, the British trade union model was seen as superior in terms of membership levels, and with regard to the independence from state and employers. Vauxhall stewards expected their Opel counterparts to ‘catch up’ with these standards – one TGWU convener declared that ‘we don’t blame the German workers for the system they have, but we do expect them to struggle against it’.61 All this evidence undoubtedly points to reinforced commitment to ‘British’ traditions as the dominant effect of internationalization up until the late 1970s. Yet, there were two aspects of national identity rhetoric which highlighted British deficiencies rather than achievements, and appropriated foreign patterns as an (ambiguous) source of inspiration rather than delimitation. First, if there was something wrong with British workers, it was that they were badly paid. UK unionists could not fail to note higher German wage levels, and, particularly in the case of Ford, British–German pay comparisons became a staple in wage negotiations in the 1970s.62 These comparisons – highly questionable in their dependence on nominal exchange rates – served to underpin opposition against cross-border efficiency benchmarking, and they were linked to the unions’ reading of ‘British decline’: investments in Germany were far higher than in the UK, not despite, but because of higher wages in the FRG, which stimulated innovation and more capital-intensive production methods.63 Moreover, a moral argument was also deployed. The 1978 Ford wage claim argued that ‘we aim to

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achieve the same treatment for our workers here . . . as has been achieved in Germany. Ford . . . cannot continue to treat their British workforce as cheap labour.’64 The second problem was consultation. Again, comparisons with the FRG were widespread, not least against the backdrop of the national debate about worker directors, which was strongly inspired by German co-determination (Gold, 2005). Ford and Vauxhall trade unionists frequently contrasted extensive consultation rights in the FRG with the lack of involvement in Britain, a problem that was compounded by the remoteness of decision-making in multinational firms.65 In the words of a Ford shop steward, it was imperative ‘to ensure that the British Ford worker is brought more into discussions at a much earlier date’.66 How to do this, however, was less clear, and here, German– British comparisons became ambiguous. Few British Ford and Vauxhall trade unionists wished to copy German co-determination – even those who endorsed TGWU leader, Jack Jones’s, lobby for board participation wanted trade unions to have the monopoly of employee representation, and they also rejected the restricted shop-floor accountability of employee board members in the FRG. As a Ford Dagenham shop steward put it: ‘There is the fear that you could start landing up like the works councils in Germany. We don’t want to be in a position where we start divorcing ourselves from the shopfloor’ (Passingham and Connor, 1977: 10). From the early 1980s, identity rhetoric in relation to trade union principles and achievements started to decline. The more difficult economic situation made British Ford and Vauxhall trade unionists focus on ‘bread-and-butter’ issues, in particular employment security, which pushed normative concerns into the background. The decline of the macro-level European debate on ‘industrial democracy’ (see Deutsch, 2005) was mirrored, at Ford and GM, by the slow disappearance of cross-country comparisons of trade union models. At the same time, the earlier domestic ‘trigger’, institutional reform attempts inspired by foreign industrial relations practices, also vanished. Unlike Heath’s 1971 reform, the new conservative governments’ agenda was not designed to imitate foreign models, but simply to curb trade union power (Howell, 2005: ch. 5). Still more importantly, the legislative changes brought about by Thatcherism effectively buried the voluntarist tradition and thus ‘removed’ a key source of British unions’ past national pride. In fact, the unions now turned from an ardent defender into a consistent opponent of British industrial relations institutions, as the earlier belief in self-reliance and industrial ‘muscle’ was shattered by membership losses and a weakening of mobilization capacity. From the late 1980s, these changes became associated with a reassessment of continental (‘European’) industrial relations, which transformed national identity rhetoric towards a strong emphasis on British deficiencies and the proclaimed need for ‘renewal’ through catch-up with ‘Europe’. Again, company-level developments were embedded in broader debates, in particular with regard to the growing recognition that the legal rights enjoyed by continental trade unions had offered them better protection against the neoliberal

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onslaught (MacShane, 1991). In national TUC debates, Britain was increasingly portrayed as Europe’s ‘outcast’, illustrated by the Tory government’s ‘opt-out’ from EU social policy in the early 1990s (Waddington, 2003: 234–5). At Ford and Vauxhall, this transformation played out in a peculiar way, as the new ‘negative’ national identity rhetoric (‘what is wrong with Britain’?) could build on earlier criticism of low wages and insufficient consultation procedures. German–British wage and benefit comparisons continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s in both firms; indeed, as the UK productivity gap started to narrow on the companies’ own admission, such comparisons were presented with more insistence – even if they continued to ambiguously coexist with references to lower UK wages as an investment incentive. The 1985 Ford trade union wage claim, for example, pointed to ‘productivity increases that make Britain outperform comparable increases in Ford’s other European plants’, while it was still ‘considerably cheaper for Ford to retain and hire labour in Britain than in Germany’.67 At Vauxhall, angry union negotiators complained about low company wage offers while noting that ‘there is plenty of money for Germans whose standards we work to for fifty pounds a week less’.68 By the late 1980s, following IG Metall’s successful thirty-five-hour campaign, the focus of comparisons was extended to working time where the German/European ‘yardstick’ could be applied with less difficulty.69 Links to the broader debate on the UK’s position in the European Community were clearly discernible: in 1989, Vauxhall union negotiators urged the company to accommodate union demands for shorter working hours and more holidays in line with higher ‘European’ standards, rather than following ‘Maggie Thatcher’s bloody minded and dogmatic approach’ that tried to isolate the UK from the continent.70 Inevitably, the new ‘European’ yardstick also became connected to arguments about economic performance. At Vauxhall, in particular, union negotiators disputed management claims that following the ‘German high-cost approach’ would impair UK investment prospects.71 In the second half of the 1990s, Ford UK and Vauxhall labour representatives angrily pointed to investment agreements in Ford and GM plants in Germany, Belgium and Spain that directly impinged on British locations. The focus of national identity rhetoric, as a result, shifted towards the issue of redundancy regulation and consultation. From a trade union point of view, UK workers seemed particularly vulnerable in cases of cutbacks because lax labour laws provided multinational firms with a perfect setting to dispose of European overcapacities.72 As the 1997 Ford NJNC wage claim put it: ‘Workers in Britain have far less social protection than our counterparts in Europe – as a consequence it is far cheaper and easier for the company to make redundancies here than anywhere else in Europe.’73 The 1998 TGWU motor industry conference called for ‘similar employment rights to those of our German colleagues in respect of dismissals in order to ensure a level playing field and prevent the UK from being seen as the soft target’.74 The ‘level playing field’ metaphor indicates that ‘European’ regulatory standards had now acquired a double meaning in union rhetoric; they came to be

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seen as a threat to British jobs and thus as part of the inter-national competition dynamic, while they also provided an attractive model to emulate. In fact, these two aspects were connected, for it was precisely through the imitation of continental investment agreements that British unions sought to neutralize the competitive threat between 1997 and 1999. However, as the successive closure of the Ford Dagenham and Vauxhall Luton plants revealed the futility of these attempts, ‘negative’ national identity rhetoric became still more powerful: a Ford shop steward document commented that ‘British labour law is in a poor state’ because it allowed the company to break agreements with impunity75 – a practice, which would be illegal in other European countries. There, bargaining agreements were legally binding, while works councils had the right to be consulted at an early stage of corporate planning instead of being confronted with a fait accompli, as in the case of the Vauxhall Luton closure.76 There was, hence, a need to ‘level up’ British consultation arrangements to ‘European standards’ through a new European Union directive.77 The contrast with the 1970s could not have been starker: the lack of statutory employee representation and the non-binding character of collective bargaining agreements – back then celebrated and defended as ‘British’ achievements – were now portrayed as liabilities, which ought to be overcome. Germany In the Federal Republic, internationalization also threw up the issue of national identity, yet initially this had more to do with new international company structures rather than strategies, and, given GM’s belated and less radical geocentric reorganization, it was much more discernible in the case of Ford. The challenges to co-determination posed by new European decision-making structures and the posting of foreign managers were paramount. In February 1970, for example, in response to conflicts about the behaviour of posted managers, the leadership of the local IG Metall organization requested guidelines for foreign managers obliging them ‘to be familiar with the German language, mentality and legal order’; the duty to respect works council rights was particularly stressed.78 Relocation decisions, particularly in the product development division, triggered especially harsh protests when they were taken without prior notification of the works council. Ford of Europe was often portrayed as dominated by ‘English’ managers, which further accentuated the national framing – as in the following, particularly drastic, example from 1973: ‘The English influence goes now so far as to allow English managers to issue instructions for overtime work without regard to the law and collective bargaining regulation. Has nobody found it necessary to acquaint these gentlemen with the German works constitution act? We are happy to teach the English a few extra lessons.’79 As Ford later reduced its reliance on posted managers, such incidents became less frequent in the second half of the 1970s. Yet, they still resurfaced occasionally, in particular in relation to planned cross-border relocation measures.80 The focus on perceived national industrial relations ‘achievements’ was

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further reinforced by the direct encounters with British industrial relations from 1967, indicated by frequent references to ‘British disease’ in works council documents.81 As in the broader national debate, the ‘disease’ metaphor stood for chaotic, conflict-ridden industrial relations, the consequences of which were experienced by German Ford workers when they were laid off because long strikes in the UK paralysed cross-border component deliveries. Occasionally, attempts were made to see such disputes in the broader context of British trade union structure and history, but the more reductionist pattern of incomprehension about the frequency of strikes clearly prevailed.82 In 1973, typically, the chairman of the works council in Saarlouis expressed his gratitude that German law helped to avoid ‘englische Verhältnisse’ (‘English conditions’) in his country.83 British–German trade union meetings, despite many efforts to achieve a better mutual understanding of different national systems, could not neutralize such images. Indeed, as the Opel case demonstrates, they ‘encouraged’ national identity projections even where corporate internationalization dynamics were weak. One aspect of this was that British delegates often voiced quite radical criticism of the German works council system, which even to the new generation of Opel union activists seemed to neglect the benefits of council rights for worker representation.84 In their turn, Opel delegates displayed a great deal of incomprehension about British multi-unionism and praised the alleged superiority of a unitary organization, in particular with regard to the settlement of disputes between groups of workers. If less strongly than at Ford, the ‘British disease’ theme was also present – many Opel representatives saw British shop stewards’ insistence on immediate action to solve problems as ‘near anarchy’.85 It should be added, however, that German trade union views of British industrial relations cannot be reduced to a reproduction of negative clichés – depending on context and issue they could be more ambiguous. Opel representatives, for example, often acknowledged British unions’ superior achievements to enforce health and safety norms.86 UK militancy at times also inspired more nuanced reactions. In the Ford Cologne plant, up to 1970, the left-wing works council leader, Günter Tolusch, at times pointed to British strikes to argue for more assertive union strategies in Germany.87 In the Ford product development division, the works council organized petitions and small-scale overtime boycotts in direct response to strikes in the UK – because employees had criticized that the works council, despite its legal rights, ‘achieved less than the English unions’.88 From the late 1970s, growing investment competition at times also encouraged the view that UK strikes helped to raise British wages and hence to reduce cost pressure in the FRG.89 Clearly, these were selective positive appropriations. At a time when the juxtaposition between ‘Modell Deutschland’ and ‘British decline’ became pervasive in German public debates (Hoff, 1977), few could be expected to praise British trade unionism as a model that German workers should emulate.90 Indeed, partial inspiration could go hand in hand with delimitation. At Ford, appeals to do it ‘the British way’ often primarily addressed management to

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remind the company of its ‘obligation’ to reward cooperative German workers. Typically, a local IG Metall leaflet from 1969 justified a wage claim with reference to the fact that discontent among German workers – in contrast to the UK – rarely led to disruptions.91 As in the UK, national identity rhetoric in relation to trade union principles and achievements remained strong throughout the 1970s, yet declined thereafter. There were still bouts of protest when international management decisions were taken without due respect for ‘German co-determination’. In 1980, for example, the Ford works council railed against FoE’s ‘American cowboy methods’ of labour management.92 Overall, however, such defensive outbursts diminished in importance as German labour representatives increasingly recognized the need to adapt co-determination practices to the new international environment (see chapter 4). At the same time, the more difficult economic situation of the 1980s and 1990s made German Ford and Opel trade unionists focus on ‘bread-and-butter’ issues, in particular employment security, which pushed normative concerns about rights and principles into the background. Production interdependence lost its earlier triggering ‘function’ – while ‘just-in-time’ production made the companies more vulnerable to strike-related disruptions than in the past, the actual number of such disruptions declined in line with broader trends of ‘labour quiescence’ (Shalev, 1992). In those instances where strikes did cause delivery shortages in German plants – at Ford for example in 1988 and 1990 due to disputes in the UK and Spain – the impact was much less dramatic than during the 1970s.93 In fact, the only occasion of serious cross-border delivery breakdown occurred in the reverse direction due to the 1984 IG Metall strike at Opel’s Rüsselsheim plant.94 Against this backdrop, the rhetorical delimitation from the ‘British disease’ was still occasionally discernible but sounded like a mere echo from the past.95 The receding importance of older sources of identity rhetoric, however, did not spell the end of that rhetoric altogether. Rather, new circumstances entailed a transformation, which shifted the focus of identity projections towards the defence of German industrial relations in the name of economic efficiency and competitiveness. Mirroring a broader European shift towards a more economic ‘reading’ of industrial relations institutions, the new identity rhetoric was primarily a trade union response to growing management pressure to cut headcount levels and labour costs in German Ford and Opel plants. As we have already seen, German unions tried to resist that pressure by pointing to ‘superior’ German quality and productivity. But identity rhetoric went further in that it tied claims of superior efficiency and quality levels to alleged characteristics of the ‘German production system’ and, in particular, to the beneficial economic effects of high pay and consensus-oriented industrial relations institutions. The first signs of that rhetoric were already discernible during the 1980s. In 1985, in response to the scare about the relocation of product development, Ford works council leaders elaborated on ‘German know-how’ and ‘German quality work’ that could only be had if employees were well paid, trained and motivated.96 At Opel, labour representatives pointed to British employer praise

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for Germany’s vocational training system and argued that competition was a ‘long-term race’, for which the FRG was better prepared than those focusing on wage and tax dumping.97 Over the course of the 1990s, the new identity rhetoric then came to full bloom, not least because management pressure was additionally nurtured by a public debate about Germany as a ‘production location’ (Standort), in which trade unions found themselves on the defensive against a growing chorus of employers, politicians and media pundits according to whom Germany’s social market economy needed reforms to face the challenges of ‘globalization’. Labour market flexibility and the reduction of entrepreneurial (labour) ‘cost burdens’ were among the key issues in the debate (see Cattero, 1998). As in the case of the ‘British decline’ controversy in the 1970s, this debate further fuelled national identity rhetoric among German Ford and Opel trade unionists. Interestingly, this was particularly pronounced at Opel where classic topoi of an imagined German economic culture now became staples of works council rhetoric, in particular the notions of ‘German engineering excellence’ and ‘German quality work’ (see Conrad, 2006: ch. 6), which were connected to beliefs about the superiority of quality expectations on the part of German automobile consumers.98 Works council leaders, against the backdrop of a growing public debate about quality defects of Opel vehicles, routinely attacked GM cost-saving and outsourcing schemes as endangering the brand’s ‘made in Germany’ image. The alleged ‘poor quality of English engines’ built into Opel cars, for example, was presented as a major problem.99 Clearly, this mushrooming identity rhetoric primarily reflected the Opel works councils’ strong urge to push for a more ‘labour-friendly’ corporate strategy, which would stabilize headcount levels and ease downward pressure on wages and social benefits. Praising ‘German engineering excellence’ tied in with works council demands for a focus on process and product innovation to maintain competitiveness, while the eulogy of ‘German quality work’ was fed by resistance against cost-driven rationalization. Claims about the superiority of German technological innovation and manufacturing were invariably connected to a range of labour-related issues. ‘German quality work’ required high wages and well-qualified personnel, high German productivity was achieved against the backdrop of social peace and workplace institutions that simultaneously contributed to economic efficiency and social welfare.100 In the case of Ford, the renewed upsurge of national identity rhetoric during the 1990s was less pronounced, perhaps because of a less principled resistance against cost-cutting, perhaps because of the dominant works council focus on FoE’s alleged ‘anti-German machinations’. But the rhetoric was clearly present nonetheless, for example when works council representatives criticized FoE for upsetting the traditionally good relationship of Fordwerke AG with its German suppliers and for neglecting the importance of ‘social peace’ in offsetting higher German labour costs.101 Still in the late 1990s, the works council leader, Kuckelkorn publicly declared that Fordwerke was a ‘German enterprise’ and ought to remain so in the future.102

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It is also noteworthy that, from the late 1980s, national identity rhetoric became occasionally imbued with wider political meanings. In 1988, for example, against the backdrop of left-wing protests against ‘nationalist’ campaigns, the Ford works council leader emphasized the need to tread carefully ‘in light of our past’, but also made it clear that German Ford employee representatives could not be blamed for that past.103 At Opel, leaked remarks by GM managers about ‘German hordes’ and their attitude of ‘Germany above everything’ triggered works council outrage because of an ‘insinuated link to Nazi ideology’ and because they offended the trade unions as democratic organizations that had helped ‘to build a new Germany’.104 Clearly, thus, national identity rhetoric was still highly salient at the end of the twentieth century. Internationalization and national autonomy If internationalization threw up the issue of national identity in both countries and companies, the same can be said of the idea of national autonomy. In various guises, ‘national control’ over resources and decision-making became a core component of trade union rhetoric throughout the period under review. Again, as with national identity, these were union-specific appropriations – ‘national autonomy’ rhetoric, while being informed by wider notions of national economic sovereignty, was primarily driven by concrete employment security and industrial relations concerns. To different degrees at different times, this included the strategic use of autonomy language to promote trade union interests, not least because, particularly in the case of the UK, companylevel developments were often connected to wider debates about the merits and drawbacks of a ‘national control’ approach to foster economic growth and stability. As with identity, national autonomy rhetoric changed over time and played out differently in the two countries and companies. German unions focused on autonomy at the corporate level, and they did so with a great deal of continuity, although, due to GM’s belated internationalization, it was not before the 1980s that Opel unionists ‘caught up’ with their Ford counterparts. In the UK, autonomy notions shifted from state control and national market protection in the 1970s towards a ‘softer’ approach that focused on the mobilization of consumers and public opinion in support of ‘domestic content’ rules. Germany Throughout the period under review, German trade union rhetoric showed few signs of ‘classic’ protectionist autonomy notions. Occasionally, there were some ‘rumblings’ in this direction, particularly in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the Ford and Opel works councils joined a broader IG Metall lobby to restrict Japanese imports.105 Yet, compared to the UK (see below), such demands never acquired much prominence. The strong political commitment to ‘Europe’ and European economic integration in the Federal Republic (see Spohn, 2002) made protectionism a non-starter in the political arena, while the experience of the

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country’s export-led ‘economic miracle’ (Esser, 1982) gave German unions a growing material stake in free trade. In the cases of Ford and Opel, the strong growth of export sales in the post-war period (for Ford, see Thomes, 2003: 172–4) strongly limited the appeal of protectionist leanings. Corporate autonomy, however, did become an important issue even if, initially, only in the case of Ford. In 1970, for example, the product development works council questioned the rationale of the FoE holding, and requested practical steps to restore Fordwerke AG’s legal status as an ‘independent German undertaking’.106 Similarly, in 1975, the company was urged to ‘seriously consider revoking the Ford of Europe concept at least in product development’.107 Clearly, such radical rhetoric disguised a fundamental ambiguity about the feasibility of a return to the golden days of ‘German independence’. Not least because of warnings by senior Fordwerke managers in this regard,108 works council rhetoric often vacillated, combining radical pleas with more modest suggestions, for example a new Anglo-German division of tasks that gave each national centre full responsibility for two of the four FoE passenger cars.109 The national autonomy theme was also expressed in a variety of other, less spectacular protests against FoE’s interference in Fordwerke affairs. In particular, throughout the 1970s, works council representatives objected to FoE’s tight headcount monitoring, advocating more subsidiary autonomy in terms of budgets and manpower planning.110 Labour representatives lobbied on behalf of German managers to widen the scope of the latter’s prerogatives, and they also argued that Fordwerke management positions should be filled with German nationals. Typically, a 1975 product development works council document urged Ford ‘to endow German managers again with real decision-making authority’ and ‘to ensure that product planning positions were staffed with German managers’.111 In part, this rhetoric reflected broader debates about ‘national champions’ – Volkswagen was always considered as a ‘role model’ of corporate organization among German Ford trade unionists.112 The influential association of automobiles with ‘national styles’ was also discernible: works council criticism often echoed arguments in the German automobile press about the alleged ‘German subordination’ within FoE.113 Yet, labour representatives appropriated these themes with a specific focus on employment security and industrial relations. The request for more autonomous product development, for example, was primarily motivated by the importance of domestic sales for employment stability. Still by the late 1970s, growing export levels notwithstanding, nearly half of Fordwerke’s output was sold on the domestic market (Thomes, 2003: 174). It was not by coincidence that such works council concerns were voiced very strongly during the 1974 recession, when a considerable decline in Ford’s FRG market share coincided with major temporary employment cutbacks.114 The industrial relations ‘imprint’ was also unmistakable – works council protests against FoE interference with German management prerogatives were

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particularly vociferous in cases where co-determination issues were concerned (e.g. manpower planning). In 1973, for example, the Cologne-Niehl works council pointed to unacceptable delays in filling vacancies due to ‘the interference of English bureaucracies’, i.e. of FoE, which increased workloads and violated works council rights.115 Moreover, national autonomy rhetoric was additionally nurtured by experiences of enforced lay-offs due to strikes in the UK. Works council representatives complained that German employees had to pay the price for the breakdown of Ford’s European network and urged the company to make German plants ‘more independent’ from foreign sources of supply.116 In the 1980s, national autonomy rhetoric further intensified even if works council representatives now frequently asserted that, as ‘good Europeans’, they were not in principle opposed to FoE’s coordinating role. 117 Yet, they remained wedded to a variety of autonomy ideas, from demands for German management discretion in terms of product, budget and manpower planning, to lobbies for the appointment of German nationals to Fordwerke leadership positions.118 If anything, the tone became still more aggressive than in the 1970s. Ford of Europe was now frequently attacked as a ‘mismanaged’ and ‘bloated bureaucracy’ that ‘nipped national initiative in the bud’, while imposing a growing financial burden on the German subsidiary. European instructions were blamed for quality defects of German-built vehicles, cumbersome European coordination procedures for technological delays and the ‘demotivation of German managers’.119 All this culminated in persistent demands for a radical ‘slimming’ of ‘superfluous Ford of Europe hierarchies’ to the benefit of national autonomy. Volkswagen with its allegedly more efficient management structures still served as a role model.120 At times, in fact, German labour representatives still questioned the European holding’s entire rationale – the 1980 ‘After Japan’ initiative, for example, triggered protests against ‘high-handed Anglo-American interference’ with national management prerogatives, and demands for Ford Germany’s ‘disassociation’ from FoE.121 Admittedly, though, such outbursts now reflected visions of a (past) ‘ideal world’ rather than serious aspirations; even in the product development division, most German Ford trade unionists had grudgingly resigned themselves to FoE’s existence.122 As German Ford trade unionists continued to lobby for national autonomy, their underlying motivations underwent a significant shift in the 1980s. The earlier emphasis on the avoidance of problematic interdependence effects disappeared as lay-offs due to strikes in foreign Ford subsidiaries became rare. On the other hand, ‘national autonomy’ increasingly turned into a rhetorical device to contest FoE cost pressure and headcount reduction targets. Opposition to costdriven relocation plans, for example, often drew on claims about how much more could be saved through radical cutbacks in FoE bureaucracy.123 Still more importantly, national autonomy was increasingly perceived as a means to counter FoE’s alleged ‘English nationalist’ strategies: More national leeway in manpower planning would allow additional hiring to pre-empt alleged plans to

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shift investment and production volumes to the UK, while the appointment of Germans to Fordwerke leadership positions was necessary to thwart FoE attempts to ‘infiltrate’ English managers who would then do their utmost to damage the German subsidiary.124 By the mid to late 1980s, national autonomy rhetoric also spread among Opel trade unionists. Works council complaints about Detroit-imposed restrictions of Opel’s independence had occasionally occurred in earlier periods, in particular with regard to corporate constraints on Opel exports to North America.125 But, compared to Ford, this remained of marginal importance as long as Opel functioned as a coordination centre of GM’s European activities. It was only after the establishment of GM Europe’s new Zurich headquarters in 1986 that national autonomy rhetoric became a regular pattern, as Opel labour representatives started to rail against cross-border coordination measures that, ‘in contravention of the German stock corporation law’, deprived Opel of its character as a ‘national automobile firm’ (Klebe and Roth, 1987: 106). Against the backdrop of heightened cost pressure and the persistent threat of plant closures, national autonomy rhetoric reached its zenith during the 1990s. There was not much change in the agenda, but the familiar demands for more product planning and budgetary autonomy were advanced with still more verve and determination. At Ford, the polemic against FoE’s ‘bloated bureaucracy’ became an everyday staple of works council rhetoric. At Opel, the case for autonomy was often framed as a defence of brand and company, yet national rhetoric – given Opel’s image as a ‘German brand’ – was also used interchangeably. In 1992, the works council leader, Heller, likened the new GME headquarter to an ‘absolute monarchy’, which had reduced the German subsidiary to a powerless puppet governed by ‘remote control’ from Zurich.126 That notions of ‘national autonomy’ became still more strongly entrenched during the 1990s is also indicated by a new works council focus on the legal implications of cross-border business coordination. At Ford and Opel alike, coordination patterns were routinely likened to a ‘disguised domination agreement’, which contravened German company law. On several occasions throughout the 1990s, German labour representatives threatened to take Opel and Fordwerke to court for alleged neglect of their legal responsibilities, in particular with regard to financial autonomy.127 At the same time, Ford and Opel works council leaders pushed for written agreements to widen subsidiary decision-making autonomy. Indeed, in part due to this lobbying, Ford and GM gave a number of guarantees in this respect in 1997–98 – to the applause of works council leaders, who celebrated the ‘dawn of more national self-reliance’ (Ford) and ‘our declaration of independence’ (Opel).128 Again, as in the 1970s and 1980s, such rhetoric could draw on wider debates within and outside the corporations. Coverage of Ford and GM affairs in the German press in the 1990s placed strong emphasis on the alleged suffering of German subsidiaries from all-powerful international headquarters – the demise of the Soviet Union inspired some commentators to dub FoE as ‘the new Kremlin’.129 At the same time, not least against the backdrop of a worsening

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European sales performance (Bordenave, 2003: 251), Fordwerke and Opel management showed growing sympathy for the autonomy agenda: at Opel, indeed, an open revolt against GM’s accelerated globalization strategy broke out in 1997, which focused on Opel’s perceived need to steer a more autonomous product strategy in Europe.130 While embedded in these debates, works council rhetoric continued to be inspired by union-specific concerns, in particular by hopes that more national autonomy would ease pressure to cut labour costs and headcounts. There were different emphases here. At Opel, autonomy rhetoric was closely connected to the identity notions described earlier – defending Opel’s autonomy vis-à-vis Zurich and Detroit primarily reflected the aim to (re)orient corporate strategies towards the valuation of ‘German quality work’ and ‘engineering excellence’, which, in turn, would help to stabilize employment and wage levels.131 At Ford, autonomy rhetoric primarily underpinned the works council campaign to scale down the ‘excessive costs of European coordination’, while it also remained connected to fears about FoE’s alleged anti-German bias.132 Whatever the precise variety, ‘national autonomy’ more than ever featured in German Ford and Opel trade union rhetoric during the 1990s, and it did so, interestingly, alongside a growing lobby to enhance German influence within the two firms’ European and international networks. German labour representatives pressed for the relocation of European headquarters to the Federal Republic – with more success at Ford than at Opel – and for combined German–European management appointments.133 Indeed, ‘German’ and ‘European’ autonomy notions now at times started to ‘merge’ in works council rhetoric – a point I will return to in more detail below. Britain Geocentric internationalization made British Ford and GM trade unionists embrace ‘national autonomy’ as well, yet this was not so much expressed in the defence of corporate autonomy. To be sure, such rhetoric did exist, particularly in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the creation of FoE coincided with the takeover of Rootes by Chrysler and the government-sponsored merger of British Leyland as the new ‘national champion’ (see Wilks, 1984: 91ff.) – developments, which, in the words of a senior Ford UK manager, ‘brought out the flags’ (Tolliday, 2003a: 193). In July 1968, for example, the technicians’ union, DATA, requested an assurance that Ford UK would continue to operate as an ‘independent British undertaking’ and would ‘continue to make passenger cars, completely designed, planned and manufactured in Britain, with 100 percent British components’.134 A 1973 report by the white-collar union, ACTSS, likewise expressed concern about the loss of Ford UK’s independent decisionmaking capacities.135 However, for one thing, such concerns appear to have been less pressing and more ephemeral than in the Federal Republic – by the mid-1970s they had receded into the background. Moreover, beyond generic references to ‘British independence’ no attention was paid to details of corporate organization

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(budget, product planning, etc.), as British unions were generally far less involved in company governance structures than their German counterparts. Most importantly, the issue of corporate autonomy was from the outset embedded in a wider notion of national control, which focused on state intervention and macroeconomic protection. DATA’s 1968 request, for example, urged the government to extract a public ‘independence’ assurance from Ford and to negotiate agreed percentages of British component content in Ford UK cars.136 In fact, the defence of national autonomy through government control became a staple of union rhetoric at Ford UK and Vauxhall (after 1973). Wider political developments were of crucial importance here, in particular the growing debates about the role of multinational firms in Britain’s political economy, which contributed to a more activist industrial policy under the 1966–70 Labour government (see Hodges, 1977) and, subsequently, to the emergence of an ‘alternative economic strategy’ agenda within the Labour Party. The latter set out to contain MNC power through the extension of public ownership and the obligation for large firms to conclude ‘planning agreements’ with the government (see Callaghan, 2000). Against this backdrop, government control became an important issue at Ford and Vauxhall as well. As early as the late 1960s, national trade union leaders urged the government to influence the set-up of the FoE network, while Halewood shop stewards specifically called for government interference with Ford’s new intra-firm trade patterns.137 Company-level campaigns also became embedded in broader TUC lobbies to enhance government monitoring of multinational firms as part of national economic planning.138 Government control rhetoric reached its zenith in 1974–75, spurred on by the arrival of a new Labour government committed, on paper, to the ‘alternative economic strategy’, and by the near collapse of British Leyland and Chrysler UK, which seemed to open up the opportunity for a state-led restructuring of the sector. Trade union evidence to the 1975 parliamentary inquiry on the motor industry was replete with demands for more state control, ranging from outright nationalization (TASS), to more moderate agendas for monitoring and planning agreements.139 A memorandum by the Vauxhall AUEW organization suggested that Prime Minister Wilson himself should take up the matter with the US president to secure the future development of GM’s British subsidiary.140 It is worth emphasizing that, with the exception of the left-wing TASS, government control rhetoric was primarily driven by mundane employment and industrial relations concerns rather than a belief in socialist planning. This reflected the broader national picture. The main blue-collar unions TGWU and AEU routinely supported TUC congress resolutions in favour of the ‘alternative economic strategy’ without sharing the Labour left’s principled commitment to the agenda (Minkin, 1991: 169ff.). In any event, that agenda quickly evaporated after 1975, as radical industrial policy plans were watered down. At Vauxhall, union lobbies for a planning agreement continued until 1977,141 before petering out in light of the disastrous Chrysler experience (Wilks, 1981). Besides government control agendas, national autonomy rhetoric also came

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to be expressed in demands for macroeconomic protection. This primarily meant supporting campaigns for ‘selective import controls’ and against British membership in the European Economic Community (after 1973 for UK withdrawal).142 Again, apart from communist activists, there were few traces of the British left’s anti-EEC ideology (Butler and Kitzinger, 1976). Rather, employment security fears were paramount. There was a widespread suspicion that EEC entry would enable Ford and Vauxhall to restrict British exports and to supply the British market from their continental plants.143 Even TUC Congress debates pointed to Ford and GM as examples of large multinationals that would orchestrate a ‘flight of capital to Europe’ and thus endanger job security in the UK.144 There were also fears that EEC membership would bring British industrial relations closer to the much-despised legalized patterns on the continent.145 Anti-EEC rhetoric had its ambiguities because it uneasily coexisted with demands for stronger company efforts to increase EEC exports. Moreover, there were differences between plants and locations, particularly at Ford where the continued large-scale exports of components (e.g. engines) limited trade union enthusiasm for protectionism.146 In any event, little was achieved as anti-EEC campaigns collapsed after the 1975 referendum, while the 1976 monetarist turn of government policy precluded the introduction of import controls. The 1980s brought continuity and change at the same time. On the one hand, reinvigorated enthusiasm for interventionist industrial policies within the Labour Party and the TUC (Minkin, 1991: 423ff.) sparked renewed calls for tighter government control of multinational firms in the motor industry – designed, primarily, to prevent Ford and GM from a further rundown of their UK subsidiaries that could threaten the survival of the entire sector. A 1984 TUC motor industry study presented a long list of demands from price and dividend controls, to the prescription of import targets.147 In the early 1980s, there was also a great deal of support for the renewed TUC campaign for UK withdrawal from the EEC. In fact, TUC Congress delegates repeatedly pointed to Ford and Vauxhall import and investment patterns to illustrate the case for withdrawal.148 On the other hand, however, closer scrutiny reveals that British trade union notions of national autonomy became much more narrowly focused during the 1980s as measures to combat ‘tied imports’ became the top priority. There was a massive anti-import mobilization in both firms, expressed, for example, in public rallies, petitions and short walkouts.149 Agenda narrowing went hand in hand with more precise ideas of how to implement import restrictions, which focused on the ‘domestic content’ concept. Partly inspired by similar debates in other countries (e.g. the USA, Australia), and following a 1979 TUC Congress resolution on the issue,150 the concept became the core of anti-import campaigns at Ford and Vauxhall throughout the 1980s. ‘Domestic content’ implied two distinct if associated meanings: first, UK-assembled cars had to have a high British manufacturing input (measured by weight or value added), and second, in relation to assembly

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itself, the bulk of UK sales had to be produced in British plants. Taken together, this translated into the demand that ‘we should build what we sell in the UK’.151 Or, as a TGWU Ford representative put it in 1985: ‘The company retains market leadership in Britain with 27 per cent of total sales . . . the bottom line of our view is that we believe that these 27 per cent should be largely satisfied by manufacturing those cars in this country’ (Greater London Council, 1986: 35). While British unions’ autonomy rhetoric narrowed in scope, its ‘target audience’ widened in the 1980s. Faced with a staunchly anti-interventionist conservative government, a continued exclusive focus on state control seemed unpromising, and it was therefore supplemented by appeals to consumers and public opinion. Such appeals could exploit growing public disquiet about Ford and GM trading patterns (Tolliday, 2003b: 98–9), which was further fuelled by Nissan’s commitment to accept a minimum ‘domestic content’ of its UK-made vehicles in the mid-1980s (Loewendahl, 2001). Even the Tory industry minister, Leon Brittan, complained that Vauxhall was ‘not yet ready to go further in proving that it really is a British car producer’.152 Against this backdrop, British trade unions – next to a persistent lobby for domestic content legislation – launched public campaigns to mobilize consumers and the media, exploiting company fears of market share loss through negative publicity.153 ‘Buy a British-built Vauxhall/Ford’ slogans became a central feature of trade union lobbies and press communications.154 Ford trade unionists used a public hearing by the Greater London Council (GLC) to radically question Ford UK’s self-image as a ‘British’ firm and to press their case for higher domestic content (Greater London Council, 1986: 35–9, 48–52). At Vauxhall, anti-import rallies were combined with repeated threats to block imports from continental factories through industrial action.155 From the late 1980s, however, Ford and Vauxhall trade unions abandoned anti-import campaigns, as union rhetoric in relation to the ‘home market’ underwent a subtle, yet significant shift. Protests against the removal of production (e.g. Ford Sierra from Dagenham in 1989) or, later, against the wholesale closure of plants still occasionally addressed the import issue but were predominantly framed in a wider European context (see below). At Vauxhall, British unions still pushed for the reduction of tied imports in 1988, but by the early 1990s this issue had simply disappeared from the bargaining agenda. This transformation reflected a number of developments. On the one hand, there was the broader pro-European turn within the British labour movement, which implied the acknowledgement – even by those on the left – that the UK’s participation in the new European Single Market was inevitable (if not necessarily desirable). Commitment to the ‘alternative economic strategy’ agenda, already downplayed during the 1980s, was now completely abandoned.156 This general shift of approach was reinforced by sector- and companyspecific developments, as the Single Market was expected – and turned out – to have particularly far-reaching effects in the car industry. At one level, liberalization measures heightened competition and eroded profits margins, particularly so in the UK where the arrival of Honda, Nissan and Toyota radically altered the

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scene (Tolliday, 2003b: 82–3). At the same time, the Japanese transplants helped to turn the industry back into an export-oriented sector (Whisler, 1999: 389f.), which was strongly welcomed by British trade unions.157 As for Ford and GM themselves, the Single Market pushed pan-European rationalization still further, which perpetuated tied imports, but also translated into an export ‘renaissance’ of Ford UK and Vauxhall assembly plants and the parallel strengthening (Ford) and re-emergence (Vauxhall) of British engine production.158 Against the backdrop of these developments, anti-import campaigns were increasingly considered as ‘counterproductive’ by Ford UK and Vauxhall trade union representatives.159 By the 1990s, there were still occasional lobbies for a ‘Buy British’ orientation of public procurement but, overall, British unions now displayed less attachment to notions of national autonomy. However, at least to some extent, these notions were ‘rebaptized’ with a broader European reference frame (see below). Internationalization and national unity If internationalization made British and German Ford and GM trade unionists concerned about ‘national identity’ and ‘national autonomy’, it is perhaps not surprising to also find evidence for the emergence and subsequent persistence of ‘national unity’ rhetoric. It is worth emphasizing here that the analysis (as in the case of identity) cannot be confined to expressions of endorsement and celebration of ‘unity’, but must include critique and questioning – at the most extreme, ‘national unity’ also becomes an ‘issue’ when actors accuse each other of ‘failing’ or ‘betraying’ the nation. Unity rhetoric was little different from identity and autonomy rhetoric in its focus on union-specific concerns (employment and industrial relations). There were two major vectors: ‘national unity’ became rhetorically associated with union–management relations and, from the early 1980s, with the relations between different groups of employees. However, again, there were differences in how these dynamics played out over time and in the two countries, and – more than in the cases of national identity and autonomy – also across the two firms. Germany That national unity rhetoric emerged earlier at Ford than at Opel will by now not come as a surprise, and it once more confirms the robustness of the chapter’s core argument of the paradoxical connection between internationalization processes and trade unions’ appropriation of banal economic nationalism: Up until the late 1970s, Opel labour representatives simply lacked a fundamental inducement to frame their concerns in national terms. At Ford, by contrast, ‘national unity’ became an issue soon after 1967, and it did so in a way that mirrored the more general contemporary pattern of labour–management relations as ‘conflictual cooperation’ (Müller-Jentsch, 1999). On the cooperative side, the notion of national partnership became

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discernible, which, in a wider context, reflected the importance of international economic challenges in underpinning class collaboration in the FRG since the joint labour–management resistance to Allied dismantlement in the late 1940s (see von Plato, 1983: 327ff.). The Ford ‘version’ of national partnership was distinctive in its advocacy of joint efforts to address the challenges of international corporate structures and strategies. At first, given the militancy of the Cologne works council under its left-wing chairman, Günter Tolusch, this was only intermittently expressed, for example in joint (and unsuccessful) opposition to the appointment of a USborn Fordwerke managing director in 1969.160 After Tolusch’s departure in 1971, ‘national unity’ then started to play a much more prominent role. In 1973, typically, Tolusch’s successor, Ernst Lück, publicly spoke out for more advanced co-determination rights not primarily to strengthen labour’s voice vis-à-vis capital, but ‘to help us better support the justified demands of German management vis-à-vis England’ (i.e. FoE).161 Interestingly, the ‘national unity’ agenda of the 1970s did not primarily focus on joint efforts in processes of investment competition. Two other issues were much more important. On the one hand, there was the concern about subsidiary autonomy, which often translated into works council lobbies on behalf of German management prerogatives (see above). Ironically, however, the addressee of such lobbies did not always react in the desired way. There was sympathy among Fordwerke managers for ideas to enhance national budgetary and planning autonomy, but radical works council critiques of European coordination met with incomprehension, especially in the case of public campaigns that could damage corporate image and sales. At times, works councillors ended up defending national management prerogatives that managers themselves did not deem important.162 On the other hand, the belief in ‘national partnership’ was expressed in appeals to German management to correct ‘wrongdoings’ of the European holding, in particular with regard to alleged violations of co-determination rights. There was an assumption that local managers were frequently unaware of such incidents but that, once alerted, they would act as a ‘mediator’ of works council concerns. In fact, this did happen sometimes – in 1969 and 1973, for example, campaigns against relocation measures were called off after Fordwerke management achieved a partial reversal of European plans.163 From the outset, invoking ‘national unity’ also implied a conflictual dimension because works councillors started to remind German managers of their ‘obligation’ to pursue national interests and to blame them when they allegedly failed to do so. This dynamic unfolded to different degrees in different locations – the works council of the product development division in Merkenich soon acquired a reputation for being the most persistent in this respect. Its leader, Udo Fielitz, repeatedly criticized Merkenich management for its alleged lack of vigilance with regard to British–German department relocations. Scepticism about works council lobbies for subsidiary autonomy was castigated as revealing the impotence of German managers to defend their own prerogatives.164 At

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times, this culminated in demands to dismiss managers who allegedly failed to comply with their duties.165 While limited in scope and degree – accusations of malevolence were usually ‘reserved’ for the FoE holding – this conflictual aspect was part and parcel of the emerging national unity rhetoric during the 1970s. In the 1980s and 1990s, ‘national unity’ moved further up on trade union agendas at Ford and also became an issue at Opel. At the same time, there was a ‘thematic’ change – unsurprisingly, it was the emphasis on safeguarding Standort Deutschland (‘location Germany’) that came to dominate unity rhetoric in the 1980s and 1990s. While this brought a defensive shift in line with broader trends of the period, it did not efface the conflictual dimension of unity rhetoric. On numerous occasions, the Ford works council admonished German management to stand up to FoE ‘with more courage’ – be it to demand more advantageous transfer prices, to urge corrections of European product policy, or to challenge ‘manipulated’ investment cost calculations.166 In 1993, typically, the works council chairman, Wilfried Kuckelkorn, urged German managers to do more to resist FoE plans because ‘it could not be up to the works council and workforce alone to fight for German interests’.167 Opel representatives followed their Ford counterparts from the mid-1980s with complaints about subsidiary managers’ insufficient efforts to lobby GM Europe for a better capacity use in German plants and about their failure to oppose ‘remote control’ from Zurich.168 In the 1990s, moreover, both works councils grew increasingly impatient about German Ford and Opel managers’ interventions into the Standort Deutschland debate, in particular because of an alleged ‘defeatist’ bias that neglected the strengths of the German production system. Opel labour representatives denounced subsidiary managers as ‘scaremongers’, and requested that Standort Deutschland should be portrayed in more positive and optimistic terms.169 However, these critiques did not weaken German labour representatives’ belief in the importance of ‘national unity’. On the contrary, this belief grew still stronger, and the positive endorsement of a nationally inspired partnership ‘outshone’ complaints about shortcomings. This was particularly so at Ford where German management was routinely portrayed as the works councils’ most important ally whose commitment to advance ‘German interests’ was beyond doubt, regardless of all mistakes and deficiencies. In the early 1980s, for example, FoE had wanted to build a new factory in Portugal and remove Fiesta assembly from Cologne, but this had been prevented thanks to the joint efforts of German management and the works council.170 In 1985, likewise, FoE plans to close product development in Merkenich had been thwarted because German management and the central works council had agreed to push for an alternative ‘plan B’, which achieved similar cost savings without a closure.171 In the 1990s, against the backdrop of near permanent European cutback threats, Fordwerke management and the works council jointly set out to secure the long-term future of German plants – ‘against open and hidden resistance within the European and international Ford organization’.172

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At Opel, probably due to the more conflictual industrial relations tradition, works council endorsement of national partnership was less euphoric. The distinction between European and German management was less clearly drawn – at times, indeed, subsidiary managers were portrayed as the ‘true culprits’ of relentless cost-cutting because they wanted to impress Zurich and Detroit to boost their career prospects.173 But commitment to ‘national unity’ clearly grew after the creation of GM Europe in 1986, expressed, for example, in the celebration of joint struggles to retain Ascona/Vectra production in Rüsselsheim, and to resist GME plans to cut vocational training budgets.174 In the 1990s, the works council welcomed joint efforts to obtain long-term investment guarantees for German Opel plants even if it was sometimes explicitly stressed that not all German managers had joined ‘the ranks’.175 More than at Ford, subsidiary management was attacked for cajoling the works council into concession bargaining, but, by the late 1990s, overall, satisfaction about the achieved investment guarantees prevailed, while the joint struggle against ‘hasty globalization’ and for more Opel independence from GME in 1997–98 gave national partnership yet another dimension.176 Less a product of conviction (as at Ford) than of circumstances, ‘national unity’ had also become a staple of Opel works council rhetoric. In the 1980s and 1990s, moreover, notions of national unity also came to be associated with the relations between different groups of employees as growing threats to employment security and conditions triggered calls to ‘close ranks’ in addressing the crises. As with labour–management relations, the rhetoric oscillated between celebration and the distribution of blame when unity was perceived to have failed. Again, there were significant differences between the two companies here. At Ford, calls for a ‘joint front’ of workforces from different German locations frequently underpinned opposition against FoE cost-cutting schemes and alleged ‘anti-German plots’. In 1988, 1990 and again in 1996, for example, short-overtime bans against FoE in all FRG locations were praised as an expression of national solidarity ‘from Berlin to Saarlouis’ (i.e. the two most distant German Ford plants).177 At the same time, ‘national unity’ became connected to burden sharing. In 1985, faced with the company threat to close product development in Merkenich, the central works council made conscious efforts to design labour cost concessions in a way that spread sacrifices to the entire Fordwerke workforce – saving product development was described as essential to ensure the long-term survival of Ford Germany, which ultimately benefited everybody. Complaints by groups of white-collar employees were criticized as short-sighted and contrary to the spirit of national solidarity.178 The negotiations about company-wide ‘investment security’ agreements in 1994 and 1997 brought a similar exercise in burden sharing between different locations and employee groups in the name of national unity.179 There were even attempts to use the image of FoE as ‘our common enemy’ in appeals to Ford migrant, and particularly Turkish workers. Given the

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estrangement of many Turkish employees from the works council and IG Metall since the 1973 strike, this proved particularly difficult and required simultaneously emphasizing and downplaying the principle of national unity. In works council elections, IG Metall candidates tried to dissuade Turkish workers from voting along the nationality principle (i.e. for ‘Turkish lists’), because European challenges required a closing of ranks of the entire workforce.180 At the same time, in a clear effort to rally Turkish workers behind a campaign against FoE, works council leaders advocated the allocation of outsourced Ford production to firms in Turkey.181 At Opel, again, national unity rhetoric was less pervasive and also – to the extent that it occurred – less celebratory. In the late 1980s in particular, representatives from Rüsselsheim and Bochum pilloried their counterparts from Kaiserslautern for local agreements on longer machine-time running and weekend work, which were seen as betraying German trade union principles. Euphemistic central works council calls ‘that we need to do still more to close our ranks against the sell-out of German plants’182 helped little to address the problems: in subsequent years, there were several further internal rows (with varying ‘fronts’).183 This is not to say that ‘national unity’ did not at times inspire successful initiatives. After all, in line with their Ford counterparts, Opel labour representatives came together to negotiate two company-wide ‘location securing agreements’ in 1993 and 1998 (Schulten et al., 2007). Yet, even then, a ‘common front’ proved much harder to achieve and maintain than at Ford – Bochum representatives, in particular, repeatedly threatened to step out of line.184 In the 1990s, moreover, the new Eisenach plant brought a new East–West fracturing of national unity. Fearful of production substitution effects and the impact of Eisenach’s new ‘lean’ work organization patterns, the works councils of ‘all West German plants’ criticized their Eisenach colleagues for allowing ‘social and workplace experiments that we in the old Federal Republic have so far been able to resist’.185 Eisenach representatives, against the backdrop of a broader ‘anti-Wessi’ atmosphere among East German IG Metall trade unionists in the early 1990s, retorted with counter-allegations and for several years refused to join the central works council.186 In a nutshell, national unity rhetoric at Opel became highly significant during the 1990s – yet it was of a much more contested nature than at Ford. Britain Unsurprisingly, the association of national unity rhetoric with processes of internationalization played out rather differently in the British case. To start with, up until the early 1980s, German labour representatives’ positive endorsement of ‘national partnership’ with subsidiary management had no equivalent in the UK. It was not that British labour representatives were entirely insensitive to the issue of nationality of managers – witness the repeated attacks of the white-collar organization DATA/TASS on ‘nationalistic German managers’ who allegedly set out to acquire control of the FoE holding to run down the British

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subsidiary.187 ACTSS, another white-collar union, also engaged in detailed assessments of the British–German management balance within FoE.188 Yet, in crucial difference to the FRG, such sentiments did not translate into the idea of a common front with British management. In one sense, this simply reflected the broader national industrial relations tradition with its emphasis on the ‘two sides of industry’ rather than ‘social partners’ (Hyman, 2001: 45). At the same time, however, although to a lesser extent at Vauxhall than at Ford, internationalization entailed the emergence of a specific nationalist–adversarialist rhetoric that went beyond the critical exhortations of national managers we encountered in the German case. This rhetoric was reminiscent of an older patriotic language praising workers as the better part of the nation and condemning employers for not honouring their duties (Fox, 1985: 42–5; Berger, 1999: 43–4), which was reappropriated in the context of the ‘British decline’ debate. On the one hand, labour representatives rejected management’s blaming British workers and trade unions for low productivity – a Ford shop steward told a 1975 parliamentary commission that ‘the British Ford worker is one of the most efficient in the world’, who, however, was held back by the company’s lack of investment.189 On the other hand, as unions perceived ‘British decline’ to be caused by under-investment rather than labour problems (see above), the blame for ‘unpatriotic’ behaviour was squarely put on the company itself. Repeatedly, union representatives attacked Ford’s self-image as a good ‘corporate citizen’, arguing that in the light of public investment grants and the long history of Ford’s profitable operations in the UK the company needed to display more loyalty to its British base.190 In the second half of the 1970s, union documents pointed to the Labour government’s ‘Social Contract’ to remind Ford of its ‘obligation’ to invest in Britain.191 Wage claims also reflected the rhetoric of adversarial patriotism, as they used German–British comparisons to argue that ‘Ford . . . cannot continue to treat their British workforce as cheap labour’.192 In the early 1980s, notions of disloyalty acquired yet another dimension, as trade union representatives blamed British Ford managers for their refusal to make a joint government lobby for domestic content legislation because of fears of being seen as ‘the unions’ bedfellows’.193 At Vauxhall, such rhetoric was much less pervasive, in part because of a less adversarial industrial relations legacy, but perhaps also because of the company’s much weaker commercial position and because the broader ‘British decline’ debate had less impact than in the case of Ford. Still, in some respects, union rhetoric resembled the Ford pattern, for example in relation to a potential joint lobby for domestic content legislation in the early 1980s. As one AUEW representative put it in 1981: ‘Top management at Vauxhall was opposed to going to the government . . . because it was motivated more by what was good for GM than what was good for Vauxhall and Britain’.194 There was another aspect of adversarial patriotism, which was associated with the above-mentioned complaints about deficient British labour–management consultation procedures. Here, British managers were blamed for their

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insistence on unilateral prerogatives and at times even for deliberately provoking strikes if it suited their interests (e.g. in market downturns). More moderate voices accepted that the unions contributed to this dynamic, too – a Ford shop steward pointed to ‘the nature of the way we conduct industrial relations in Britain. We take advantage of various situations and so do the management.’195 Internationalization heightened awareness of this problem due to comparisons with the more dialogue-oriented approach in the FRG. At Vauxhall and Ford alike, British unions at times even asked for the posting of non-British managers with whom a cooperation-based relationship would be easier to establish.196 Clearly, the contrast with works council rhetoric in the FRG could not have been stronger. From the mid-1980s, the situation changed. Weakened by successive mass redundancies, plant closure threats and a hostile political climate, and perhaps also encouraged by new management initiatives of ‘employee involvement’ (for Ford, see Tolliday, 1991: 100ff.), union positions took a ‘cooperative turn’. National unity rhetoric shifted away from a predominant negative emphasis on management ‘bashing’, towards a pattern that combined a commitment to cooperation in the face of international challenges with more moderate critiques of management shortcomings. The decline of the earlier image of British managers as willing executioners of international company strategies became manifest in a series of instances, which saw labour representatives side by side with subsidiary managers in lobbies for investment in the UK – from the engine plant struggles in 1984–85 (Ford) and 1989–90 (Vauxhall), to the broader European rationalization measures during the 1990s.197 These lobbies often had a strong local focus on ‘saving’ Dagenham, Luton or Halewood, but national rhetoric was usually discernible as well (for Ford, see Darlington, 1994: 227, 257–8). Vauxhall trade union representatives lauded subsidiary management for its ‘fight to maintain jobs in the UK’, while their Ford counterparts joined UK management for a joint ‘business case’ presentation to bring a Mazda–Ford joint venture production to Britain.198 This transformation of national unity rhetoric was dramatically confirmed at the time of the crises over the Luton and Dagenham plants between 1998 and 2000. Trade unions were outraged about broken promises and unfair treatment, but they often exempted British subsidiary management from blame. Ford shop stewards accepted assurances that Ford UK management had been unaware of investment promises to German plants, which threatened Dagenham’s survival. At Vauxhall, union representatives showed no sign of contesting assertions by the managing director that he had – ultimately in vain – attempted to fight off the closure of the Luton plant.199 In comparison to the FRG, this new unity rhetoric was undoubtedly closer to the Opel than to the Fordwerke pattern. Not only did the more positive approach to nationally defined labour–management collaboration coexist with continued strong critiques of subsidiary management, for example with regard to consultation, vocational training and early retirement schemes.200 More importantly, there were few signs of ideological enthusiasm about ‘partnership’.

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Mirroring the broader national picture of widespread scepticism towards the partnership ideal (Fichter and Greer, 2004), British Ford and Vauxhall trade unionists appeared to have embraced ‘national unity’ as a result of adverse circumstances rather than ideological ‘conversion’. As in the FRG, the 1980s and 1990s also witnessed the emergence of a unity rhetoric associated with the relations between different groups of employees, oscillating between calls to ‘close ranks’ and ‘pointing fingers’ at those who had allegedly ‘betrayed’ national goals. Next to relations between employees at different company locations, this internal unity dynamic also concerned relations between different national trade union organizations – a reflection of Britain’s multi-unionism structure. As in Germany, this was primarily a response to the intensifying employment crisis, which appeared to require a national ‘closing of ranks’. As early as 1980, Vauxhall blue- and white-collar unions decided to set up a novel ‘joint liaison committee’ to coordinate a campaign against tied imports; the committee urged all unionists to ‘speak with one voice now’, in order to ‘safeguard British jobs’.201 The subsequent TGWU mobilization of its membership in the docks (to prevent the unloading of imported vehicles) made the appeal to national unity even wider. At Ford, a similar dynamic unfolded in response to the company threat to close the Dagenham foundry, which was widely perceived as the start of a wider move to reduce operations in the UK. All unions represented in the Ford negotiating committee resolved to resist the foundry closure, ‘even if this resulted in the total closure of all Ford UK establishments’.202 However, both these examples also highlight the ‘negative turn’ of unity rhetoric when calls for joint action failed. In the case of the Ford foundry, the actual shutdown in 1984 entailed no company-wide strike but much internal infighting.203 Desperate calls ‘to forget our differences and come together as one unit’ went unheard, and Dagenham shop stewards were left to complain that ‘Ford British workers have deserted their brothers’.204 At Vauxhall, the anti-import campaign, at first supported by all unions and all locations, ran into difficulties from the mid-1980s because it was increasingly perceived as an ‘Ellesmere Port campaign’ at Luton, while inter-union tensions emerged at the national level.205 This ‘pointing fingers’ dynamic was still more drastic in the case of a proposed Ford investment in Dundee in 1987/8, which erupted due to TGWU and MSF protests against a single-union site deal between the company and the AEU. Against this backdrop, Ford decided to divert the investment to Spain, which led AEU representatives to accuse the TGWU of depriving Britain of valuable inward investment. TGWU representatives retorted with charges against the AEU’s acceptance of lower wage rates for the Dundee site, which endangered the future of employment and wage levels in existing Ford UK plants. MSF leader, Clive Jenkins, warned against ‘bizarre auctions . . . to sell the British people’.206 The national dimension of the conflict was further accentuated by the fact that the Scottish section of the TGWU disagreed with the national leadership207 – a division that resembled the East–West fracturing of national unity at Opel after 1989.

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The 1990s, by and large, brought a continuation of the dual unity rhetoric. Recurrent crisis moments engendered renewed calls to stand together, while disappointment about the failure of ‘national solidarity’ triggered the ‘blame game’. At Ford, there was satisfaction about the country-wide protests against the discontinuation of Escort production at Halewood in 1997, while the more locally confined reactions to the closure of the Dagenham assembly plant in 2000 caused many to lament the lack of national unity.208 At Vauxhall, there was much celebration about the united front in the immediate aftermath of the Luton closure decision in 2000, but Luton shop stewards later complained of a lack of militant support from their Ellesmere Port counterparts.209 Either way, by the end of the century, ‘national unity’ had become a firmly entrenched part of British trade union rhetoric at Ford and Vauxhall. Conclusions: economic nationalism and economic patriotism The chapter has presented a wealth of evidence to demonstrate that internationalization paradoxically strengthened notions of banal economic nationalism among British and German Ford and GM trade unionists throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. At the same time, we have seen that unions’ banal economic nationalism significantly changed over time and found very different expressions in the two countries. We have also seen that trade unions invoked classic topoi of nationalist ideology (national identity, autonomy and unity) but that their rhetoric remained focused on specific concerns, in particular employment security and industrial relations. In this sense, the analysis does not support sweeping claims that internationalization leads trade unions to replace ‘class interests’ with ‘national interests’ (Streeck, 1998: 442) – because British and German trade unionists had their own specific notions of what constituted ‘national interests’. Certainly, as in the case of Ford Germany in the 1980s and 1990s, this could imply a strong emphasis on ‘national unity’ with management, yet, as in the case of Ford UK during the 1970s, it could also find expression in a language of adversarial patriotism, which blamed managers for allegedly ‘failing the nation’. Indeed, as we have seen, national rhetoric was often particularly strong among left-leaning British trade union representatives. In the introduction to this chapter, I have discussed the recent emergence of a scholarly debate on ‘economic patriotism’. As will be recalled, economic patriotism scholars conceptualize cross-border economic integration as nurturing patriotism through the reproduction of a ‘mismatch’ between economic and community boundaries, yet they emphasize that, depending on circumstances, this dynamic can find expression at different spatial levels (see Clift and Woll, 2012). Taking this conceptual insight on board, I pointed to the need to place national trade union rhetoric into the context of possible other ‘patriotic’ reference frames, in particular with regard to local and supranational allegiances. In fact, connections between local and national reference frames have been mentioned on a number of occasions throughout the analysis, yet it seems appropriate to close the chapter with a brief general assessment, and to combine

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this with an exploration of the supranational (European) dimension of trade union rhetoric. Localism, as in many other firms in both countries (Batstone, 1984; Kotthoff, 1994), had been a pervasive feature at Ford and Opel/Vauxhall long before corporate internationalization processes started to unfold. Internationalization did not displace this localism and even encouraged its reproduction in a number of ways, while, at the same time, it frequently became tied to the new national rhetoric. To start with, as we have seen, internationalization strongly reinforced notions of locational competition for investment and employment due to the multiple sourcing of identical vehicles and the associated processes of efficiency benchmarking. Yet, given that competition usually involved units and plants in different countries, union rhetoric often ‘merged’ local and national references – and competition started to be perceived primarily, or at least equally, as international competition. It was usually only in the context of allocation competitions within the same state (e.g. for engine investments between Dagenham and Bridgend at Ford UK, or between Rüsselsheim and Kaiserslautern at Opel), that localism survived in an ‘uncontaminated’ way. A general assessment of the impact of internationalization on local trade union identities at Ford and General Motors is rather difficult. Certainly, these local identities did not disappear with the onset of internationalization processes. Scholarship on domestic shop-floor politics at Ford UK, for example, points to distinct local traditions at the Dagenham and Halewood plants, which still caused intra-organizational tensions in the 1970s and 1980s (Beynon, 1984). Much the same could be said in relation to the two main German Opel plants at Rüsselsheim and Bochum (see Düe and Hentrich, 1981). Yet, it was only occasionally that local identity rhetoric was directly fuelled by internationalization processes. For example, as we have seen, disagreements between Vauxhall Luton and Ellesmere Port shopfloor leaders about the continuation of anti-import campaigns coincided with an upsurge of local identity rhetoric in the late 1980s, while growing concession-bargaining pressure entailed repeated open clashes about trade union principles between Opel works councils representatives from Rüsselsheim, Bochum and Kaiserslautern. However, at the same time, internationalization sharply enhanced the awareness of cross-country differences of trade union traditions and industrial relations systems, in the light of which local specificities appeared of rather secondary importance. While the impact of internationalization on local identities is difficult to ascertain, it seems rather clear that localism had little to offer to address the autonomy challenge posed by internationalization processes. In the German Ford and GM subsidiaries, complaints about allegedly excessive control by German HQ management were occasionally voiced by works council representatives from smaller locations210 yet they remained unrelated to internationalization processes. If anything, internationalization made such concerns less salient in relative terms given that an effective defence of local plant autonomy now primarily seemed to require a determined fight to maintain the autonomy of national subsidiaries as

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a whole. In the British case, the necessity of state intervention and/or broad public support for measures against imports made purely local autonomy strategies simply a non-starter. On the other hand, as already mentioned earlier, internationalization did give a boost to notions of local unity in both countries, particularly so in the 1980s and 1990s when accelerating investment competition fostered a ‘closing of ranks’ between plant managers and shop-floor leaders, as well as within local trade union organizations. Opel works council’s praise for ‘us at Rüsselsheim’, or Ford trade unionists’ appeals ‘to stand united to save Dagenham’ against FoE closure plans clearly testify to this trend.211 Yet, again, as documented earlier, such local unity rhetoric rarely existed in isolation from broader notions of national unity – in many instances, as in the case of locational competition, the two spatial reference frames came to be used interchangeably. Internationalization thus did to some extent help to perpetuate trade union localism at Ford and GM in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, yet, more importantly, it ‘tied’ this localism to the new and powerful inter-national rhetoric. If we shift the attention from the local to the supranational (European) dimension of economic patriotism, a similar picture emerges – yet one that only belatedly started to emerge. In fact, there were no expressions of such a European patriotism prior to the 1980s, and even then, they were at first only discernible on a very small scale, namely in the Ford product development division, where early signs of corporate globalization (e.g. a strategic alliance with Mazda) triggered anxious trade union reactions. German and British labour representatives requested assurances about the future role of European facilities within Ford’s worldwide design and development organization212 and warned against ‘American and Japanese intrusion in European responsibilities’.213 Against the backdrop of a new discourse on ‘European competitiveness’ (see Rosamond, 2002) and the acceleration of corporate globalization in both firms (Bordenave and Lung, 2003), this rhetoric became more broadly entrenched during the 1990s. British Vauxhall representatives warned that GM’s new plants in Asia would constitute a threat for long-term employment prospects in Europe,214 while the German Ford works council chairman started to contemplate the need to defend ‘European interests’ in global competition for investment and even successfully ran as an SPD-sponsored candidate for European Parliament elections in 1994. ‘Europe’ did not replace nation or locality here, as he saw his new MEP ‘mission’ as simultaneously advancing the interests of Cologne, Germany and the European Union.215 In the case of Opel, the fusion of national and European rhetoric was equally strong – works council representatives emphasized that GM’s ‘premature globalization’ plans came at the expense of German and European locations.216 Incidentally, given GM’s strong involvement in Eastern Europe, the focus on ‘European interests’ often primarily meant the defence of ‘traditional Western European locations’ vis-àvis the new GM plants behind the Iron Curtain.217 By the 1990s, the new European rhetoric also started to embrace the ‘classic’

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identity and autonomy dimensions. Yet, here again – in line with the broader literature on the relationship between national and European identities (see Malmborg and Strath, 2002; Risse, 2005) – we are dealing with ‘composite’ discourses that merged national and European references and consequently took quite different forms in the two countries. In the UK, as already mentioned earlier, ‘Europe’ entered national identity rhetoric in the 1990s through the reassessment of continental industrial relations models against the backdrop of the severe domestic decline of membership and bargaining power. As national union positions now contrasted ‘best European practices’ to Britain’s neoliberal deregulation pattern (see Waddington, 2003: 234–5), Ford and Vauxhall labour representatives, too, started to advocate the ‘catch-up’ with ‘Europe’. Lower British wages and longer working hours were attacked as out of line with ‘European standards’, and the discrepancy was likened to the British opt-out from EU social policy.218 With regard to the autonomy dimension, as already alluded to above, the completion of the EU’s Single Market entailed a downplaying of the issue of tied imports, yet, at the same time, earlier notions of ‘local content’ were ‘Europeanized’: Instead of campaigning for British sales to be met from British production, Ford and Vauxhall trade unionists now stressed the UK’s status as one of Ford and GM’s largest European markets. In 1997, for example, the large UK share of European Escort sales was invoked to oppose Ford’s decision to terminate the cars’ assembly at Halewood, while similar arguments were deployed to resist the closure of Vauxhall’s Luton plant.219 In Germany, the ‘Europeanization’ of identity rhetoric was crucially nurtured by the growing link between the companies’ multiplying measures to cut costs and the new corporate globalization agenda. Works council protests against such measures were no longer exclusively framed in national terms but included a European dimension. The Ford works council chairman averred that US business models could not be transplanted across the Atlantic because of the different ‘European culture’, in particular with regard to social patterns and a ‘European model of employee participation’.220 Highlighting the ‘fusion’ of national and European rhetoric, Opel labour representatives pointed to a ‘German/European path of social compromise’ that combined economic efficiency with secure jobs, high pay and skills, and harmonious workplace relations.221 In turn, this ‘German/European’ production system was deemed crucial to satisfy ‘European customers’. Echoing a growing public and academic discourse on the distinctiveness of European automobile market demand (see Jürgens, 2004), the Opel works council stressed ‘European values’, such as energy efficiency and a strong focus on product quality which the company could only ignore at its own peril.222 The ‘discovery’ of the quality-driven ‘European customer’ went hand in hand with the Europeanization of autonomy rhetoric, in particular at Opel. Works council representatives complained that GM’s globalization plans threatened the capacity of the ‘German and European locations’ to properly address the quality challenge of European car markets because ‘Opel and GM Europe had

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lost their autonomy’ to Detroit. The specificity of European demand was invoked to insist that Opel and GM Europe needed more autonomy in the development and production of ‘European vehicles’.223 In the case of Ford, given the legacy of works council hostility towards FoE, this shift was less pronounced – in the mid-1990s, for example, the works council chairman welcomed Detroit’s plans to downgrade FoE.224 But with the relocation of the FoE headquarters from Warley to Cologne in 1997, notions of ‘European autonomy’ vis-à-vis Detroit started to resemble the Opel pattern.225 In sum, it was only in the 1990s that a truly multilevel economic patriotism rhetoric emerged among Ford and GM trade unionists, as corporate globalization and the broader public debates on ‘European competitiveness’ and a ‘European social model’ (Hyman, 2005) added the hitherto missing supranational dimension.226 Yet, even then, banal economic nationalism (or national economic patriotism) clearly remained the dominant component. It continued to absorb or integrate older localist allegiances, while it gave the new European patriotism rhetoric very distinct national meanings. Notes 1 In nationalism studies, attention to economics was for a long time confined to the question of origins – for ‘modernists’ such as Nairn (1975) and Gellner (1983), capitalism had caused the emergence of nationalism, while ‘idealists’, such as Greenfeld (2001), sought to reverse the causal arrow. 2 ‘Extract from a document prepared by DATA called “Transfer of design work from Ford of Great Britain to Ford of Germany”’, 15 July 1968, Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), Department of Trade and Industry, FV 22/17. 3 ‘Protokoll der Betriebsratssitzung der Produktgruppe’, 30 June 1969, Archiv Betriebsrat Fordwerke AG Produktentwicklung (hereafter ABRF-P), ‘BR Sitzungsprotokolle 1969’. 4 IG Metall Vertrauenskörperleitung Fordwerke AG, ‘Tatsachen 7/1975’ [1975], Archiv IG Metall Cologne (hereafter AIGMC), ‘Tatsachen’. 5 ‘BR-Information 3/1987’ [1987], AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N von Januar 1987 bis 11/89’. 6 ‘Statement made by the trade union side of the Vauxhall Joint Negotiating Committee’, 21 January 1981, Archive Vauxhall Motors Ltd, HRM Department (hereafter AVM-HRM), Box 4; TGWU, ‘Review and assessment of Vauxhall Motors presentation to the unions’, 25 October 1985, Archive TGWU Liverpool (hereafter ATGWU-Liv), ‘S car’. 7 ‘Rechenschaftsbericht des GBR’, Betriebsräteversammlung, 24–26 October 1988, Archiv Gesamtbetriebsrat Adam Opel AG (hereafter AGBRO), ‘Betriebsräteversammlung, 24–26 October 1988’. 8 See, for example, ‘Kampfbereit für den Standort Saarlouis’, Saarbrücker Zeitung, 1 December 1993. 9 It is interesting to note that prior to 1967 trade union representatives occasionally worried about similar instances of competition between locations. Yet, given that these locations were situated within the same country there were no references to ‘national interests’. For apprehension among local trade unionists in Dagenham about company expansion plans to Halewood in the early 1960s, see, for example,

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‘Minutes of Joint Works Committee Dagenham Assembly Plant’, 8 September 1960, Archive AMICUS Dagenham (hereafter AAMICUS-Dag), ‘JWC minutes 1959–66’. ‘Kampfbereit für den Standort Saarlouis’, Saarbrücker Zeitung, 1 December 1993. ‘Opel-Betriebsrat: Überkapazitäten wachsen’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 29 April 1980. ‘Deutscher Ford besser verarbeitet’, Kölnische Rundschau, 24 March 1971. For Ford UK, see Beynon (1973: 179); for Ford Germany, see ‘Niederschrift über die Betriebsversammlung, 19 June 1972’, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1972’. For a typical example, see TGWU, ‘Trade union presentation on Ford’s Annual Report 1977’, 21 April 1978, Modern Record Centre Centre (hereafter MRC), MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 36/2. ‘Ford boss to talk on job transfers’, Dagenham Post, 10 May 1972. ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 14 December 1972, MRC, MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 140/2. DATA, ‘The German take-over of Ford of Britain’, [February 1970], PRO, Department of Trade and Industry, FV 22/17. The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1974–75, vol. III, p. 176. TGWU, ‘Trade union presentation on Ford’s Annual Report 1977’, 21 April 1978, MRC, MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 36/2. Vauxhall trade unions advanced similar arguments – see ‘Minutes of the meeting of Vauxhall Joint Negotiating Committee’, 11–12 September 1975, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 2. The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1974–75, vol. II, p. 165. ‘Vauxhall men’s worries grow’, Luton News, 19 June 1975. The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1974–75, vol. II, p. 191. TGWU, ‘Review and assessment of Vauxhall Motors presentation to the unions’, 25 October 1985, ATGWU-Liv, ‘S car’. Ford NJNC, ‘Submission of the trade unions’ 1985/6 wages and conditions claim’, 5 October 1985, AVM-HRM, Box 8, ‘Negotiations 1985’. ‘Minutes of a meeting held in Transport House’, 25 February 1985; ‘Minutes of a meeting held in Transport House’, 5 March 1985, ATGWU-Liv, ‘S car’; ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 26–27 March 1981, ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 23 July 1981, MRC, MSS 126/TG/3, Sack 117/2. ‘Minutes of the meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 25–26 August 1982, 9 September 1982, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 3. ‘Minutes of a meeting of the Ford NJNC (TU side)’, 19 January 1989, AAMICUSDag, ‘NJNC minutes’. Ford NJNC (TU side), ‘Ford hourly paid pay and conditions claim 1997’, 4 September 1997, AAMICUS-Dag. ‘Strike vote looms as Ford digs in on cuts’, Daily Telegraph, 28 January 1997. Joint Hourly and Staff Union Dagenham campaign group, ‘Open letter to all our members’ [2000], AAMICUS-Dag; ‘Minutes of a special meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 12 December 2000, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 7. House of Commons, Trade and Industry Committee, ‘Vehicle Manufacturing in the UK’, Minutes of Evidence, 11 January 2001, at www.publications.parliament. uk/pa/cm200001/cmselect/cmtrdind/128/1011101.htm (last accessed 24 April 2009). ‘Niederschrift über die Sitzung mit dem BA der Produktentwicklung’, 24 February

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1975, 23 February 1978, ABRF-P, ‘BA-Protokolle BR-P’. 33 ‘Niederschrift über die Betriebsversammlung in der Produktentwicklung’, 9 December 1974, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1974’. 34 ‘Niederschrift über die Betriebsversammlung in der Produktentwicklung’, 19 June 1972, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1972’. 35 ‘Fehlgriffe am laufenden Band’, Manager Magazin, 9/1973. 36 ‘Niederschrift über die Betriebsversammlung in der Produktentwicklung’, 7 October 1974, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1974’. 37 ‘BR-Information 1/1987’, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N von Januar 1987 bis 11/89’; ‘Protokoll der Sitzung mit dem Wirtschaftsausschuss’, 21 July 1988, AGBRO, ‘Wirtschaftsausschuss 1.3.1988 bis 30.8.1988’. 38 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung’, 11 March 1985, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Okt 1984’. 39 ‘Korea-Herausforderung gegen Opel’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 12 November 1986. 40 ‘Rechenschaftsbericht des GBR’, BR-Versammlung, 6–8 November 1996, AGBRO, ‘GBR-Konferenzen 1993–97’. 41 ‘Protokoll der Sitzung des Konzernbetriebsrats’, 16 February 1995, ibid. 42 ‘Ford Deutschland war die Melk-Kuh für Europa’, Kölnische Rundschau, 16 June 1993. 43 ‘Bericht des Betriebsrates Produktentwicklung zur Betriebsversammlung’, 14 June 1985, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-P von Dez 84 bis 6/89’. 44 ‘Opel bald nicht mehr “made in Germany”?’, Main-Spitze, 12 April 1990. 45 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung 1. Quartal 1979’, [1979], AIGMC, ‘BR Ford bis Dez. 1979’; ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung’, 11 March 1985’, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Okt 1984’. 46 ‘Fakten für die Ford-Belegschaft’, [1987], AIGMC, ‘VKL Ford-Niehl von Apr 84 bis Okt 87’. 47 ‘Aufruf zur Aufsichtsratswahl’‚ 5 April 1988, [1988], ibid. 48 ‘Der Mensch muss Mensch bleiben’, 7 December 1989, AGBRO, ‘Nachtschicht Bochum 1989’. 49 ‘Opel bald nicht mehr “made in Germany”?’, Main-Spitze, 12 April 1990. 50 ‘Heller: Gleiche Löhne’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 15 March 1990; ‘Referat Richard Heller, GBR-Konferenz Kaiserslautern’, 4–6 November 1992, AGBRO, ‘GBR-Konferenzen 1986–92’. 51 As in the case of locational competition, national rhetoric was superimposed on the older localist traditions, which were dominant prior to 1967 (Ford) and 1973/4 (GM) – consider, for example, the widely held beliefs about different shop-floor bargaining traditions in the two Ford UK plants in Dagenham and Halewood (Beynon, 1984). 52 The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1974–75, vol. I, p. 246. 53 Again, ‘modernization’ was primarily understood in a restrictive sense even if the 1971 Industrial Relations Act also gave trade unions a new right to legal recognition. 54 The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1974–75, vol. III, pp. 200–1. 55 Ibid.: vol. II, p. 246. 56 ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 4 May 1979, MRC, MSS/TG/3, Sack 37/1. 57 ‘A policy for the British motor vehicle industry. A trade union response to the

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government White Paper by AUEW (TASS)’, [1976], MRC, MSS. 292 D., Box 1709. 58 Trades Union Congress, Report of the 103rd Annual Trades Union Congress, 6–10 September 1971, p. 485. 59 ‘Report of a visit to Rüsselsheim by a party of trade unionists from Vauxhall Motors’, 1–7 December 1975, Archiv Max Gutknecht-Stöhr. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. These claims can, of course, not be taken at face value even if a comparison of trade union density levels in Western Europe shows that British levels exceeded those of all other countries apart from Scandinavia by the late 1970s (Ebbinghaus and Visser, 2000: 63). 62 ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 14 December 1972, MRC, MSS 126/TG/3, Sack 140/2; ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC, 24 August 1978’, MRC, MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 36/2. 63 There was a great deal of ambiguity here, too, as union representatives often also pointed to low British wages as an incentive for Ford and GM to invest more in the UK. 64 ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 24 August 1978, MRC, MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 36/2. 65 The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1974–75, vol. II, pp. 224–5, 254. 66 Ibid.: p. 190. 67 ‘Submission of the trade unions’ 1985/6 wages and conditions claim’, 5 October 1985, AVM-HRM, Box 8, ‘Negotiations 1985’. 68 ‘Ellesmere Port joint trade union statement’ [1983], in: AVM-HRM, Box 8, ‘JNC August 1983–3 July 1984’. 69 See, for example, ‘Minutes of a meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 15 July 1993, 6 October 1993, 25 February 1994, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes, vol. 6’. 70 ‘Vauxhall Motors Limited 1989 wages and conditions claim, on behalf of AEI–EEPTU–TGWU’ [1989], ATGWU-Liv. 71 ‘Minutes of a meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 6 December 1993, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 6. 72 ‘Nationwide strike threat as Ford cuts 1,300 jobs’, Daily Telegraph, 17 January 1997. 73 Ford NJNC (TU side), ‘Ford hourly paid pay and conditions claim 1997’, 4 September 1997, AAMICUS-Dag. 74 TGWU, Vehicle Building and Automotive National Trade Group, National Industrial Policy Conference, 14–15 July 1998, ibid. 75 Leaflet Ford Dagenham PTA – body plant joint trade union shop stewards committee, [2000], ibid. 76 House of Commons, Trade and industry Committee, Minutes of Evidence, 24 October 2000, 11 January 2001, at: www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001 /cmselect/cmtrdind/128/1011101.htm (last accessed 24 April 2009). 77 Ibid. 78 ‘Protokoll der Vertrauensleutesitzung Ford’, 23 February 1970, AIGMC, ‘Ford 1969/70’. 79 IG Metall Vertrauenskörperleitung Fordwerke AG, ‘Tatsachen’ 12/1973, AIGMC, ‘Tatsachen’. 80 ‘Bericht des BR-P zur Betriebsversammlung’, 28 September 1979, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1979’. 81 See, for instance, ‘Protokoll der Sitzung des Betriebsrats Köln-Niehl’, 21 November

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Paradoxes of internationalization 1968, Archiv Gesamtbetriebsrat Fordwerke AG (hereafter AGBRF), ‘Protokolle Betriebsratssitzungen 15.10.68 bis 25.3.69’. ‘Protokoll der Sitzung des Betriebsrates Köln-Niehl’, 4 March 1969, ibid. ‘Der Saarländische Arbeitnehmer’, [May 1973], AGBRF, ‘Flugblätter’. ‘Report of a visit to Rüsselsheim by a party of trade unionists from Vauxhall Motors’, 1–7 December 1975, Archive Max Gutknecht-Stöhr. Ibid. ‘Bericht über die Englandfahrt vom 15.9.74 bis 22.9.74’ [1974], ibid. ‘IG Metall Vertrauenskörperleitung Fordwerke AG’, Tatsachen’ 21/1970 [1970], AGBRF, ‘Flugblätter’. ’Niederschrift über die Sitzung mit dem BA der Produktentwicklung’, 24 February 1975, ABRF-P, ‘BA-Protokolle BR-P’. ‘Betriebsrat lehnt Kuhhandel ab’, [1978], AIGMC, ‘VKL Ford 77 – Dez. 1979’. For an example see ‘Rote Fordarbeiterzeitung’, 17 March 1971, AGBRF, ‘Flugblätter’. IG Metall Vertrauenskörperleitung Fordwerke AG, ‘Tatsachen’ 19/1969, 26 September 1969, ibid. ‘Mit “Cowboy-Methoden” wird Kölner Werk regiert’, Kölnische Rundschau, 25 November 1980. ‘Der Ford-Streik fordert die Intelligenz’, Die Welt, 10 February 1988; ‘Ford: FiestaProduktion liegt still’, Kölner Express, 18 October 1990. ‘Minutes of the meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 27 April 1984, 15 June 1984, AVMHRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 4. ‘Betriebsräte müssen sich europaweit organisieren’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 30 April 1991. ‘Bericht des Betriebsrates Produktentwicklung zur Betriebsversammlung’, 14 June 1985’, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-P von Dez 84 bis 6/89’. ‘Eröffnungsrede von Rudi Müller’, BR-Versammlung, 24–26 October 1988, AGBRO, ‘Betriebsräteversammlung, 24–26 October 1988’. ‘Rechenschaftsbericht des GBR’, BR-Versammlung, 6–8 November 1996, AGBRO, ‘GBR-Konferenzen 1993–97’. ‘Opel bald nicht mehr “made in Germany”?’, Main-Spitze, 12 April 1990. ‘Rechenschaftsbericht des GBR’, BR-Versammlung, 3–5 November 1993, AGBRO, ‘GBR-Konferenzen 1993–97’. ‘Betriebsrat warnt Caspers’, Kölner Express, 15 June 1993; ‘Niederschrift über die Sitzung des Aufsichtsrats der Fordwerke AG’, 19 May 1995, AIGMC, ‘Ford Aufsichtsrat 1994–95’. ‘Die Rolle der neuen Manager zwischen Kapital und Arbeit’, Die Welt, 22 February 1998. ‘Bericht des Gesamtbetriebsrats zur ausserordentlichen Betriebsversammlung’ [1988], AIGMC, BR Ford-N von Januar 1987 bis 11/89. Letter from Rudolf Müller to John D. Butler, GM Europe, 14 September 1995, AGBRO, ‘Europäische Konzernbetriebsrat I’. Circular IG Metall automobile committee, 14 June 1993, AGBRO, ‘IG Metall 1993–95’. ‘Protokoll der Vertrauensleutesitzung Ford’, 23 February 1970, AIGMC, ‘Ford 1969/70’. ‘BR-P Information 3/75’, 17 February 1975, ABRF-P, ‘BA-Protokolle BR-P’. ‘The European concept’, 19 March 1975, ABRF-P, ‘Ford Europa’.

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109 Anlagen 7 und 9 zum Protokoll der Betriebsratssitzung der Produktgruppe, 24 February 1970, ABRF-P, ‘BR Sitzungsprotokolle 1970’. 110 ‘Niederschrift über die Betriebsversammlung’, 4 December 1972; ‘Protokoll der BRSitzung der Produktgruppe’, 25 January 1977, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1972’; ‘Protokolle BR-Sitzungen 1977/78’. 111 ‘BR-P Information 3/75’, 17 February 1975, ABRF-P, ‘BA-Protokolle BR-P’. 112 Interview by the author with Ernst Schwarzenberg, former works council chairman, Fordwerke AG, 10 September 2003. 113 See for instance: ‘Cologne oder Köln’, Auto, Motor und Sport, 22 December 1976. 114 ‘BR-P Information 3/75’, 17 February 1975, ABRF-P, ‘BA-Protokolle BR-P’. 115 ‘Niederschrift über die Betriebsversammlung’, 10 September 1973, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1973’. 116 ‘Protokoll der Sitzung des Betriebsrates Köln-Niehl’, 4 March 1969, AGBRF, ‘BR Protokolle vom 15.10.68 bis 25.3.69’; ‘Der Saarländische Arbeitnehmer’, [May 1973], ibid., ‘Flugblätter’. 117 ‘Bericht des Gesamtbetriebsrats zur Betriebsversammlung’ [1988], AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N von Januar 1987 bis 11/89’. 118 ‘Bericht des Gesamtbetriebsrates zur Betriebsversammlung IV. Quartal 1980’, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford ab Dez. 79’; ‘BR-Information’, 5 November 1986, ibid., ‘BR FordN ab Okt 1984’. 119 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung I. Quartal 1985’, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Okt 1984’; ‘Tätigkeitsbericht BR-P’, 11 December 1981, ibid., ‘BR-P 1977–84’. 120 ‘Bericht des BR-P zur Betriebsversammlung’, 5 March 1982, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1982’; ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung I. Quartal 1987’, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N von Januar 1987 bis 11/1989’. 121 ‘Ford Köln soll sich selbständig machen’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 25 November 1980. 122 See, for example, ‘Bericht des Betriebsrates Produktentwicklung zur Betriebsversammlung’, 12 December 1980, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1980’. 123 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung II. Quartal 1984’, [1984], AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Jan 1983’. 124 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung IV. Quartal 1986’ [1986], AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Okt 1984’. 125 See ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsräteversammlung 1973’ [1973], AGBRO, ‘Betriebsräteversammlungen, 1972/1973/1974/1975’. 126 ‘Wettbewerb oder Ausblutung – wie schlank soll Opel werden?’, Main-Spitze, 14 February 1992. 127 ‘Ford-Betriebsrat spricht von echtem Existenzkampf’, Kölner Stadtanzeiger, 26 June 1996; ‘Opel-Arbeitnehmer pochen auf mehr Eigenständigkeit’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 7 December 1998. 128 ‘Ford-Belegschaft wählt Betriebsrat’, Kölnische Rundschau, 17 June 1997; ‘Statement von Rudolf Müller zur Pressekonferenz’, 26 October 1998, AGBRO. 129 ‘Nur in der Werbung eigenständig’, Die Welt‚ 16 July 1994. 130 ‘Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung’, Der Spiegel, 16 June 1997. 131 ‘Rechenschaftsbericht des GBR’, BR-Versammlung, 18–20 November 1998, AGBRO, ‘Betriebsräteversammlung, 18–20. November 1998’. 132 ‘Ford: Betriebsrat schießt gegen Europa-Chefs’, Kölner Express, 22 September 1992; ‘Ford-Belegschaft wählt Betriebsrat’, Kölnische Rundschau, 17 June 1997. 133 ‘Ich werte dies eher als positive’, Kölner Stadtanzeiger, 24 November 1997’,

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‘Statement von Rudolf Müller zur Pressekonferenz’, 26 October 1998, AGBRO. 134 ‘Extract from a document prepared by DATA called “Transfer of design work from Ford of Great Britain to Ford of Germany”’, 15 July 1968, PRO, Department of Trade and Industry, FV 22/17. 135 ACTSS Ford Motor Company, ‘Ford of Europe – a special report for Members of Parliament based on the ACTSS report on the Ford of Europe Manufacturing Complex’, [1973], MRC, MSS. 292 D, Box 937. 136 ‘Extract from a document prepared by DATA called ‘“Transfer of design work from Ford of Great Britain to Ford of Germany”’, 15 July 1968, PRO, Department of Trade and Industry, FV 22/17. 137 Note R. Hibbert, 3 July 1968, in: PRO, Department of Trade and Industry, FV 22/4; Note E. W. G. Haynes, 22 January 1970, ibid. 138 ‘International companies and trade union interests’, TUC, Economic Committee, 10 December 1969, MRC, MSS 292.B, 560.1/21. 139 The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1974–75, vol. II, pp. 40–2; 235; for TASS, see ‘A policy for the British motor vehicle industry. A trade union response to the government White Paper by AUEW (TASS)’, [1975], MRC, MSS. 292 D/Box 1709. 140 The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1974–75, vol. III, p. 146. 141 ‘MP’s plea backed by minister’, Luton News, 18 November 1976. 142 The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1974–75, vol. II, p. 262; vol. III, p. 177. 143 ‘Supplementary notes on motor industry, with special reference to Ford claim’, [January 1971], Archive Trade Union Research Unit, Ruskin College Oxford, ‘Ford claim 1970’. 144 Trades Union Congress, Report of 106th Annual Trades Union Congress, 2–6 September 1974, pp. 486–7. 145 Trades Union Congress, Report of the 103rd Annual Trades Union Congress, 6–10 September 1971, pp. 473, 482. 146 For Ford, see, for example: ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 14 December 1972, MRC, MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 140/2. 147 ‘Motor industry study’, TUC, Economic Committee, 11 January 1984, MRC, MSS. 292 D, 560.1, Box 1096. 148 Trades Union Congress, Report of 112th Annual Trades Union Congress, 1–5 September 1980, pp. 488–9; Report of 113th Annual Trades Union Congress, 7–11 September 1981, pp. 523, 533; see also Teague (1984: 116ff., 213f.). 149 ‘Unions act over new car fears’, Dagenham Post, 7 October 1981, ‘Save car firm jobs, union bosses plead’, Luton News, 16 October 1980. 150 Trades Union Congress, Report of 111th Annual Trades Union Congress, 3–7 September 1979, p. 604. 151 TGWU, ‘Review and assessment of Vauxhall Motors presentation to the unions’, 25 October 1985, ATGWU-Liv, ‘S car’. 152 House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates, 1960–2000, Sixth Series, vol. 84, col. 283. 153 Centre for Alternative Industrial and Technological Systems (CAITS), ‘The UK motor industry – some options for trade union strategies’, [July 1984], ATGWU-Liv. 154 ‘Vauxhall Motors – the threat to jobs’, 4 October 1985, AVM-HRM, Box 19, ‘S car agreement’.

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155 ‘Car unions threaten to join forces’, Luton News, 7 October 1982, ‘One day stoppage at Vauxhall’, Luton News, 11 November 1982. 156 ‘International investment and the UK economy. Memorandum by the Trades Union Congress’, TUC, Economic Committee, 8 June 1988, MRC, MSS.292D.565/1, Box 1100. 157 Trades Union Congress, Report of 123rd Annual Congress, 2–6 September 1991, pp. 486–90. 158 Tolliday (2003b: 110); CAITS, ‘Trade union responses to new managerial initiatives: The new V6 engine plant agreement, Ellesmere Port, Vauxhall Motors’, [March 1990], ATGWU-Liv. 159 Interview by the author with Steve Broadhead, former trade union chairman, Vauxhall Joint Negotiating Committee, 24 July 2003. 160 ‘Protokoll der BR-Sitzung’, 11 February 1969, ABRF-P, ‘BR Protokolle vom 15.10.68 bis 25.3.69’. 161 ‘Fehlgriffe am laufenden Band’, Manager Magazin, 9/1973. 162 ‘The European concept’, 19 March 1975, ABRF-P, ‘Ford Europa’. 163 ‘Protokoll der BR-Sitzung der Produktgruppe’, 11 March 1969, ABRF-P, ‘BR Sitzungsprotokolle 1969’; ‘Niederschrift über die Sitzung mit dem Betriebsausschuß Köln-Niehl’, 14 February 1973, 14 March 1973, AGBRF, ‘BA 1971–’. 164 ‘Niederschrift über die Sitzung mit dem Betriebsausschuß der Produktentwicklung Merkenich’, 24 October 1973, 24 February 1975, 5 May 1976, 5 July 1978, ABRF-P, ‘BA-Protokolle BR-P’. 165 ‘Bericht des BR-P zur Betriebsversammlung’, 28 September 1979, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1979’. 166 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung I. Quartal 1982’ [1982], AIGMC, ‘BR Ford ab Januar 82 bis Januar 1983’. 167 ‘Ford-Betriebsrat: Hardiman soll kämpfen’, Kölner Express, 16 March 1993. 168 ‘Protokoll der Sitzung mit dem Wirtschaftsausschuss’, 21 July 1988, AGBRO, ‘Wirtschaftsausschuss 1.3.1988–30.8.1988’. 169 ‘Kampf um Standort immer härter’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 14 July 1995. 170 ‘Bericht des Betriebsrats zur Betriebsversammlung’, 12 December 1983, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Jan 1983’. 171 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung III. Quartal 1985’, [1985] AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Okt 1984’. 172 ‘Verzicht auf Lohnzuwachs sichert Ford-Standorte’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 23 April 1997. 173 ‘Jeder dritte Arbeitsplatz bei Opel wird gestrichen’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 6 May 1992. 174 ‘Der neue Ascona soll in Rüsselsheim gebaut werden’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 6 May 1987; ‘GM-Europazentrale will bei Opel Ausbildungskahlschlag’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 18 February 1987. 175 ‘Rechenschaftsbericht des GBR’, BR-Versammlung, 13–15 November 1995, AGBRO, ‘GBR-Konferenzen 1993–97’. 176 ‘Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung’, Der Spiegel 25/1997. 177 ‘BR-Information’,14 October 1988, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N von Januar 1987 bis 11/89’; ‘Ford will 850 Jobs abbauen’, Kölner Express, 4 December 1990. 178 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung II. Quartal 1986’, [1986], AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Okt 1984’. 179 ‘Bangen um die Zukunft hat ein Ende’, BR-Information 1/1997 [April 1997], AIGMC.

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180 ‘Aufruf zur Aufsichtsratswahl’, 5 April 1988, AIGMC, ‘VKL Ford-Niehl von Apr 1984 bis Okt 1987’. 181 ‘Motorenwerk gesichert’, BR-Information 9/1990, AIGMC, ‘Ford 1990–92’. 182 ‘Rede von Richard Heller’, BR-Versammlung, 6–8 November 1989, AGBRO, ‘Betriebsräteversammlung, 6–8 November 1989’. 183 ‘Opel-Gesamtbetriebsrat will verhindern, dass sich einzelne Werke gegeneinander ausspielen lassen’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 22 May 1994. 184 ‘Rechenschaftsbericht des GBR’, BR-Versammlung, 26–28 October 1994, AGBRO, ‘GBR-Konferenzen 1993–97’. 185 ‘Antrag: Eisenach’, 24. Betriebsrätekonferenz, 4–6 November 1992, AGBRO, ‘GBRKonferenzen 1986–92’. 186 ‘Ost-Betriebsräte liegen mit West-Gewerkschaften über Kreuz’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 23 June 1992. 187 DATA, ‘The German take-over of Ford of Britain’, [February 1970], PRO, Department of Trade and Industry, FV 22/17. 188 ‘Ford of Europe – a special report for Members of Parliament based on the ACTSS report on the Ford of Europe Manufacturing Complex’, MRC, MSS. 292 D, Box 937. 189 The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1974–75, vol. II, p. 191. 190 ‘Trade union points’, 23 March 1971, MRC, MSS. 292D, Box 890. 191 TGWU, ‘Trade union presentation on Ford’s Annual Report 1977’, 21 April 1978, MRC, MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 36/2. 192 ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 24 August 1978, ibid. 193 ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 9 November 1981, MRC, MSS 126/TG/3, Sack 117/2. 194 ‘Notes of the special meeting with Staff and hourly-paid trade union representatives’, 23 July 1981, AVM-HRM, Box 4, ‘JNC August 1981–July 1982’. 195 The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1974–75, vol. II, pp. 193–4. 196 Interview by the author with John Hougham, former employee relations manager, Ford Dagenham, 15 October 2003; Interview by the author with Steve Broadhead, former trade union chairman, Vauxhall Joint Negotiating Committee, 24 July 2003. 197 ‘Minutes of a meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 6 December 1993, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 6. 198 ‘Ford of Britain, Dagenham Operations: joint trade union–management presentation to Albert Caspers’, 2 December 1992, AAMICUS-Dag. 199 ‘Under pressure’, PTA shop stewards bulletin, March 1998, AAMICUS-Dag; ‘Minutes of a meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 8 February 2001, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 7. 200 For Ford, see Letter from W. Young, Chairman Dagenham Panel, to Jack Adams, Chairman Ford NJNC, 18 February 1993; AAMICUS-Dag. 201 ‘Vauxhall unions link up to face crisis’, Luton News, 30 October 1980. 202 ‘Minutes of fortnightly meeting’, Dagenham Panel of District Officers, 8 September 1981, MRC, MSS. 126/TG 3, Sack 117/2; the leaked document recommended a further period of cooperation with trade unions in order ‘to minimise the risk of industrial action’ – ‘Leaked Ford Foundry closure strategy’, Archive Trade Union Research Unit, Ruskin College Oxford. 203 ‘Minutes of a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 2 March 1984, AAMICUS-Dag.

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204 ‘Under pressure’, PTA shop stewards bulletin, April 1984, ibid. 205 Letter from Anthony Woodley to Ron Todd, General Secretary, TGWU, 20 May 1986, ATGWU-Liv, ‘S car’. 206 ‘Todd kills Dundee Ford deal’, The Observer, 27 March 1988. 207 ‘Dispute over single-union deal at new Ford factory’, The Independent, 10 October 1987. 208 ‘Dagenham: officials threw the fight away’, 8 December 2001, at www.labournet. net/ukunion/0012/ford1.html (last accessed 4 November 2009). 209 Interview by the author with John Jack, former convener, Vauxhall Luton plant, 20 July 2003. 210 For Ford Germany, see ‘Niederschrift über die Klausurtagung des Gesamtbetriebsrates’, 26–27 March 1986, ABRF-P, ‘GBR’. 211 For Ford, UK see, ‘Union pledge to save Ford plant’, Dagenham Post, 29 September 1982; for Opel, see ‘Unser Geld ist falsch ausgegeben worden’, Neue Rhein-Zeitung, 12 July 1993. 212 Letter from works council Cologne-Merkenich/TASS Dunton to Philipp Caldwell, FoE, 6 May 1981, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-P von 1977 bis Dez. 1984’. 213 ‘Treffen 21–23.11.1983’, ABRF-P, ‘Ford Europa’. 214 ‘General Motors. Autoproduktion und Zulieferung – Neue Strukturen in der Automobilindustrie’. Protokoll der Veranstaltung in Kooperation von EMB, IG Metall und GBR Opel, 21–23 November 1994, AGBRO, ‘Europäischer Konzernbetriebsrat I’. 215 ‘Sichere Ford-Jobs auf intelligente Art’, Kölnische Rundschau, 23 November 1995; ‘Das Mandat hilft dem Standort Köln’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 27 October 1995. 216 ‘Rede Rudolf Müller Europäisches GM Arbeitnehmerforum’, 15–16 January 1997, AGBRO, ‘Europäisches GM Arbeitnehmer-Forum’. 217 ‘Stellungnahme des GBR zum Jahresabschluß 1995’, 20 June 1996, AGBRO, ‘Gesamtbetriebsrat ab 3/92 bis 12/98’. 218 Ford NJNC (TU side), ‘Submission of the trade unions’ 1991 wages and conditions claim’ [1991], AAMICUS-Dag. 219 ‘Yet another UK car plant comes under threat of closure’, 28 March 1998, at www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/1998/03/inbrief/uk9803114n.htm (last accessed 12 April 2010). 220 ‘Global denken, lokal handeln’, Welt am Sonntag, 22 February 1998; ‘Strippenzieher für Jobs bei Ford’, Rheinische Post, 29 March 2000. 221 Siegfried Roth, IG Metall, ‘Hersteller-Zuliefererbeziehungen am Scheideweg’, 29 June 1993, AGBRO, ‘Gesamtbetriebsrat ab 3/92 bis 12/1998’. 222 ‘Rechenschaftsbericht des GBR’, BR-Versammlung, 5–7 November 1997, AGBRO, ‘GBR-Konferenzen 1993–97’. 223 Ibid. 224 ‘Ford-Betriebsrat sieht Umstrukturierung positiv’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 30 May 1994. 225 Interview by the author with Wilfried Kuckelkorn, former works council chairman, Fordwerke AG, 11 December 2001. 226 Incidentally, this transformation also included a partial ‘Europeanization’ of unity rhetoric – expressed in stronger aspirations for cross-border trade union cooperation. The book will discuss this issue in detail in chapter 5.

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Contrary to the scant attention paid to the relationship between economic internationalization and patriotism/nationalism, industrial relations scholars have long been actively involved in debates about trends of cross-border convergence of Western European socio-economic systems after 1945. In particular, Kerr et al.’s Industrialism and Industrial Man (1960) triggered a drawn-out controversy about the prospects for convergence of Western European patterns on the US model of company-based collective bargaining and business unionism (see Smith, 1999). In a wider context, industrial relations also played an important role in the ‘Americanization’ debates among historians (for an overview, see Nolan, 2006), which were nurtured by studies of US labour organizations during the European Cold War, in particular with regard to their attempts to ‘export’ US-style ‘politics of productivity’ (Maier, 1977) through informal networks and their participation in the administration of Marshall Plan funds (see Dartmann, 1996; Angster, 2003). Industrial relations featured prominently in convergence debates among social historians as well – although usually considered in a longer time-frame and in contrast to the US model (see Kaelble, 1987, 2004). Internationalization and convergence: the industrial relations debate Economic internationalization processes were often considered as a facilitating context for cross-border convergence in these older debates, but it was only in the 1990s – against the backdrop of the emerging globalization literature (Held and McGrew, 2003; Scholte, 2005) – that they became the explicit focus of analysis. As Streeck (2009: 170, fn. 1) puts it, international competition now replaced technological progress and political development as the presumed primary cause of cross-border convergence. Yet, this new convergence debate soon became similarly polarized as had its predecessors. On one side were those who celebrated or condemned (depending on political leanings) globalization as driving a process of homogenization of

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socio-economic regimes towards the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model of ‘neoliberalism’ (Ohmae, 1990; Albert 1993). Competition for internationally mobile capital was seen as the key convergence mechanism. Accelerating liberalization and market widening – in Europe exemplified by the fall of the Iron Curtain and the parallel transition to the Single Market – made it easier for firms (especially MNCs) to switch investment between countries and to use relocation threats in negotiations with domestic actors. As a result, ‘competitiveness’ became the new ‘hegemonic concept’ of European industrial relations in the 1990s (Streeck, 1998: 439), associated with, among other things, a decline in trade union density, a shift from collective to individual employment regulation, and the decentralization and fragmentation of regulatory frameworks (Katz and Darbishire, 2000; Howell, 2003). In the case of multinational firms, these trends were magnified by direct headquarters’ policies to reshape human resource practices in subsidiaries (for US firms, see Almond and Ferner, 2006). On the other side, embedded in the wider current of globalization ‘sceptics’ (see Hirst et al., 2009), many authors have questioned the breadth and depth of convergence dynamics. They have pointed to the continued salience of crossnational diversity, for example with regard to labour law, collective-bargaining patterns or – most importantly for our discussion – ‘varieties of unionism’ (Frege and Kelly, 2004). In multinational firms, despite a growing trend towards headquarter coordination, ‘host country influences’ remain of crucial importance for industrial relations practices in national subsidiaries (Edwards and Ferner, 2002). Two sets of factors have been identified as limiting convergence dynamics. First, it has been argued that internationalization processes affect countries to different degrees and in different ways. International economic exposure has varied considerably in post-1945 Western Europe (Hirst et al., 2009: 27, 34), for example with regard to the importance of foreign direct investment (FDI) for national GDP and employment levels (Marginson and Meardi, 2010). Even within MNCs, headquarters–subsidiary relations have varied, reflecting, for example, the importance of different national markets or perceived performance hierarchies between subsidiaries (Ferner and Tempel, 2006). More fundamentally, the appeal of notions of international ‘best practice’ is limited in the sphere of industrial relations because there is often no clear link between institutional practices and economic outcomes (Traxler and Woitech, 2000). A second and more influential ‘anti-convergence’ argument focuses on domestic industrial relations regimes’ propensity for institutional reproduction. Such ‘path dependence’ approaches (see Deeg, 2005) stress institutional continuity resulting either from the inertia of long-established practices or, in the more dynamic version, from ‘positive feedback’ effects, which arise continuously through learning, coordination, and the complementarities between the interconnected institutional arrangements of national political economies (Streeck and Thelen, 2005: 6–7). In the case of industrial relations, ‘path dependence’ may thus be seen as primarily reflecting contrasting state and trade union traditions (Crouch, 1993; Hyman, 2001), or the embeddedness of

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industrial relations in ‘national business systems’ (Whitley, 1999) or ‘varieties of capitalism’ (Hall and Soskice, 2001). In the latter framework, in fact, economic internationalization reinforces rather than weakens cross-national diversity because firms (including MNCs) develop their competitive capacities through the conscious exploitation of the ‘comparative institutional advantages’ of their host countries (ibid.: 36f., 56f.).1 Frequently – reminiscent of the earlier Americanization controversy (Nolan, 2006: 96–102) – convergence and path dependence came to be seen as incompatible and dichotomous, giving rise to debates about what constituted the ‘dominant trend’. A typical example was the controversy about the alleged erosion of the German works council system in the late 1990s (Hassel 1999; Klikauer, 2002). In this case, as in others, the recent and ongoing nature of the processes in question encouraged polar juxtapositions that at times appeared to boil down to a rather fruitless debate about whether the glass of convergence was half full or half empty. As the debate progressed, however, there has been a growing appreciation that both approaches are not mutually exclusive. Throughout the post-1945 period industrial relations systems have often shifted in similar ways across Western Europe while, at the same time, country-specific institutional arrangements have shown a remarkable degree of resilience (Smith, 1999). In the words of Wolfgang Streeck: ‘differences in national industrial relations systems can be properly understood only in the context of their interaction with general tendencies’ (1998: 438). Streeck distinguishes between ‘functional’ and ‘institutional’ convergence, and argues that economic internationalization has been instrumental for the former but not for the latter – internationalization may ‘impose’ broadly similar directions and ‘rationales’ of change, and it can also undermine the effectiveness of traditional practices, yet it does not force domestic actors to adopt a ‘best practice’ blueprint for institutional change (ibid.: 435ff.). In recent years, moreover, an increasing number of scholars started to seek additional analytical tools beyond ‘convergence’ and ‘path reproduction’ to account for contemporary processes of change in Western European political economies (including industrial relations). A considerable body of evidence suggests that these processes have often occurred incrementally through shifting forms of ‘practical enactment’, for example through ‘layering’, when new institutional arrangements are superimposed on older ones, or ‘conversion’ when established practices are redirected to new purposes (Streeck and Thelen, 2005: 22–9). Such changes often go beyond the mere adaptive reproduction of existing patterns, while, at the same time, they are country-specific rather than uniform (Thelen, 2009). The implication of these insights for the study of internationalization processes is that we are again dealing with a paradox, namely that internationalization is likely to make industrial relations practices more similar across borders in some respects, while it simultaneously contributes to the re-creation (rather than the mere reproduction) of diversity between (and also within) indi-

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vidual countries. The next section explores this paradox in more detail for the specific case of British and German trade unions in the idea of post-1945 period.

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The paradox of internationalization and trade union practices: post-1945 Britain and Germany Available literature on British and German trade union practices since the late 1980s provides ample evidence to support the idea of paradoxical effects of economic internationalization. On the one hand, there is no doubt that internationalization processes have made union practices more similar across Western Europe in important respects during this period, and Britain and Germany have been part of this trend. Most importantly, union strategies shifted towards defensive cooperation with employers: increased opportunities for firms to move investment across borders and to deploy credible relocation threats in bargaining processes forced unions to accommodate employer concerns, while their capacity to shape bargaining agendas and push for their own objectives declined (Streeck, 1998). There is considerable debate about the salience of cross-border relocation processes and relocation threats in different sectors and countries (see Galgóczi et al., 2006; Meardi et al., 2009), and a number of scholars have rightly warned against exaggerated predictions about an impending ‘eclipse’ of labour conflict (Sisson and Artiles, 2000: 52–3, 97–9). Indeed, the accelerated shift towards integrated ‘just in time’ production networks makes firms often more vulnerable to the disruptive effects of strike action, which can at times enhance trade union bargaining power at least in the short term (Silver, 2003: 6). However, few would dispute that accelerating competition for internationally mobile capital and the associated hegemony of the ‘competitiveness’ concept contributed to the weakening of trade union positions across Western Europe during the 1990s. At the macro level, this was reflected in a decline of strike levels and in a gravity shift of labour conflict from manufacturing to ‘sheltered’ public services (Bordogna and Cella, 2002). At the company level, British and German unions – as their counterparts across Western Europe – agreed to ‘pacts for employment and competitiveness’ (especially in MNC subsidiaries); in these ‘pacts’, labour representatives accepted headcount reductions, productivity drives and wage concessions ‘in exchange’ for job security assurances (see Sisson and Artiles, 2000). Significantly, these pacts were usually management initiated, thus reversing the traditional post-war bargaining pattern of employers reacting to trade union demands (ibid.: 71). Management whipsawing strategies, particularly widespread in MNCs, also accentuated tensions and coordination problems within national union organizations (Katz and Darbishire, 2000: 275–7). In parallel to these shifts, trade union approaches to industrial democracy2 also underwent an important transformation. These approaches had, of course, varied greatly in post-1945 Western Europe (see Thelen and Turner, 1999) – in terms of bases (custom or law), forms (bargaining or consultation) and levels of

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action (workplace, plant or enterprise). Yet, there had been a similar focus on ‘industrial citizenship’ (Marshall, 1950), that is, a concern to secure employee rights and welfare. By the 1990s, this had been superimposed by an intense preoccupation with issues like investment and production planning, outsourcing or work organization, particularly marked in multinational firms (Sisson and Artiles, 2000: 52ff.). Some observers pointed to new opportunities for unions as ‘co-managers’, while others emphasized risks and drawbacks, in particular with regard to the subordination of ‘classic’ union concerns for employee welfare (see, for example, Klitzke et al., 2000). While internationalization thus contributed to convergence dynamics in Western European trade union practices during the 1990s, this naturally cannot be equated with the ‘steamrolling’ of distinct domestic patterns. Internationalization did not displace different ‘varieties of unionism’ (Frege and Kelly, 2004). For example, while cooperation with employers was embraced everywhere in Western Europe in the 1990s, this played out differently depending on prior institutional and ideological legacies; in the UK, given an arm’s-length-bargaining tradition, the ‘partnership turn’ remained more limited than in other European countries (Fichter and Greer, 2004; Kelly, 2004). Likewise, the internationalization-nurtured shift from social to more economic approaches to industrial democracy did little to alter the long-standing intra-European differences between ‘single channel’ (trade unions only) and ‘dual channel’ (trade unions and works councils) models, or contrasting union attitudes to representation on company boards (see Knudsen, 1995). Analysing the impact of internationalization on British and German trade union practices cannot thus be confined to the search for convergence dynamics, but must also address the question of how country-specific legacies have shaped trade union responses to internationalization and how internationalization, in turn, has helped to re-create cross-national diversity through country-specific processes of incremental change. The literature on British and German industrial relations since the late 1980s offers a number of potentially interesting insights for such country-specific dynamics. In the FRG, company-level studies invariably point to the crucial importance of co-determination institutions in shaping trade union responses to internationalization, yet they also highlight a number of significant shifts in co-determination practices. In particular, the growing importance of investment competition in many German MNC subsidiaries during the 1990s entailed a downplaying of the traditional reliance on legally guaranteed rights, in favour of more informal approaches and a new emphasis on ‘co-determination through contract’ to obtain investment guarantees in exchange for wage and flexibility concessions (see Rehder, 2003). In turn, this ‘investment bargaining’ altered the balance in Germany’s traditional ‘dual’ system of employee representation. The scope of company-level bargaining carried out by works councils widened (e.g. with regard to workingtime regulation) – at the expense of sectoral bargaining by industrial unions like IG Metall. Some observers have stressed the ensuing rise of intra-organizational

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tensions, while others have emphasized the ‘organized’ nature of this decentralization process (Streeck and Rehder, 2003; Whittall, 2005). In the UK, internationalization processes contributed to changing trade union practices in a twofold way from the late 1980s. On the one hand, accelerated European and global market integration added to the erosion of the classic union reliance on voluntarist bargaining (Marsh, 1992) – a process, which was, of course, primarily driven by Thatcher’s industrial relations reforms (see Howell, 2005) and broader structural and sociological shifts (deindustrialization, ‘white-collarization’, rise of ‘atypical’ employment contracts, etc.). On the other hand, scholars detected a growing British trade union interest in foreign industrial relations models, in particular with regard to legal regulation (MacShane, 1991). This went hand in hand with a new strategic emphasis on European Union regulation to help to reverse the decline of domestic membership and influence (Waddington, 2003: 234–5). However, as in Germany, change remained limited, most clearly expressed in the continued widespread scepticism towards the ‘import’ of works councils: British trade unions lobbied for legal rights as new instruments of interest representation, yet they did so by insisting – albeit not always successfully – on a predominantly union-based system of labour–management consultation (see Kelly, 1996; Hall, 2010). While the book can build upon a significant body of literature to explore the paradoxical impact of internationalization on trade union practices from the late 1980s, the same is not the case for the earlier post-war decades. As pointed out in the introduction to this book, there is a widespread if misconceived assumption that economic internationalization did not ‘really’ take off, or that it did not have much impact on national industrial relations and trade unions prior to the 1990s. A few labour historians have recently made some efforts to correct such misperceptions (see for example Knox and McKinlay, 2010), yet little of this is specifically related to the question of cross-national convergence. In fact, there is little reason to doubt the heuristic value of the convergence–diversity paradox for earlier post-war decades. Western European history in the post-1945 period has in many ways been a history of ‘common themes and variations’ (Fulbrook, 2001: 276), and this equally applies to the history of industrial relations and trade unionism (Smith, 1999). However, the precise dynamics of how this paradox unfolded between the late 1960s and the late 1980s cannot be assumed to be identical – after all, the weakness of West European trade unionism during the 1990s sharply contrasts with what has been termed the ‘apogée des syndicalismes en Europe’ in the period up to the late 1970s (Pigenet et al., 2005). Admittedly, there are some indications that convergence effects of the 1990s had a longer ‘prehistory’ given that concerns about competitiveness in international markets underpinned trade union attitudes of wage and conflict moderation in many countries throughout the post-1945 period. For example, Katzenstein (1985) has demonstrated that such concerns were a core element sustaining the ‘democratic corporatism’ in the small states of Northern,

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Western and Central Europe since the 1950s. In this perspective, economic internationalization placed constraints on trade union assertiveness even in the period when they reached the zenith of their post-war power. However, it would be mistaken to use this hypothesis as the sole analytical guideline. In fact, a contrasting argument can be derived from the work of Beverly Silver ( 2003), who contends that international capital movements encouraged labour conflict in Western Europe during the 1960s and 1970s because, in contrast to later decades, these movements were instrumental to the expansion of production and employment, which strengthened labour’s bargaining position and militancy. Silver’s book is an analysis of labour conflict rather than of trade unions, yet her data on the global automobile industry suggest that in a structural sense, economic internationalization enabled West European trade unions to adopt a relatively assertive stance up to the late 1970s – until the later shift of gravity to Southern and Eastern Europe and Asia weakened this potential (ibid.: ch. 2). In this model, convergence effects of internationalization are time specific – the weakening effects on Western European labour during the 1990s contrast with the opposite dynamic in the 1960s and 1970s. While there are thus two contrasting hypotheses with regard to longer-term convergence dynamics, very little is known about country-specific effects of economic internationalization on trade union practices in Germany and Britain prior to the 1990s. In the German case, there is not a single in-depth case study of union politics in a multinational firm, and survey-type analyses (Bomers, 1976; Bamberg et al., 1989) provide few indications beyond the basic insight that labour representatives were primarily concerned about the impact of international corporate structures on the effectiveness of co-determination. As for the UK, there has been a long-standing debate about distinct labour practices of multinational firms, yet this literature has only marginally dealt with trade unions as actors (see Buckley and Enderwick, 1985; Ferner, 2003). The few survey studies that explicitly address trade union politics in multinational firms (e.g. Gennard, 1971) are limited to the 1970s; they point to a new union emphasis on government intervention to deal with multinational firms, which seems to fit the broader pattern of support for an ‘alternative economic strategy’ within the British labour movement (see Callaghan, 2000). However, Minkin (1991: 169ff.) has warned against taking such rhetorical support at face value. Industry and company case studies at times include international aspects as well, but the analytical emphasis remains here on local bargaining and strikes against the backdrop of the national political context – multinational firms are treated as if they were domestic companies (Friedman and Meredeen, 1980; Beynon, 1984; Marsden et al., 1985; Tolliday, 1991; Darlington, 1994; Holden, 2003). Generally, as in the German case, the literature thus provides little guidance for the analysis of union politics in MNC prior to the 1990s. The remainder of the chapter will now explore in detail the ways in which internationalization contributed to converging trends and, at the same time,

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helped to re-create cross-national diversity of trade union practices at Ford and GM in Germany and the UK between the late 1960s and the end of the twentieth century. By doing so, the book will also contribute to ‘historicize’ the contemporary convergence debate: on the one hand, emphasis on the ‘prehistory’ of contemporary trends will help to qualify frequent assumptions about the radical nature of change during the 1990s and to explore the nature of longer-term continuities. On the other hand, the analysis of different internationalization dynamics in the period prior to the 1990s implies the need to reconceptualize developments of the 1990s not as results of economic internationalization per se, but as reflections of a time-specific reconfiguration of internationalization processes. Internationalization and domestic union practices at Ford and GM The internationalization of company structures and strategies after 1967 (Ford) and 1973–74 (GM) transformed domestic trade union practices in the German and British subsidiaries alike, and it did so in the paradoxical way outlined in the introduction to this chapter: internationalization made those practices more similar in some respects, while it simultaneously contributed to the re-creation of cross-national and cross-company diversity. Over time, on balance, the convergence dynamic became stronger. By the late 1990s, British and German trade union practices resembled each other more closely than they had three decades earlier, yet there was still a great deal of diversity. In the following, this paradoxical dynamic of partial convergence and the simultaneous re-creation of diversity will be analysed in detail. A distinction is made between the period up to the late 1970s when union power was at its post-war height, and the subsequent two decades in which labour representatives focused on the defence of earlier achievements. Internationalization at the apogee of trade union power (1967–79) When geocentric internationalization started to unfold at Ford and (later) at Opel/Vauxhall, it found British and German trade unions at the apogee of their post-war power (see chapter 1). Until the late 1970s – if for different reasons in the two countries – internationalization did not act as a major constraint on trade union power. In the German Ford and GM subsidiaries, internationalization did not entail much management pressure on union achievements during this period. In Britain, the unions were by and large able to fend off such pressure, while continued (if uneven) employment growth limited the negative implications of UK subsidiaries’ relative decline in the short term. Indeed, particularly at Ford, the vulnerability of new cross-border production networks even provided some added leverage for union assertiveness. At the same time, to different degrees in the two countries and companies, growing uncertainty about long-term employment prospects and unease about the opaque nature of new geocentric corporate structures triggered a widening

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of the scope of trade union agendas. Against the backdrop of a broader contemporary debate on ‘industrial democracy’ (see Deutsch, 2005: 648f.), German and British Ford and GM labour representatives started to develop an active interest in classic management prerogatives such as investment, trading and production organization. This was expressed in the expansion of data collection capacities, growing requests for information disclosure and consultation, and also some attempts to directly influence corporate strategies. Beyond these broad similarities, internationalization effects played out very differently due to the varying local and national contexts. In the UK, unions often adopted an adversarial approach (more at Ford than at Vauxhall) and sought to address internationalization-related concerns through ‘classic’ voluntarist bargaining and a new focus on public and political campaigning. In the FRG, by contrast, internationalization gave a new twist to works council politics of ‘conflictual cooperation’ (in different ways at Opel and Ford) and induced labour representatives to use their legal rights, while simultaneously adapting co-determination practices to the new international environment. Convergence (I): assertiveness despite internationalization The decade between the late 1960s and the late 1970s saw British and German trade unions at Ford and GM in a dramatic upswing. In Britain, as we have seen earlier, the emergence of geocentric internationalization coincided with a strong upwards trend in domestic trade union bargaining power. Particularly at Ford, the growth of plant-level shop stewards’ organizations – nurtured by the support of the new left-wing leaders of TGWU and AEU – entailed more assertive bargaining stances, expressed, in particular, in the campaign for wage parity with motor firms in the Midlands in the early 1970s. Continuous employer and government attacks reinforced rather than weakened trade union militancy (see chapter 1). In this situation, Ford and (later) Vauxhall labour representatives started to be confronted with management attempts to use internationalization as a bargaining lever. As the 1970s progressed, in fact, they became seriously concerned about the companies’ shifting European production geographies and the concomitant management strategies to question work standards and industrial relations practices through cross-border productivity benchmarking (see chapter 2). However, intriguingly, these concerns did not restrain union assertiveness in a significant way. In the case of Ford, where management pressure emerged earlier (from 1968) and more consistently, this is particularly revealing. Admittedly, occasional constraining effects are discernible. In 1970, for example, rumours about a shift of Escort production from Halewood to Saarlouis probably contributed to the acceptance of a pay offer well short of initial union demands (Beynon, 1973: 181–3). Yet, this was clearly outweighed by two major strikes in 1969 and 1971 conducted in the face of company threats to shift investment to the continent. In 1971, the strike for wage parity with Midlands car workers dragged on for nine weeks, despite personal interventions by Henry Ford II, and it appears to

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have ended not due to his threats, but because of escalating costs that led to growing dissatisfaction within the wider AEU and TGWU membership (Beynon, 1984: 303–4). After the first oil crisis, the ebbs (1974–75) and flows (1976–78) of wage militancy at Ford seem unrelated to internationalization processes, reflecting instead the changing macroeconomic situation (recession/recovery), and the rise and fall of the Labour government’s ‘social contract’ (Tolliday, 1991: 98–100). Likewise, there is not much evidence for internationalization-imposed constraints on shop-floor work practices. To be sure, government and parliamentary inquiries in the mid-1970 witnessed trade union officials participating in visits to continental Ford factories, which left no doubt of a UK efficiency lag. Yet, there was always the proviso that efficiency was mainly a function of investment levels and was ‘not simply a question of how hard people work’ (Beynon, 1984: 348). Moreover, at the plant level, many shop stewards showed little concern for such national-level debates, and disputes about work standards, manning levels, and other issues remained widespread throughout the 1970s (Tolliday, 1991: 99–100). Management pressure for a change of industrial relations practices did not yield much success either. Again, increasingly after 1974, NJNC union officials often pledged to support attempts to reduce the incidence of wildcat strikes, and in the 1977 negotiations about the location of a new engine plant in Bridgend (Wales), national union leaders ‘were bending over backwards to be helpful’ (Beynon, 1984: 339). However, beyond isolated ad hoc promises, there was persistent resistance against any rules that would restrict the freedom to strike. In 1969, for example, an AEU- and TGWU-backed strike forced the company to backtrack on a scheme that made (improved) lay-off benefits conditional on workers’ nonparticipation in wildcat walkouts (see Friedman and Meredeen, 1980: 225–30). In 1977, likewise, company pressure for a stricter union ‘policing’ of wildcat disputes – along the lines of the American UAW – was categorically rejected.3 At the shop-floor level, too, internationalization did little to contain ‘unofficial’ stoppages. There was much infighting between employee groups in relation to sectional walkouts over pay differentials and lay-off procedures – yet those who urged ‘moderation’ rarely invoked arguments about potential investment losses.4 At Vauxhall – despite the overall more limited internationalization challenges – constraints on union assertiveness were quite significant in the mid-1970s. That strike levels at Vauxhall dropped much more sharply than at Ford during this period (Marsden et al., 1985: 131), did not just reflect a less antagonistic industrial relations tradition, but also frequent management warnings that labour disputes would further weaken Vauxhall’s position within GM’s emerging European network.5 Arguably, however, this represents an extreme case in which moderation – equally expressed in wage demands below those at Ford6 – was not the result of specific fears about investment loss, but of a general anxiety about impending

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bankruptcy. As the company’s situation stabilized from 1976, trade union assertiveness returned despite a further slow advance of geocentric internationalization. An emerging pattern of productivity benchmarking did little to constrain shop-floor disputes over work practices and manning levels, although this was much more widespread in the traditionally more militant Ellesmere Port than at Luton.7 As in the case of Ford, moreover, growing dissatisfaction with government income policy and the proliferation of sectional claims in relation to pay differentials outweighed any other constraints8 – in 1977 and 1979, in fact, Vauxhall strike levels were higher than those at Ford (Marsden et al., 1985: 131). At times, indeed, internationalization even further encouraged militant bargaining stances. This was particularly discernible in the case of Ford UK, where strike strategies were frequently designed to ensure a rapid breakdown of cross-border component deliveries to increase bargaining pressure on the company. In both of the major disputes in 1971 and 1978, this tactic appears to have been crucial in securing a union-friendly settlement.9 GM’s less extensive integration limited such strategies at Vauxhall, but here, too, they were occasionally pursued: during a 1979 strike, for example, Ellesmere Port shop stewards organized pickets at Harwich harbour to prevent the continued inflow of Belgian components for UK assembly.10 Why did internationalization have so little ‘moderating’ effect on bargaining stances? Three aspects seem crucial to answer this question. First, clearly, the domestic context continuously fuelled assertive strategies and thus often neutralized any constraints arising from internationalization. Put simply, the combination of growing union strength and continuous domestic battles about industrial relations reforms at the company, as well as at the national level, produced inevitable clashes that overrode all other considerations. Second, Silver’s (2003) argument about the differential impact of crossborder capital movements in expanding and shrinking regions needs to be taken into account. Admittedly, Ford UK and Vauxhall output, mirroring the broader national trend (Church, 1995: 49), peaked in the early 1970s and did not recover to those levels after the 1974–75 recession. Yet, for a variety of reasons, employment trends were different, as temporary cutbacks in 1974–75 were followed by renewed hiring: between 1975 and 1979, Ford UK and Vauxhall workforces grew again by 15 and 10 per cent respectively (Tolliday, 2003b: 119, 143; Holden, 2003: 208). Clearly, this pattern limited the salience of ‘exit’ threats and productivity benchmarking because it fostered the belief that Ford and GM were dependent on British production to maintain and increase their UK market share (Beynon, 1984: 349). Third, the unions themselves (particularly at Ford) made major efforts to ensure that their domestic campaigns were not derailed by internationalizationinspired management pressure. Labour representatives fought a battle for the hearts and minds of workers who could be susceptible to believe and/or be intimidated by company investment boycott threats. As a TGWU leaflet issued during the 1971 parity campaign put it: ‘we cannot control Ford export market-

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ing policy but we can and must see that we are not trapped into docility by threats of foreign bogey men’.11 National rhetoric denouncing Ford as ‘unpatriotic’ played an important role here (see chapter 3), as did the questioning of the credibility of threats, and the argument that labour issues had little relevance for the investment decisions of multinational firms.12 Union negotiators also launched a ‘statistical warfare’, countering Ford’s European productivity benchmarking with cross-border wage comparisons that showed a considerable gap between German and British wages.13 While such comparisons were fraught with contradictions – union documents also pointed to low UK wages as an investment incentive14 – they appear to have well served their purpose of upholding employee determination in the face of company threats. In 1978, for example, Ford’s labour director, Paul Roots, despaired at the persistence of British–German wage comparisons during the strike agitation: ‘I must have explained to the trade unions and to our employees as a whole a dozen times the comparative situation between the British and German rates of pay, yet almost every day I hear from somebody on your side . . . the nonsense about the difference with German rates.’15 If British unions were thus often able to resist concession-bargaining pressure, their German counterparts were exposed to hardly any such pressure until the late 1970s. There were a few half-hearted attempts at Ford, but they met with determined works council opposition. In the early 1970s, for example, the works council successfully obstructed management plans to reduce the annual summer holidays from four to three weeks in line with practice in the UK.16 In 1978, Fordwerke management threats to relocate parts of the right-hand drive vehicle production for the British market appear to have weakened works council resolve to use its overtime co-determination rights as a bargaining tool – but only temporarily.17 The most important instance of works council weakness during the 1970s – the lack of determination to push for the long-formulated aim to achieve co-determination over line speeds – had little to do with internationalization. Rather, it reflected the inter-ethnic divisions in the wake of the ‘Türkenstreik’ in 1973 – apprehensive to avoid a similar disaster in the future, works council leaders were reluctant to press the line speed issue, which continued to be voiced primarily by Turkish and other migrant employees.18 There is also no evidence that labour representatives came to heed unspecific warnings about ‘high German labour costs’, which were occasionally voiced by Opel and Fordwerke managers in the second half of the 1970s. Such warnings were not dismissed out of hand. A 1978 Ford works council document opined that ‘every wage increase in Belgium and England is good for our jobs’.19 Yet, no constraining effect on bargaining agendas and outcomes can be detected. In fact, after a period of moderation during the 1974–75 recession, union positions hardened in both firms in the late 1970s, not least against the backdrop of soaring profits. This found expression at the company level (pressure for higher fringe benefits and the improvement of working conditions), as well as in militant positions in regional IG Metall bargaining commissions where Opel and

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Ford representatives routinely lobbied for high initial demands and a tough negotiation stance. Moreover, both works councils persistently urged a shift from regional to company-level bargaining within IG Metall, which was to allow a better ‘squeeze’ of company profits.20 In fact, this issue caused a great deal of tension between the Ford and Opel works councils, and the IG Metall leadership. Ford and Opel union organizations had been in the forefront of debates about the decentralization of IG Metall bargaining structures (‘betriebsnahe Tarifpolitik’) since the 1950s (see Fetzer, 2010a), and they now used the general country-wide upswing in militancy to step up their initiatives. Internationalization gave decentralization ambitions an additional boost. For one thing, there was a growing awareness that German subsidiary profits were transferred abroad, which reinforced the determination to exploit the companies’ superior ability to pay.21 At the same time, debates about cross-border trade union cooperation in multinational firms (see chapter 5) provided a further rationale – participation in such cooperation efforts would be made easier if German Ford and Opel unionists had some bargaining flexibility at the company level. For some time it seemed that the IG Metall leadership would perhaps accommodate these initiatives; pressure for reform was strong after the wave of wildcat strikes in September 1969 (Schneider, 2000: 350f.). In January 1970, for example, IG Metall leader, Otto Brenner, told the Ford works council that he could envisage a separate bargaining contract for automobile firms.22 However, this soon turned out to be tactical manoeuvres: at the 1971 national union conference, the IG Metall leadership came out openly against motions for company bargaining advocated by Ford and Opel delegates, and this clash was repeated at the 1977 convention.23 Among Ford and Opel trade unionists, these defeats left much bitterness and also entailed intermittent half-secret debates about a breakaway and the possible creation of a German automobile trade union along the model of the American UAW.24 At the company level, however, internationalization did not encourage union militancy in the same way as it did in the UK. Works councils were legally prohibited to call strikes, which could exploit the vulnerability of European production networks, and short ‘illegal’ walkouts and overtime bans did not have much effect prior to the introduction of ‘just in time’ production methods in the 1980s. At Ford, it was only in the product development division with its high level of everyday German–British coordination that such small disruptions could have a serious impact.25 Still, in a more indirect sense, Ford’s frequent public praise for German workers could not but step up works council campaigns for higher wages and fringe benefits,26 while there were also occasional cross-border imitation effects – either because works council leaders pointed to UK strike examples to urge employee resolve, or because employee perceptions of British union achievements induced works councillors to raise their demands.27

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Convergence (II): towards monitoring of corporate structures and strategies Prior to the onset of internationalization, trade union interest representation at Ford and GM exclusively focused on issues of employee welfare and rights. In Germany, admittedly, the co-determination framework gave organized labour limited access to corporate decision-making on the Ford and Opel supervisory boards but, as in most other German firms at the time (Mitbestimmung im Unternehmen, 1970), this had little impact on day-to-day practices of interest representation. In the UK, no such representation existed, and apart from exceptional circumstances, like the 1960 buyout of British minority shareholders at Ford (Fetzer, 2005: 62–8), trade union policy focused on the annual (or biannual) wage negotiations and mundane issues such as work standards and the settlement of employee grievances (Tolliday, 1991: 94f.; Holden, 2003: 191–8). That British and German Ford and GM labour representatives started to become concerned about issues such as investment, product policy or crossborder trade during the 1970s was, of course, not only a response to the internationalization of corporate structures and strategies. Across Western Europe, the decade witnessed a revival of trade union debates about ‘industrial democracy’ (see Deutsch, 2005: 648f.), in which corporate disclosure and various models of employee participation in corporate decision-making processes played an important role. The (ultimately fruitless) discussion of European Community legislation to harmonize participation arrangements (see Höland, 2000) at once reflected and fed into these debates – in the UK most clearly expressed in the set-up of a special government commission to study the possible introduction of workers directors (see Atenstedt, 1987). The oil crises and the concomitant debates about a possible slowing down of car demand and about a likely qualitative shift towards smaller vehicles provided a further impulse. Internationalization multiplied all these concerns because it brought a new uncertainty about long-term employment prospects due to the higher crossborder relocation potential and the growing specialization of individual production units. Labour representatives became more interested in product and production volume allocations, as well as future product market trends – after all, the allocation of a ‘low seller’ could mean extended short-time work.28 At the same time, knowledgeable bargaining required background information about cross-border trading patterns and profit distribution. In the absence of legal rights to consultation on corporate matters, British labour representatives started to address these issues through ‘normal’ collective-bargaining channels, expressed in a growing number of information disclosure and consultation requests put forward in NJNC meetings and plantlevel committees.29 However, management displayed little enthusiasm to share confidential planning information with the trade unions beyond a minimum level. Vauxhall managers were slightly more forthcoming, while at Ford, the level and quality of information disclosure turned itself into a permanent bone of contention throughout the 1970s.30

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Against this backdrop, alternative approaches were required. On the one hand, information could be collected through appeals to individual union members – a strategy suitable for white-collar organizations that had members with some knowledge about corporate-planning processes. Based on such collections, the technicians’ union DATA elaborated several lengthy documents about Ford of Europe (FoE) in the late 1960s and early 1970s.31 Blue-collar organizations and local shop stewards, on the other hand, needed external support, and internationalization thus induced labour representatives to seek collaboration with union-‘friendly’ research groups at Ruskin College (Ford) and the Centre for Alternative Industrial and Technological Systems (CAITS – Vauxhall). In the case of Ford, Ruskin college research support not only regularly helped to prepare wage claims, but also supplied updates on FoE strategies.32 At the same time, external research ‘input’ was also used to assess strategic options. In 1975, for example, the TGWU commissioned a report from the Ruskin research unit that pondered the likely benefits and drawbacks of bringing Ford under full or partial public ownership.33 Collaboration with external research institutes was complemented by a number of other ad hoc sources of information, for example press articles or material provided by the International Metalworkers’ Federation; bilateral meetings with the usually more knowledgeable German Ford trade union representative added another ‘avenue’ of data gathering (Passingham and Connor, 1977: 7). In the second half of the 1970s, intriguingly, Ford trade unions even drew on London City stockbrokers, such as Phillips & Drew, to contest the company’s annual account statements34 – the mobilization of ‘independent’ economic expertise was to bolster the legitimacy of trade union positions. Given the unfavourable context, these data collection strategies yielded quite remarkable results, most clearly expressed in a whole range of detailed documents submitted to a House of Commons inquiry in the motor industry in 1975. Ford shop stewards supplied a list with data concerning the age of Ford UK equipment and the company preference for German sourcing, while their Vauxhall counterparts elaborated a document on how GM’s new European model and marketing policy deprived Vauxhall of its independent export potential. The white-collar organizations, TASS and ASMTS, provided still more detailed analyses of the ‘geocentric shift’ at Ford and GM.35 However, a good part of such union ‘documentations’ were distorted by conspiracy theories about the companies’ ultimate intention to ‘run down’ UK subsidiaries and, as contemporary Ruskin College researchers confirm,36 plant conveners and union officials often lacked knowledge of the ‘big picture’ of corporate strategies. In the FRG, extensive works council rights and representation on supervisory boards provided a much better basis for the monitoring of corporate structures and strategies. On the one hand, it was much easier than in the UK to build on existing company requirements for information disclosure and consultation. In the case of Ford, works council meetings with management and supervisory board sessions regularly dealt with works council information requests in rela-

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tion to FoE structures and strategies from 1968. Product and marketing policy were in the forefront of interest – in 1968–69, the product development works council repeatedly inquired into the implications of European model standardization for vehicle prices and for Ford’s sales volume in the German market.37 German Ford labour representatives also developed a keen interest in the British–German distribution of design and engineering responsibilities.38 Moreover, fed by a continuous emphasis on German subsidiary autonomy (see chapter 3), there were continuous information requests about FoE’s decisionmaking structures and the role and responsibilities of German managers within these structures.39 At Opel, a new focus beyond ‘pure’ employee welfare emerged after 1973, although, given the initially limited internationalization impact, works council information requests were primarily driven by concerns about the recession and a possible future slowing down of car demand growth. Inquiries about the lack of a small car in Opel’s model range to address future market trends were particularly widespread, while there was also a growing interest in the determination of Opel vehicle prices.40 It was only from 1977–78 that works council meetings increasingly recorded consultation requests in relation to internationalization dynamics, for example with regard to the increase of vehicle assembly capacity in the Belgian Antwerp plant.41 In comparison to their UK counterparts, the co-determination framework thus put German labour representatives in a rather favourable position to obtain information about international corporate structures and strategies. Moreover, the much better resource endowment (e.g. significant number of full-time works council members) allowed the development of additional strategies, e.g. the regular review of the national and international business press. At Ford, works council monitoring of the new European car design regularly drew on articles in automotive journals.42 At the same time, closer informal contacts with subsidiary middle management often delivered information about FoE’s internal functioning – with a particular focus on the German–British balance in decision-making bodies.43 Beyond data gathering and monitoring, British and German trade unions also attempted to exert influence on corporate structures and strategies. Until the late 1970s, this evolved in an ad hoc fashion and in strongly country-specific ways – German labour representatives sought to use their legal rights and simultaneously to adapt co-determination practices to the new international environment, while their British counterparts relied on ‘classic’ voluntarist bargaining instruments and the development of new forms of public and political campaigning. It is to these country (and company-) specific practices that the analysis will now turn. The re-creation of diversity: United Kingdom British company-level bargaining procedures formally did not provide any institutional mechanisms to accommodate union aspirations to influence international corporate strategies, unlike in Germany (see below). Ford UK

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managers repeatedly pointed out that national negotiating committee meetings were designed for bargaining about employment conditions, and not to discuss management prerogatives.44 Nonetheless, from 1968 (Ford) and 1974 (Vauxhall), union negotiators routinely used such meetings not only to request information, but also to press specific union concerns in relation to investment, production and trade (export/import) patterns. For example, on several occasions, Ford UK labour representatives pushed the companies to provide ad hoc assurances that European investment strategies would not negatively affect employment security in the British plants.45 Their Vauxhall counterparts pressed for similar promises during the 1974–75 crisis.46 Industrial action or threats to take such action were repeatedly used to back up union concerns. At Ford, the local DATA/TASS section instituted a series of overtime bans and boycotts to collaborate with German engineers between 1968 and 1970 to force the company to disclose manpower plans for the product development division, as well as to protest against specific aspects of the British–German allocation of design and engineering responsibilities.47 In 1975, Dagenham shop stewards threatened to block the planned import of Ford’s new small car, the Fiesta, demanding the assembly of the vehicle to supply the British and some export markets. Three years later, Ford union officials voiced similar threats to back up their demands for more investment in UK plants.48 At Vauxhall, while militancy was generally less strong, there were also occasional announcements to block the transfer of production activities abroad and to resist the import of Opel-made vehicles.49 While British labour representatives thus attempted to expand the boundaries of ‘classic’ bargaining, it soon turned out, however, that a pure bargaining approach would not be sufficient to address internationalization challenges. Ford and Vauxhall managers usually rejected union advances and it was not easy to mobilize employees beyond ephemeral moments because, unlike in the case of ‘normal’ workplace bargaining, corporate decisions on investment or marketing appeared to have little immediate bearing on the personal situation of individual workers. If these constraints pushed trade unions to go beyond pure bargaining, there were also a number of important ‘pull’ factors. Crucially, industrial relations at Ford and (to a lesser extent) Vauxhall during the 1970s became, to an extent, ‘national affairs’. Ford strikes, for example, were extensively discussed in the national media and in the House of Commons, not least in relation to the question of future investment in the UK.50 Even the Prime Ministers, Wilson, Heath and Callaghan, became personally involved in Ford affairs.51 More generally, the emergence of Ford and GM cross-border productivity benchmarking was closely connected to the broader national debate about whether industrial relations contributed to the country’s much-lamented ‘economic decline’, which reflected back on the legitimacy of trade union demands at the company level. This was crucial not least because workers’ susceptibility to shifts in public opinion could directly affect strike mobilization.

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As a Ford shop steward put it: ‘You have got to make some attempt to get the facts across because the lads will be reading the papers’ (cited in Beynon, 1984: 280). At the same time, the emerging debate about multinational firms provided new opportunities to highlight trade union concerns. The upshot of this new context was a partial shift of union activity beyond the boundaries of the firm, and a concomitant new focus on public campaigning and political lobbying, as well as a greater connection to broader debates within the British labour movement. Much more than in the past, trade union leaders became implicated in Ford (and to a lesser extent) Vauxhall company affairs, even if such interventions were usually of an ad hoc and uncoordinated nature. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, for example, events at Ford crucially informed the emerging TUC debate on ‘multinational firms’, in particular with regard to the challenges posed by production relocation threats and by attempts to introduce ‘alien’ industrial relations practices (e.g. Ford’s 1969 initiative for cooling-off periods and the penalization of wildcat strikes); in turn, companylevel protests against such initiatives were frequently framed as opposition against ‘footloose multinationals’. National rhetoric became a strategic weapon here – the leaders of TGWU and AEU, Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon, used their personal involvement in the settlement of the 1969 and 1971 Ford strikes to rebuff investment boycott threats as a violation of national sovereignty.52 The strong mobilization of Ford trade unionists against the Labour governments’ reform agenda ‘In Place of Strife’ in 1969 and against the US-inspired 1971 Industrial Relations Act also drew, in part, on TUC demands to defend British industrial relations traditions (Friedman and Meredeen, 1980: 226–7). From 1974–75, involvement in national political arenas was reinforced by the dramatic crisis of British Leyland and the associated debates about the future of the country’s motor industry. The set-up of a tripartite ‘sector working party’ had a strong focus on productivity comparisons with continental Ford and GM plants (Beynon, 1984: 347–8), and, against this backdrop, labour representatives spent much effort to publicly deflect notions of the ‘British strike disease’, and to blame productivity shortfalls on lack of investment. At Ford, this culminated in ‘counter-presentations’ to the company’s annual accounts that were designed to demonstrate ‘how Ford is underinvesting and undermining Britain’s economic performance by substantial imports of cars and machinery’.53 At Vauxhall, labour representatives likewise denounced GM’s ‘Opelization’ strategy as damaging for the UK, while they rejected suggestions about ‘lazy British workers’ and the British ‘strike disease’ as unfounded clichés.54 Protectionist campaigns provide another illustration of how internationalization widened the scope of union action. In the early to mid-1970s, many Ford and Vauxhall trade unionists participated in rallies against British EEC membership as a means to stop the ‘gravity shift’ in the companies’ production geographies,55 while arguments about an EEC-enabled ‘flight of capital to Europe’ played an important role in debates at TUC congresses; the example of Ford was often explicitly mentioned.56 After the 1975 referendum, the focus shifted to import controls: widespread

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scepticism about the feasibility of import restrictions notwithstanding, Ford and Vauxhall trade union representatives lobbied local MPs and national union leaderships, and even organized a few rallies in Westminster.57 At the national level, in turn, TUC representatives frequently pointed to the worsening trade balance of the multinational car firms to buttress the case for import restrictions in talks with government ministers.58 Yet, these lobbies had little success. By the late 1970s, at Ford and Vauxhall alike, there was widespread disillusion about the ‘total failure’ of the Labour government to help to address import concerns.59 The same could be said of the broader industrial policy agenda, although here, failure was in part self-inflicted. To be sure, there was no lack of lobbies for government interventions in corporate planning, most extensively between 1968 and 1970 (only Ford), and in 1974–75, when industrial policy agendas of Labour governments seemed most propitious. Ford shop stewards, for example, approached Tony Benn as minister of technology (late 1960s) and minister of industry (1974/75) to urge government scrutiny of specific investment and export-marketing decisions.60 At Vauxhall, similar lobbies occurred, more sporadically, from 1975.61 And again, national union leaders were often closely involved in such initiatives – in 1969, TUC general secretary, Victor Feather, wrote personally to Benn with a number of specific queries in relation to Ford investments in the UK.62 However, this was usually confined to ad hoc initiatives to address shortterm employment concerns, while there was little consistent pressure for state intervention as part of a long-term industrial policy agenda. In 1974–75, for example, the left-leaning TASS was the only union that unequivocally advocated the nationalization of the entire British motor industry.63 In the two major blue-collar unions, AUEW and TGWU, similar demands were raised by left-wing Ford and Vauxhall shop stewards but they found little echo at the leadership level – TGWU officers explicitly maintained that public ownership be restricted to British Leyland, while Detroit should continue to cater for the needs of its UK subsidiaries.64 In 1976, likewise, the TUC’s economic department flatly rejected a local initiative to bring Vauxhall under public ownership.65 On the one hand, these attitudes were nurtured by anxiety about the massive cost burden associated with nationalization – as revealed during the Chrysler crisis in 1974–7566 – on the other hand, they also reflected the traditional scepticism towards radical state intervention within the British trade union movement (see Minkin, 1991). Planning agreements between companies and government were often praised as a less radical and more effective alternative, and they were endorsed by all major British trade unions in the motor industry. However, in the case of Ford, the issue was never seriously pursued at the company level. At Vauxhall, AUEW and TASS officials and Vauxhall shop stewards did lobby for a planning agreement in meetings with MPs and government representatives, yet their initiatives were frustrated by successful company obstruction against the backdrop of a ‘watering down’ of Labour’s industrial policy agenda after 1975.67

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Overall, then, despite a variety of initiatives and notwithstanding their success in fending off concession-bargaining pressure, British trade union attempts to influence Ford and GM corporate strategies achieved few results. Given continued employment growth and a remarkable advance in employment conditions this was not a major and urgent problem during the 1970s. Yet, this was to change in the 1980s and 1990s. The re-creation of diversity: Germany While internationalization entailed a shift of trade union policy beyond the boundaries of the firm in the UK, German union strategies remained much more focused on the company level. For one thing, national ‘pull’ incentives were missing: media coverage of corporate internationalization processes at Ford and GM was largely limited to the local and business press, while public debates about multinational firms were less extensive than in the UK and usually focused on the issue of foreign takeovers (Safarian, 1993: 322–8). Industrial policy of federal and state governments was geared towards support of ‘national champions’ but never envisaged the control of MNC subsidiaries (Reich, 1990). Country-wide trade union debates about multinational firms were vivid in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but receded into the background subsequently. In complete contrast to the UK, a 1977 IG Metall congress motion expressed satisfaction that ‘the impudent threats to relocate production and investment have receded’.68 Likewise, internationalization did not entail greater participation of national union officialdom in company affairs until the late 1970s. At Ford, there was some occasional IG Metall headquarters’ involvement in the handling of lay-offs following supply shortages caused by strikes in the UK, especially with regard to compensation payments from the federal labour office.69 Yet, these remained exceptional interventions. Next to weak ‘pull’ factors, the ‘push’ dynamic was also limited because, compared to the UK, the co-determination framework provided more opportunities to deal with the challenges posed by internationalization. It was no coincidence that British Ford and Vauxhall trade union representatives frequently approached their German counterparts with requests for background information on corporate strategies.70 In line with broader national trends (Bamberg et al., 1989), the two tiers of co-determination served different functions. On the one hand, as mentioned earlier, participation in supervisory board and ‘economic committee’ (Wirtschafsausschuss) meetings primarily helped to collect information about international corporate strategies and to voice concerns about these strategies. On the other hand, works council representatives deployed co-determination rights in attempts to influence company decisions. In the early 1970s, for example, the Ford Cologne-Niehl works council repeatedly invoked its codetermination right with regard to the timing of the annual holiday period to oppose a FoE-inspired plan to reduce the duration of the plants’ summer shutdown; a conciliation committee (Einigungsstelle) ruling eventually decided

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the matter in favour of the works council.71 The works council in the Ford Saarlouis plant (unsuccessfully) attempted to use co-determination on overtime to ‘force’ the company to increase local assembly capacity.72 Ford works councils also actively tried to stretch the limits of co-determination – there were various (mostly failed) attempts, particularly in the product development division, to achieve more influence over cross-border relocation decisions by claiming the applicability of the works constitution paragraph on ‘alteration of establishment’ (Betriebsänderung).73 Another paragraph on ‘disturbance of establishment order’ (Störung des Betriebsfriedens) was invoked to achieve the dismissal of posted foreign managers who had allegedly shown disrespect for co-determination.74 In the case of Opel, given the initially weak internationalization dynamic, similar initiatives were confined to a few examples, such as the Rüsselsheim works council attempt to reverse the loss of Opel’s commercial vehicle programme in 1975.75 However, the exercise of co-determination in a more international environment was not without difficulties. At Ford, in particular, the remoteness of FoE’s new decision-making structures presented a structural impediment to effective co-determination – as in other foreign-owned firms (Bamberg et al., 1989: 252–74). The power of the German subsidiary’s supervisory board became much more circumscribed, as did local management discretion with regard to day-to-day issues of production and manpower planning. In the case of Opel, works council complaints about the limited effectiveness of co-determination started to be voiced in the late 1970s when GM launched major investment programmes in other European countries, which were perceived to negatively affect employment security in Germany.76 Against this backdrop, unsurprisingly, German Ford and Opel labour representatives placed great hopes in the co-determination reform debates of the 1970s – exceptionally connecting interest representation to broader national trade union campaigns. In particular, there was determined support for national IG Metall and DGB campaigns for supervisory board parity.77 However, while the 1972 and 1976 co-determination reforms did bring improvements – especially with regard to labour representatives’ access to information78 – they fell short of union ambitions (Schneider, 2000: 344–8) and did not remove the problem of effectiveness limitations due to remote international decision-making. While lobbying for political reform, German Ford labour representatives also set out to adapt co-determination to the new international environment and to explore complementary strategies of interest representation. On the one hand, economic committee meetings were regularly used to initiate informal contacts with high-ranking Fordwerke managers who also held important positions in the FoE hierarchy. In the product development division, such informal channels were frequently explored to press specific concerns with regard to the British–German distribution of design and engineering activities.79 Supervisory board meetings served to establish contacts with European and US top managers on the shareholder ‘bench’.80 On the other hand, the co-determination framework was also used to institu-

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tionalize more formal arrangements to address internationalization challenges. The product development works council, for example, repeatedly used a soft-law category under the works constitution act – the so-called Regelungsabsprache – to ensure consultation prior to cross-border relocation measures.81 Moreover, there was also some emphasis on employee mobilization, for example through the initiation of petitions or ‘open letters’ to denounce specific aspects of European reorganization (relocations, model and marketing policy, alleged violations of co-determination rights, etc.).82 At times, such protests were even voiced in the media, although this was confined to the local press.83 In the wider context of the post-war history of co-determination, there was nothing path-breaking about these new departures – informal lobbying had always been part of works council co-determination, while a trend towards more employee and media mobilization was discernible in many large German firms since the late 1960 (Bamberg et al., 1989). What was specific about Ford, however, was the ‘two level game’ of interaction due to the involvement of the new European holding. Ford of Europe managers and strategies were often strongly criticized in works assemblies, at times the portrayal of the European holding as ‘our common enemy’ was even used to overcome divisions within the local union organization.84 At the same time, however, works council leaders were anxious to avoid a weakening of German management positions within the European holding because of domestic rows. A typical example occurred in 1969 in the product development centre: plans for the relocation of a department from Merkenich to Dunton caused strong protests but works council leaders resisted conflict escalation that could endanger negotiations with subsidiary management. The idea to file a labour law complaint against the company was withdrawn after German management promised to advocate a reversal of the plans within FoE.85 Clearly, as we have seen in chapter 3, this cooperative attitude also had a conflictual dimension: to varying degrees in the different divisions, works councillors now reminded German management of its ‘obligation’ to determinedly pursue Fordwerke interests and autonomy vis-à-vis FoE.86 ‘Classic’ labour– management conflicts were thus superimposed by ‘autonomy conflicts’ (see Rehder, 2003: 177ff.) in which labour representatives fought ‘on behalf’ of local managers for the latter’s prerogatives, not least in order to ensure the effectiveness of their own co-determination rights. In the case of Opel, a pattern only started to emerge in the late 1970s. Given the absence of a separate European headquarters and the much less far-reaching degree of cross-border integration, the concern about subsidiary autonomy was missing here. At the same time, there was less reliance on informal lobbying, which reflected not only different internationalization profiles, but also different local patterns of interest representation: contrary to Ford where works council approaches became more moderate after the disastrous Türkenstreik in 1973,87 the opposite dynamic occurred at Opel – from 1975, the new works council leader, Richard Heller, consciously distanced himself from his

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predecessors’ emphasis on a close and informal relationship with Opel management (Neugebauer, 1996: 24–5). Internationalization challenges were addressed in line with this general approach, focusing on a campaign for a formal management guarantee on future employment security. This objective had first been pursued during the 1974–75 recession and then also in relation to the company’s domestic rationalization scheme in 1977 (Streeck, 1984: 118–35). By the late 1970s, a similar guarantee was sought to protect Opel workers from the alleged negative repercussions of GM’s ‘over-expansion’ of production capacity in other European countries.88 In parallel, the works council launched a quite aggressive public campaign against GM plans.89 The 1980s and 1990s: internationalization and defensive trade unions If internationalization had helped rather than constrained trade union assertiveness during the 1970s, the opposite dynamic became clearly dominant from the early 1980s. Faced with a much less union-friendly external environment – particularly so in the UK – and much stronger management pressure on headcount levels and employment conditions, trade unions were driven onto the defensive: agenda-setting power shifted in favour of management, and the focus of union activity shifted from the push for wage and welfare improvements, to the defence of earlier achieved standards. Importantly, however, this did not mean the eclipse of assertiveness. At the same time, the trend to move beyond classic welfare agendas accelerated during the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed, by the turn of the millennium, in different ways in the two countries and companies, labour representatives had practically turned into ‘shadow managers’. As internationalization accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s, it not only entailed more convergence pressure, but also growing country- and companyspecific effects on interest representation patterns. Reflecting the contrasting development of national industrial relations during this period (see chapter 1), changes were incremental in the FRG, but more turbulent in the UK. Convergence (I): internationalization as a constraint on trade union power That internationalization turned into an important restraint of British and German trade union power at Ford and GM during the 1980s and 1990s is easily understood if we recall Silver’s (2003) model of international labour conflict ‘migration’: as German and British Ford and GM subsidiaries ceased employment expansion and instead started to cut headcount levels, capital ‘exit’ became a much more serious threat than it had been before. Against the backdrop of a much more hostile political and macroeconomic environment, the ‘defensive shift’ marked a radical break in the UK, which was first discernible during the 1980–81 recession. Notwithstanding initial militant noises to resist employment cuts, Ford and Vauxhall trade union negotiators soon concentrated on suggestions to mitigate and soften job losses, e.g. through

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short-time working and early retirement programmes.90 At the same time, resistance against management pressure to ‘catch up’ with continental efficiency levels started to dwindle – not least against the backdrop of accelerated investment competition. A growing number of trade union representatives grudgingly accepted that ‘European standards’ should be used to determine workloads and manning levels, and greater efforts were made to reduce the incidence of wildcat strikes. At Vauxhall, given the again very precarious commercial position of the company, this process went faster – as early as 1981 senior managers publicly praised shop stewards and employees for their ‘new realism’.91 Union stances in wage negotiations reflected clear signs of moderation in the early 1980s, while management’s productivity counter-agenda (relaxation of skill and job demarcations, revision of work standards, etc.) increasingly dominated bargaining processes.92 The Ellesmere Port plant – the central spot of militancy during the 1970s – now became the ‘turnaround’ model: committed to secure more GM investment in the future, shop-floor leaders actively collaborated in raising the plant’s performance, not least through more determined efforts to reduce the number of work stoppages.93 At Ford, the shift was slower and much more controversial. In 1981, the NJNC trade union chairman warned employees that wildcat disputes, if left unchecked, could precipitate production relocations abroad. Regular plant visits by national officers were to reduce the incidence of stoppages (Beynon, 1984: 364). One year later, NJNC leaders launched a dramatic call to ‘save Dagenham’, which referred to company documents ‘proving the disadvantages of manufacturing cars at Dagenham compared to elsewhere in the world’, and concluded that ‘our future lies in the willingness of workers to utilize the facilities we have’.94 However, while such attitudes became widespread among full-time officers, the situation looked different at the local level, where many shop stewards fought rearguard battles to defend established workplace customs. At Halewood, long plant-wide stoppages forced the company to withdraw a new disciplinary code in 1981 and to reinstate a dismissed worker in 1983 (Darlington, 1994: 204–22). It was only in the second half of the 1980s that such resistance fizzled out. Against the backdrop of a series of NJNC ‘efficiency agreements’ in relation to job mobility, working-time flexibility and quality control (Tolliday, 1991: 105f.), stoppages fell to low numbers by the late 1980s. TGWU conveners gave orders to break picket lines of striking craftsmen out of fears that ‘disruption could lead the company . . . to withdraw investment at British plants’ (Darlington, 1994: 258). In the two German Ford and GM subsidiaries, successive large-scale headcount and cost reduction programmes put organized labour on the defensive as well. Trade union agendas to improve employee welfare receded into the background. Redundancies due to recession, rationalization and outsourcing now dominated works council agendas. Nonetheless, given the much less hostile industrial and political environment, the ‘defensive turn’ was less radical than in Britain. Employment losses were less

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dramatic (for Ford, see Tolliday, 2003b: 143; Thomes, 2003: 174), and there was initially no direct concession-bargaining pressure. If management made attempts in this direction, the works councils successfully resisted, as for example with regard to bonus payments at Opel in 1981.95 It was only from the mid-1980s that union defensiveness became much more pronounced. At Ford, first signs were discernible during the 1984 IG Metall strike, which found only half-hearted support in the local union organization, not least due to management warnings about possible future investment losses. The works council accommodated management requests for continued component deliveries to other European locations, which caused a serious row with the regional IG Metall.96 The real turning point then came in 1985, when the central works council, confronted with company threats to relocate the product development division, agreed to a five-year restructuring plan, which included not only headcount reductions, but also substantial wage and fringe benefit concessions.97 Further concessions in terms of working-time flexibility followed in 1987–88, as the works council accepted the extension of weekend work to enhance the investment allocation chances of German Ford plants.98 These developments went hand in hand with a declining participation in regional IG Metall ‘warning strikes’ – in 1987 the ‘strike’ was held in a breakfast break to avoid production losses – and appeals to employees to refrain from ‘imprudent’ militancy, which could provide FoE with a pretext to run down the German subsidiary.99 In the case of Opel, the rupture with earlier assertive strategies was even starker. Still in 1983–84, the works council adopted a militant stance in relation to a large-scale rationalization programme,100 while the Opel trade union organization displayed strong and militant support for IG Metall’s thirty-fivehour campaign; the Rüsselsheim plant itself became a strike target, which entailed bitter labour–management conflicts.101 Subsequently, three consecutive years of Opel losses and the acceleration of outsourcing and locational competition in the wake of the creation of the GM Europe headquarters made works council negotiation stances somewhat more moderate, yet resistance against labour cost-cutting remained strong.102 However, Opel labour representatives ultimately could not prevent concession bargaining: in March 1988, driven by fears of future investment and job losses, the works council in the Kaiserslautern plant agreed to a far-reaching extension of machine running times and weekend shifts, which, after much internal acrimony, was replicated in the other German locations. In 1989, this was followed by the acceptance of permanent three-shift work in the assembly plants.103 In the 1990s, the concession-bargaining dynamic magnified as ‘scare scenarios’ became much more dramatic. From the 1992–93 recession, Ford and GM executives repeatedly contemplated plant closures as an instrument to reduce European overcapacity.104 Across the continent, a dynamic of competitive ‘underbidding’ for investment and production unfolded, culminating in a quick succession of concession-bargaining agreements in the different European Ford

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and GM locations between 1997 and 1999 (Zagelmeyer, 2001). In fact, over the course of the decade, German and British labour representatives in both firms were even driven to accept an increasingly similar set of concessions that ranged from working-time flexibility (new shift patterns, annual working-time accounts, flexible weekend working), to the introduction of teamwork and the reduction of absenteeism (ibid.). If internationalization thus contributed to a far-reaching ‘defensive shift’ in British and German trade union policies from the mid-1980s, it is important to emphasize that this shift cannot be equated with the eclipse of assertiveness. While (more or less rapidly) accepting the logic of ‘concession bargaining’, labour representatives sought to limit employee sacrifices, to ensure ‘soft’ ways of managing headcount reductions and to obtain long-term employment security commitments for the remaining workers. Again, approaches varied between the two countries and companies. In the German case, assertiveness remained higher at Opel than at Ford. In 1980–81, the local IG Metall unit at Rüsselsheim organized employee petitions and a demonstration outside the factory gate to protest against employment losses due to GM’s world car schemes, and there were serious, if abortive, debates about more militant actions (e.g. a factory occupation).105 The years 1987–88 and 1995 again witnessed campaigns against GME-driven rationalization schemes to cut labour costs, which included the ‘creative’ use of co-determination rights to block overtime work.106 Moreover, once negotiations on restructuring got under way, they were often protracted because of works council objections, usually accompanied by internal conflicts between and within local union organizations. The Rüsselsheim works council for a long time upheld its opposition to weekend work without extra compensation in the face of local agreements in the Bochum and Kaiserslautern plants.107 In turn, there was a great deal of resistance at Bochum against the major restructuring negotiations in 1993 and 1997–98, in part because internationalization turned into a major divisive issue within the traditionally militant Bochum union organization itself – oppositional factions denounced the works council leadership for allegedly ‘selling out’ hard-won achievements.108 At Fordwerke, there was less principled resistance against internationalization-driven headcount and labour cost cuts as long as rationalization schemes provided for social ‘cushioning’ (early retirement, grade protection, retraining, etc.) – and as long as they did not ‘discriminate’ against German plants.109 This is not to say that management–labour conflicts were absent during the 1980s and 1990s. ‘Disguised’ overtime boycotts through insistence on co-determination rights took place regularly during negotiations on restructuring – from the threatened relocation of product development in 1985, to crises in relation to future Fiesta and Escort assembly in 1993 and 1996.110 However, reflecting the generally more moderate works council strategies and Ford Germany’s less dominant position within the European business network, such actions occurred less frequently than at Opel, and they focused on protests against

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alleged FoE ‘machinations’, rather than on resistance against employee sacrifices as such.111 Moreover, in large part due to skilful leadership of the works council chairman, Wilfried Kuckelkorn, internationalization proved internally to be a unifying rather than divisive issue, which meant that local militant impulses were kept much more in check than at Opel. Following the 1985 restructuring deal, the works council did come under pressure from dissatisfied employees and left-wing groups.112 In the longer term, however, as testified by the consistently high share of IG Metall votes in works council elections after 1987, the moderate leadership enjoyed widespread employee support113 – not least, as we have seen, because of the discursive mobilization of ‘national unity’ in election campaigns. In the UK, the ‘defensive turn’ of the 1980s and 1990s did not turn the unions into management stooges either. Wage militancy certainly declined, and Ford and Vauxhall labour representatives were repeatedly trapped in a situation where their rejection of wage offers was overturned in employee meetings or ballots – not least against the backdrop of company ‘warnings’ of plant closures due to European overcapacity.114 Yet, against the backdrop of rising productivity, union negotiators did at times take determined bargaining stances, backed up, as we have seen, by notions of ‘European parity’ and patriotic rhetoric related to the ‘illegitimate’ appropriation of ‘British profits’. In the second half of the 1980s, on several occasions, union strike threats led Ford and Vauxhall managements to step up wage offers. At Ford, a two-week-long pay strike occurred in 1988, while sectional walkouts still caused disruption in the Halewood plant in the early 1990s (Darlington, 1994: 222–4). In 1995, successful strike ballots in both firms led to (much exaggerated) speculation about a ‘return of the 1970s’.115 At the same time, ‘efficiency bargaining’ was often protracted and not always a complete victory for management. At Vauxhall, for example, management pressure to change shift patterns started as early as 1981, but trade union insistence on unchanged meal breaks and a higher shift premium stalled progress for a long time, and it was only due to the AEU’s ‘new realist’ shift and ensuing AEU–TGWU tensions that an agreement was eventually reached in the late 1980s.116 At Ford, TGWU resistance against a Nissan-style single-union and ‘no-strike’ agreement in relation to a planned new electronics plant in Dundee led the company to move the project from Britain to Spain in 1988.117 In 1990, Vauxhall union negotiators made considerable concessions to secure a new engine plant investment at Ellesmere Port, but successfully rejected a number of management demands (e.g. in relation to arbitration), which they deemed to reflect ‘pure opportunism by the company’.118 Even in the emergency negotiations to prevent plant closures at Vauxhall in 1998, union representatives managed to wrest a few limited compromises from the company (amount of mandatory overtime, new starter rates).119 From the mid-1990s, moreover, British trade unions insisted on employment security commitments in line with those given to German and Belgian Ford and

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GM employees, at times against considerable initial management objections.120 There was much consternation when the two firms reneged on these commitments by closing the Luton and Dagenham assembly plants in 2000, but union responses again reconfirmed the general approach to internationalization in the 1990s: while refraining from militant mobilization, union negotiators sought to ‘limit the damages’ – ensuring social ‘cushioning’ for the concerned workers (severance payments, training schemes, etc.) and long-term investment guarantees for the remaining production locations.121 Convergence (II): towards shadow management While union interest in corporate structures and strategies in the 1970s had drawn inspiration from the wider debate on industrial democracy, the transformation towards fully-fledged ‘shadow management’ in the 1980s and 1990s was strongly influenced by the debate’s increasingly close link between industrial democracy and ‘competitiveness’. In the automobile industry, this was discernible across the European continent (see Zagelmeyer, 2001). Ford and General Motors can be seen as model cases – on the one hand, trade unions further extended the scope of their activities, but, on the other hand, these new roles also implied growing involvement in the control of employee behaviour. In Germany, as during the 1970s, co-determination provided extensive access to information, and a good resource base enabled Ford and Opel works councils to professionally develop data collection through informal networks inside the firm and the monitoring of the domestic and international press. Works councils specifically sought the support of executive employees with detailed knowledge about corporate structures.122 Further support was provided by regular analyses of company accounts by IG Metall’s economic department.123 Occasionally, works council leaders even sought the advice of professional researchers – the Ford works council archive, for example, contains a 1985 manuscript by social scientist, Wolfgang Streeck, which urged unions to develop alternative product and production management strategies.124 Thus equipped, Ford and Opel works councils not only routinely monitored corporate strategies in relation to investment and production volumes, but also engaged in critical assessments of product technology, design, advertising and marketing programmes. Opel works council documents from the 1980s record intense concern about the company’s failure to develop catalytic converters and its presentation at international automobile exhibitions, while Ford labour representatives worried about high interest rates on the Ford bank’s consumer credits and the absence of a notchback version for the Sierra.125 Overall, until the mid-1980s, ‘shadow management’ was more pronounced in the case of Ford due to the presence of a European management headquarters (yet missing at GM). The central Ford works council chairman, Kuckelkorn, came to see himself as a ‘watchdog’, whose reviewing of corporate strategies was to uncover FoE ‘mismanagement’, or even to thwart malign ‘machinations’ at the expense of the German subsidiary. Transfer prices and the cross-border

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distribution of profits were a constant core concern, as were investment allocation processes. By 1984–85, this culminated in the regular elaboration of ‘alternative’ investment plans in order to ‘unmask’ allegedly manipulated FoE cost calculations.126 At the same time, FoE management structures were monitored with regard to an alleged German under-representation, and the works council also made numerous suggestions to improve the position of the German subsidiary within the European network, for example through more aggressive sales and advertising methods on the domestic market, or the skilful use of factory logistics to make investment bids more competitive.127 After the creation of the GME headquarters in 1986, Opel labour representatives caught up on their Ford counterparts. Accelerated intra-firm competition for production and investment pushed the works council towards a systematic monitoring of plant capacities and production volumes across the continent. Suspicions that GME was ‘fleecing’ the German subsidiary triggered regular reviews of transfer prices and investment cost calculations. Moreover, as in the case of Ford, the works council became increasingly involved in the monitoring of outsourcing processes.128 In the 1990s, the scope of ‘shadow management’ further widened. For one thing, German labour representatives also started to take a more active interest in the reviewing of corporate leadership personnel, and – as in the case of the 1998 recomposition of the Opel board – they occasionally even tried to actively intervene in processes of leadership change.129 Still more importantly, the Ford and Opel works councils now focused on the scrutiny of long-term company business plans in order to secure German sourcing of specific assembly and manufacturing operations in the future.130 In the UK, ‘shadow management’ also became more pronounced even if it did not reach the same degree as in Germany. From the early 1980s, there was hardly a company, or plant-level negotiating committee meeting at Ford, which did not feature trade union requests for information disclosure about production schedules, import and investment levels. In the Ford Dagenham assembly plant, for example, union pressure forced management to supply Fiesta and Cortina/Sierra schedule and import figures on a monthly basis from 1981 onwards.131 ‘Tied imports’ became the central focus of monitoring throughout the decade, and here unions could draw not only on their own data collections, but also on numerous media reports and research papers (Tolliday, 2003b: 98–9). As a result, the ‘Dagenham panel’ of union officials could compile detailed lists of necessary investments to reduce the level of imported components and built-up vehicles (Greater London Council, 1986: 35–8). At Vauxhall, likewise, labour representatives continuously reviewed the import content of the UK-built models Astra and Cavalier and closely monitored company plans to import the new small vehicle Corsa. Opposition against these latter plans nurtured a far-reaching campaign to upgrade UK production facilities (see below), in the course of which plant conveners made detailed suggestions for additional investment to increase plant capacity and output.132 Vauxhall management noted with concern that this had led to a

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situation ‘where the trade unions are virtually monitoring management’s performance’.133 In the 1990s, the focus on ‘tied imports’ waned, yet ‘shadow management’ became still more accentuated, as British labour representatives now regularly engaged in detailed assessments of UK plant capacities and production volumes in comparison to those in Ford and GM factories in Germany, Spain and Belgium. At Vauxhall, in particular, unions became alarmed about the relatively small size of the Luton and Ellesmere Port plants, and they made numerous suggestions to increase capacity and make the plants less vulnerable through higher assembly volumes and the allocation of new component manufacturing activities.134 In the case of Ford, the removal of Sierra production from Dagenham in 1989 triggered a similar dynamic.135 Reflecting the ‘defensive shift’ of German and British union politics, ‘shadow management’ increasingly implied a strong focus on production efficiency. During the 1980s, Ford UK plant conveners initiated the set-up of ‘scheduling committees’ to identify causes for production shortfalls (ibid.: 37) and became involved in the management of new model launches.136 In Vauxhall’s Ellesmere Port plant, shop-floor leaders were constantly concerned about low line speeds and the failure to achieve schedules: ‘We are presently running at 25 jph [jobs per hour] as opposed to the 35 jph promised. We are stopping for reliefs, which cost products daily. We have insufficient labour to increase speeds other than minimally.’137 In the 1990s, the trend became still more accentuated, expressed in the increasingly close involvement of Ford and Vauxhall trade unionists in the elaboration of local investment bids. In the case of Ford, for example, labour representatives repeatedly joined forces with Dagenham management in presentations of ‘business cases’ to FoE HQ delegates.138 German Opel and Ford trade unionists’ involvement in the micro-management of production efficiency went still further. Not least to counteract growing cost pressure from the mid-1980s, works council representatives made continuous suggestions to ‘optimize’ the efficiency of production, including proposals to alter factory layouts and shift patterns and to ensure a better integration of production planning and manufacturing.139 There was also a growing concern about the need for a ‘rejuvenation’ of workforces to keep up with growing performance pressure, which spurred a consistent works council lobby for early retirement schemes.140 ‘Shadow management’ of production efficiency gave labour representatives new opportunities for the critical review of management processes, exposing instances of waste and ‘mismanagement’. In the UK, Ford and Vauxhall conveners pointed to maintenance breakdowns and production line bottlenecks as causes of output shortfall, and at times this was connected to suspicions about corporate strategies to deliberately hold down UK output.141 In Germany, labour representatives castigated extra costs incurred due to quality defects as a result of outsourcing and relocation processes, which employees were subsequently called upon to pay for through wage concessions.142

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Yet, there was also a new emphasis on the control of employee behaviour. In the UK, this was primarily related to the containment of work stoppages. At Vauxhall’s Ellesmere Port plant, the TGWU branch exhorted members in 1985 that ‘discipline is the essence of all good organisation’ and warned workers against walking out in defiance of decisions by in-plant trade union bodies.143 Plant conveners also advocated temporary higher workloads in order ‘to push the schedule through the hole’.144 At Ford Halewood, likewise, senior stewards acted as permanent ‘fire-fighters’ to prevent wildcat work stoppages. When stoppages occurred, employees were threatened with disciplinary measures or visited in their homes to ensure a speedy return to work. During a sectional strike by craftsmen in 1990, TGWU conveners even instructed members to cross the strikers’ picket lines (Darlington, 1994: 237–9). In Germany, the tendency towards works council control of employee behaviour was expressed in different forms, for example in growing involvement in the micro management of quality drives and of employee transfers across workplaces, as well as in the regular monitoring of employee sickness and absenteeism records. At Ford, from the mid-1980s, the works council constantly conjured the FoE enemy image to convince employees of the need for sacrifices – from the endorsement of workplace transfers and retraining, to the acceptance of shortened rest breaks and regular overtime work.145 At Opel, there was much less enthusiasm. For example, a 1993 agreement coupling the payment of Christmas bonuses to the reduction of sickness levels was only accepted after a great deal of controversy. Nonetheless, works council leaders felt they had no choice than to go along.146 ‘Shadow management’ reached its peak in the second half of the 1990s against the backdrop of continuous cutback and plant closure threats. German and British trade unionists now persistently scrutinized restructuring plans and insisted on production capacity commitments for the future. This reached its peak with the already mentioned ‘investment security’ agreements between 1997 and 1999, which contained detailed investment promises for individual plants and locations in exchange for trade union concessions. In fact, there was a great deal of interdependence, as negotiations in the UK were directly triggered by the news of the conclusion of agreements in the German (and Belgian) Ford and GM subsidiaries. Importantly, the investment guarantees contained in the German and Belgian agreements made British plants more vulnerable to closure, all the more since facilities in the UK were smaller in size than those on the continent. As a Ford UK NJNC document put it: ‘We watched with interest the way in which the company agreed to safeguard jobs in Germany by providing investments and volume commitments up to the year 2010 . . . Such guarantees make jobs here in Britain more vulnerable during any future downturn. We are looking to agree this sort of underpinning here in the UK in order to equalize priority for sourcing volume.’147 Clearly, these ‘domino’ investment-bargaining cycles highlight more than anything else the significant convergence of German and British trade union practices at Ford and General Motors during the 1990s. Yet, the implications of

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these investment agreements were quite different in the two countries, as they remained embedded in country-specific patterns of interest representation, which internationalization helped to reshape. How this played out precisely is the subject of the final two sections of this chapter. The re-creation of diversity: Germany In Germany – at Opel and Fordwerke alike – the co-determination framework continued to provide the key resources of interest representation. Yet, building on earlier precedents and in line with a more general trend in many other large German companies (see Rehder, 2003: 189–97), the ‘classic’ emphasis on statutory co-determination rights declined. Instead, the informal and contractual use of the statutory framework acquired more and more importance in dealing with internationalization challenges. Certainly, this was a slow transformation. Still in the 1980s, statutory works council rights were quite frequently invoked in response to corporate internationalization. The Opel works council, for example, made several (failed) attempts to couple its agreement to technological rationalization measures to company commitments to refrain from cross-border relocations in the future.148 At Ford, the works council invoked rights in relation to paragraphs 111 and 112 of the works constitution act (‘alteration of establishment’) and blocked pension pay-outs for retiring migrant employees to overcome FoE resistance to hiring in the German subsidiary.149 Even during the 1990s, despite a now markedly reduced incidence, such strategies did not disappear altogether, particularly in the case of Opel. In 1993, for example, the works council in the traditionally militant Bochum plant called a ‘conciliation committee’ to challenge a GM Europe decision to cancel a nightshift arrangement and also took the company to court for alleged disregard of works council rights in relation to outsourcing decisions.150 Moreover, in both firms, works council representatives publicly lobbied for the amendment of co-determination law to enhance statutory works council rights with regard to internationalization.151 However, as complaints about the ineffectiveness of statutory rights due to remote international decision-making multiplied, the focus of interest representation increasingly shifted towards alternative avenues. One of them was informal lobbying through personal contacts. In the case of Ford, first signs of this had already been discernible during the 1970s, but the pattern now became much more consistent. In the wake of the 1976 co-determination law (Mitbestimmungsgesetz), the composition of the Ford supervisory board changed not only because of a new quasi-parity between capital and labour, but also because of a much increased presence of FoE and Detroit HQ management representatives on the shareholder bench. For labour representatives, this enhanced opportunities for informal meetings prior or after supervisory board meetings.152 There was a special emphasis on the build-up of informal networks with US headquarters management, which was seen as necessary to counteract ‘anti-German’ FoE plans. In 1984, a works council delegation even travelled to Detroit to protest against an allegedly ‘falsified’ FoE investment cost calculation.153

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Over time, informal lobbying became increasingly concentrated in the hands of the works council chairman, Kuckelkorn, who due to his long tenure, undisputed leadership and strong interest in co-management, gained a stature close to that of Fordwerke chairmen. In the 1990s, Kuckelkorn frequently engaged in direct informal negotiations with FoE and even FMC chairmen – at times alone, at times in tandem with subsidiary management. In 1993, for example, he obtained promises for more investment and subsidiary autonomy from FoE chairman, Jacques Nasser, and one year later a joint trip to Detroit with the Fordwerke labour director cleared the way for the subsequent long-term investment agreement.154 In 1996–97, the breakthrough to the conclusion of yet another investment agreement was again achieved in a confidential meeting between Kuckelkorn, Fordwerke chairman, Albert Caspers, and Ford’s CEO, Alex Trotman. What was crucial in all these negotiations was that Ford’s corporate leadership trusted Kuckelkorn’s wellproven ability to ‘deliver’ deals which would guarantee substantial labour cost savings in exchange for investment commitments.155 In the case of Opel, informal lobbying developed later, as the need for informal contacts to international decision-makers was less pressing prior to the creation of GM Europe in 1986. Moreover, when such contacts did become urgent from the late 1980s, they were less concentrated on the person of the works council chairman.156 In 1998, for example, several Opel labour representatives made a concerted attempt to exercise informal influence upon the selection process for a new Opel CEO and simultaneously lobbied for the establishment of an ‘Opel enterprise forum’, which would hold annual informal workshops and would bring together all members of the board, supervisory board, central works council and economic committee.157 Moreover, informal talks served information and lobbying purposes, while, unlike at Ford, they did not prefigure subsequent concession bargaining. In 1993, typically, the negotiations about a ‘site pact’ (Standortvertrag) were launched by management’s unilateral cancellation of the works agreement on bonus payments, rather than by any prior tacit ‘deal’.158 The co-determination framework was not only used to develop new forms of informal lobbying, but also to safeguard employment through contractual means. In 1981, the Opel Rüsselsheim works council was still unsuccessful with its request for a written agreement that would legally bind management ‘to maintain the current headcount level’ in the plant. In 1984, the works council then did achieve an agreement prohibiting ‘enforced redundancies’ (betriebsbedinge Kündigungen) for the next five years.159 At Ford, the works council pursued a different approach, which focused on longer-term company commitments to guarantee the existence of German locations (Standorte) rather than specific headcount targets. For the first time, such a commitment was achieved as part of the 1985 restructuring agreement, and it was reiterated in a 1988 document, which committed the company to ‘make all necessary investments to ensure the continued existence of all production locations in Germany’. Moreover, FoE gave specific guarantees for the allocation of new engine production to Cologne.160

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The ‘Ford approach’ turned out to have a more lasting impact – by the late 1980s, it also spread to Opel: in 1989, the Rüsselsheim works council successfully pushed for an agreement that guaranteed the plant a constant share of GM Europe production volumes until 1994.161 In the 1990s, as elaborated earlier, a series of new agreements were concluded in both firms, which traded detailed investment commitments for labour cost concessions. In all cases, this went hand in hand with significant headcount reductions. Opel works council representatives, too, had resigned themselves to the idea that it made more sense to strive for the survival of production locations, rather than for a fixed number of jobs.162 Nonetheless, the older differences in emphasis were still discernible – unlike their Ford counterparts, Opel labour representatives insisted on additional company assurances not to resort to ‘enforced redundancies’ for a given period of time. This gave employees a more direct job guarantee, as company choices to reduce headcount levels were contractually restricted to the use of voluntary early retirement and separation schemes.163 Formally, all these were agreements were concluded as Betriebsvereinbarungen (plant agreements) under the legal works constitution framework. Yet, as Rehder (2003: 191–3) has argued, such agreements constituted a subtle shift in practice from co-determination through rights, to co-determination through contract: rather than invoking specific statutory rights, the works councils exercised influence by tying the companies to contractually specified employment and/or investment guarantees. Indeed, in some cases, on top of wage concessions, labour representatives also temporarily ‘traded’ certain rights as part of such contractual deals. In 1985, for example, the Ford works council relinquished its right to oversee the selection of employees in situations of redundancy, not least because it shared management concerns about the need to ‘rejuvenate’ the Fordwerke workforce.164 In the 1990s, in both firms, several agreements included a provision that, in advance, ‘guaranteed’ works council assent to a limited number of extra weekend shifts.165 Particularly at Opel, this entailed anxious reflections about the danger that such deals could make works council politics ‘toothless’.166 At the same time, German labour representatives acquired the opportunity to legally enforce contractual guarantees in the courts, and at Ford, in particular, the works council repeatedly threatened to take legal action. In 1987, FoE abandoned scenarios to close a German assembly plant not least because of the likelihood of a legal challenge by the works council, which would have caused major financial and public relations damages.167 In the 1990s, again, rumours about alleged FoE plans to renege on some investment promises triggered repeated works council threats to go to court – chairman Kuckelkorn warned that the agreements made Detroit directly liable for any resulting financial damages.168 If the (changing) use of the co-determination framework continued to provide the backbone for interest representation in the 1980s and 1990s, other elements were also important. From the mid-1980s, fuelled by ‘national autonomy’ rhetoric, German labour representatives started to invoke German stock

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corporation law to protest against international interference with subsidiary autonomy.169 In 1987, for example, the Opel works council took the company to the regional Darmstadt court, claiming that the introduction of a new crossborder communication system deprived the Opel board of its legally prescribed ability to steer company affairs on its own authority (Klebe and Roth, 1987: 106–13). In both firms, German labour representatives constantly denounced European interference as a hidden form of dependency without the existence of a controlling agreement, combined with repeated threats to legally challenge these practices. 170 By the late 1990s, such works council lobbies even yielded some success, as subsidiary autonomy was enhanced in both firms at least on paper – even if continuing complaints indicate that implementation was at best partial.171 Public and political lobbying also became more important than in the 1970s, although there were again major differences between the two firms. In the case of Opel, public protests against rationalization and relocation schemes became a frequently used instrument of interest representation. Indeed, in 1982, the central works council chairman, Heller, received a German journalist association’s annual award for his open approach to the media.172 Heller’s successor, Rudolf Müller was more cautious, yet – not least because of the frequent disagreements between Bochum, Kaiserslautern and Rüsselsheim representatives – Opel affairs continued to be extensively covered in the regional and national press.173 Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, restructuring crises also led Opel works councils to seek the support of political actors at the local (Rüsselsheim/ Bochum, etc.) and regional (Hesse/Nordrhine-Westphalia, etc.) levels. At Rüsselsheim, for example, the works council repeatedly managed to ensure informal interventions by the long-standing SPD prime ministers of Hesse, Holger Börner (1976–87), and Hans Eichel (1991–99).174 From the mid-1980s, Opel labour representatives also made attempts to initiate a tripartite national motor industry policy, the success of which was limited, however, due to the staunch resistance of the conservative–liberal federal government.175 Opel labour representatives also repeatedly lobbied for political action by the EC/EU. As part of broader DGB and IG Metall initiatives or through direct contacts with German MEPs and European Commission representatives, they advocated a more activist European industrial policy and legislation to create Europe-wide labour–management consultation bodies in multinational firms.176 The Ford pattern was different. Press campaigns were much more selectively deployed than at Opel. On the one hand, the works council leader, Kuckelkorn, used the media proactively when circumstances were such that a ‘public outcry’ seemed likely to enhance the works council’s bargaining position. In 1993, for example, he cleverly exploited public uproar about an interview by a FoE public relations manager to extract additional investment promises for German locations. In 1996, he publicly rang the alarm bell to counteract plans for massive cutbacks.177 However, on many other occasions, Kuckelkorn warned against media interventions that could damage the company’s reputation and used his

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undisputed leadership to impose ‘muzzles’ in particularly sensitive periods. Fordwerke managers frequently praised the works council for its public restraint.178 Political lobbying, too, was of a different kind than at Opel, as it often took place behind closed doors rather than in the form of public interventions. In the mid-1980s, for example, a ‘behind the scenes’ works council lobby of NordrhineWestphalia’s Prime Minister, Johannes Rau, was instrumental in securing an investment subsidy for future transmission production in a small branch plant close to Cologne.179 Moreover, unlike its Opel counterpart, the Ford works council also used political contacts to openly promote Ford’s commercial interests by helping to acquire large vehicle procurement orders from local, regional and national state authorities.180 In line with a typology proposed by Kotthoff (1994: 215–16), a ‘moderate’ works council self-understanding went hand in hand with a propensity to act as company representative vis-à-vis external actors. The impact of internationalization on the relationship between works councils and IG Metall leadership was also different in the two firms in the 1980s and 1990s. The emerging concession-bargaining dynamic developed without much IG Metall leadership intervention at Ford – negotiations about the major ‘site agreements’ (1985, 1988, 1994, 1997) were all concluded without the involvement of IG Metall’s HQ.181 At Opel, by contrast, national IG Metall representatives were frequently drawn into such negotiations. In 1988, for example, Opel works councils met with the IG Metall board to discuss a coordinated response to company demands for longer machine-running time.182 In 1993, likewise, IG Metall HQ officials were closely involved in the negotiation of the investment security agreement.183 On the one hand, these differences again reflect contrasting approaches of the works council: the moderate and informal ‘style’ of interest representation at Ford implied the marginalization of ‘outside’ actors in contrast to the more open and conflictual Opel pattern. On the other hand, the conflict-ridden internal works council’s politics at Opel produced frequent calls for a ‘neutral’ arbiter, either because internationalization pitched German plants against each other in the competition for investment, and/or because works council concessions in one plant (in particular Kaiserslautern) caused rows about ‘domino effects’ for other Opel locations and the rest of the German automobile industry.184 At Ford, by contrast, occasional disputes notwithstanding,185 internationalization enhanced rather than weakened the cohesion between works councils in the different locations (see above). From the point of view of the IG Metall leadership, both patterns gave cause for concern – at Ford because of the decoupling of firm-level politics from broader union objectives, at Opel because of the problematic involvement in the micro-management of concession bargaining – clearly, concessions in one firm could have knock-on effects on the entire German automobile industry (see Katz and Darbishire, 2000: 193–6). Moreover, the long time-span covered in concession-bargaining agreements pre-empted IG Metall bargaining outcomes in subsequent years (Rehder, 2003: 213).

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However, these tensions should not be exaggerated. In both firms, actual wages had been considerably above IG Metall rates since the early post-war period, and the concessions granted in the 1990s merely reduced this gap. In fact, the narrowing of the gap between union rates and actual pay helped to ease the earlier conflicts about a reform of collective-bargaining structures. By the 1990s, significantly, Ford and Opel trade union representatives ceased to advocate a shift to company bargaining or to toy with the idea of a German UAW. Instead, they turned into defenders of IG Metall’s traditional sectoral agreements because these agreements now appeared to provide a ‘lifeline’ for anticipated future rounds of concession bargaining. Internationalization thus encouraged a new type of ‘cooperative syndicalism’ in the 1980s and 1990s, but it also helped to neutralize the appeal of the perhaps organizationally more dangerous ‘conflictual syndicalism’ of the 1960s and 1970s (see Streeck, 1979: 223–4). The re-creation of diversity: United Kingdom Compared to these incremental adaptations of trade union policies in Germany, the 1980s and 1990s brought a much more far-reaching transformation in Britain. Against the backdrop of a rapid membership decline and a very hostile economic and political environment, UK labour representatives were forced to reassess traditional patterns, and their policies underwent a number of significant shifts. Certainly, these shifts did not occur overnight. In the first half of the 1980s, in fact, there was still a great deal of continuity with past strategies. The broader renewal of TUC and Labour Party debates about the ‘alternative economic strategy’ (see Callaghan, 2000: 121–2) found a considerable echo among UK motor industry unions186 although, as during the 1970s, not all of these demands were pursued with determination at the company level. What was lobbied for consistently was the import control issue, the importance of which was magnified by the exorbitant rise of tied imports in both firms during the first half of the 1980s (Church, 1995: 115). Focusing on the new ‘local content’ formula (see above), representatives of the Vauxhall NJNC met with government ministers to press the issue. At Ford, a petition for local content legislation was signed by several thousand employees.187 Trade unionists from both firms also actively participated in a mass lobby for import controls in Westminster in October 1981.188 To an extent, union hopes may have been nurtured by the government’s tacit support for informal restrictions of Japanese car imports and its negotiation of a local content agreement with Nissan in relation to the firm’s new UK site in Sunderland (Loewendahl, 2001). This raised questions of equal treatment notably in the case of Vauxhall where the local content rate was far below the 60 per cent threshold agreed at Nissan (Jones, 1985). Nonetheless, many labour representatives had few illusions about the outcome of their government lobbying. As one Vauxhall convener put it: ‘We have to explore every avenue we can. Even if those avenues fail, it is better to have tried and failed.’189 Predictably, the Thatcher cabinet showed little interest in import control legislation, and it was

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equally unimpressed by renewed trade union campaigns for Britain’s withdrawal from the EEC (see Teague, 1984: 116f.). Against this backdrop, alternative strategies acquired more importance, in particular the further development of ‘classic’ bargaining and of public campaigning. However, there were significant differences between the two companies here. Most importantly – and in contrast to long-established overall patterns of militancy – Vauxhall labour representatives adopted more aggressive means of action. There was a great deal of unrest about the combination of mass redundancies, low production volumes and massive tied imports, particularly at Ellesmere Port, and this was brought to a boil in the spring of 1982 when further redundancies coincided with the announcement of company plans to import the new Corsa from Spain.190 Vauxhall union representatives reacted with aggressive pressure in the NJNC, media mobilization and anti-import lobbies at the Birmingham motor show, as well as with threats of industrial action to block the import of Corsa and other GM vehicles.191 A first escalation came in September 1982 when the TGWU General Executive Council backed the import ban and set out to instruct its dock membership to impose a handling ban on Vauxhall vehicles.192 This forced the company to the bargaining table, and by the spring of 1983, an informal agreement to increase production and investment in the two UK plants appeared to have calmed down trade union protests. However, as the company failed to implement the promised measures at Ellesmere Port, the ‘protest cycle’ started again in 1984–85: public pressure was stepped up through lobbies of MPs, local authorities and the annual Labour party conference; a motor rally across the country indicated, according to an Ellesmere Port convener, ‘massive public opinion in our support’.193 If we are to believe company sources, the campaign created a ‘very emotive atmosphere’ in which management was forced to acquiesce to most union requests to avoid an import ban with wide public support.194 In the case of Ford, strike threats in support of anti-import strategies also occurred,195 but overall their importance was less significant. In part, this was because of the different position of UK subsidiaries in the European networks. While Vauxhall had become a marginal assembly shop by the early 1980s, Ford UK was still the company’s most profitable European subsidiary, which had large manufacturing units (especially engine and transmission production) whose integration of component facilities (e.g. engine and transmission plants) into European delivery networks limited the enthusiasm among Ford trade unionists for industrial action against imports.196 Ford trade union strategies combined public campaigning with a new approach to exploit FoE’s headquarters location in Essex that provided trade unions with a limited direct lobbying access (absent in the case of Vauxhall). From the early 1980s, the Ford NJNC and also local union bodies like the ‘Dagenham Panel’, a liaison body of plant conveners and district officials of blue-collar unions, regularly met with FoE’s vice-director for manufacturing, Bill Hayden, to press investment and trading concerns. As labour representatives promised to cooperate in raising efficiency and quality, this yielded some

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modest success, for example the allocation of a new plastics component plant to Halewood in 1983 (Darlington, 1994: 214), or the decision to opt for Dagenham rather than Cologne for the production of new petrol engines in 1985.197 As for public campaigning, initiatives were manifold. The ‘Dagenham Panel’, for example, organized press conferences and lobbied Members of Parliament and the local business community. To raise the awareness of shop stewards and workforces, the Panel organized a series of conferences in relation to international trading and investment issues.198 Perhaps most important was the collaboration with the local public authority, the Greater London Council, to organize a public hearing on Ford’s regional operations in January 1985. The hearing attracted a strong media echo and thus provided an ideal platform for trade union lobbying. Moreover, the ‘Dagenham panel’ submitted a large part of the evidence presented, which was subsequently published as the ‘Ford Report’ (Greater London Council, 1986). These differences notwithstanding, the focus of trade union action was similar in both firms in the first half of the 1980s as strategies were primarily designed to exploit company fears of a sales setback in the lucrative British car market.199 These fears were still stronger than they had been in the 1970s – Ford had now to defend its position as UK market leader, while GM launched a costly sales drive to increase its position in Britain (Marsden et al., 1985: 160). The exploitation of such fears was most obvious in the case of a physical blockage of imports, but it was equally salient in relation to public ‘naming and shaming’: here, trade union protests fed into wider public disquiet about Ford and GM’s growing import bills (see above). Consumer mobilization became a new additional element of campaigning in the early 1980s despite the fact that model standardization and production integration made it difficult to define the meaning of ‘buying British’. Next to rallies and press communications, consumer campaigns also involved direct lobbying in Ford and Vauxhall dealerships.200 The TUC economic department gave technical information to consumers on how to distinguish a UK version from an otherwise identical European Ford or Vauxhall car.201 From the mid-1980s onwards, the strategic focus on the mobilization of employees, consumers and public opinion started to decline. To begin with, employee mobilization became undermined by the general weakening of domestic union positions. On the one hand, the consolidation of conservative anti-union legislation and Thatcher’s victory against the miners in 1984–85 dashed union militancy across the country (see Marsh, 1992). On the other hand, at the company level, the growing incidence of plant closure threats dampened employee determination to take industrial action. At Vauxhall, TGWU protests against the reorganization of commercial vehicle operations in 1986/7 failed to mobilize resistance ‘because of the low level of morale’.202 In the case of Ford, a planned strike against the closure of the Dagenham foundry had to be cancelled in 1984 due to widespread fears about further cutbacks in other plants and the company’s tactic to buy off protest with generous severance payments.203

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Moreover, against the backdrop of the emergence of a ‘new realism’ faction within the TUC, there were growing disagreements about the appropriateness of militant protest strategies. ‘New realism’ acquired prominence in the motor industry through Nissan’s single-union agreement with the AEU, which contained a system of compulsory arbitration and thus a de facto ‘no-strike’ clause. Predictably, Vauxhall and Ford UK pressed for similar agreements in new sites, which entailed tensions between AEU and TGWU representatives. At Ford, a single union deal with the AEU for a new electronic equipment plant in Scotland was openly contested by the TGWU leadership, which resulted in Ford’s withdrawal and a major AEU–TGWU row in the national press.204 At Vauxhall, disagreements between AEU and TGWU were partly responsible for the end of the domestic content campaigns in 1987–88.205 The effects of the transformation of British industrial relations were compounded by broader shifts in the UK motor industry and the acceleration of European market integration, which contributed to a radical reassessment of British union positions towards multinational firms. Reversing earlier attitudes, the 1988 TUC congress endorsed the ‘Single European Market’ – despite continued reservations by left-wing unions.206 In the motor industry, the arrival of the Japanese firms Nisan, Toyota and Honda eroded the traditionally high-profit margins of the British market, which further undermined home market-focused campaigns. At the same time, the ‘export renaissance’ of the industry made earlier domestic content and anti-import campaigns appear counterproductive.207 The preceding analysis is not to suggest that there was a complete break with earlier practices. Ad hoc press campaigns and the lobbying of local MPs and government ministers were still part of union ‘toolkits’ in the 1990s – the closure of the Dagenham and Luton assembly plants in 2000 made union negotiators even push for the direct intervention by Prime Minister Blair.208 However, beyond such exceptional occasions, traditional approaches slowly lost their appeal, and British union strategies underwent a twofold transformation. First, the majority of Ford and Vauxhall labour representatives came to endorse ‘partnership’ with local management. While embedded in a broader domestic and TUC debate on the merits of ‘social partnership’ (see Guest and Peccei, 2001; Kelly, 2004), this transformation was spurred by internationalization dynamics, in particular the accelerating investment competition between European Ford and GM subsidiaries. This was particularly revealing in the case of Ford with its legacy of adversarial union–management relations: from the early 1990s, Dagenham labour representatives regularly participated in plant presentations to FoE,209 and by the end of the decade, the local TGWU praised the new ‘win-win situation’, which demonstrated that ‘partnership between strong trade unions and a positive corporate direction is the best protector of jobs, productivity and quality’.210 To some extent, this can be interpreted as a convergence dynamic: broader TUC debates on social partnership were inspired by vague ideas of a ‘European social model’ (see MacShane, 1991), while, at the company level, such ‘mimicry’

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was additionally nurtured by investment competition, most clearly illustrated in the ‘domino bargaining’ between 1996 and 1999, when labour–management agreements in the German Ford and GM subsidiaries directly endangered the survival of plants in the UK.211 In many ways, however, British unions’ experiences with partnership remained very different from those of their German counterparts. To start with, as noted more generally by Fichter and Greer (2004: 78–82), company-level partnership arrangements in the UK lacked the broader institutional embeddedness provided by the co-determination framework in the FRG. British partnership agreements were not legally enforceable, and their elaboration, both at Ford UK and Vauxhall, often responded to ad hoc crisis situations, rather than flowing from a long-term strategic approach. At GM, for example, Opel’s highly detailed 1998 investment security agreement was concluded after more than eight months of negotiations between works council and local management, while the subsequent ‘crisis bargaining’ at Vauxhall was pushed through in a matter of weeks – to the dismay of union negotiators (Arrowsmith, 2002). In fact, trade union endorsement of partnership primarily reflected the seriousness of plant closure threats and the lack of alternative strategies, rather than ideological commitment. Certainly, there were attempts to enhance labour–management trust, expressed, for example, in a new emphasis on information sharing.212 Yet, again in line with a broader country-wide pattern (see Kelly, 2004), these experiences were offset by unilateral management decisions that reneged on earlier job security and consultation promises. The closure of the Dagenham and Luton assembly plants in 2000 despite explicit investment promises caused a great deal of disillusion about partnership even if labour representatives acknowledged efforts by subsidiary management to defend UK plants.213 At Vauxhall, union negotiators had received the news through local radio stations, and even managers were forced to admit that trust had been severely damaged.214 If cooperation continued in the aftermath of the closures, this was primarily because large-scale strike actions were perceived to endanger the remainder of Ford UK and Vauxhall operations.215 The (limited) endorsement of partnership went hand in hand with a second significant transformation, namely the partial questioning of voluntarism and an associated lobby for a new legal underpinning of industrial relations. At the national level, this lobby acquired prominence from the late 1980s, expressed in TUC demands for statutory labour market protection and a minimum wage, as well as a new legal framework for employee consultation. Again, as in the case of partnership, the shift was partly inspired by the TUC’s pro-European turn and it fed into the campaign against the Tory government’s opt-out of EU social policy (Waddington, 2003: 229–30). At Ford and Vauxhall, parts of this campaign (e.g. minimum wage) were of little importance but consultation and redundancy protection did turn into important issues during the 1990s. The experience of the investment agreement ‘domino’ strengthened the belief that British workers were at a disadvantage in their search for employment security because of the lack of legal protection as

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enjoyed by employees on the continent. For example, protests against Ford’s 1997 decision to terminate Escort production at Halewood focused on the UK’s ‘lax labour laws’, which allowed companies to single out Britain as a ‘soft target’ for downsizing – in contrast to Germany where labour agreements were legally binding and redundancy payments higher.216 The closure of the Dagenham and Luton plants in 2000 reinforced this agenda. Again, UK labour representatives complained about ‘British solutions to European problems’: in the case of Ford, almost identical agreements had existed at Dagenham and Cologne, but the choice of the site for closure fell automatically on Britain because labour law protection in Germany made it impossible to proceed in this way.217 Against this backdrop, demands for new legislation became a trade union priority. On the one hand, Ford and Vauxhall unionists lobbied for a government review of redundancy protection legislation, in particular with regard to notice periods and statutory redundancy payments. On the other hand, the campaign for legal consultation rights was stepped up through the support for the TUC’s lobby for a new EU directive mandating a minimum level of information and consultation requirements in all member states (see Hall, 2010). In fact, strong TUC lobbying helped to overcome the UK government’s opposition, and the directive was eventually adopted by the EU’s Council of Ministers in 2001 (see ibid.: 57–9). Clearly, the persistent invoking of a ‘European level playing field’ and the importance attached to EU legislation can legitimately be seen as signs of a convergence dynamic. Yet, as in the case of social partnership, convergence was only partial because the appropriation of ‘European’ models remained selective. The ‘European level playing field’ metaphor remained vague as to how the perceived bias should be remedied. It was one thing to point to the fact that collective-bargaining agreements were legally binding in Germany and to argue that British unions were well advised ‘not to place so much faith in agreements of honour rather than legalistic agreements’.218 But it was another to propose concrete reforms. Here, the approach was much more selective – while British unions now supported the legal enforceability of consultation arrangements, they did not advocate a more general shift towards the enforceability of ‘normal’ collective-bargaining agreements. The approach towards the ‘import’ of works council-type bodies remained equally selective, in particular with regard to the nomination mechanism for legally mandated employee representatives. While Ford and Vauxhall trade unionists abandoned their earlier ideological opposition to consultation outside collective-bargaining structures,219 they remained wary of possible management attempts to use consultation arrangements to circumvent trade unions. As a consequence, they insisted on what came to be referred to as the ‘single channel plus’ model, that is, on a trade union monopoly in the nomination of employee delegates in consultation bodies. At Vauxhall, this position was already successfully pursued in the negotiations about the firms’ voluntary introduction of a new ‘company council’ for the Ellesmere Port engine plant in

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1989–90.220 In the negotiations about the nomination of UK representatives for European works councils at Ford and GM in the first half of the 1990s, TGWU and AEEU representatives likewise insisted on the election of UK delegates through trade union channels rather than through employee ballot (Gluch, 1997). Taken together with the noteworthy absence of any renewed British trade union debates about employee representation in company boards along German or Scandinavian lines, these positions clearly suggest that appropriations of foreign practices remained selective and shaped by the domestic context. Conclusions This chapter has highlighted a second paradoxical dimension of British and German trade union responses to the internationalization of corporate structures and strategies at Ford and General Motors: internationalization contributed to a partial convergence of domestic interest representation practices, yet simultaneously also helped to re-create country-specific patterns. While the convergence dynamic became stronger over time, there was still a great deal of diversity by the late 1990s. The chapter thus demonstrates the futility of a juxtaposition between ‘convergence’ and ‘path dependence’ dynamics (see Smith, 1999) – British and German trade union politics at Ford and GM invariably involved a combination of both. On the convergence side, the case studies confirm a number of trends emphasized in contemporary industrial relations writing on internationalization (see Streeck, 1998; Katz and Darbishire, 2000; Howell, 2003). For example, crossborder subsidiary integration led to more trade union anxiety about employment prospects in both countries as early as the late 1960s (in the case of Ford), and this attitude translated into a similar emphasis on the monitoring of corporate strategies through the upgrading of consultation arrangements and the build-up of research capacities. Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, as we have seen, this pattern continuously developed into more or less systematic ‘shadow management’. Other convergence effects, in line with Silver ( 2003), remained more time specific, however, in particular with regard to the weakening of trade union assertiveness by multinational companies’ enhanced potential to shift investment across borders, and to use relocation threats as bargaining chips: the case study evidence revealed that this dynamic only started to unfold from the early 1980s when the earlier expansion of headcount levels came to a halt. Partial convergence trends notwithstanding, we have also seen that trade union strategies remained strongly shaped by country-specific patterns. Given the distinct national industrial relations systems (Crouch 1993; Hyman, 2001), it is not surprising that German trade unions’ focus on the co-determination framework for a long time contrasted with the emphasis on bargaining and workforce mobilization in the UK. Indeed, these differences were even

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reinforced through ‘positive feedback’ (as predicted by the more dynamic versions of ‘path dependence’) given that the new international environment at times offered additional incentives to pursue traditional strategies. To take the example of British trade unions in the 1970s, adversarial mobilization strategies were reinforced by the potential to exploit Ford’s and GM’s vulnerability to disruption of its new cross-border delivery chains. However, in line with recent writing on institutional change (Streeck and Thelen, 2005; Thelen, 2009), the chapter has also demonstrated that internationalization re-created rather than merely reproduced cross-country (and cross-company) diversity of interest representation patterns. In both countries, internationalization challenges created new ‘layers’ of meanings and forms of action, which significantly altered earlier trade union strategies, while traditional instruments were redirected to new functions and purposes. In terms of the precise dynamics of change, the Ford and GM case studies lend support to a number of arguments in the literature, while they also highlight some hitherto less observed elements. In the German case, for example, the analysis confirms Rehder’s contention that investment competition in MNC led labour representatives to downplay the traditional reliance on legally guaranteed rights, in favour of more informal networking and a new emphasis on the contractual use of the co-determination framework (2003). Equally significant, the Ford and GM case studies testify to the frequently emphasized widening of company-level bargaining at the expense of industry-level negotiations from the late 1980s (Hassel, 1999; Streeck, 2009: ch. 2). Yet, the case study evidence also suggests that the resulting tensions between works councils and trade union leaderships (see Whittall, 2005) should not be exaggerated. At Ford and GM, works councils had had tense relationships with IG Metall leaders since the 1960s, and in many ways the rise of concession bargaining for investment in the 1990s made works council leaders more rather than less committed to the industry-level negotiation framework. As for the UK, the case studies exemplify the importance of internationalization for the reorientation of trade union strategies from the late 1980s, in particular with regard to the downplaying of workforce mobilization and the novel search for legal support (MacShane, 1991) even if the chapter has also revealed the often-cited limits to that shift (e.g. continued scepticism towards works councils – Kelly, 1996). In a longer historical perspective, Ford and Vauxhall trade unionists’ emphasis on public and political lobbying to address internationalization challenges is perhaps most noteworthy. Certainly, the ad hoc character of many initiatives and the mostly ambiguous embrace of state interventionism, confirm the mainstream ‘labourist’ interpretation of British trade unionism with its scepticism of ‘high politics’ (see Minkin, 1991). Nonetheless, internationalization seems to have made the support by public opinion and political decision-makers a more important resource than in ‘normal’ domestic firms,221 which probably reflects the intense debates about multinational firms in the UK motor industry during the 1970s and 1980s (see Wilks, 1984). Against this backdrop, it is ironic that the 1990s witnessed a

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decline of public lobbying at Ford and Vauxhall due to the end of anti-import mobilization at a time when, generally speaking, media campaigns acquired greater prominence in British trade union strategies (see Heery, 1998; McIlroy, 2000).

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Notes 1 In the original version by Hall and Soskice (2001), ‘varieties of capitalism’ were limited to essentially two types (‘liberal’ vs. ‘coordinated’), which implies the possibility of a ‘dual convergence’ on both ideal types. Since then, however, many authors have sought to extend the number of varieties under consideration – see, for example, Schmidt (2002), Amable (2003), Bohle and Greskovits (2007). 2 ‘Industrial democracy’ can be broadly defined as the participation by employees and their representatives in the decision-making processes governing their working lives (Schuller, 1985: 4). 3 ‘Minutes of the NJNC Sub Committee on lay-offs, caused by internal stoppages’, 7 March 1977; Modern Records Centre (hereafter MRC), MSS. 126/TG 3, Sack 36/2. 4 ‘A short history of the struggle against lay-offs at Ford Dagenham’, June 1978, MRC, MSS. 226x/IND/21/1. 5 Minutes of the meeting of Vauxhall Joint Negotiating Committee’, 11–12 September 1975, Archive Vauxhall Motors Ltd, HRM department (hereafter AVMHRM), ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 2. 6 ‘Car men set to accept pay deal’, Luton News, 24 October 1974. 7 ‘Strikers win job review’, Luton News, 16 September 1976. 8 ‘Unions give grim warning’, Luton News, 17 February 1977, ‘Car men discuss pay deal’, Luton News, 30 August 1979. 9 ‘Ford strike 1971 – chronology and news clips’, MRC, MSS. 217/B1/12; ‘Ford strike news no. 2’ [1978], ibid., MSS 226x/IND/21/128. 10 ‘Vauxhall workers accept final pay offer’, Luton News, 27 September 1979. 11 ‘TGWU Bulletin (Fords)’, [1971], Archive Trade Union Research Unit, Ruskin College Oxford, ‘Ford claim 1970’. 12 ‘Ford strike 1971 – chronology and news clips’, MRC, MSS. 217/B1/12. 13 See, for example TGWU, The Ford Wage Claim (1970), Archive Trade Union Research Unit, Ruskin College Oxford, ‘Ford claim 1970’. 14 TGWU, ‘Trade union presentation on Ford’s Annual Report 1977’, 21 April 1978, MRC, MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 36/2. 15 ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 15 November 1978, MRC, MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 37/1. 16 ‘Niederschrift über die Betriebsversammlung’, 10 September 1973, Archiv Betriebsrat Fordwerke AG Produktentwicklung (hereafter ABRF-P), ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1973’. 17 ‘Niederschrift der Sitzung der VKL Ford’, 29 September 1978, Archiv IG Metall Cologne (hereafter AIGMC), ‘VKL Ford 77–Dez. 79’. 18 ‘Punkte aus der türkischen Betriebsversammlung IV. Quartal 1978’, Archiv Gesamtbetriebsrat Fordwerke AG (hereafter AGBRF), ‘Betriebsversammlungen von 1965 bis 1979’. 19 ‘Betriebsrat lehnt Kuhhandel ab’, Tatsachen [1978], AIGMC, ‘VKL Ford 77–Dez. 79’. 20 ‘IG Metall drängt Arbeitgeberverband – Opel und Ford wollen Betriebstarife’,

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Industriekurier, 5 March 1970. 21 ‘Öffnung nach unten’, Der Spiegel, 8 December 1969. 22 ‘Brenner unterstützt Kölner Forderungen’, Neue Rhein-Zeitung, 20 January 1970. 23 Industriegewerkschaft Metall (ed.), Protokoll des 10. ordentlichen Gewerkschaftstages der IG Metall für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 27 September–2 October 1971, pp. 425f.; Industriegewerkschaft Metall (ed.), Protokoll des 12. ordentlichen Gewerkschaftstages der IG Metall für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 18–24 September 1977; pp. 295ff. 24 ‘Bericht des Gesamtbetriebsrats, II. Quartal 1978’, AIGMC, ‘Ford VKL/BR Protokolle’. 25 ‘Streik von oben?’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 28 November 1970. 26 ‘Niederschrift über die Betriebsversammlung’, 4 December 1972, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1972’. 27 IG Metall Vertrauenskörperleitung Fordwerke AG, ‘Tatsachen’ no. 21 [undated], AGBRF, ‘Flugblätter’; ‘Niederschrift über die Sitzung mit dem BA der Produktentwicklung’, 24 February 1975, ABRF-P, ‘BA-Protokolle BR-P’. 28 ‘Bei Ford ist man nicht ganz so glücklich’, Westfälische Rundschau, 16 February 1968. 29 ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 14 December 1972, MRC, MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 140/2; ‘Minutes of the meeting of Vauxhall Joint Negotiating Committee’, 11–12 September 1975, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 2. 30 See for example: ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 14 December 1972, 9 February 1973, MRC, MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 140/2. 31 ‘Extract from a document prepared by DATA called “Transfer of design work from Ford of Great Britain to Ford of Germany”’, 15 July 1968; ‘The German takeover of Ford of Britain’, [1970], Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), Department of Trade and Industry, FV 22/17. 32 Interview by the author with Denis Gregory, Trade Union Research Unit, Ruskin College Oxford, 18 July 2004. 33 ‘Nationalisation of the Ford Motor Company: notes commissioned by the TGWU’, [1975], Archive Trade Union Research Unit, Ruskin College Oxford. 34 TGWU, ‘Trade union presentation on Ford’s Annual Report 1977’, 21 April 1978, MRC, MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 36/2. 35 The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1974–5, vol. II, pp. 211–32, 242–9, vol. III, pp. 145–6, 173–83. 36 Interview by the author with Denis Gregory, Trade Union Research Unit, Ruskin College Oxford, 18 July 2004. 37 ‘Protokoll der BR-Sitzung der Produktgruppe’, 15 October 1968, ABRF-P, ‘BR Sitzungsprotokolle 1968’. 38 ‘Protokoll der BR-Sitzung der Produktgruppe’, 30 June 1969, ABRF-P, ‘BR Sitzungsprotokolle 1969’. 39 For example: ‘BR-P-Information 3/75’, 17 February 1975, ABRF-P, ‘BA-Protokolle BR-P’. 40 ‘Protokoll der Sitzung des Wirtschaftsausschusses’, 13 December 1973, 21 May 1974, 28 November 1974, 15 January 1975, Archiv Gesamtbetriebsrat Adam Opel AG (hereafter AGBRO), ‘Wirtschaftsausschuss 2/72–3/75’. 41 ‘Protokoll der Sitzung des Wirtschaftsausschusses’, 30 June 1977, 23 February 1978, ibid., ‘wirtschaftsausschuss 4/75–6/79’. 42 ‘Niederschrift der Sitzung mit dem Betriebsausschuss der Produktentwicklung’,

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4 March 1970, ABRF-P, ‘BA-Protokolle BR-P’. 43 ‘Protokoll der BR-Sitzung der Produktgruppe’, 30 June 1969, 23 July 1969, ABRFP, ‘BR Sitzungsprotokolle 1969’. 44 ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 21 September 1978, MRC, MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 36/2. 45 ‘Ford boss to talk on job transfers’, Dagenham Post, 10 May 1972; ‘Vauxhall Men’s Worries Grow’, Luton News, 19 June 1975. 46 ‘Minutes of the meeting of Vauxhall Joint Negotiating Committee’, 11–12 September 1975, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 2. 47 ‘Ford technicians walk out’, Dagenham Post, 13 March 1968; ‘Let’s be beastly’, Daily Telegraph, 11 February 1970. 48 ‘Minutes of fortnightly meeting’, Dagenham Panel of District Officers, 9 March 1978, 6 April 1978, 18 May 1978, MRC, MSS/126/3, Sack 36/2. 49 ‘Minutes of the meeting of Vauxhall Joint Negotiating Committee’, 14 March 1975, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 2. ‘Threat over imports’, Luton News, 27 November 1975. 50 See House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates, 1960–2000, Fifth Series, vol. 815, cols. 238–240; vol. 858, cols. 1183/1184. 51 ‘Prime Minister’s meeting with Mr Leonard Woodcock, President of the UAW’, 23 March 1971, PRO, Records of the Prime Minister’s Office, PREM 15/1662. 52 ‘Trade union points’, 23 March 1971, MRC, MSS. 292D, Box 890. 53 TGWU press release, 21 April 1978, MRC, MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 36/2. 54 ‘Shake-up at car plant’, Luton News, 5 December 1974. 55 ‘Fight against Common Market starts’, Dagenham Post, 2 April 1975, ‘Market membership has done us no good’, Luton News, 6 February 1975. There were sizeable minorities in both firms, however, who were opposed to the campaigns against UK membership (interview by the author with Bernie Passingham, former convener, Ford Dagenham, 20 November 2001). 56 Trades Union Congress, Report of 106th Annual Trades Union Congress, 2–6 September 1974, pp. 486–7. 57 ‘Unions plan to meet with Benn’, Dagenham Post, 5 March 1975. 58 ‘Report of a meeting between the Economic Committee and the Secretaries of State for Industry and Trade’, TUC, Economic Committee, 12 July 1978, MRC, MSS 292D, 560.1/Box 1090. 59 TGWU, ‘Report of the Annual Conference of Vehicle Building and Automotive Group’, 7–8 July 1978, MRC, MSS 126/TG 3, Sack 116/2. 60 Memo R. Hibbert, 3 July 1968, PRO, Department of Trade and Industry, FV 22/4; Memo E. W. G. Haynes, 22 January 1970, ibid., 22/17. 61 ‘Investment – the recipe for recovery’, Luton News, 14 August 1975. 62 Letter from Vic Feather to Tony Benn, Ministry of Technology, 17 October 1969; letter from Tony Benn to Vic Feather, 5 December 1969, MRC, MSS. 292B/617/2. 63 ‘A policy for the British motor vehicle industry. A trade union response to the government White Paper by AUEW (TASS)’, [1975], MRC, MSS. 292 D/Box 1709. 64 The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, Session 1974–5, vol. II, pp. 40–2, 235. 65 Letter from D. E. Lea (TUC) to Luton and District Trades Council, 2 August 1976, MRC, MSS. 292D/ Box 1709. 66 TUC, General Council, 17 December 1975, MRC, MSS. 292 D, 20/9. 67 ‘Investment – the recipe for recovery’, Luton News, 14 August 1975; ‘MP’s plea

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backed by minister’, Luton News, 18 November 1976. 68 Industriegewerkschaft Metall, Protokoll des 12. ordentlichen Gewerkschaftstages der IG Metall für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 18–24 September 1977, part ‘Anträge’, p. 323. 69 Industriegewerkschaft Metall (Hg.), Protokoll des 11. ordentlichen Gewerkschaftstages der IG Metall für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 15–21 September 1974, part ‘Anträge’, pp. 420, 440. 70 Interview by the author with Bernie Passingham, former convener, Ford Dagenham, 20 November 2001. 71 ‘Betriebsferien gekürzt’, Kölner Express, 3 December 1971. 72 ‘Entscheidung fällt in Detroit’, Welt der Arbeit, 3 May 1979. 73 ‘Niederschrift der Sitzung mit dem Betriebsausschuss der Produktentwicklung’, 4 March 1970, ABRF-P, ‘BA-Protokolle BR-P’. 74 ‘Niederschrift über die Sitzung mit dem Betriebsausschuss Köln-Niehl’, 14 February 1973, AGBRF, ‘BA 1971’. 75 ‘Protokoll der Sitzung des Wirtschaftsausschusses, 15 January 1975, AGBRO, ‘Wirtschaftsausschuss 2/1972–3/1975’. 76 ‘Steigende Beschäftigung ein Trugschluß’, Main-Spitze, 17 July 1979. 77 See for Ford: ‘Niederschrift der Betriebsversammlung’, 25 March 1974, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlugen 1974’. 78 Interview by the author with Wilfried Kuckelkorn, former works council chairman, Fordwerke AG, 11 December 2001. 79 ‘Protokoll der Sitzung des Betriebsrats Köln-Niehl’, 12 November 1968, 14 January 1969, 11 February 1969, AGBRF, ‘BR Protokolle vom 15.10.68 bis 25.3.69’. 80 Interview by the author with Wilfried Kuckelkorn, former works council chairman, Fordwerke AG, 11 December 2001. 81 ‘Protokoll der BR-Sitzung der Produktgruppe’, 23 July 1969, ABRF-P, ‘BR Sitzungsprotokolle 1969’. 82 See, for example: ‘Niederschrift über die Betriebsversammlung’, 29 November 1971, ABRF-P, ‘Betriebsversammlungen 1971’. 83 See, for example: ‘Streit bei Ford über geplante Kurzarbeit’, Kölnische Rundschau, 20 September 1974. 84 ‘Bericht über die Vertrauensleutevollkonferenz der Fordwerke’, 9 September 1973, Archiv der sozialen Demokratie (hereafter AdsD), Bestand IG Metall, Abteilung Tarifpolitik, 941a. 85 ‘Protokoll der BR-Sitzung der Produktgruppe’, 4 March 1969, 30 June 1969, 17 July 1969, 23 July 1969, ABRF-P, ‘BR Sitzungsprotokolle 1969’. 86 Interview by the author with Günther Middell and Peter Nottelmann, former HRM staff, Fordwerke AG, 5 September 2003. 87 ‘Bericht über die Vertrauensleutevollkonferenz der Fordwerke’, 9 September 1973, AdsD, Bestand IG Metall, Abteilung Tarifpolitik, 941a. 88 ‘Rechenschaftsbericht des GBR zur Betriebsräteversammlung 1979’ [1979], AGBRO, ‘Betriebsräteversammlung 1979’. 89 ‘Beschäftigte zahlen die Zeche’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 13 June 1979; ‘Sorge um Arbeitsplätze wächst ständig’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 14 July 1979. 90 ‘Notes of proceedings at a special meeting of the Ford Joint National Negotiating Committee’, 7 July 1980, MRC, MSS. 126/TG/3, Sack 117/1; ‘Minutes of the meeting of the Vauxhall Joint Negotiating Committee’, 21–22 January 1981, AVMHRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 3.

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91 ‘Biggest loss ever for Vauxhall’, Luton News, 2 July 1981. 92 ‘Minutes of the meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 13 December 1985, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 4. 93 AUEW Ellesmere Port notice, 28 January 1981, AVM-HRM, Box 3, ‘Redundancy’. 94 ‘Union pledge to save Ford plant’, Dagenham Post, 29 September 1982. 95 ‘Weihnachtsgratifikation’ [October 1981], AGBRO, ‘Wirtschaftsausschuss ab 1 September 1980’. 96 ‘Ford: IG Metall schießt gegen Betriebsrat’, Kölner Express, 6 July 1984. 97 ‘Niederschrift über die Sitzung mit den Betriebsausschüssen der Betriebsräte Niehl/Deutz undProduktgruppe’, 16–17 September 1985, Archiv Fordwerke AG, HRM department (hereafter AFAG-HRM), ‘Restrukturierung’. 98 ‘Arbeit am Samstag soll Motorenauftrag sichern’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 19 September 1987. 99 ‘Bei Ford Streik in der Frühstückspause’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 10 March 1987; ‘Bericht des Betriebsrates Produktentwicklung zur Betriebsversammlung’, 13 June 1986, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-P von Dez 84 bis 6/89’. 100 ‘Opel betreibt Politik der Desinformation’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 9 November 1983. 101 ‘Heller ist für Betriebsbesetzungen’, Main-Spitze, 26 June 1984. 102 ‘Lasst die Finger von der Schmiede weg’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 5 July 1988. 103 ‘Uns wurde die Pistole auf die Brust gesetzt’, Der Spiegel, 40/1988; ‘Nachtschicht Bochum: 700 Mitarbeiter, 700 Mark mehr’, Main-Spitze, 21 December 1989. 104 ‘Britischen Fordwerken droht Schließung’, General-Anzeiger Bonn, 21 August 1992. 105 ‘Opel-Metaller sehen Zeit zum Handeln gekommen’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 10 November 1980; ‘Mobilisierung noch sinnvoll?’, Main-Spitze, 20 October 1980. 106 ‘Protokoll der Sitzung des Betriebsrats’, 5 May 1992, 27 May 1992, AGBRO, ‘Protokolle Betriebsratssitzungen vom 1. März 1990 bis 14. Dez. 1992’; ‘Kampf um Standort immer härter’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 14 July 1995. 107 ‘Opel-Gesamtbetriebsrat will verhindern, dass sich einzelne Werke gegeneinander ausspielen lassen’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 22 May 1994. 108 ‘Opel-Betriebsrat: Wir treten nicht zurück’, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, 8 May 1996. 109 ‘Bericht des BR Niehl zur Betriebsversammlung 2. Quartal 1982’, 14 June 1982, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford ab Januar 82 bis Jan. 83’. 110 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung III. Quartal 1985’, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Okt 1984; ‘Machtkampf: Sieg für den Betriebsrat’, Kölner Express, 10 March 1993; ‘Ford-Betriebsrat schlägt Alarm’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 25 June 1996. 111 ‘Ford investiert in Köln Millionen’, Kölner Express, 11 March 1993. 112 ‘Protokoll der VKL-Sitzung’, 13 September 1985, AIGMC, ‘VKL Ford-Niehl von Apr. 84 bis Okt. 87’. 113 ‘IG Metall mit Rekordergebnis’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 12 June 1987; ‘Die IG Metall bleibt die stärkste Kraft’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 23 June 1997. 114 For Vauxhall, see ‘Vauxhall eight percent wins vote’, Luton News, 2 December 1982. 115 ‘Car strikes’, Autocar, 6 December 1995. 116 ‘Revised shift patterns: Meeting with convenors’, 29 April 1987, AVM-HRM, Box 2, ‘Shift changes’. 117 ‘Dispute over single-union deal at new Ford factory’, The Independent, 10 October 1987. 118 Centre for Alternative Industrial and Technological Systems, ‘Trade union

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responses to new managerial initiatives: The new V 6 engine plant agreement, Ellesmere Port, Vauxhall Motors’, [March 1990], Archive Transport and General Workers’ Union, Liverpool office (hereafter ATGWU-Liv). ‘Minutes of a meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 19 March 1998, 25–26 March 1998, 1 April 1998, 8 April 1998, 15–16 April 1998, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 7. Ibid.; for Ford, see ‘Joint JWC Stage 5.1 meeting to discuss supplement to the security agreement issued in Germany’, 6 March 1998, Archive AMICUS, Dagenham office (hereafter AAMICUS-Dag). House of Commons, Trade and industry Committee, Minutes of Evidence, 24 October 2000, 11 January 2001, at: www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001 /cmselect/cmtrdind/128/1011101.htm (last accessed 24 April 2009). Interestingly, this stood in clear tension to the predominantly negative views of the role of executive employees for supervisory board co-determination in national trade union positions – see Schneider (2000: 345f.). See, for example: IG Metall, Abteilung Wirtschaft, Bilanzanalyse Fordwerke AG für das Geschätsjahr 1994, 27 April 1995, AIGMC, ‘Ford Aufsichtsrat 1994–95’. AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Okt 1984’. ‘Protokoll der Sitzung der Geschätsleitung mit dem Wirtschaftsauschuss’, 27 September 1984, AGBRO, ‘Wirtschaftsausschuss ab Januar 1984’; ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung IV. Quartal 1982’, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford ab Januar 82 bis Jan. 83’. For an example: ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung I. Quartal 1985’, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Okt 1984’. ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung IV. Quartal 1982’, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford ab Januar 82 bis Jan. 83’. ‘Protokoll der Betriebsratssitzung’, 21 December 1989, AGBRO, ‘Protokolle Betriebsratssitzungen ab Januar 1989’. ‘Rechenschaftsbericht Rudolf Müller zur 30. Betriebsräteversammlung’, 18–20 November 1998, AGBRO, ‘Betriebsräteversammlung, 18–20 November 1998’. Schulten et al. (2007); ‘Betriebsvereinbarung zwischen dem Vorstand und dem Gesamtbetriebsrat der Ford-Werke Aktiengesellschaft über die Sicherung von Investitionen innerhalb der Ford-Werke Aktiengesellschaft’, 25 February 1994, AIGMC. ‘Minutes of Joint Works Committee’, 14 October 1981, 17 March 1982, 9 February 1983, 15 February 1984, AAMICUS-Dag, ‘JWC 1980–89’. ‘Review and assessment of Vauxhall Motors presentation to the unions’, 25 October 1985, ATGWU-Liv, ‘S car’. ‘Review of strategy for probable meeting with trade union national official to discuss S car agreement’ [1987], AVM-HRM, Box 19, ‘S car agreement’. ‘Minutes of a meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 26 November 1991, 6 December 1993, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 6. ‘Under pressure’, PTA shop stewards bulletin, [1989], AAMICUS-Dag. ‘Minutes of Hythe Conference’ 23–24 June 1982, AAMICUS-Dag, ‘Dagenham Panel’. Letter from Anthony Woodley to G. Hawley, National Secretary TGWU Automotive Group, 10 January 1985, ATGWU-Liv, ‘S car’. ‘Ford of Britain, Dagenham Operations: joint trade union–management presentation to Albert Caspers’, 2 December 1992, AAMICUS-Dag. ‘Misstände im Management’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 12 May 1992.

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140 See, for example, ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung II. Quartal 1984, AIGMC, ‘Ford-N ab Jan 83’. 141 See, for example: ‘Review and assessment of Vauxhall Motors presentation to the unions’, 25 October 1985, ATGWU-Liv, ‘S car’. 142 ‘Protokoll der Sitzung des KBR/GBR’, 5 September 1996, AGBRO, ‘Gesamtbetriebsrat ab 3/92 bis 12/98’. 143 ‘Notice on behalf of the TGWU shop stewards committee Ellesmere Port’, 12 November 1985, ATGWU-Liv, ‘Disputes/shift guarantee’. 144 ‘Up-date of the position in relation to Vauxhall Motors’ commitment in association with the S car agreement’, 20 November 1985, ATGWU-Liv, ‘S car’. 145 IG Metall, ‘Fakten für die Ford-Belegschaft’, [March 1987], AIGMC, ‘VKL FordNiehl von Apr 84 bis Okt. 87’; ‘US-Mutter gibt Ford in Köln Großauftrag’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 3 December 1993. 146 ‘Konzern dreht in Bochum erneut an der Sparschraube’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 1 February 1994 ; ‘Die Kollegen würden sogar auf noch mehr Einkommen versichten’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 27 February 1994. 147 Ford NJNC (TU side), ‘Ford hourly paid pay and conditions claim 1997’, 4 September 1997, AAMICUS-Dag. 148 ‘Gegen weitere Auslagerungen’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 26 November 1986. 149 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung II. Quartal 1984’, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Jan 83’. 150 ‘Protokoll der Sitzung des Gesamtbetriebsrats’, 30 March 1993, AGBRO, ‘Gesamtbetriebsrat ab 3/92 bis 12/98’. 151 ‘Für ein neues Betriebsverfassungsgesetz’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 9 December 1997. 152 Interview by the author with Wilfried Kuckelkorn, former works council chairman, Fordwerke AG Cologne, 11 December 2001, Cologne. 153 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung’, 11 March 1985, AIGMC, ‘Ford-N ab Okt. 1984’. 154 ‘Machtkampf auf Ford-Chefetage’, Kölnische Rundschau, 9 March 1993; ‘USABlitzreise soll Kölner Produktion des Fiesta retten’, Kölnische Rundschau, 24 January 1994. 155 ‘Standorte in Deutschland sind sicher’, Kölnische Rundschau, 29 January 1997. 156 ‘Protokoll der BR-Sitzung’, 4 November 1991; AGBRO, ‘Protokolle Betriebsratssitzungen vom 1. März 1990 bis 14. Dezember 1992’. 157 ‘Opel-Unternehmensforum’ [undated], AGBRO, ‘Betriebsräteversammlung, 18–20 November 1998’. 158 ‘Opel: Sozialabbau roter Faden’, Main-Spitze, 16 July 1993. 159 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsräteversammlung’, 22–24 October 1984, AGBRO, ‘Betriebsräteversammlung 1984’. 160 ‘BR-Information: Sonderausgabe’, 14 October 1988, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N von Januar 1987 bis 11/89’. 161 ‘Protokoll der Betriebsratssitzung’, 21 December 1989, AGBRO, ‘Protokolle Betriebsratssitzungen ab Januar 1989’. 162 ‘Vier Sonderschichten bei Opel’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 15 February 1989. 163 ‘Arbeitsplatzabbau bei Opel gestoppt?’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 1 February 1996. 164 ‘Niederschrift über die Sitzung mit den Betriebsausschüssen der Betriebsräte Niehl/Deutz und Produktgruppe’, 16–17 September 1985, AFAG-HRM, ‘Restrukturierung’. 165 For Opel, see for example: ‘Opel-Betriebsrat: Wir treten nicht zuück’, Westdeutsche

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Allgemeine Zeitung, 8 May 1996. 166 ‘Protokoll der BR-Sitzung, 6 September 1999’, AGBRO, ‘Protokolle von BRSitzungen 27.3.1998–9.10.2000’. 167 Letter from F. B. Kulp to W. J. Hayden, FoE, 4 March 1987, AFAG-HRM, ‘Restructuring follow-up’. 168 ‘Vorwürfe gegen Management’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 17 June 1997. 169 For Ford, see ‘VKL-Klausurtagung’, 11–13 January 1985, AIGMC, ‘VKL Ford-Niehl von Apr. 84 bis Okt. 87’. 170 For Opel, see ‘Opel-Arbeitnehmer pochen auf mehr Eigenständigkeit’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 7 December 1998. 171 ‘Ford-Belegschaft wählt Betriebsrat’, Kölnische Rundschau, 17 June 1997; ‘Statement von Rudolf Müller zur Pressekonferenz’, 26 October 1998, AGBRO. 172 ‘Opel-Mutter GM soll Unternehmenspolitik offenlegen’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 15 April 1982. 173 ‘Protokoll der BR-Sitzung’, 27 May 1997, AGBRO, ‘Protokolle von BR-Sitzungen Rüsselsheim, 1.1.97–2.3.98’. 174 ‘Im August 1981 fallen 3700 Arbeitsplätze weg’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 29 April 1980; ‘Eichel vor der Opelbelegschaft’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 6 May 1992. 175 ‘Zur Lage der Autoindustrie’, Main-Spitze, 29 October 1987; IG Metall circular, 20 March 1995, AGBRO, ‘IG Metall 1993–95’. 176 ‘Multis sollen Personalplanung offenlegen’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 29 February 1980; ‘Kein Europa ohne Arbeitnehmer’, Main-Spitze, 21 April 1986. 177 ‘Pokerspiel um Köln’, Autozeitung, 19 March 1993; ‘Ford-Betriebsrat spricht von echtem Existenzkampf’, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 25 June 1996. 178 ‘Niederschrift über die Sitzung des Aufsichtsrats der Fordwerke AG’, 7 March 1994, AIGMC, ‘Ford Aufsichtsrat 1994–95’. 179 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung III. Quartal 1985’, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Okt. 1984’. 180 ‘Niederschrift über die Sitzung des Aufsichtsrats der Fordwerke AG’, 3 June 1994, AIGMC, ‘Ford Aufsichtsrat 1994–95’. 181 Interview by the author with Wilfried Kuckelkorn, former works council chairman, Fordwerke AG, 11 December 2001. 182 ‘Vorschlag zur Beurteilung der angeblichen Unumgänglichkeit der Ausweitung von Maschinennutzungszeiten im Presswerk Bochum’, 29 September 1988, AGBRO, ‘Schriftverkehr IG Metall ab August 1987’. 183 Letter from Mr Schumann, IG Metall, to Handelsblatt, 4 July 1994, AGBRO, ‘IG Metall 1993–95’. 184 ‘Rede von Richard Heller zur Betriebsräteversammlung’, 6–8 November 1989, AGBRO, ‘Betriebsräteversammlung, 6–8 November 1989’. 185 ‘Niederschrift über die Klausurtagung des Gesamtbetriebsrates’, 26–27 March 1986, ABRF-P, ‘GBR’. 186 ‘Motor industry study’, TUC Economic Committee, 11 January 1984, MRC, MSS. 292 D, 560.1, Box 1096. 187 ‘Unions act over new car fears’, Dagenham Post, 7 October 1981, ‘Save car firm jobs, union bosses plead’, Luton News, 16 October 1980. 188 ‘Foot backs car workers’ case’, Luton News, 22 October 1981. 189 ‘Save car firm jobs, union bosses plead’, Luton News, 16 October 1980. 190 ‘Vauxhall workers angry over Cavalier imports’, Luton News, 28 January 1982. 191 ‘Minutes of the meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 23 April 1982; 25–26 August 1982,

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9 September 1982, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 3. 192 ‘Resolution submitted and endorsed by the TGWU General Executive Council’, 23 September 1982, AVM-HRM, Box 19, ‘S car agreement’. 193 TGWU, ‘Vauxhall Motors – the threat to jobs’, 4 October 1985, AVM-HRM, Box 19, ‘S car agreement’. 194 Letter from John Fleming, Vauxhall Motors Ltd, to J. F. Waters, GMC Overseas Group, 6 January 1986, AVM-HRM, ibid. 195 ‘Fords: who is next?’, Dagenham Post, 18 January 1984. 196 Interview by the author with Bernie Passingham, former convener, Ford Dagenham, 20 November 2001. 197 ‘Dagenham wins new Ford deal’, Dagenham Post, 10 July 1985. 198 ‘Minutes of fortnightly meeting’, Dagenham Panel of District Officers, 18 October 1983, 1 November 1983, 29 November 1983, 21 February 1984, AAMICUS-Dag. 199 Centre for Alternative Industrial and Technological Systems, ‘The UK motor industry – some options for trade union strategies’, [July 1984], ATGWU-Liv. 200 TGWU, ‘Vauxhall Motors – the threat to jobs’, 4 October 1985, AVM-HRM, Box 19, ‘S car agreement’. 201 TUC, Report of 117th Annual Trades Union Congress, 2–6 September 1985, pp. 543f. 202 TGWU, ‘Vehicle Building and Automotive Group, National Committee Report to the National Industrial Policy Conference’, 3 July 1987, AAMICUS-Dag. 203 ‘Minutes of a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 2 March 1984; ‘Under pressure’, PTA shop stewards bulletin, [January 1984], ibid. 204 TUC, Report of 120th Annual Trades Union Congress, 5–9 September 1988, pp. 440f. 205 ‘Review of strategy for probable meeting with trade union national officials to discuss S car agreement’, [November 1988], AVM-HRM, Box 19, ‘S car agreement’. 206 ‘International investment and the UK economy: memorandum by the Trades Union Congress’, TUC, Economic Committee, 8 June 1988, MRC, MSS.292D. 565/1, Box 1100. 207 Interview by the author with Steve Broadhead, former trade union chairman, Vauxhall Joint Negotiating Committee, 24 July 2003. 208 House of Commons, Trade and industry Committee, Minutes of Evidence, 24 October 2000, 11 January 2001, at: www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001 /cmselect/cmtrdind/128/1011101.htm (last accessed 24 April 2009). 209 Ford of Britain, Dagenham Operations, ‘Joint trade union–management presentation to Albert Caspers’, 2 December 1992; ‘Under pressure’, PTA shop stewards bulletin, [April 1998], AAMICUS-Dag. 210 Press release TGWU South East and East Anglia, 21 April 1999, ibid. 211 ‘Minutes of a meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 18 February 1997, 22 January 1998, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 7; ‘Special JWC/MSF meeting to discuss supplement to the security agreement issued in Germany’, 6 March 1998, AAMICUS-Dag. 212 Interviews by the author with Bruce Warman, former director of personnel, Vauxhall Motors Luton (14 October 2003), and John Hougham, former employee relations manager, Ford Dagenham (15 October 2003). 213 House of Commons, Trade and Industry Committee, Minutes of Evidence, 11 January 2001, at www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001/cmselect/cmtrdind /128/1011101.htm (last accessed 24 April 2009). 214 ‘Minutes of a meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 12 December 2000, AVM-HRM, ‘JNC

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minutes’, vol. 7. 215 House of Commons, Trade and Industry Committee, Minutes of Evidence, 11 January 2001, at www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001/cmselect/cmtrdind /128/1011101.htm (last accessed 24 April 2009). 216 ‘Nationwide strike threat as Ford cuts 1300 jobs’, Daily Telegraph, 17 January 1997. 217 House of Commons, Trade and Industry Committee, Minutes of Evidence, 24 October 2000, at www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001/cmselect/cmtrdind /128/1011101.htm (last accessed 24 April 2009). 218 Ibid. 219 Steve Hart (TGWU), ‘Ford European works council and the management of change’, [September 1993], AAMICUS-Dag. 220 Centre for Alternative Industrial and Technological Systems, ‘Trade union responses to new managerial initiatives: the new V6 engine plant agreement, Ellesmere Port, Vauxhall Motors’, [March 1990], ATGWU-Liv. 221 Public and political lobbying of course also played an important role in a number of high-profile domestic firms such as British Leyland (see Whisler, 1999: 111–24).

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Internationalization and the paradox of cross-border trade union cooperation

If post-1945 trade union scholars have shown little concern for nations and nationalism, and have only recently started to engage with the impact of internationalization on domestic trade union practices, interest in cross-border cooperation has traditionally been much stronger. However, much of this literature does not explicitly deal with economic internationalization. For example, there is an extensive body of scholarship concerned with the institutional evolution of the various international (see, for example, Pasture, 1999; Carew et al., 2000) and European (see Gobin, 1996; Dolvik, 1999) trade union organizations, including a plethora of studies on specific sector-level organizations (see, for example, Reutter, 1998; Koch-Baumgarten, 1999; Croucher and Cotton, 2009). The more issue-specific literature ranges from studies dealing with trade union internationals’ involvement in the Cold War (MacShane, 1992), to works that analyse their role in international organizations such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) or the European Union (Gumbrell-McCormick, 2000; Bieler, 2006; Erne, 2008). Trade union efforts to address the challenge of multinational firms have also attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. Some have looked at the activities of peak-level organizations such as the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) to establish codes of conduct for MNCs by the United Nations and the OECD, and at the more recent campaigns to regulate MNC behaviour through a ‘Global Compact’ and so-called ‘international framework agreements’ designed to ensure observance of the ILO’s core labour standards (Müller et al., 2004). More frequently, and of more importance for the purpose of this book, scholars have scrutinized concrete cooperation experiences in specific firms or industries. In the 1970s, this concentrated on the so-called ‘world company councils’, which the sector-specific international union associations set up in many MNCs, notably in the motor, electrical, chemical and food-processing industries (Piehl, 1974; Olle, 1978; Northrup, 1980). After the decline of these councils in the 1980s, attention shifted to the regional European level, where the law-backed creation of European works councils offered trade

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unions a new cooperation platform (Kotthoff, 2006; Whittall et al., 2007; Waddington, 2010).

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Internationalization and cross-border trade union cooperation: the debate Since the 1970s, scholarly debates about cross-border trade union cooperation in MNCs have been dominated by the question whether or not we are witnessing a breakthrough towards new and ‘truly’ transnational forms of industrial relations and trade unionism. ‘Optimists’ have pointed to successful cooperation examples, such as the recent involvement of some European works councils in pan-European restructuring negotiations (see, for example, da Costa and Rehfeldt, 2007). These avant-garde examples of ‘political entrepreneurship’ (Greer and Hauptmeier, 2008) are expected to be emulated more widely in due course, as labour representatives successively overcome linguistic, cultural and trust barriers (Lecher et al., 1999) and realize that the internationalization of capital ‘requires’ a much greater emphasis on cross-border cooperation than in the past (Hyman, 2005). Inspired by a strongly normative approach to the subject, such accounts portray recent decades as a ‘threshold period’ witnessing a ‘nascent’ new type of trade union internationalism. Indeed, according to van der Linden (2008), this ongoing process needs to be placed in a longer-term historical analysis of the stages of international union cooperation since the nineteenth century. More precisely, van der Linden suggests that the period since the late 1960s represents a ‘prolonged transitional phase’ from a pattern of ‘national internationalism’ – dominated by high-level diplomacy between national union bureaucracies – towards a new network-based ‘transnational internationalism’ that relies much more on a multitude of decentralized coordination initiatives, not least in multinational firms (ibid.: 281). Against these ‘optimist’ accounts, ‘sceptics’ have objected that cross-border trade union cooperation has to this day been hampered by numerous structural obstacles, which are likely to persist in the future as well. Many scholars have stressed the integration of trade unions into distinct national, legal, political and industrial relations systems, which can make cross-border cooperation initiatives incompatible with domestic economic policies, bargaining structures and labour law statutes (see Ebbinghaus and Visser, 1997). Another frequently noted problem concerns the lack of a comprehensive international regulatory framework. The International Labour Organization’s work (see van Daele, 2008) has helped trade unions worldwide, yet it has not created a legal framework to support the emergence of international industrial relations institutions. Even in the European Union, supranational legislation has, by and large, been limited to complementing existing national regulation (Marginson and Sisson, 2004). Moreover, unsurprisingly, employers have shown little sympathy for international trade unionism. In the case of multinational firms, apart from a few exceptions, managements for a long time even opposed consultation meetings at the international level. In Europe, that resistance only crumbled in the late 1990s due to the statutory imposition of European works councils.

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Apart from these ‘environmental’ problems, ‘sceptics’ have also pointed to obstacles caused by trade union structures and strategies. In many instances, particularly in the case of MNCs, local and national labour representatives have been pitted against each other in conflicts over jobs and investment (Streeck, 1997; Hancké, 2000), not least because they are democratically accountable to local and national constituencies, and hence face a ‘structural problem of parochialism’ (Offe and Wiesenthal, 1980). This is compounded by ideology-driven clashes over the definition of common goals and strategies. Moreover, national leaderships have traditionally shown a great deal of reluctance to transfer competences to international trade union organizations, and they have resisted cross-border cooperation initiatives that appeared to interfere with national union structures and objectives (Kassalow, 1974; Bendiner, 1987). Indeed, scholars who analyse a broader range of international NGOs often juxtapose trade unions as representatives of a ‘parochial Old Left’ to ‘global civic networks’ epitomized by environmentalists and human rights activists (see, for example, Kaldor, 2000). Clearly, nobody could dispute the relevance of many of these arguments for the analysis of cross-border trade union cooperation in the post-1945 period. Yet, as in the case of the convergence vs. path dependence debate, a growing number of scholars have questioned the often abstract polarization of opinion, which neglects ambiguities and is unable to account for context-specific variations of experience. Why, for example, have some European works councils (EWCs) turned into bargaining agents, while in many other firms labour representatives have not even bothered to request the establishment of such an EWC?1 Marginson et al. (2004) and Kotthoff (2006) have convincingly demonstrated that the effectiveness of EWCs is crucially dependent on factors such as the degree and type of corporate internationalization, and the existence of autonomous European management structures. Contrary to the claims of ‘optimists’, learning and trust-building processes appear to be of much more limited importance. On the other hand, locational competition has had more ambiguous effects than ‘sceptics’ contend – depending on circumstances, it could become the key motive to enhance cross-border cooperation. Indeed, several authors have found that strong EWCs often develop in companies with a high degree of inter-firm investment and job competition (Kotthoff, 2006: 43–61; Anner et al., 2006: 11–15). At least as important as the context-specific conditions at a particular moment is the question of change over time: why, in our specific case, were European works councils in the 1990s more successful than the ‘world company councils’ in the 1970s? For ‘sceptics’ this question is difficult to address, while ‘optimists’ ultimately rely on a teleological notion of a ‘still unfinished’ transformation, which is epitomized by van der Linden’s (2008: 280–3) bizarre idea of a more than four decades-long ‘transitional phase’ towards an, as yet, not clearly definable ‘transnational internationalism’. Regrettably, there are no empirical studies of cross-border trade union coop-

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eration in MNCs from a long-term perspective, and many works provide little more than ‘snapshots’. The literature on the ‘world company councils’ in the 1970s resembles a sharp U-turn from initial (‘optimist’) hopes for a breakthrough to international bargaining, towards the (‘sceptic’) search for causes that had made such hopes disappear (see, for example, Piehl, 1974; Tudyka et al., 1978). Yet, perceptive observers such as Lloyd Ulman (1975) provided a much more complex picture. In his view, national unions had incentives to step up cross-border cooperation in MNCs during the 1970s, in particular the containment of whipsawing potential arising from the multinationals’ ability to switch assets across frontiers. However, the salience of this incentive was reduced not only by full employment and a number of obstacles (for example interference of coordination with national wage differentials and bargaining structures), but also by the perceived availability of alternative national strategies to deal with multinational companies (ibid.). Scholars of European works councils have shown little interest in historical precursors prior to the 1990s, yet it seems clear that the more successful development of some EWCs was due to a mix of ‘pull’ and ‘push’ factors, in particular the statutory imposition through EU law, the trade unions’ more difficult domestic situation and growing fears about an internationalization-driven ‘race to the bottom’ in high-wage countries in Western Europe (see Burgoon and Jacoby, 2004). At the same time, most EWC case studies highlight the fragile, issue-specific and interest-driven nature of recent cooperation initiatives. Even the most successful EWCs, in Kotthoff’s words, ‘do not have a strong European identity . . . in the sense of strong affective bonds and collective feelings’ (2007: 174). Building on these insights and my own earlier work (Fetzer, 2008, 2010b), the chapter will argue that trade union cross-border cooperation in multinational firms from the late 1960s is best conceptualized as a paradox – the driving forces behind cooperation initiatives have at once also restricted the incidence, scope and success of such initiatives. That cooperation turned out to be more successful in the 1990s than in the 1970s accordingly reflects a changing balance between facilitating and constraining conditions. Cross-border trade union cooperation in multinational firms: a paradox If processes of economic internationalization have induced trade unions to cooperate across borders, this has rarely been motivated by some idealist notion of internationalism. Actions such as the handling bans of South African goods during the 1970s and 1980s (van der Linden, 2003: 157) certainly testify to the existence of such idealism – yet, the typical pattern has been that cooperation initiatives originated from self-interested concerns over (the protection of) domestic employment and wage levels. This ‘economistic’ motivation is much older than the post-1945 period and has been discernible in relation to the cross-border movement of labour, goods and capital alike. Fears that the large-scale ‘import’ of ‘cheap’ migrant workers

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could put downward pressure on domestic wages, for example, already loomed large in the early initiatives for international cooperation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in particular with regard to employers’ use of migrants as strike-breakers (see Koller, 2009). As for trade, the pattern has been recurrent: in the late nineteenth century, British miners pressed for international cooperation to improve working conditions and wages on the continent, which would help to protect them from ‘cheap coal’ (van der Linden, 2003: 158). In the 1950s, American auto and steel workers took similar initiatives because they were worried that low pay levels in Western Europe and Latin America would threaten employment and/or wage standards in the United States (Kassalow 1974). By the 1990s, German trade unions sought to step up collective-bargaining coordination with their counterparts in neighbouring countries, not least in the low-wage areas of Central and Eastern Europe (Schroeder and Weinert, 2003: 576–9). In multinational firms, interdependence has been particularly pronounced, as inter-plant competition for investment had significant implications for local employment levels, while collective-bargaining processes in one subsidiary could have immediate ‘knock-on’ effects in other countries. Tellingly, as already mentioned earlier, it was in companies with a very high degree of inter-plant investment and job competition that European works councils have developed most dynamically since the late 1990s (Kotthoff, 2006: 43–61). Paradoxically, however, the purely interest-based nature of the cooperation impulse limits the incidence, scope and success of cooperation initiatives. First, as the above-mentioned historical examples indicate, the cooperation impulse is usually much stronger when it aims at the defence of existing employment and wage levels, than when it is based on hopes of raising domestic wages and conditions. This significantly reduces the potential incidence of cooperation. Cooperation initiatives have usually been undertaken in periods of economic difficulty, and have originated with trade unions in high-wage countries (Olle and Schoeller, 1977: 62) – from nineteenth-century British miners, to twentyfirst-century German metalworkers. The specific case of MNCs confirms this pattern. For example, recent studies of European works councils demonstrate that council involvement in transnational corporate restructuring processes is usually confined to instances where these processes are perceived to have a negative impact on employment security (Carley and Hall, 2006: 62–3). Second, many authors emphasize that trade union interest in international cooperation correlates inversely with the perceived availability of alternative domestic strategies. As John Logue has put it: ‘The greater the degree of trade union control over its national environment, the less likely it is to undertake international activity to achieve its members’ goals’ (1980: 11). Thus, even if union interests are affected by international economic interdependence, crossborder cooperation initiatives may play a subordinate role in the strategic trade union ‘toolkit’. The exceptionally far-reaching cooperation measures in the maritime sector reflect not least the highly internationalized labour market for seafarers, which reduced the effectiveness of domestic regulation (Koch-

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Baumgarten, 1999). In other sectors, cross-border cooperation has usually been pursued as a supplement to local and national-level strategies, and this also applies to union policy in multinational firms. Still today, even the most successful European works councils provide little more than ‘safety nets’ for subsequent domestic bargaining. Third, and most importantly, cooperation initiatives are only likely to succeed if the cooperation impulse is widely shared, that is, if economic internationalization is similarly perceived as a potential or actual threat to domestic standards by labour representatives from different countries. Conversely, if interdependence entails gains for some locations at the expense of others, cooperation impulses on the part of ‘losers’ are unlikely to translate into successful action. What I have elsewhere called a trade union ‘risk community’ (Fetzer, 2008), may be based on an internal or external dynamic (or a combination of both): on the internal side, the shared cooperation impulse stems from the fear of a ‘race to the bottom’ through concession-bargaining spirals – threat perception is here equivalent to the perception of mutual vulnerability. Externally, cooperation initiatives are rooted in a sense of shared vulnerability vis-à-vis other countries or regions, such as in the already mentioned case of the maritime sector, where international action was to protect employment and wage levels of Western seafarers in the face of low-wage competition from third world countries (Koch-Baumgarten, 1999). Clearly, the success of cross-border trade union cooperation does not solely depend on the ways in which the paradox of competition and cooperation unfolds. As mentioned earlier, a whole range of ‘environmental’ and ‘selfimposed’ obstacles could hamper cooperation initiatives – from differences in industrial relations structures, to employer opposition and intra-union clashes over appropriate strategies. Moreover, cross-border cooperation in multinational firms implies the participation of local, company-level representatives. While this allows broadening the actor base of cooperation, it also entails specific problems. For example, company-level networks face serious resource problems if they are not supported by national and/or international union organizations, or through statutory provisions. That church, or community-based organizations, have at times acted as substitutes (van der Linden, 2008: 278) is best seen as a symptom of, rather than a remedy for, the problem. Still more importantly, grass-roots cooperation initiatives in MNCs have at times posed direct cohesion problems for national union organizations because they appeared to interfere with ‘national orbits of wage comparisons’ and domestic bargaining structures, which triggered fears about intra-organizational tensions within the concerned countries and trade unions (Ulman, 1975: 11ff.). Contrary to the claims of ‘optimists’ such as van der Linden (2008: 279), attempts to ‘bypass’ official national and international union bureaucracies could thus hamper, rather than facilitate the prospects for cross-border trade union cooperation. Building on these insights, the chapter now turns to the case study of cross-

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border cooperation at Ford and General Motors between the late 1960s and the early twenty-first century. The chapter will argue that corporate internationalization entailed numerous cooperation initiatives from the late 1960s, but that these often remained short-lived and without sustained practical effects. It was not before the late 1990s that a changing balance between facilitating and constraining conditions led to more tangible results in the guise of European works council agreements. Cross-border trade union cooperation at Ford and GM (1967–2001) The history of cross-border trade union cooperation initiatives at Ford and General Motors started long before the late 1960s. As early as 1953, a conference organized by the relevant sector organization, the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF), called for the creation of ‘international company councils’ in the two firms and first advanced ideas about the cross-border exchange of information and a potential coordination of collective bargaining. Further debates took place during the regular IMF automotive conferences in the late 1950s and early 1960s (see Kassalow, 1974: 95–128, 155–82). The initiative for these first attempts came from the American United Automobile Workers (UAW), in part inspired by a Cold War agenda to bolster ‘free’ trade unions in Europe against their communist rivals (see Liechtenstein, 1995: 327–36). More importantly, UAW leaders became increasingly concerned about Ford and GM investments in Western Europe, which were perceived to be motivated by inferior European wages and working conditions, and hence to potentially endanger the much higher domestic standards in the USA (Kassalow, 1974: 130–42). In response, the UAW promoted ‘international fair labour standards’ through ILO and GATT and, more importantly for this chapter, sought to step up direct cooperation with its European counterparts through the IMF. Much energy was spent on convincing European delegates to fight for the forty-hour-working week and to bring wages up in line with productivity growth (ibid.: 143–82). Clearly, this pattern fits the interest-based paradox of cooperation outlined earlier – UAW leaders sought coordination because they perceived their European counterparts as competitors for investment, whose low wage standards could endanger hard-won domestic achievements. And, in fact, these UAW initiatives found considerable support among local trade unionists in Ford and GM’s two major European locations, Germany and Britain, where claims for higher wages and benefits started to be justified with direct references to bargaining agreements in the United States.2 However, it was precisely this ‘rank-and file’ support for cooperation in Britain and Germany that turned out to be a double-edged sword. While apparently strengthening the case for cooperation – in line with ‘optimist’ expectations – the positions of local GM and Ford unionists were linked to broader conflicts within the German and British movements, which dealt a decisive blow to the UAW advance. In the UK, the UAW initiatives encouraged

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left-wing militants, who were dissatisfied with official union policy and hoped for UAW support for their campaigns, thereby causing a stir in the leaderships of AEU and TGWU.3 Moreover, the UAW model of a specific automobile trade union invited emulation attempts, which would have entailed the break-away of the car sector union members from AEU and TGWU structures.4 In Germany, the latter problem was still more salient as UAW initiatives coincided with the emergence of the already mentioned controversy about a decentralization of bargaining structures within IG Metall. Opel and Ford works council leaders were among the most ardent supporters of decentralization, and they were also in the forefront of attempts to create a separate trade union for the car industry, which were clearly inspired by the UAW model. In 1963–64, such an attempt even coincided with (later denied) press reports that the UAW president, Walter Reuther, planned to set up a global automobile trade union.5 Against this backdrop, German and British union leaders opposed UAW proposals for international Ford and GM company councils for a long time; still in 1965, IG Metall chairman, Otto Brenner, warned against divisive implications for German union structures.6 Ultimately, however, a compromise was found, not least against the backdrop of the UAW’s ‘near-threat to abandon the IMF’.7 In 1966, the international Ford and GM councils were officially created at an IMF meeting in Detroit, but British and German union leaders received explicit reassurances that the councils would not tamper with domestic trade union structures and strategies (see ibid.: 183–201). Ambitious projects, modest achievements (1967–78) By 1967, some institutional preconditions for cross-border cooperation were thus already in place, while, at the same time, the scope of potential initiatives appeared to be circumscribed. But events in the late 1960s and early 1970s then seemed to signal that any such limits would soon be overcome. As will be recalled, this was a time of growing and controversial public debates about multinational firms, and of associated discussions about the social and political regulation of such firms’ activities (see Jones, 2005: ch. 8). Western European trade unions, too, as we have seen, started to pay much more attention to ‘the multinationals’, in particular because of the growing tendency among MNC to integrate their European subsidiaries across borders, which enhanced the potential to switch investments between countries, and also the opportunities for management to use whipsawing tactics in bargaining processes. Against this backdrop, there was a strong groundswell of trade union opinion in favour of stronger efforts for cross-border cooperation – it was not by coincidence that ‘international company councils’ were now created in numerous other firms beyond the automobile industry (see Northrup, 1980). At Ford and, to a lesser extent, General Motors, this new atmosphere entailed the intensification of cross-border trade union contacts under the auspices of the IMF. The newly created company councils met regularly on the occasion of IMF automobile conferences and, in the case of Ford, further ad hoc gatherings were organized as well, for example at the time of the 1971 strike in Britain

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(Kassalow, 1974: 269–73). UAW involvement decreased as company council meetings were held on a regional, European basis, while the larger IMF conferences also allowed European delegates to gather separately to discuss their specific problems (ibid.: 219–23). At the same time, new shop-floor level networks emerged although, again, with important differences between the two firms. At Ford, following a British initiative, the first European conference of shop-floor representatives from Germany, Belgium and the UK took place in the spring of 1969 (Friedman and Meredeen, 1980: 256), and similar gatherings were held regularly in subsequent years.8 In the case of GM, given the belated and less far-reaching nature of corporate internationalization, such shop-floor networks only started to emerge in 1973–74.9 The proliferation of meetings and networks went hand in hand with a widening of the envisaged agenda for cross-border cooperation (see Kassalow, 1974: 214–31). One important element here was the new emphasis on information exchange about corporate structures and strategies, which came to dominate IMF and shop-floor meetings alike. In close connection to this, there were also new aspirations to establish regular international union-management consultation meetings with regard to corporate planning. As for the older idea of bargaining coordination, more thought was given to the precise ways in which such a coordination could be brought about, for example through cross-border agreements on bargaining priorities and the synchronization of contract expiry dates in the different countries. Finally, an entirely new concern with crossborder support measures in strike situations emerged as well. In part, this new activism no doubt reflected the broader contemporary search for more stringent MNC regulation. More importantly, however, there was a specific trade union aspiration to thwart potential attempts by Ford and GM to undermine the domestic bargaining positions of organized labour through (threats of) cross-border investment switching. At the most basic level, regular information exchange about corporate structures and strategies was to help domestic labour representatives in their assessment of the motives and the credibility of such management tactics, while consultation meetings at the international level were to provide a check of the consistency of management messages. It was not by chance that UK labour representatives were in the forefront of these initiatives – in comparison to their German counterparts, they were more affected by management whipsawing attempts, while they lacked regular access to information on corporate strategies. At Ford, in particular, British delegates strongly pushed for consultation meetings at the European level to discuss company business plans (see ibid.: 297–8). Intensified efforts to coordinate bargaining demands and procedures were to prevent management pressure on domestic trade unions to lower their demands or accept unfavourable compromise settlements. In 1968, for example, Belgian Ford and GM union representatives pointed to the danger of such blackmailing tactics with regard to union demands for a shorter working week – a joint crossborder commitment to further working-time reduction was seen as the necessary antidote (ibid.: 223).

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In the event of labour disputes in a given national subsidiary, mutual strike assistance was to prevent management from temporary cross-border production relocations that could influence the outcome of industrial conflicts (Ulman, 1975: 3, 7). In 1968–69, in particular, much time was spent with debates on how to deal with this challenge beyond the ‘classic’ symbolic support provided by letters or telegrams. Full-scale coordinated strike actions had to be ruled out due to differing labour law provisions and bargaining structures, but delegates were called upon to block direct management attempts to shift production during labour disputes, complemented, if possible, by the reduction of overtime work, or, at least, the refusal to work additional overtime (Bendiner, 1987: 69–71). This was an ambitious and far-reaching agenda, even if it was primarily driven by a pragmatic desire to reduce domestic unions’ vulnerability to international interdependence, rather than by a normative belief in international solidarity and brotherhood. However, as the 1970s progressed, more and more elements of this agenda were downplayed or lost, while concrete cooperation achievements remained modest. Most cross-border union meetings – whether in the IMF framework or at the shop-floor level – were primarily concerned with mundane exchanges of information with regard to production, investment, wages and working conditions, as well as collective-bargaining developments. To varying degrees, these exchanges were useful for national delegates, as they could help to bolster domestic strategies. In the UK, for example, unions regularly used IMF wage comparisons to underpin their domestic claims for higher pay throughout the 1970s, while cross-border shop-floor networks gave them valuable information with regard to Ford and GM forward planning.10 However, the more ambitious aims of cooperation remained unfulfilled. To start with, attempts to establish international union–management consultation bodies ran into deadlock in the early 1970s. In the case of General Motors, there were preliminary discussions at a 1972 IMF company council meeting but, given the absence of an independent European company headquarters, the idea was considered premature (Kassalow, 1974: 296). At Ford, by contrast, IMF meetings resolved to seek direct talks with Ford of Europe (FoE) management in 1971 and 1972, and this move was backed up by coordinated written requests to FoE headquarter management on the part of all concerned national unions in 1972. But the company flatly rejected the proposal, and a subsequent informal meeting of IMF representatives with Detroit labour relations management yielded no results either. The Ford managers questioned the representative capacity of the IMF and made it clear that the company preferred to deal with trade unions at the national level.11 Faced with this company position, the IMF council discussed the issue again in 1974, but the German IG Metall delegates opposed British suggestions to apply industrial pressure on Ford, and nothing was done as a result.12 As for bargaining coordination, successive IMF meetings generated ‘shopping lists’ of priority items, and the idea to synchronise contract expiry dates remained an ‘evergreen’ in conference resolutions. But discussions did not go beyond the repeated assessment of possible advantages and difficulties of

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synchronization (ibid.: 297–301). As time passed, sceptical voices became louder. In line with the domestic trend towards decentralization, British delegates increasingly questioned the rationale of fully-fledged bargaining coordination and argued in favour of a system of leapfrogging, whereby gains should first be made in union strongholds and then built upon in other countries (ibid.: 300). In Germany, by 1975, cross-border-bargaining coordination was openly described as ‘the wrong path’ (Pitz, 1975). Cooperation in situations of industrial dispute – despite many ambitious conference resolutions – did usually not exceed solidarity telegrams and some token support. In the case of GM, again, the much less developed cross-border production network limited the salience of the issue from the outset. At Ford, there was no lack of occasions, yet little was achieved. In 1968, a few German and British Ford workers participated in a demonstration in support of a strike in the Belgian Genk factory, but more tangible support was missing. British NJNC leaders opined that they were busy with domestic problems, while the Cologne works council was unable to prevent the transfer of German engineers to the nearby Belgian plant. That overtime was reduced in the course of the dispute was the result of delivery shortages rather than deliberate union action – the Cologne works council was primarily interested in securing ‘compensation’ payment for the cancelled weekend shifts (Spitaels, 1968). Likewise, during the long 1971 strike in the UK, an IMF meeting in London expressed general messages of solidarity while, at the same time, overtime was worked regularly in Cologne, not least to compensate for the lack of British engine supplies, which had caused lay-offs in the second German assembly plant in Saarlouis.13 In 1978, the second major Ford UK dispute again triggered massive lay-offs in Belgium and Germany, leading the IMF to organize an emergency meeting of the Ford company council in London. Beyond the usual solidarity message, the meeting offered some financial assistance and also pledged a ban on work normally done in Britain (Friedman and Meredeen, 1980: 273). However, as in 1971, continental delegates were primarily concerned to contain strike repercussions on their own plants. In the FRG, for example, Fordwerke management and the works council negotiated an agreement with the federal labour office that guaranteed laid-off workers 95 per cent of their normal pay for the duration of the strike.14 Why did cross-border cooperation achievements during the 1970s fall so far short of the ambitious agendas of the late 1960s? Following the conceptual considerations outlined earlier, it is useful to distinguish between two complementary lines of explanation: on the one hand, the interest-driven cooperation impulse turned out to be weaker than anticipated in the late 1960s, while, on the other hand, cooperation initiatives were also hampered by external and selfimposed obstacles. With regard to the latter aspect, the case studies of Ford and GM confirm many insights of the existing literature (see Piehl, 1974). To start with, in the absence of an international legal framework, cooperation initiatives were inhibited by cross-country differences in industrial relations and labour law.

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Collective-bargaining coordination, for example, failed not least due to contrasting domestic bargaining structures (regional/sectoral in Germany vs. company-level bargaining in the UK), which made it impossible to harmonize contract expiry dates.15 Likewise, differences in strike legislation hampered mutual assistance during industrial disputes. During the 1971 strike at Ford UK, for example, German delegates pointed to the legal prohibition of sympathy strikes that prevented them from blocking the delivery of specific parts from Ford Canada, which the company used as a partial substitute for UK production.16 It should be said though that such legal arguments were at times also a convenient excuse. In the case of overtime bans, for example, legal provisions were in practice of little relevance, as revealed by the scenarios anticipated by Fordwerke management: ‘There is . . . practically no way to enforce the works council’s approval on overtime . . .This means, that the works council can, for a period of time, reject any request for additional working time. This would be a form of support for unions in other Ford plants in Europe.’17 Management resistance was another serious external obstacle to cooperation during the 1970s, in particular because of the new focus on consultation meetings at the international level. As we saw in the case of Ford, management strictly opposed such attempts and also prepared plans to prevent unions from the synchronization of bargaining rounds in the different subsidiaries. In countries where labour representatives were company employees (e.g. works councillors in Germany) managers at times also exerted direct pressure to prevent attendance of international union meetings.18 But difficulties were not merely the result of ‘environmental’ factors, they also reflected a number of self-imposed obstacles. Clashes about the merits and drawbacks of national trade union models were one important issue in this respect. In fact, cross-country differences of interest representation would not have been a major problem had these differences simply been mutually acknowledged as a condition of different national histories and institutions. However, as we have seen, delimitation from the respective other country became a prominent part of the emerging ‘national identity’ rhetoric among British and German Ford and GM trade unionists during the 1970s, and these negative projections were accentuated by plant-level experiences. The lack of militancy in Germany could easily be perceived as a factor undermining trade union campaigns in Britain, while German labour representatives often complained about the hardships workers had to suffer as a result of lay-offs caused by frequent strike action in the UK (see chapter 3). Still more importantly, there was the problem of national union structures and solidarities, which had already inhibited cooperation initiatives prior to 1967. In the UK, the left shift within the TUC relaxed former anxieties about international communist infiltration but fears that notions of international wage ‘parity’ could erode national solidarity were still present. In 1970, TUC general secretary, Vic Feather, warned against ‘premature moves’ towards international harmonization, which would create a new international elite of workers and thus much increased wage differentials within the countries

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concerned.19 TGWU and AUEW, despite the domestic decentralization of union structures (see Undy et al., 1981), showed little inclination to support international shop-floor networks – partly because of competence rivalry, partly because of insufficient financial means.20 In Germany, cross-border cooperation initiatives became again connected to broader domestic decentralization debates and half-secret schemes to create a separate trade union for the car industry. The IG Metall leadership took determined steps against such aspirations, and it also went on the brakes with regard to international bargaining coordination.21 Indeed, by 1974, IG Metall officials even declined to participate in further attempts to institutionalize regular consultation meetings with FoE, fearful that such consultation could turn into collective bargaining, and hence encourage ‘separatist’ developments within the union.22 IG Metall leaders also repeatedly attempted to prevent Ford and Opel labour representatives from attending meetings of cross-border shop-floor networks, and the union generally refused to provide any financial assistance for such meetings.23 In the case of GM, as a result, shop-floor exchanges had to be organized by industrial and social services of the Anglican and Protestant churches. Socially engaged pastors performed the role national union federations declined to play.24 If the combination of all these obstacles seriously undermined cross-border cooperation prospects, this effect was compounded by the fact that the crucial interest-driven cooperation impulse turned out to be weaker than anticipated in the late 1960s. Here, the fundamentally paradoxical nature of cross-border trade union cooperation comes into play: contrary to assessments of contemporary industrial relations researchers (see, for example, Piehl, 1974: 241–2), the problem was not the unfolding of stronger competition between Ford and GM locations, but rather that this competition created few negative externalities and affected domestic trade unions to different degrees, which limited the potential for the emergence of a shared risk perception among Ford and GM trade unionists. A comparison of the positions of German and British labour representatives helps to illustrate this problem: as we have seen earlier, the German share of Ford’s and GM’s European output considerably increased between 1967 and 1979, and it did so at the direct expense of the British subsidiaries. At the same time, perceptions of bargaining vulnerability were also very different. In the UK, particularly in the case of Ford, investment boycott threats became a ‘staple’ of management strategies in collective-bargaining processes, while hardly any such pressure was applied in Germany (see chapter 4). As a result, interest-based cooperation incentives were weak in the FRG – apart from exceptional situations such as the Ford UK strike in 1978 when management complaints about German–British labour cost differentials pushed the works council to provide some cross-border support (Friedman and Meredeen, 1980: 273). Even in the British case, negative effects of investment competition remained limited during the 1970s. While production levels at Ford UK and Vauxhall stagnated from the early 1970s, employment – except for the recession years

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1974–75 – continued to grow. In turn, this also reduced the salience of investment boycott threats in collective-bargaining processes.25 From a British point of view, it was also difficult to see how cross-border union cooperation could help to contain management threats. Given the management focus on low UK productivity and strike losses, it would have been necessary to ‘export’ British militancy – a practically impossible task. This is not to say that there were no efforts to spread the ‘virtues’ of British trade unionism. In 1975, for example, leading Vauxhall conveners claimed that there were safety problems at workplaces in Opel factories, and praised the way British unions were able to deal with such problems. They also criticized the lack of union militancy in the FRG. One TGWU convener declared that ‘we don’t blame the German workers for the system they have, but we do expect them to struggle against it’.26 Predictably, however, such calls found little resonance and instead triggered counterclaims, as German delegates expressed incomprehension about the British pattern of multi-unionism, which was juxtaposed to the FRG’s successful unitary union movement. By the late 1970s, British reports of crossborder trade union encounters noted with resignation that German unions appeared to accept the system in which they had grown up.27 Moreover, British unions were able to fend off much management bargaining pressure during the 1970s through purely domestic means of action, most clearly expressed in the successful Ford campaign for wage parity with Midlands motor firms in 1971 (Mathews, 1972). In turn, such experiences of effective unilateral action further reduced the urgency of cross-border cooperation. British unions’ scepticism towards cross-border-bargaining coordination, for example, clearly reflected the successful domestic strategies of decentralized ‘leapfrogging’ (Kassalow, 1974: 300). Domestic strike capacities, too, contrary to the widespread fears of the late 1960s, turned out to be little affected by corporate internationalization. Temporary production transfers during industrial disputes had limited importance, and their effect was more than offset by the disruption of cross-border deliveries, which multiplied the commercial damage and hence increased the pressure on management to settle on union-friendly terms. During the long Ford strikes in 1971 and 1978, for example, support measures by foreign trade unionists were expendable because the breakdown of UK engine and transmission deliveries to Germany and Belgium was in itself sufficient to bring the company to their knees.28 In sum, investment competition did not entail a shared risk perception among Ford and GM trade unionists during the 1970s because it affected national subsidiaries in contrasting ways and because continuous employment growth and domestic bargaining strength limited perceptions of vulnerability. Taken together with the multitude of obstacles mentioned earlier, this meant that ambitious agendas for cross-border cooperation had little chance to be implemented. In practice, cooperation remained confined to information exchange and symbolic solidarity rhetoric.

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Crisis and seeds for future development (1979–87) Among industrial relations scholars, the 1980s are often regarded as a period of crisis for cross-border cooperation initiatives in multinational firms (see, for example, Tudyka, 1986), not least due to the failure of the earlier ambitious cooperation schemes, which left a legacy of disillusion. While the case studies of Ford and GM confirm this general picture, they call for a more nuanced analysis, which also pays attention to a number of important changes, which foreshadowed the more successful development of the 1990s. There was no shortage of cross-border trade union meetings at Ford and GM during the 1980s. Next to the traditional shop-floor contacts and the conferences organized by the International Metalworkers’ Federation, additional communication channels were created through ‘TIE’, a network for ‘transnational information exchange’ with its seat in Amsterdam. Between 1984 and 1986 alone, four large pan-European gatherings of Ford labour representatives were held in various institutional settings,29 and a similar frequency can be observed in the case of General Motors.30 In addition, there were also regular bilateral meetings, in particular between German and British Ford and GM labour representatives. However, this continuous activity cannot hide the fact that cooperation results were very limited. To start with, many of the earlier aspirations simply disappeared. The decline of industrial disputes – particularly in the UK – removed strike assistance from the agenda, while efforts to coordinate domestic collective bargaining processes were discontinued in light of scepticism from national union leaderships. At General Motors, the creation of GM Europe in 1986 induced a renewed lobby for regular Europe-wide consultation meetings on forward business planning, but in the face of management resistance the idea was soon abandoned.31 In line with the defensive shift of union policy at the national level (see chapter 4), cross-border cooperation attempts were now primarily undertaken in response to company restructuring and rationalization measures. For example, Ford gatherings in the mid-1980s were called to deal with FoE capacity reduction plans, while a GM IMF council meeting took place in the wake of the creation of the GME headquarters in Zurich. But meetings and conferences rarely went beyond country-by-country reports on the impact of company strategies in the respective national subsidiaries and the exchange of experiences with regard to domestic trade union reactions. They usually concluded with the endorsement of a vaguely worded protest resolution against Ford or GM measures, which implied little in terms of joint action, and at times also stood in an awkward relation to local trade union strategies.32 In the Dagenham assembly plant, for instance, shop stewards openly demanded that production of the closing factory in Cork (Ireland) should be transferred to Dagenham, notwithstanding the solidarity declarations for Irish workers expressed at international conferences.33 At the same time, more far-reaching cooperation initiatives regularly failed due to internal conflicts. In 1980, for example, GM delegates were split over the

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question whether trade unions should jointly lobby against the provision of investment grants by national governments.34 At Ford, in 1985, there was disagreement about how to react to the company’s pan-European capacity reduction plans – while British representatives favoured joint industrial action, their German counterparts advocated the elaboration of an alternative costcutting scheme that would downsize the FoE bureaucracy.35 Ideas of how to implement local content rules in an internationally coordinated way, such as a ‘European production code’ (Greater London Council, 1986: 24), were never systematically discussed. A British delegate best captured this ineffectiveness at an international conference in 1985, arguing that ‘in a strange way the capitalist Ford Motor Company is being more socialistic by spreading work around the world, than perhaps we as, I believe socialists, would do voluntarily’.36 As some of these examples demonstrate, cross-border cooperation was still hampered by clashes about different ‘styles’ of interest representation even if – compared to the 1970s – such conflicts diminished somewhat in importance. The long-standing difficulties related to the potential interference of international initiatives with national bargaining and union structures were also still salient, particularly in Germany where the Ford and Opel works council leaders still faced IG Metall headquarter resistance against autonomous company-level meetings with their European counterparts. It was only at the 1986 IG Metall convention that independent lay delegate contacts in multinational companies were eventually given official union blessing.37 In Britain, Ford shop stewards also still had to lobby for more determined union efforts in support of crossborder shop-floor contacts.38 Following much contemporary industrial relations writing about the difficulties of cross-border union cooperation (see, for example, Streeck, 1997), one could argue that cooperation efforts in the 1980s remained limited primarily because of the accelerating competition for investment. This interpretation is correct in as much as any cross-border cooperation initiative in the 1980s was bound to be limited by the increasingly pervasive impact of investment competition, which was further heightened by an omnipresent ‘competition between nations’ rhetoric (see chapter 3). Ford Germany’s works council chairman, Wilfried Kuckelkorn, for example, saw it as ‘natural’ that labour representatives were drawn into this competitive dynamic, and he openly suspected British unions of resorting to deceitful tactics to ensure favourable investment allocation decisions.39 Left at that, however, the analysis would fail to comprehend the paradoxical nature of cross-border trade union cooperation, namely that competition for jobs and investment, while complicating and limiting cooperation initiatives, has often been a necessary precondition for cooperation to occur at all. In fact, at Ford and GM alike, even the very limited cooperation impulses in the 1980s often stemmed from investment competition experiences. For example, in 1980–81, Opel labour representatives tried to enlist the support of their European counterparts for protests against GM investments in Spain and Austria.40 In 1984, Ford UK trade unionists appealed for cross-border help in

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their struggle against the closure of the Dagenham foundry, while their German Ford colleagues did the same to help prevent the relocation of Fordwerke’s product development division in 1985.41 What this suggests is that the problem was not investment competition as such, but rather that the specific context of competition in the 1980s did not favour the success of cross-border cooperation initiatives. And, in line with the argument put forward in the introduction to this chapter, this failure is best explained by the fact that competition did not engender a shared sense of risk or threat. Certainly, in contrast to the 1970s, investment competition now coincided with headcount reductions (rather than employment growth), which did sharpen trade union risk perceptions. However, beyond superficial rhetoric, these risk perceptions were rarely shared across borders. To start with, as we have seen in chapter 4, the impact of investment competition was still very different: importantly, German trade unions suffered much lower headcount reductions than their UK counterparts after British Ford and GM assembly plants had been downgraded to the supply of the domestic market in the early 1980s. At the same time, apart from exceptional cases such as Ford’s ‘After Japan’ programme (Starkey and McKinlay, 1994), management agendas were still strongly shaped by country-specific features. In the UK, in continuity with the 1970s, there was much pressure on trade unions to reduce wildcat strikes and improve labour productivity through the revision of work practices, while German labour representatives faced management demands to reduce labour costs from the mid-1980s onwards. Against this backdrop, the degree and focus of risk perceptions varied a great deal, which made it difficult to come up with a shared agenda for cross-border cooperation. These problems were further compounded by the fact that investment competition in the 1980s often amounted to zero-sum ‘battles’ between German and British locations. While this triggered repeated requests for international union meetings on the part of the ‘losers’, there was little scope for a joint agenda here: British Ford trade unionists understood Fordwerke works council concerns about the loss of engine production to the UK in 1984, but they saw the engine decision as a positive compensation for the earlier closure of the Dagenham foundry.42 Opel’s works council chairman voiced his appreciation for the Vauxhall trade union campaign against tied imports in 1985, but urged UK delegates to accept that German unions would not want to give away production capacity at a time of employment cutbacks.43 Under these circumstances, a cooperation agenda could only have relied on a shared aspiration to prevent a ‘race to the bottom’ in terms of employment conditions. However, against the backdrop of the still very different domestic labour–management battles, this was slow to emerge. Indeed, from a German works council point of view – given the earlier widespread endorsement of ‘British disease’ notions (see chapter 3) – it was difficult to see a reduction of wildcat strikes in the UK as part of a ‘race to the bottom’. Shared risk perceptions were not only impeded by difficulties to formulate joint aspirations, but also, following Ulman (1975), by the perceived availability

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of domestic means of action to address internationalization challenges. As demonstrated in chapter 4, German works councils became more experienced in using co-determination to exert influence on European forward planning, while in the UK, unions concentrated on campaigns against tied imports, for which they mobilized employee, public and consumer support. There was some awareness that union actions in another country could have negative repercussions on domestic strategies. Vauxhall unions’ local content campaign, for example, caused some anxiety in the Opel works council,44 while Ford UK trade unionists were apprehensive of Fordwerke works council strategies to divert investments from Britain to Germany.45 But such ‘externalities’ remained too limited to translate into sustained cross-border cooperation initiatives. There was one exception to this pattern: the Ford product development division. Here, the 1980s witnessed a series of significant cooperation efforts, which are worth considering in some detail because they provide powerful additional evidence for the importance of a shared risk perception for cross-border union cooperation. Direct contacts between the product development works council in CologneMerkenich and the Dunton branch of the UK white-collar union DATA/TASS had started in the late 1960s, but had remained at the level of sporadic information exchange for most of the 1970s.46 It was in 1979 that the first attempt for more far-reaching cooperation was made. Following contradictory management information about future diesel engine development, a joint works council/TASS meeting resolved to request clarification through a direct encounter with FoE management, which, moreover, was to be followed up by a general agreement on the British–German division of responsibilities and headcount levels in the division.47 And, as Ford management flatly refused the request, labour representatives pledged to jointly monitor future changes of work distribution through information exchange and, if necessary, through joint pressure on management to achieve a ‘balanced work distribution’.48 In 1981, against the backdrop of planned headcount reductions, efforts were further stepped up: the Merkenich works council leader and the chairman of the Dunton TASS branch wrote a joint letter to FoE president, Philip Caldwell, protesting against the staff cuts, the postponing of development projects and the planned outsourcing of some functions to Ford suppliers, which together would increase work pressure and endanger product quality. Moreover, they requested assurances about the future role of the European facilities within Ford’s worldwide design and development organization, in particular with regard to the area of small-car development where Ford’s emerging cooperation with Mazda was perceived with much anxiety.49 In subsequent years, cross-border works council/TASS meetings became more frequent. British and German unionists alike started to invoke ‘European interests’, and they repeatedly emphasized that ‘Japanization’ and other features of worldwide programmes, e.g. the planned import of Escorts made in Brazil, would damage job security in the ‘European’ locations. TASS representatives elaborated that ‘they wanted to ensure that EAO [European Automotive

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Operations] should have a significant influence on developments and that world programmes would not equate centralization of product development in the United States’.50 A 1983 meeting expressed concern about ‘American and Japanese intrusion in European responsibilities’.51 In 1986, the Merkenich works council and the TASS Dunton branch again jointly approached FoE management to lobby against a stronger role for Mazda in Ford’s product development division.52 To some extent, these initiatives reflected peculiar features of the product development division, whose small size allowed labour representatives to envisage ambitious goals such as the monitoring of cross-border relocations of development work. At the same time, however, the division’s status as the ‘frontrunner’ of geocentric internationalization points to the heralding of new trends, particularly so with regard to the emergence of a new shared risk perception, which underpinned the stepping up of cooperation efforts. On the one hand, this perception resulted from the fact that FoE restructuring and costcutting measures affected labour representatives in similar ways across borders – more often than in the past they faced similar pressure on headcount levels and work practices. On the other hand, Ford’s emerging globalization strategies provided a new, ‘external’ dimension of risk, which entailed a shared sense of ‘European’ vulnerability to competition from development centres in other world regions (primarily Japan and United States). Certainly, these cooperation initiatives did not suspend the competition for investment and responsibilities between Merkenich and Dunton, and one also needs to be careful not to exaggerate the practical effectiveness of cooperation agendas. Works council documents report repeated complaints by TASS representatives about ‘broken pacts’ in the early 1980s.53 And yet, these continued rivalries were now ‘overarched’ by an – admittedly limited – cooperation agenda. The Merkenich works council leader repeatedly warned against letting British–German rivalry override the shared concern about corporate globalization – in his view, Merkenich and Dunton were forced to cooperate to avoid ‘being steamrolled by Mazda’.54 Occasionally, the ‘external’ challenge was even invoked to mitigate British–German allocation disputes – in 1984, for example, TASS made a plea to temporarily transfer some functions from Merkenich to Dunton to avoid a longer-term relocation from Europe to Japan or North America.55 While not all of this rhetoric can be taken at face value, it nonetheless indicates that the emergence of a shared risk perception was a crucial precondition for cross-border cooperation. The product development case of course also demonstrates that ‘environmental’ obstacles continued to hamper cooperation efforts during the 1980s. The ambitious agenda of 1979–81 had to be scaled back in part because the company simply opposed joint consultation meetings, let alone negotiations about the cross-border distribution of workloads. Invoking the historically distinct industrial relations traditions in each country and subsidiary, Ford declared that it was ‘not prepared to sacrifice or jeopardise those relations by superimposing another level of meeting, which is not within the framework of

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any agreed procedure’.56 This confirmed the experience already made in the early 1970s: unless forced in one way or another, management would do its utmost to avoid having to deal with trade unions at the international level. In fact, this resistance was not confined to the company level – Ford and General Motors also joined the US business lobby that successfully blocked European Commission proposals for legislation (the so-called ‘Vredeling directive’) obliging multinational firms to consult with employee representatives on a pan-European basis (see de Vos, 1989). It should be added though that British trade unions showed little interest in European legislation either, as the British labour movement’s anti-EC attitude reached a new peak in the first half of the 1980s (see Teague, 1984: 116–18). At Ford UK, the Greater London Council’s public hearing in 1985 revealed that labour representatives were entirely unaware of the proposed directive.57 In Germany, there was some more interest, particularly in the case of Opel where the works council publicly spoke out for EC legislation to create labour–management consultation bodies in multinational firms.58 In any event, the Vredeling directive’s blockade in the EC Council of Ministers meant that employer obstruction could not be overcome. It was not before the early 1990s that renewed efforts for a European legislative framework were to create a more favourable environment for cross-border trade union cooperation at Ford and General Motors. Towards more effective cross-border cooperation (1988–2001) The 1990s witnessed the transformation towards more effective international trade union cooperation at Ford and General Motors, facilitated by the successful macro-level trade union lobby for European Union legislation prescribing the set-up of European councils (EWC) for labour–management consultation in multinational firms. By the early twenty-first century, these councils had become negotiation partners of European group managements, and had concluded several framework agreements related to corporate restructuring. Yet, importantly, the achievements remained modest and, for a variety of reasons, cooperation turned out to be more far-reaching at General Motors than at Ford. The process leading up to this transformation started in the late 1980s, when a series of events triggered a stronger trade union interest in cross-border cooperation. The paradox of cooperation now came into its own. Albeit to different degrees in the two countries and companies, risk perceptions flowing from investment competition became stronger and increasingly shared across borders. Three aspects need to be mentioned in this respect. First, there was a growing awareness of the limits of domestic strategies of interest representation and, as a corollary, of the need to step up cross-border cooperation efforts. Given the different domestic patterns analysed in chapter 4, this played out differently in the two countries and companies. In Germany, the shift was much more pronounced at Opel than at Ford, where the works council had long been

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obliged to cope with a remote European decision-making centre. By contrast, the 1986 creation of the new GM Europe headquarters in Zurich undermined Opel labour representatives’ earlier privileged access to corporate decisionmaking. As a result, there emerged a stronger determination to link up with labour representatives in GM’s other European locations in order to force the company to accept a Europe-wide labour–management consultation arrangement.59 In the UK, the impact of the ‘Single European Market’ project was crucial because it undermined the previous strategic focus on national market segregation and import controls. At Ford and GM alike, British assembly units became essentially one-model plants with a much higher share of their output going into exports (for Ford, see Tolliday 2003b: 101). From a union perspective, this diminished the effectiveness of local content campaigns or strike actions against tied imports – the changes ‘deprived’ British unions of their former virtual ‘ally’: the national market. The parallel pro-European shift of national trade union positions also dashed the still lingering hopes for a nation-state-driven ‘alternative economic strategy’ and instead encouraged closer cooperation with foreign trade unionists (see Rosamond, 1993; Wendon, 1994). Second, the acceleration of corporate globalization from the late 1980s magnified the shared risk perceptions in relation to investment competition from non-European locations.60 Leading Opel works councillors now spoke about the necessity for a new ‘European thinking’ as GM was investing large sums in other parts of the world. British representatives warned that GM’s new plants in Asia would constitute a threat for long-term employment prospects in Europe, urging joint attempts to secure a maximum of production and jobs on the old continent.61 Third, geocentric restructuring measures now increasingly affected domestic labour representatives in similar ways. In both firms, management initiatives envisaged similar changes of employment practices across the continent, for example increased job flexibility and ‘quality circles’, while the acceleration of rationalization in anticipation of the Single European Market intensified investment competition and management attempts for concession bargaining. Much more than in the past, union representatives in European Ford and GM locations were faced with similar management demands, in particular with regard to the extension of machine running times, and the associated demands for extended weekend work flexibility and new shift patterns (Mueller and Purcell, 1992). In response, Ford and GM labour representatives across the continent emphasized the need to step up cross-border cooperation to contain competitive underbidding.62 In the FRG, this shift was particularly pronounced. Indeed, developments at Ford and Opel even caused uproar in the IG Metall leadership because of their implications for national collective bargaining standards (e.g. with regard to weekend work). In 1988, with explicit reference to Ford, the IG Metall chairman, Franz Steinkühler, emphasized that German unions, in contrast to earlier periods, were now to some extent dependent on the support

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of other European labour representatives in multinational companies. Crossborder cooperation was to ‘create a certain obligation for mutual information’ and ‘to make national solos more difficult’.63 Against the backdrop of these developments, the new cross-border cooperation agenda took shape in a joint lobby for the set-up of European labour–management consultation bodies at Ford and General Motors. In 1988, the first of these initiatives was launched by AEU president, Bill Jordan, who urged the firms to follow the example of a number of French-owned MNCs that had recently accepted voluntary agreements with the European Metalworkers’ Federation (EMF). Subsequently, a series of meetings were held under the auspices of the IMF and EMF to discuss the modalities for a joint approach to European managements (Fetzer, 2005: 323–4). In May 1991, Ford trade union representatives from all European production locations gave an official mandate to the EMF to seek a voluntary agreement with FoE for the establishment of an international consultation structure (Gluch, 1997: 29–30). In February 1992, a similar declaration was adopted by a conference of European GM trade union delegates.64 In comparison, union determination was greater at GM,65 in part because of the more sustained management concession-bargaining agenda, but in part also because of the specific situation of the dominant group of German Opel representatives who were ideologically less disposed to make concessions than their Ford counterparts, but found themselves increasingly besieged by the new GM Europe headquarter.66 Despite this trade union lobby, however, it was not before 1996 that European works councils were eventually created at Ford and General Motors. Primarily, this delay was the result of management resistance. Throughout the early 1990s, senior Ford and GM figures made it plain that they would not engage in European-level consultation exercises unless they were forced to do so by European Union legislation. It was claimed that existing local and national arrangements were satisfactory, and that European schemes would only add unnecessary bureaucracy.67 Probably more to the point were the public remarks by a senior Opel manager in early 1993, who argued that benchmarking and investment competition between European locations could – if given in ‘small doses’ – be used to accelerate efficiency improvements of the whole European group.68 Against this backdrop, a realistic chance for Euro-level consultation emerged only after the legislative passage of the European works council directive in 1994. Moreover, on the union side itself, there were also still ambiguities, as the precise institutional design of European works councils remained to be decided. Unlike in the past, German unions were not the main problem here, even if the IG Metall leadership was still anxious to ensure that European consultation would not turn into fully-fledged company bargaining that could undermine industrial union and bargaining structures. As a matter of fact, there was now much less desire for such a course among local Ford and Opel unionists than in the past. By the 1990s, the Ford and Opel works councils had ceased to advocate

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a shift to company bargaining and had instead embraced IG Metall’s traditional sectoral agreements, which were no longer perceived as constraints on local militancy, but rather as ‘safety nets’ for anticipated future rounds of concession bargaining.69 In Britain, however, there was still a great deal of anxiety that EWC election procedures through workforce balloting could encourage non-union forms of labour representation. By the 1990s, as we have seen in chapter 4, British unions had abandoned their total opposition against a ‘second channel’ of employee representation – yet the majority still insisted on the election of works council delegates through union machinery rather than employee ballot. In line with this position, TGWU and AEEU representatives feared that the creation of European works councils could weaken trade union positions in the UK because of the possible direct election of delegates through workforce ballots (Fetzer, 2005: 327–8). Particularly at Ford, British unions also stressed the need for the inclusion of national headquarters officials. This led to clashes with the German works council, which were exacerbated by ideological differences and personal antipathies.70 As a result, protracted negotiations ensued even after management was forced to accept the establishment of European works councils, and it was only in 1996 that the Ford and GM EWCs could officially start to operate. Yet, the existence of European works councils in itself did not mean an automatic breakthrough to labour–management negotiations at the European level. According to EU law, EWCs were confined to information and consultation purposes, and in most other firms, including other European automobile producers such as Volkswagen or Daimler (see Greer and Hauptmeier, 2008), EWC activities did not go much beyond this legally prescribed function (see Whittall et al., 2007). By contrast, the Ford and GM councils turned into negotiation bodies within a few years. The first agreement between FoE and the company’s EWC was made in 1999. It gave long-term employment and wage guarantees for around 20,000 workers in eight of Ford’s European component plants (four in the UK, three in Germany and one in France) that had been outsourced into the new company Visteon. A further agreement with similar provisions followed in 2001 when Ford entered into a joint venture with the German company Getrag, which was to take charge of Ford’s entire manual transmission production, including the plants at Halewood and Cologne (see Greer and Hauptmeier, 2008: 84–6). At General Motors, the years 2000 and 2001 witnessed the conclusion of altogether three European framework agreements, the first of which pertained to the spin-off of powertrain operations that were to be transferred into a joint venture with Fiat. GM’s EWC obtained similar guarantees as its Ford counterpart in the cases of Visteon and Getrag. The two other agreements went far beyond the Ford pattern because they were related to the restructuring of GM’s own European operations. In January 2001, the EWC intervened in the negotiations over the planned closure of the Luton assembly plant and obtained management commitments to refrain from enforced redundancies and to guarantee future production at the second UK plant in Ellesmere Port. In October of

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the same year, the EWC negotiated about GM’s pan-European restructuring plan ‘Olympia’, and it successfully insisted that restructuring should be carried out without plant closures. Negotiations were accompanied by short industrial action in all major production sites – pioneering a new type of ‘Euro-strike’ (Klebe and Roth, 2000: 752–4; Greer and Hauptmeier, 2008: 86–8). Explaining this unusual success of European works councils at Ford and GM – and also the differences between the two firms – again requires looking at trade union threat (or risk) perceptions, both with regard to intra-European dynamics and to the competition between European and non-European locations. On the internal side, against the backdrop of declining Ford and GM market shares, trade unionists across Western Europe were faced with costcutting programmes in the second half of the 1990s, which were routinely accompanied by public speculation about plant closures. Compared to EUbased firms such as Volkswagen, Renault or Fiat, national unions were more evenly affected by these threats because of Ford and GM’s lack of a European ‘home country’ – closure threats often hung over several plants at the same time. Moreover, major outsourcing operations, such as the Ford Visteon spin-off or the GM–Fiat joint venture, had a pan-European dimension that affected labour representatives across different countries. Importantly, the dynamic of corporate restructuring varied considerably between the two firms, and this partly helps to explain the greater scope of cooperation at GM. There, the trade unions were confronted with a strongly accelerating intra-European competition for investment that entailed almost permanent pressure on employment and wage levels. European GM managers often deliberately raised the uncertainty as to the outcome of the regular rounds of corporate restructuring to put pressure on local trade unions.71 On several occasions, rumours about impending cutbacks were spread through press interviews of GM Europe managers who alleged that the company needed to cut European overcapacity and/or to close one or several of its European plants. Such statements often triggered a wave of speculation in different countries.72 Against this backdrop, European GM trade unionists increasingly perceived that they were all ‘in the same boat’, and this perception was strongly reinforced by events in 1998–99 when an agreement at Opel triggered a spiral of ‘domino’ concession bargaining in Belgium, Spain and the UK (see chapter 4). Continuing along these lines appeared to entail the danger of a ‘race to the bottom’ of employment conditions in all locations, and hence strengthened the belief in the need for cross-border cooperation to contain management whipsawing. The practical ‘procedural’ consequence was that national representatives mutually committed themselves to refrain from unilateral concession bargaining in situations of European restructuring prior to the conclusion of a framework agreement by the EWC (Herber and Schäfer-Klug, 2002). In the case of Ford, corporate restructuring in the late 1990s – albeit accompanied by a similar bargaining ‘domino’ dynamic – entailed a mitigation of the previous pattern of investment competition because manufacturing came to be

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concentrated in fewer locations than before (see Greer and Hauptmeier, 2008: 85–6). For example, Fiesta and Escort production were now divided between only two (rather than three) plants, while the UK sites in Dagenham and Bridgend became FoE’s engine production centres. At the same time, the shift of the FoE headquarters to Cologne entailed a downplaying of aggressive whipsawing strategies and it also brought Ford closer to the Volkswagen pattern: German labour representatives now had privileged access to corporate decisionmaking, which in turn reduced the scope of cross-border union cooperation. Not least against this backdrop, EWC activity was confined to straightforward cases, such as the pan-European outsourcing of component plants. Threat perceptions in relation to non-European competition add to the differences between Ford and General Motors. While corporate globalization underpinned the operation of European works councils in both firms, this dynamic was again stronger in the case of GM. As elaborated in chapter 2, globalization accelerated at GM after 1995 through a rapidly changing ‘production geography’ (massive investments in Eastern Europe and Asia), and global product standardization. Against this backdrop, the lobby for the ‘production location Europe’ became a leitmotiv of the EWC at General Motors, expressed, for example, in the advocacy of ‘European autonomy’ in terms of products and production, or the promotion of greater export opportunities for European brands in other world regions.73 Most importantly, there was a strong new emphasis on notions of cross-border ‘European unity’ among trade unionists – defined not only as a task of intra-European solidarity but also as the necessity to jointly defend ‘European’ interests within the global GM network. The understanding of ‘European’ was often quite ambiguous though, as cooperation was to an important extent designed for the defence of West European locations against competition from Asia as well as Eastern Europe.74 In comparison, such perceptions remained weaker at Ford, not least because the company’s initially ambitious globalization strategies were somewhat scaled back in the second half of the 1990s. Moreover, Ford was also more cautious than GM in terms of the extension of its production geography in Eastern Europe and Asia (see chapter 2). Clearly, however, the differences between EWC activity at Ford and GM cannot solely be accounted for with reference to differences in corporate structures and strategies. As had already been discernible in the run-up period to the EWC creation, different styles of interest representation also played an important role, in particular with regard to the different approaches of the dominant German ‘factions’ within the European works councils. In the case of Ford, following the relocation of the FoE HQ to Cologne, the traditionally very partnership-oriented approach of the German works council was practically ‘transposed’ to the European level: negotiations between the EWC and European management were carried out in a spirit of collaboration and did not involve the mobilization of employees or the press. There was also a strong emphasis on the autonomy of local and national negotiations. For example, unlike in the case of GM Luton, the Ford EWC refrained from inter-

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ventions in negotiations about the Dagenham plant closure in 2000 (Greer and Hauptmeier, 2008: 86). At GM, on the other hand, the EWC’s resolve to contain management whipsawing was inspired by the traditionally more conflictual outlook of the Opel works council in Germany. Spurred on by spontaneous local walkouts (e.g. at Luton in 2000), the EWC actively sought the support of GM Europe employees through frequent in-plant communication and even created the so-called ‘gmworkersblog’, an internet forum providing reports and debates about ongoing European negotiations, and a space for exchange between workers and unionists. Much more than at Ford, regular interventions in the press ensured an outside visibility of EWC activities.75 In sum, the European works council at GM took more autonomous initiatives and its scope of activity was wider than in the case of Ford. Even in the case of General Motors (and still more so at Ford), however, cooperation achievements remained limited. For one thing, European works council activity took up only one dimension of the historical agendas of international cooperation, namely the set-up of union–management consultation bodies. By contrast, the older ideas about coordinated wage bargaining were not revitalized. More importantly, the paradoxical nature of the competition-driven cooperation impulse needs to be highlighted again – while enabling cooperation through the emergence of shared risk perceptions, locational competition at once also limited the scope of cooperation agendas. On the one hand, as labour representatives themselves emphasized, the focus on risks and threats gave EWC agreements an exclusively defensive nature– they were concerned with ‘sharing losses’, that is, with the distribution of capacity and job cutbacks and the defence of existing wages and conditions, rather than with the much more difficult task of ‘sharing gains’.76 Clearly, trade union representatives were keenly aware that future employment security ultimately depended on the relative economic position of plants within Ford and GM’s international business operations – for instance in terms of size, product cycles, and the modernity of plant equipment. Such issues were difficult to translate into a logic of cross-border distribution. On the other hand, EWC agreements never provided more than minimum ‘safety nets’ (e.g. no plant closures, minimum conditions for outsourcing processes), leaving most of the detailed restructuring measures to be carried out at the local or national level. In many instances, sites were affected to very different degrees, which left ample room for continued competitive underbidding.77 EWC agreements provided some minimum conditions to contain locational competition – but they did not suspend it. In fact, as we have seen in chapters 3 and 4, perceptions of competition between local and national union representatives continued to thrive. In Britain, for example, the support for EWCs was combined with a powerful lobby for a ‘European level playing field’ in terms of labour law. Indeed, British unions’ support for European works councils itself partly drew on this source: given that EWC agreements were legally binding,

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they helped to improve employment security in British plants covered by the deals because they ‘equalized’ their status with competing sites in other European countries.78 Against this backdrop, and particularly in the case of GM, European works councils themselves became a kind of ‘clearing house’ to elaborate accepted rules for ‘fair competition’ between the locations, e.g. with regard to the transparency of investment tenders and the definition of ‘bottom lines’ for wage concessions (see Bartmann, 2005). Cross-border cooperation thus remained fragile, issue specific and dependent on the coincidence of local and national interests. Conclusions At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Ford and General Motors are widely regarded as being among the most outstanding examples of cross-border trade union cooperation on the European continent (Da Costa and Rehfeldt, 2007). This chapter has attempted to reconstruct the history of international trade union networks in the two firms in a longer-term perspective. It has demonstrated that this history cannot be read as a slow progress towards a transnational labour identity and that the pattern of international cooperation evolved largely in response to shifting corporate structures and strategies, as well as in connection with broader economic and political changes. Early attempts in the 1970s might have been more successful had employment implications of company strategies been more threatening and had cooperation attempts not interfered with national bargaining and trade union structures. The 1990s would have brought little innovation had there not been a change in the ‘mix’ of incentives and obstacles for international action, complemented by a growing perception that alternative national influence channels could not anymore be pursued as effectively as before. By implication, further progress in the future cannot be taken for granted; indeed, the role of EWCs may decline again if those challenges, which brought about the European trade union ‘risk community’, recede into the background.79 There is of course the possibility that socialization effects will make international networks more immune against future setbacks but little points to a scenario in which Ford and GM trade unionists will shed national allegiances in favour of a new transnational identity. In many ways, as we have seen in chapter 3, the environment of multinational firms tends to perpetuate these national allegiances, not least because of the powerful association of investment competition with the old notion of the international economy as a sphere of competition between nations. Essentially, these conclusions should warn us to read events at Ford and GM as heralding a new age of labour transnationalism destined to overcome ‘traditional’ trade union parochialism. If anything, this parochialism (Offe and Wiesenthal, 1980), seems to be in a process of transformation towards a new, geographically extended form: Eurocentrism. The Ford and GM case study

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material clearly suggests that European cooperation was in part achieved through a conscious juxtaposition of (West) European and non-European interests from the early 1990s. Significantly, this appears to have been accompanied by increasing tensions between European labour representatives and the American UAW (Anner et al., 2006: 14–15) – an ironic development in light of the pioneering role played by the US automobile trade union in the build-up of international networks during the 1950s and 1960s. The case studies thus highlight not least the danger that cross-border cooperation in Europe could turn into a protectionist instrument to defend parochial European interests against those of workers and trade unions in other world regions. Notes 1 Ten years after the adoption of the European works council directive, less than half of the firms covered by the legislation had actually set up councils (Knudsen et al., 2007: 10). 2 For GM/Opel in Germany, see ‘Protokoll Betriebsversammlung’, 6 July1955, 20 June 1956, 25 June 1958, Stadtarchiv Rüsselsheim, Sammlung Opel, Protokolle Betriebsversammlungen, Band 2; for Ford UK, see ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 16 May 1955, 5 December 1956, Modern Records Centre Warwick (hereafter MRC), MSS. 126/TG/Sack 23/2. 3 Letter from Victor Reuther, UAW to William Carron, AEU, 10 April 1963, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Detroit (hereafter ALUA), UAW International Affairs Department, Victor Reuther and Lewis Carliner Files 1962–68, Box 35–6. 4 Letter from William Carron, AEU to Ken Bannon, Director UAW Ford Department, 5 April 1962, ALUA, UAW International Affairs Department, Victor Reuther and Lewis Carliner Files 1955–62, Box 95/18. 5 Letter from Nat Weinberg, UAW to Werner Thonessen, IG Metall, 18 February 1964, ALUA, Nat Weinberg Collection, Part 2, Box 53/34. 6 ‘Niederschrift der Sitzung des Vorstandes der IG Metall’, 12–13 April 1965, Archiv der sozialen Demokratie (hereafter AdsD), Bestand IG Metall, Vorstand 1965 Nr. 1/65–8/65. 7 Memo Lewis Carliner to Irving Bluestone, 9 December 1964, ALUA, International Affairs Department, Victor Reuther and Lewis Carliner Files, 1962–68, Box 53/7. 8 ‘Europäische Konferenz der Ford-Arbeiter 1975 – Beitrag der britischen Delegation’, Archiv Betriebsrat Fordwerke AG Produktentwicklung (hereafter ABRF-P), ‘Ford Europa’. 9 ‘Bericht über die Englandfahrt vom 15.9.74 bis 22.9.74’, Archive Max GutknechtStöhr, Rüsselsheim. 10 See for Ford, ‘Notes of proceedings at a meeting of the Ford NJNC’, 14 December 1972, MRC, MSS 126/TG/3, Sack 140/2; for GM/Vauxhall: Letter from Mike West to Max Gutknecht-Stöhr, 12 May 1975, Archive Max Gutknecht-Stöhr, Rüsselsheim. 11 ‘Account of IMF meeting with Ford executives’, 9 February 1973, ALUA, UAW International Affairs Department, Herman Rebhan Collection, Box 15/15. 12 Letter from Burton Bendiner to Herman Rebhan, 16 July 1974, ALUA, UAW International Affairs Department, Herman Rebhan Collection, Box 5/10. 13 ‘Besprechung zwischen den shop stewards und den Vertretern der Ford-Werke Saarlouis sowie den Kollegen Tolusch und Pleitgen, IG Metall’, [March 1971], AdsD,

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Bestand IG Metall, Abteilung Internationales, I 295. 14 ‘Britischer Sand im saarländischen Getriebe’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 11 November 1978. 15 ‘Protokoll der Tagung europäischer Vertreter des IMB-Weltautomobilausschusses für Ford’ [1972], AdsD, Bestand IG Metall, Abteilung Internationales, I 295. 16 ‘Besprechung zwischen den shop stewards und den Vertretern der Ford-Werke Saarlouis sowie den Kollegen Tolusch und Pleitgen, IG Metall’, [March 1971], ibid. 17 Letter from Dr Blaeser, Labour Affairs Planning Fordwerke AG, to Mr Court, FoE, 15 June 1972, Archiv Fordwerke AG, HRM department (hereafter AFAG-HRM), ‘FoE’. 18 Interview by the author with Günther Middell and Peter Nottelmann, former HRM staff, Fordwerke AG, 5 September 2003. 19 TUC, ‘Report of a conference on international companies’, 21 October 1970, MRC, MSS. 292D, Box 936. 20 Interview by the author with Bernie Passingham, former convener, Ford Dagenham, 20 November 2001. 21 ‘Referat von Eugen Loderer auf der nationalen Automobilkonferenz in Böblingen’, 8 November 1973’, AdsD, Bestand IG Metall, Abt. Organisation, O 637. 22 Memo Fritz Hauser, 18 November 1974, AdsD, Bestand IG Metall, Abteilung Internationales, I 163. 23 Letter from Eugen Loderer, IG Metall to Richard Heller, Chairman works council Adam Opel AG, 3 October 1977, Archiv Gesamtbetriebsrat Adam Opel AG (hereafter AGBRO), ‘Schriftverkehr mit der IG Metall 1976 bis 31.7.1978’; letter from Wilfried Kuckelkorn, chairman works council Fordwerke AG to Eugen Loderer, IG Metall, 7 November 1979, Archiv IG Metall Cologne (hereafter AIGMC), ‘VKL Ford 77–Dez 79’. 24 ‘Brücke Opel-Vauxhall: Noch fehlt der IG Metall-Pfeiler’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 28 September 1976. 25 ‘Trade union points’, 23 March 1971, MRC, MSS. 292D, Box 890. 26 ‘Report of a visit to Rüsselsheim by a party of trade unionists from Vauxhall Motors, 1–7 December 1975’, Archive Max Gutknecht-Stöhr, Rüsselsheim. 27 E. Bone, ‘Report on German study group’, 5–11 March 1978, MRC, MSS 126/TG 3/Sack 116/2. 28 ‘Ford strike 1971 – chronology and news clips’, MRC, MSS. 217/B1/12; ‘Britischer Sand im saarländischen Getriebe’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 11 November 1978. 29 ‘European Ford Workers’ Conference Report’, produced for the Ford UK National Convener Committee by CAITS, [March 1984]; ‘IMF World Auto Council Meeting’, Cologne, 23–25 April 1986, Archive Trade Union Research Unit, Ruskin College Oxford; ‘Ford Workers International Conference’, Liverpool, 15–17 March 1985, Archive AMICUS Dagenham office (hereafter AAMICUS-Dag); ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung’, 11 March 1985, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Okt 1984’; ‘Transnational Information Exchange, Ford Special 9/1981’, MRC, MSS. 226x/IND/21/65/1. 30 ‘Report of European GM Auto Council, organised by IMF’, 19–20 May 1980, MRC, MSS. 292 D/Box 1709; TIE, ‘GM Workers Voice’, No 1, 1984, Archive TGWU Liverpool (hereafter ATGWU-Liv), ‘press cuttings’; ‘Sitzung des IMBWeltautomobilauschussses für General Motors’, 24–26 June 1981, ‘Sitzung des IMB-Weltautomobilauschusses für General Motors’, 28–29 March 1985’; ‘IMBSitzung für General Motors Europa’, 3 March 1986, AGBRO, ‘Tagungen’. 31 ‘Kein Europa ohne Arbeitnehmer’, Main-Spitze, 21 April 1986.

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32 See, for example, ‘Sitzung des IMB-Weltautomobilauschussses für General Motors’, 24–26 June 1981, ’IMB-Sitzung für General Motors Europa’, 3 March 1986, AGBRO, ‘Tagungen’. 33 ‘Under pressure’, PTA shop stewards’ bulletin, [April 1984], AAMICUS-Dag. 34 ‘Report of European GM Auto Council, organised by the IMF’, 19–20 May 1980, MRC, MSS. 292 D/Box 1709. 35 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung’, 11 March 1985, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Okt 1984’. 36 ‘Ford Workers International Conference’, Liverpool, 15–17 March 1985, AAMICUSDag. 37 Industriegewerkschaft Metall, Anhang zum Protokoll des 15. ordentlichen Gewerkschaftstages der IG Metall für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 19–25 October 1986, pp. 2–3. 38 See the comments by Ford Dagenham convener, Bernie Passingham, in: ‘Report of the TUC Consultative Conference, “Trade Union Rights In Multinational Companies”’, 28 January 1983, MRC, MSS. 292 D, 560.1, Box 1095. 39 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung I. Quartal 1984’; ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung IV. Quartal 1984’, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Jan 83’. 40 ‘Report of European GM Auto Council, organised by the IMF’, 19–20 May 1980, MRC, MSS. 292 D/Box 1709. 41 ‘European Ford Workers Conference Report’, produced for the Ford UK National Convenor Committee by CAITS’, [March 1984], Archive Trade Union Research Unit, Ruskin College Oxford. 42 ‘Bericht des GBR zur Betriebsversammlung IV. Quartal 1984’, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-N ab Jan 83’. 43 ‘Heller sieht Kollegen bei Vauxhall und Opel in einem Boot’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 21 September 1985. 44 ‘Protokoll der Sitzung der Geschäftsleitung mit dem Wirtschaftsausschuß’, 6 March 1985, AGBRO, ’Wirtschaftsausschuß Januar 1985 bis Nov. 85’. 45 ‘Ford Workers International Conference’, Liverpool, 15–17 March 1985, AAMICUSDag. 46 ‘Bericht über ein Gespräch mit Vertretern der DATA’ [May 1970], ABRF-P, ‘Ford Europa’. 47 ‘Meeting in Cologne’, 8 September 1979, ABRF-P, ‘Ford Europa’. 48 Memo Udo Fielitz, chairman works council product development CologneMerkenich, 11 September 1979, ibid. 49 Letter from works council Cologne-Merkenich/TASS Dunton to Caldwell, 6 May 1981, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-P von 1977 bis Dez. 1984’. 50 TASS, ‘Product Development Staff monthly meeting’, 23 July 1982, ABRF-P, ‘Ford Europa’. 51 ‘Treffen 21–23.11.1983’, ibid. 52 ‘Bericht des BR Produktentwicklung zur Betriebsversammlung’, 12 September 1986, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-P von Dez 84 bis 6/89’. 53 ABRF-P, ‘Ford Europa’. 54 ‘Bericht des Betriebsrates Produktentwicklung zur Betriebsversammlung’, 12 September 1986, AIGMC, ‘BR Ford-P von Dez 84 bis 6/89’. 55 Memo TASS Dunton [February 1984], ABRF-P, ‘Ford Europa’. 56 ‘Statement to be made to TASS representatives’, 12 September 1979, ibid. 57 Greater London Council, ‘Ford inquiry’, minutes 1 February 1985. I am grateful to

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Steven Tolliday for providing me access to this documentation. 58 ‘Multis sollen Personalplanung offenlegen’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 29 February 1980. 59 ‘Kein Europa ohne Arbeitnehmer’, Main-Spitze, 21 April 1986; ‘Opel-Chef Hughes sperrt sich gegen GM-Europabetriebsrat’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 22 February 1992. 60 As described earlier, this dynamic had first been discernible in the Ford product development division in the early 1980s. 61 ‘General Motors. Autoproduktion und Zulieferung – Neue Strukturen in der Automobilindustrie’. Protokoll der Veranstaltung in Kooperation von EMB, IG Metall und GBR Opel, 21–23 November 1994, AGBRO, ‘Europäischer Konzernbetriebsrat I’. 62 ‘Ford’s Traum: Arbeiten rund um die Uhr’, Die Welt, 22 August 1989. 63 ‘Niederschrift über die Sitzung des Vorstands der IG Metall’, 19 April 1988, Archiv IG Metall, Frankfurt/Main, ‘Vorstand Januar–April 1988’. 64 ‘Protokoll der 1. Europa-Konferenz der Arbeitnehmervertreter von GM’, 20–21 February 1992, AGBRO, ‘1. Europakonferenz der GM-Arbeitnehmer’. 65 For Vauxhall see: ‘Minutes of the meeting of the Vauxhall JNC’, 13 November 1992, Archive HRM Vauxhall Motors Ltd, HRM Department (hereafter AVM-HRM), ‘JNC minutes’, vol. 6. 66 ‘Autoproduktion rund um die Uhr’, Der Spiegel, 1 January 1990. 67 ‘Opel-Chef Hughes sperrt sich gegen GM-Europabetriebsrat’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 22 February 1992. 68 ‘Den Wettbewerb der Standorte nutzen’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17 February 1993. 69 Interview by the author with Wilfried Kuckelkorn, former works council chairman, Fordwerke AG, 11 December 2001. 70 Interview by the author with Denis Gregory, Trade Union Research Unit, Ruskin College Oxford, 18 July 2004. 71 ‘Den Wettbewerb der Standorte nutzen’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17 February 1993. 72 See, for example, ‘Glaube, Liebe, Hoffnung’, Der Spiegel, 16 June 1997. 73 ‘Europäischer Rahmenvertrag zwischen dem Management und dem Europäischen Arbeitnehmerforum von General Motors’, 1 October 2001, paragraph ‘neue Geschäftsmöglichkeiten’, at www.labournet.de/branchen/auto/gm-opel/olympia -eu4.html (last accessed 23 June 2010). 74 ‘Rede Rudolf Müller Europäisches GM Arbeitnehmerforum’, 15–16 January 1997, AGBRO, ‘Europäisches GM Arbeitnehmer-Forum’. 75 See, for example: ‘Opel-Arbeitnehmer pochen auf mehr Eigenständigkeit’, Rüsselsheimer Echo, 7 December 1998. 76 Interviews by the author with Anthony Woodley, former general secretary of the TGWU and joint general secretary of UNITE (20 November 2001) and John Jack, former convener, Vauxhall Luton plant (20 July 2003). 77 ‘Impact of Opel restructuring plans in Spain’, at www.eiro.eurofound.eu.int /2001/09/feature/ es0109205f.html (last accessed 4 June 2007). 78 House of Commons, Trade and Industry Committee, Minutes of Evidence, 24 October 2000, at www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001/cmselect/cmtrdind /128/1011101.htm (last accessed 24 April 2009). 79 In fact, this dynamic was clearly discernible during the recent restructuring at General Motors in 2008–9 when the close involvement of various national governments entailed a ‘renationalization’ of trade union alignments and the sidelining of the European works council (‘Trade union welcomes General Motors’ decision not to sell Opel’, at www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2009/11/articles/uk0911049i.htm (last accessed 9 May 2010).

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Conclusions

This book has argued that British and German trade union politics at Ford and General Motors was thoroughly affected by the internationalization of corporate structures and strategies from the late 1960s. Yet, the analysis supports neither the claims of radical ‘globalists’ about the allegedly inexorable rise of cross-national homogeneity in values and institutions, nor utopian hopes for a new era of global cosmopolitanism (see Held, 1995). The book has taken issue with the tendency for polar juxtapositions in the industrial relations literature on internationalization – whether between ‘convergence’ and ‘path dependence’, or between ‘solidarity’ and ‘competition’. Throughout the analysis, the book has emphasized the multifaceted and context-dependent nature of internationalization’s challenges – and the paradoxical effects this entailed for British and German trade union politics. Taking its cue from the scholarship highlighting the symbiotic relationship between internationalization and nationalism – and economic nationalism in particular (Helleiner and Pickel, 2005) – the book has first demonstrated how internationalization entailed an upsurge of ‘banal’ nationalist (Billig, 1995) rhetoric, which appropriated classic topoi of nationalist ideology (identity, autonomy and unity) in ways that enabled trade unions to frame everyday concerns and aspirations in national terms. To varying degrees coexisting and ‘merging’ with local (and in the 1990s also European) notions of patriotism, this rhetoric found very different expressions in the two countries and underwent significant transformations over time. And yet, as chapter 3 has shown, it remained firmly entrenched in Germany and Britain alike still in the early twenty-first century. Second, inspired by recent advances in the conceptualization of institutional change (Streeck and Thelen, 2005), the book has highlighted the paradoxical simultaneity of convergence dynamics and incremental change with regard to unions’ domestic interest representation practices. While becoming more similar in some respects, these practices continued to evolve along country- and firm-specific trajectories – internationalization, in the words of Sorge, ‘fed into the build-up of societal specificity’ (2005: 2). This was in part because

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internationalization affected Ford and GM subsidiaries in different ways, and in part because internationalization interacted differently with the specific national and local contexts. Over time, certainly, the convergence dynamic became stronger. Against the backdrop of heightened locational competition, British and German labour representatives at Ford and GM – as their counterparts in many other firms (see Sisson and Artiles, 2000) – had little alternative to concession bargaining in the 1990s. And yet, internationalization also continued to help re-create (rather than merely reproduce) cross-national diversity. Third, drawing on Koch-Baumgarten’s (1999, 2006) appropriation of international regime theory for the analysis of cross-border trade union cooperation, the book has emphasized the paradoxical role of investment competition for such cooperation initiatives at Ford and General Motors. Counter-intuitively, investment competition was the most important precondition for cooperation to occur, and it was precisely the massive acceleration of this competition that induced trade unions at Ford and GM to step up their efforts during the 1990s. At the same time, however, the interest-driven nature of union motivations limited the scope of cooperation agendas – still in the early twenty-first century European works councils could not suspend, but at best – and only to a limited extent – contain competition. Clearly, a study based on two company cases cannot make claims to be generalizable. It is evident, for example, that not all sectors are as prone as the automobile industry to ‘engender’ banal economic nationalism or patriotism (Callaghan and Lagneau-Ymonet, 2012). Likewise, the conditions for crossborder trade union cooperation have varied in different industries (see Anner et al., 2006). However, as the methodological debates among historical comparativists indicate (see, for example, Rueschemeyer, 2003), small-scale case studies can yield significant heuristic gains in ‘testing’ existing assumptions and interpretations, as well as generating new questions and analytical tools for future research. For example, the conceptual framework developed in chapter 3 could be used to examine the salience of banal economic nationalism across time, countries and industries. Similarly, the ‘risk community’ concept elaborated in chapter 5 could be ‘tested’ in a larger sample study through the systematic analysis of cooperation initiatives in companies with different risk ‘profiles’ (high vs. low degree of intra-European competition; high vs. low degree of extraEuropean competition). Going beyond those immediate extensions of the books’ arguments, I would like to conclude with a series of reflections on the broader implications of the case study findings, with a particular emphasis on two aspects elaborated in the introduction to this book, namely, first, the bridging of historical and contemporary approaches to the study of internationalization in industrial relations, and, second, the importance of the issue of national allegiance for the analysis of internationalization processes. As for the former aspect, the book has demonstrated the benefits of a better ‘bridging’ of history and social science approaches, and it points to a number of

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specific conclusions for both ‘branches’ of industrial relations studies. With regard to labour history, the book’s findings suggest that the study of internationalization should not be confined to the analysis of international trade union networks and organizations, but should also pay attention to the impact of internationalization on domestic actors and processes – a perspective, which has a rich potential far beyond the obvious case of multinational firms. In fact, the analysis itself points to some broader dynamics in both countries, which would be worth exploring in the future. In the British case, the book’s findings highlight the international dimension of industrial relations reform debates since the 1960s, which have so far been studied through a purely domestic ‘lens’ (see Fox, 1985; Davies and Freedland, 1993). One aspect of this concerns the importance of multinational firms as model cases and points of reference in such debates. The country-wide significance of Ford during the 1970s appears to be part of a longer-term continuity reaching back to the mid1960s when experiences of US multinationals’ ‘productivity bargaining’ informed the deliberations of the government-appointed Donovan commission (Howell, 2005: 103–4). More importantly, the book indicates how much arguments in favour or against reform were inspired by comparisons with industrial relations practices abroad – from the conflicts over the ‘import’ of US labour law and German-style co-determination in the 1970s, to the debates about the UK’s opt-out from EUlevel industrial relations directives in the 1990s. Not least against the backdrop of the controversial ‘British decline’ debate (Tomlinson, 2000), industrial relations reform ‘battles’ appear to have been embedded in a salient if shifting international reference frame, which has not yet been systematically explored. In fact, following Howell’s (2005) sweeping study of Britain’s ‘three systems’ of industrial relations, such an analysis could even be extended to cover major reform debates throughout the period since the late nineteenth century – already then, cross-national comparisons appear to have played an important role in making (or opposing) the case for reform (see ibid.: 82–5). In the German case, the book points to international entanglements in the history of co-determination – apart from a few studies about the crucial Allied contribution to the systems’ creation in the immediate post-war period (see Dartmann, 1996), this is a question that has so far found little scholarly interest. Given the more centralized and legally regulated nature of German industrial relations, the ‘demonstration effects’ of foreign-owned firms appear to be generally weaker than in the UK – yet, as the book highlights, they do exist. Indeed, Rehder (2003: 68) has identified Ford and GM as ‘trendsetters’ in the broader transformation towards a more contractual interpretation of co-determination since the late 1980s. At the same time, as in the British case, the book suggests that it would be worth exploring the broader discursive context, in particular with regard to the importance of comparisons with foreign industrial relations systems for debates in the FRG (see Hoff, 1977). That the emergence of a few small and militant occupational unions (e.g. train drivers) in the early 2000s has again triggered

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German employer anxiety about the alleged danger to ‘import’ the ‘British disease’1 should be sufficient proof for the salience of this issue in the post-1945 period. In the specific case of supervisory board co-determination, wider European entanglements also still await scholarly treatment, in particular with regard to the role of German actors and the ‘German model’ in debates about board participation in other European countries and at the EC/EU level (for a first attempt, see Fetzer, 2010c). If the book thus helps to open up new avenues of research to further internationalize the historiography of post-1945 British and German industrial relations, it also contributes to ‘historicize’ contemporary industrial relations scholarship. Contrary to widespread assumptions among industrial relations academics, the case study evidence demonstrates that internationalization could have crucial effects for trade union policy long before the 1990s. Certainly, Ford and General Motors belonged to a small group of companies pioneering geocentric internationalization, while a much larger number of firms only followed suit in the wake of the Single European Market (Dicken, 2007). Undoubtedly, too, internationalization processes accelerated from the late 1980s, driven at once by the broader shift from ‘embedded’ to ‘neoliberal’ capitalism (van Apeldoorn, 1998) and the micro-level dynamics of performance benchmarking and intra-company investment tenders (Zagelmeyer, 2001). Still, the Ford and GM cases suggest a longer ‘prehistory’ of internationalization, which, moreover, helps to shed new light on contemporary developments. As pointed out in the introduction, this implies two different aspects. On the one hand, a more historically grounded analysis allows capturing those longterm continuities whose ‘remnants’ are still discernible today. The case study points, for example, to the roots of trade unions’ ‘shadow management’, which emerged soon after the onset of geocentric internationalization, and then accelerated in subsequent decades. Perhaps more importantly, the emphasis on the ‘prehistory’ of internationalization implies the need to consider contemporary developments as time-specific and changing, too. For example, recent comparative studies of US multinationals emphasize that their challenges to industrial relations institutions in Germany are today stronger than in other European countries, including Britain (Almond and Ferner, 2006) – in complete contrast to the situation at Ford and General Motors during the 1970s and 1980s. What this suggests is that internationalization effects are time specific. While celebrated as a ‘best practice’ model during the 1970s, German industrial relations came to be much more critically viewed in the wake of the ‘Standort Deutschland’ debate in the 1990s. And yet, this, too, is likely to change again in the future. In a similar vein, the book’s evidence contradicts frequently made assumptions about internationalization as heralding an inexorable ‘race to the bottom’ in employment conditions and trade union strength. Rather, along the lines suggested by Silver (2003), internationalization effects on union power need to be understood as time and place specific. As long as internationalization goes hand in hand with production and employment growth – as was the case in

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Germany and the UK until the late 1970s – there is little reason to suspect a weakening of unions’ bargaining strength. The more problematic situation for organized labour across Western Europe today is not the result of internationalization per se, but appears to be primarily due to the recent geographical extension of potential ‘exit’ options for multinational firms, in particular with regard to the Eastern enlargement of the European Union (Galgóczi et al., 2006). Moreover, this rapid growth of foreign direct investment beyond the former Iron Curtain may in fact enable East European trade unions – battered by communist legacies and the difficult socio-economic transition of the 1990s (Crowley and Ost, 2001) – to regain some strength (see Meardi, 2007). Turning to the issue of national identity and allegiance, the book not only adds to the existing literature by raising a previously neglected question of inquiry. Its findings call upon industrial relations and trade union scholars to take ‘banal’ nationalism more seriously in their analyses of internationalization processes. In the cases of post-1945 Britain and Germany, a number of potential issues quickly come to mind, for example with regard to the salience of role perceptions within the international trade union movement for national identity projections. As for the FRG, it may be worth asking whether trade unions’ successive endorsement of the post-1945 socio-economic order was in part nurtured by perceptions of superiority with regard to union structures and achievements in other countries – witness the importance of the ‘British disease’ metaphor in German union rhetoric of the 1970s (Hoff, 1977). More prosaically, with regard to ‘national autonomy’ rhetoric, trade union attitudes towards the defence of ‘Germany Inc.’ (see Höpner and Krempel, 2004) against foreign takeovers would also merit systematic scholarly attention. In the British case, likewise, union attitudes towards the ‘alternative economic strategy’ still have to be systematically explored, as have the selfperceptions within the international labour movement. For example, the book’s findings reveal that British unions’ growing perception of economic crisis in the 1970s coexisted uneasily with an attitude of condescension towards the industrial relations models in economically more successful countries – while German wages and conditions became a routine feature of union-bargaining agendas at Ford and Vauxhall, German unions were simultaneously scorned for their lack of wage militancy. In a wider context, it was perhaps not by chance that such ambiguities coincided with a wave of nostalgia for British trade union links with Commonwealth countries – leading TGWU figures praised Commonwealth trade unionists as ‘all speaking the common language English, all talking trade unionism in the way that we talk about it’.2 Against this backdrop, it would certainly be worth exploring in detail whether and in what ways British unions’ self-perception as the pioneer of world trade unionism fed into their domestic positions and strategies. Beyond the focus on trade unions, there are also some broader implications for the study of the relationship between internationalization and nationalism, and the book thus helps to better connect industrial relations scholarship to the internationalization/globalization literature. If we accept Billig’s (1995)

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argument about the post-1945 reproduction of nationalism through ‘banal’ everyday rhetoric and symbolism, then the book highlights the scholarly case to pay more attention to the economic sphere (see Helleiner and Pickel, 2005). In this perspective, trade unions can be conceptualized as one among other actors whose rhetoric perpetuates a banal economic nationalism in internationalizing markets, and their study can be connected to wider analyses of the languages of ‘nationhood’ that permeate economic life – from the rhetoric of consumer movements (see Frank, 1999), to corporate product-marketing communication (see Kühschelm, 2010). Finally, in a broader methodological perspective, the findings of this book support the arguments of all those who regard ‘nation’ and ‘nation-state’ as crucial categories for the analysis of internationalization/globalization processes (see Patel, 2005). On the whole, it seems more promising to conceptualize such processes as powerful forces transforming national societies, rather than as harbingers of a post-national era. Notes 1 ‘Gesamtmetall fürchtet britische Verhältnisse’, Handelsblatt, 17 August 2007. 2 TUC, Report of 106th Annual Trades Union Congress, 2–6 September 1974, pp. 480–1.

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References

Primary sources Archives Archiv der sozialen Demokratie Bound (AdsD) Archive AMICUS, Dagenham office (AAMICUS-Dag) Archive Betriebsrat Fordwerke AG, Produktentwicklung (ABRF-P) Archive Gesamtbetriebsrat Fordwerke AG (AGBRF) Archive Gesamtbetriebsrat Adam Opel AG (AGBRO) Archive Fordwerke AG, HRM Department (AFAG-HRM) Archive Industriegewerkschaft Metall, Frankfurt/Main headquarters Archive Industriegewerkschaft Metall, Cologne office (AIGMC) Archive Max Gutknecht-Stöhr, Rüsselsheim Archive Trade Union Research Unit, Ruskin College, Oxford Archive Transport and General Workers’ Union, Liverpool office (ATGWU-Liv) Archive Vauxhall Motors Ltd, HRM department (AVM-HRM) Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, Detroit (ALUA) Modern Records Centre, Warwick (MRC) Public Record Office, London (PRO) Stadtarchiv Rüsselsheim

Printed primary sources House of Commons, Parliamentary Debates (1960–2000). House of Commons, Trade and Industry Committee, Vehicle Manufacturing in the UK, Report and Minutes of Evidence (London: HMSO, 2001). The Motor Vehicle Industry. Fourteenth Report from the Expenditure Committee, session 1974–75, report and 3 vols. Annex (London, 1975). Trades Union Congress, Reports of Annual Trades Union Congress (various years). Industriegewerkschaft Metall, Protokolle der Gewerkschaftstage der IG Metall (various years).

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Newspapers Auto, Motor und Sport Autocar Autozeitung Berliner Morgenpost Dagenham Post Daily Telegraph Der Spiegel Die Welt Dürener Nachrichten Financial Times Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung Frankfurter Rundschau General-Anzeiger Bonn Guardian Handelsblatt Independent Industriekurier Kölner Express Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger Kölnische Rundschau Luton News Main-Spitze Manager Magazin Neue Rhein-Zeitung Observer Rheinische Post Rüsselsheimer Echo Saarbrücker Zeitung Süddeutsche Zeitung Welt am Sonntag Welt der Arbeit Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung

Interviews Broadhead, Steve, former trade union chairman, Vauxhall Joint Negotiating Committee Liverpool, 14 August 2002, 24 July 2003. Gregory, Denis, Trade Union Research Unit, Ruskin College Oxford, Oxford, 18 July 2004. Heller, Richard, former works council chairman, Adam Opel AG, Hechtsheim, 12 February 2003. Hougham, John, former employee relations manager, Ford Dagenham, London, 15 October 2003. Jack, John, former convener, Vauxhall Luton plant, Luton, 20 July 2003. Kuckelkorn, Wilfried, former works council chairman, Fordwerke AG, Cologne, 11 December 2001. Middell, Günther and Nottelmann, Peter, former HRM staff, Fordwerke AG, Cologne, 5 September 2003. Passingham, Bernie, former convener, Ford Dagenham, London, 20 November 2001, 17 July 2003.

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Schwarzenberg, Ernst, former works council chairman Fordwerke AG, Cologne, 10 September 2003. Todd, Ron, former general secretary, Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU) Dagenham, 10 July 2003. Warman, Bruce, former director of personnel, Vauxhall Motors Ltd, London, 14 October 2003. Woodley, Anthony, former general secretary, Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU), and joint general secretary, UNITE-The Union, London, 20 November 2001.

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absenteeism 131, 136 AEU see Amalgamated Engineering Union Alternative Economic Strategy 57, 81, 83, 112, 142, 180, 195 Amalgamated Engineering Union 21–2, 81, 167, 181–2 Ford UK 43, 91, 114–15, 123, 145 Vauxhall 21, 132, 145 Americanization 106, 108 ‘Anglo-Saxon model’ 56, 107 Antwerp (GM plant) 33, 46, 61, 121 automobile industry 1–2, 5–6, 26, 37, 192 Britain 7–8 Germany 9–10 and economic nationalism 54, 57, 61 banal nationalism 4, 51–4, 59, 84, 92, 96, 191–2, 195–6 benchmarking (efficiency) 44, 63, 66, 69, 93, 114, 116–17, 122, 181, 194 see also investment competition Billig, Michael 4, 51, 195 BL see British Leyland Blair, Tony 16, 145 BMW 8–9 Bochum (GM/Opel plant) 10, 24–5, 32–3, 35, 61, 88, 93, 131, 137, 140 Brenner, Otto 118, 167 Bridgend (Ford plant) 31, 36, 93, 115, 184 ‘British decline’ 8–11, 14, 43, 45, 55–8, 61, 67–9, 73, 75, 89, 122, 193 ‘British disease’ 14, 68, 73–4, 123, 176, 194–5 British Leyland 7–9, 22, 35, 61, 68, 80–1, 123–4 see also ‘national champions’

Callaghan, James 15, 57, 122 Christmas bonus 47, 65, 136 Chrysler 8–9, 22, 80–1, 124 closure (plants) 62, 72, 92, 94–5, 145, 147 threats 40–1, 64–5, 79, 86, 90–2, 130, 132, 136, 144, 146 co-determination 10, 13, 17–19, 21, 193 practices Opel and Ford Germany 25, 72–4, 78, 85, 110, 112, 114, 117, 121, 125–7, 131, 133, 137–9, 146, 148–9 Cold War 2, 18, 106, 160, 166 collective bargaining British industrial relations 13–16 and cross-border union cooperation 164, 166, 169, 171–4, 180 decentralization 15, 19–21, 26, 107, 111, 118, 167, 170, 172 German industrial relations 13, 16–21 trade unions at Ford Germany and Opel 25, 72, 142 trade unions at Ford UK and Vauxhall 22, 72, 119, 147 Cologne (Ford plant) 10, 24–5, 29, 31, 34, 36, 41, 60, 73, 78, 85–6, 94, 96, 125, 138, 141, 144, 147, 170, 177, 182, 184 company councils (IMF) 160, 162–3 Ford and General Motors 166–70 see also European works councils competitiveness 46, 109 and British trade unions 24, 55 European 59, 94, 96 and German trade unions 54, 74–5 and industrial relations 46, 107, 109, 111, 133 concession bargaining 21, 192

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220 and cross-border union cooperation 165, 180–3 Ford and GM 42–6, 87, 117, 125, 130–1, 138, 141–2 see also investment competition conciliation committee 25, 126, 137 ‘conflictual cooperation’ 18, 84, 114 see also co-determination convergence industrial relations in Western Europe 4–5, 106–8, 110–13 trade unions practices Ford and General Motors 113–14, 119, 128, 133, 136, 145, 147–8, 191 see also path dependence corporate autonomy 77, 80–1 see also national autonomy Dagenham (Ford plant) 10, 29–31, 34, 36, 41, 46–7, 62–4, 70, 72, 83, 90–4, 122, 133–5, 143–7, 174, 176, 184–5 panel (trade unions) 134, 143–4 Daimler-Benz 9, 57, 182 deindustrialization Britain 16, 111 Germany 20 Detroit 10, 30–2, 34–5, 37, 45, 79–80, 87, 96, 124, 137–9, 167, 169 Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund 17, 19, 126 DGB see Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund domestic content 76, 82–3, 89, 145 see also local content Donovan commission 156, 193 Draughtsmen’s and Allied Technicians Union (DATA) see Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Section Dundee 91, 132 Dunton (Ford UK product development) 31, 65, 127, 177–8 early retirement 20, 90, 129–31, 135, 139 ‘economic miracle’ 55, 57, 77 EEC/EC see European (Economic) Community Eisenach (GM/Opel plant) 33, 66–7, 88 Ellesmere Port (GM/Vauxhall plant) 10, 23, 32–3, 35–6, 40, 91–3, 116, 129, 132, 135–6, 143, 147, 182

Index embeddedness 107, 146 employee involvement 23, 90 employee participation 95, 119 see also industrial democracy employment security 9, 21, 26, 29, 37–9, 70, 74–7, 82, 87, 92, 122, 126–8, 131, 146, 164, 185–6 see also investment competition EU see European Union European autonomy 80, 96, 184 see also national autonomy European (Economic) Community 9, 30, 46, 50, 56–7, 71, 82, 119, 135 Europeanization 45, 95 European social model 59, 96, 145 European Union 16, 72, 94, 111, 160, 173, 179, 181, 195 social policy 71, 95, 146 European works councils 3, 5, 160–5 Ford and General Motors 148, 181–6 see also company councils (IMF) Feather, Victor 124, 171 Ford II, Henry 30, 42, 44, 63, 114 Ford of Europe (FoE) 30–7, 39–46, 60–1, 72, 74–81, 85–9, 120–1, 125–7, 130–6, 143–5, 169, 172–5, 181–4 foreign direct investment 107, 195 see also multinational corporations foreign takeovers British industry 8, 80 German industry 57, 125, 195 see also ‘Germany Inc.’ General Motors Europe (GME) 79, 87, 131, 134, 174 Genk (Ford plant) 31, 33–4, 170 geocentric internationalization 1–2, 5–6, 27, 29–36, 48, 59–60, 67, 72, 80, 113–14, 116, 120, 178, 180, 194 and employment security 37–9, 41 and industrial relations 42–7 ‘German quality work’ 55, 74–5, 80 see also national identity ‘Germany Inc.’ 57, 195 globalization 2–3, 6, 195–6 and convergence 106–7 Ford and GM 33–4, 80, 87, 94, 178, 180, 184

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and nationalism 4, 52–4 Greater London Council 83, 144, 175, 179 Halewood (Ford plant) 10, 24, 31, 36, 41, 46–7, 60–4, 81, 90, 92–5, 114, 129, 132, 136, 144, 147, 182 Heath, Edward 15, 43, 68, 70, 122 Heller, Richard 65, 79, 127–8, 140 Hesse 25, 140 Hobsbawm, Eric J. 52–3 Honda 8, 83, 145 House of Commons 43, 120, 122 Human resource management 12, 42, 107 IG Metall 19–20, 71, 110, 125–6, 140 and cross-border union cooperation 167, 169, 172, 175, 180–2 Ford 24–6, 72, 74, 76, 78, 88, 117–18, 130, 132, 141–2 Opel 24–6, 76, 88, 117–18, 130–1, 141–2 ILO see International Labour Organization import controls 57, 82, 123, 142, 180 see also Alternative Economic Strategy income policy (UK) 15, 23, 116 see also pay differentials industrial democracy 44, 69–70, 109–10, 114, 119, 133 industrial policy Britain 81, 124 Germany 125 European Union 140 see also Alternative Economic Strategy Industrial Relations Act (1971) 15, 22, 43, 122 ‘In place of strife’ 15, 22, 43, 123 see also Donovan Commission IMF see International Metalworkers’ Federation International Labour Organization 160, 166 International Metalworkers’ Federation 166–70, 174, 181 see also company councils (IMF) investment competition and cross-border union cooperation 172–3, 175–6, 179–81, 183, 186 and economic nationalism 72–3, 85

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and industrial relations 5, 46, 110, 129, 145–6, 149 see also concession bargaining Jones, Jack 12, 69–70, 123 Kaiserslautern (GM/Opel plant) 10, 24, 33, 35–6, 61, 88, 93, 130–1, 140–1 Kuckelkorn, Wilfried 75, 86, 132–3, 138–40, 175 labour law 107 and cross-border union cooperation 161, 169–70, 185 Germany 127 UK 14, 71–2, 147, 193 Labour Party 12, 57, 81–2, 142–3 line speed 22, 25, 117, 135 local content 36, 95, 142, 175, 177 see also domestic content localism 59, 61, 93 Luton (GM/Vauxhall plant) 10, 23, 32–3, 35–6, 39–41, 47, 61–2, 64, 72, 90–3, 95, 116, 133, 135, 145–7, 182, 184–5 machine running times 88, 130, 141, 180 see also working time flexibility Management Advisory Committee (Vauxhall) 23, 69 manning levels 25, 43–4, 46, 68, 115–16, 129 Manufacturing, Science and Finance 22, 91 Mazda 90, 94, 177–8 Merkenich (Ford Germany product development) 31, 36, 41, 60, 65, 85–7, 127, 177–8 militancy 2, 13, 112, 114 British trade unions 14, 22–3, 115, 122, 129, 132, 143–4 German trade unions 20, 85, 118, 130 see also strikes MNC see multinational corporations mobility (employees) 44, 47, 129 ‘Modell Deutschland’ 10, 56, 85 see also ‘Standort Deutschland’ MSF see Manufacturing, Science and Finance multinational corporations 1–3, 193–5

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and cross-border union cooperation 160–8, 174–5, 179, 181, 186 and economic nationalism 52, 54, 57, 69–70, 81–2 industrial relations practices 42, 107–10, 112, 148–9 UK automobile industry 8 see also foreign direct investment national autonomy and economics 52–4, 56–7 and trade unions at Ford and GM 76–85, 92–6, 139–40 see also corporate autonomy ‘national champions’ 7–9, 54, 56, 77, 80, 125 national identity 3–4, 191, 195 and economics 51–6 and trade unions at Ford and GM 67–76, 84, 92–3, 95, 171 national joint negotiation committee Ford UK 22, 69, 71, 115, 136, 143 Vauxhall 22, 142–3 national partnership 84–5, 87 see also national unity national unity and economics 53, 57–8 and trade unions at Ford and GM 84–92, 94, 132 neo-corporatism 12, 111 ‘New Realism’ (UK) 129, 145 Nissan 8, 36, 47, 83, 132, 142, 145 Nordrhine-Westphalia 25, 65, 140–1 oil crisis 8–9, 12, 38, 62–3, 65, 115 see also recession overcapacity 36, 130, 132, 183 see also investment competition overtime work and British unions 47, 122, 132 and cross-border union cooperation 169–71 and German unions 19, 25, 47, 72–3, 87, 117–18, 126, 131, 136 see also co-determination path dependence 5, 107–8, 148–9, 191 see also convergence pay differentials

Index and British trade unions 16, 23, 115–16, 163, 171 and cross-border union cooperation 163, 171 planning agreements 57, 81, 124 see also Alternative Economic Strategy product development and British trade unions 60, 122 and cross-border union cooperation 94, 176–8 Ford 31, 41, 47 General Motors 32, 39 and German trade unions 60, 64–6, 72–3, 77–8, 85–7, 121–2, 126–7 productivity 14, 106, 109, 193 and British trade unions 43, 46, 63–4, 67, 71, 89, 116–17, 122–3, 132 and German trade unions 66, 74–5 see also benchmarking protectionism 64, 76, 82 see also import controls public ownership 81, 120, 124 see also Alternative Economic Strategy quality circles 16, 45, 180 rationalization 2, 26, 30, 32–5, 39–41, 44, 63, 75, 84, 90, 128–31, 140, 174 see also geocentric internationalization recession 9–10, 20, 22, 38–40, 65, 77, 116, 121, 128–30 see also oil crisis redundancies 38, 40, 71, 90, 129, 138–9, 143, 194 relocation threats 37–40, 42, 107, 109 and British trade unions 60–1, 123–4, 129 and German trade unions 60–1, 64, 72–4, 78, 126–7, 131, 140 see also investment competition reunification (Germany) 9, 20, 67 ‘risk community’ 165, 186, 192 see also European works councils Rootes 8, 80 Rüsselsheim (GM/Opel plant) 10, 24–5, 32–3, 35–6, 61, 74, 87–8, 93–4, 126, 130–1, 138–40 Saarlouis (Ford plant) 10, 24, 31, 34, 36,

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61, 73, 87, 114, 126, 170 Second World War 10, 29–30, 53 Schmidt, Helmut 56 ‘shadow management’ 133–6, 148, 194 see also investment competition shift patterns 46, 130–2, 135, 180 see also working time flexibility shop stewards 14–15 Ford UK 22, 45, 60, 62–3, 70–2, 89–91, 114–15, 122–4, 144, 174–5 Vauxhall 23, 39, 45, 63, 69, 92, 116, 124, 129 Silver, Beverly 2, 109, 112, 116, 148, 194 single channel 17, 110, 145 see also works councils, British trade union debates Single European Market 33, 145, 180, 194 single union agreement 91, 132, 145 Smith, Anthony D. 51, 53 ‘social contract’ (UK) 15, 22, 89, 115 see also Labour Party social market economy 21, 56, 75 Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands 12, 94, 140 SPD see Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands standardization (car models) 2, 29, 38–9, 60, 121, 144, 184 see also geocentric internationalization ‘Standort Deutschland’ 21, 47, 75, 86, 194 Streeck, Wolfgang 106, 108, 133 strikes 12–13, 109 British industrial relations 10, 14–16 and cross-border union cooperation 168–74, 176, 183 Ford Germany 25–6, 45, 88, 130 Ford UK 22, 24, 42–3, 46–7, 68, 73, 91, 114–15, 122–3, 132, 136, 143–4, 167, 170–1 German industrial relations 18–19, 21 Opel 25–6, 74, 130 Vauxhall 23, 44, 46–7, 115–16, 132 see also militancy supervisory board Ford Germany and Opel 44–5, 119–20, 125–6, 137–8 German industrial relations 17, 19, 194 see also co-determination

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TASS see Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Section teamwork 46, 131 Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Section 21–2 Ford UK 60, 63, 69, 80–1, 88, 120, 122, 124, 177–8 Vauxhall 63, 124 TGWU see Transport and General Workers Union Thatcher, Margaret 16, 71, 111, 142, 144 ‘tied imports’ 35–7, 39–41, 63–4, 82–4, 91, 95, 134–5, 142–3, 176–7, 180 see also import controls Tolliday, Steven 37 Tolusch, Günter 73, 85 Toyota 8, 46, 83, 145 Trades Union Congress 13–14, 17, 69, 71, 81–2, 123–4, 142, 144–7, 171 transfer prices 66, 86, 133–4 see also geocentric internationalization Transport and General Workers Union 12, 69–70, 81 and cross-border union cooperation 167, 172–3, 182 Ford UK 21–2, 39, 43, 62–4, 71, 83, 91, 114–16, 120, 123–4, 132, 145 Vauxhall 21, 64, 69, 71, 91, 124, 132, 136, 143–5 TUC see Trades Union Congress ‘Türkenstreik’ 24–5, 117, 127 UAW see United Automobile Workers United Automobile Workers 115, 118, 142, 166–8, 187 Valencia (Ford plant) 31, 34, 36, 61 Van der Linden, Marcel 161–2, 165 varieties of capitalism 108, 150n1 Visteon 182–3 Volkswagen 7–9, 57, 61, 77–8, 182–4 see also ‘national champions’ voluntarism 14–15, 68, 146 see also labour law (UK) VW see Volkswagen wage comparisons across borders 117, 165, 169 see also benchmarking (efficiency)

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224 wage parity across borders 132, 171 UK motor industry 22–3, 114, 116, 172 Warley (Ford of Europe headquarter) 31, 34, 96 Weimar Republic 17–18 Wilson, Harold 43, 57, 81, 122 ‘Winter of discontent’ 16 working time comparisons 45, 71 flexibility 46, 129–31 reduction 20, 47, 168 see also collective bargaining workload 66, 78, 129, 136, 178 works councils British trade union debates 16–17, 111, 147–9 Ford Germany 24–6, 44–5, 60–1, 65–6, 72–9, 85–8, 94–6, 117–18, 120–1,

Index 131–41, 170–2, 175–8 and German industrial relations 17–21, 108–10, 127 Opel 25–6, 39–40, 45–7, 65–6, 73, 79–80, 86–8, 94–5, 118, 121, 129–41, 175–7, 179–82, 185 see also European works councils works constitution (Betriebsverfassung) 19, 72, 126–7, 137, 139 see also co-determination work standards 22, 44, 47, 67, 114–15, 118 world cars 2, 31, 133 see also geocentric internationalization Zaragoza (GM plant) 33, 46 Zurich (GM Europe headquarter) 33, 40, 79–80, 86–7, 174, 180