Specifically, the UAW signed a five year agreement with GM in 1950. By the end of the agreement GM workers were completely fed up with the resulting situation due to the prolonged accumulation of unresolved problems. Consequently, no auto industry agreement longer than three years in duration has been signed since. Signing long term agreements in this year's auto negotiations will simply be a next logical step for a union whose leadership has embraced every other form of contract concession imaginable. Long term agreements will be the icing on the cake for the auto bosses and they, not us, will love the way it tastes.
Modular manufacturing involves a radically different approach to organizing work.
It also involves a more fundamental departure from the mass system of production than the Toyota Production System did. Modular manufacturing will reconfigure automotive final assembly plants by blurring the distinction between supplier firms and assembly operations. Modular manufacturing will do this by outsourcing the design and assembly of entire auto components to supplier firms. Consequently, the amount of work that will be performed by auto corporations' final assembly operations is going to be sharply reduced and there will be a corresponding reduction in the size of the final assembly workforce. Modular manufacturing will take outsourcing to an entirely new level.