Local Responses to a Global Downturn: Labour Adjustment in Two Multinational Companies

Abstract

After years of steadily declining sales and profits, the global financial crisis sent the United States and Australian automotive manufacturing industries into crises of their own. Faced with dramatically reduced demand, the companies cut production and, consequently, their production workforces. Using qualitative data from case studies of the Ford Motor Company, the General Motors Company and their wholly owned Australian subsidiaries, Ford Australia and Holden, we can assess the extent to which these two multinational companies standardized their methods of adjusting labour levels and to what extent such responses were localized. In four manufacturing plants implementing similar cuts in production, responses were developed locally, shaped largely by local market, institutional and political forces.