■ The present era of 'flexible accumulation' and crisis is widely seen to have engendered distinctive changes in the labour process. The analysis pre sented here explores the ways in which these transformations are experienced and absorbed by hourly wage workers at an aluminium plant in the United States. Of particular interest are the distinct meanings the workers attach to different managerial innovations; thus, the reordering of shift arrangements provokes worker response (and union action) that is quite different from the reaction inspired by the introduction of cooperative worker-management teams at the plant. Using classical Marxian analytical categories, it may be said that the current regimen of workplace control involves some combination of absolute and relative surplus value strategies. By disaggregating this mix of strategies, these workers' narratives help cast some light on the currently raging debate about whether or not we are living in an age of globalization and epochal change.
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