This author's ethnography of shop-floor struggle against the introduction of new management techniques at a South Wales-based brownfield manufacturing plant questions the emergence of a ‘new industrial relations' characterised by worker co-operation and commitment. The article describes the impact on shop-floor social action of such factors as the suppression of independent shop steward organization, worker divisions, job insecurity, militant customer interventionism and the state's employment legislation. Although these can critically constrain effective collective resistance the article highlights how management-labour conflict and struggle remain inherent in the capitalist labour process.
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