Bevor die Fabriken schließen : Arbeit und Management bei Alusuisse (1960–1991)

Abstract

The balance of power between labor and capital changed dramatically in the last decades of the 20th century: entrepreneurs implemented restructuring and plant closures, workers faced fiercer competition between locations and greater pressure to perform, and they feared for their jobs and wages, while unions simultaneously found themselves on the defensive. Leo Grob examines this transformation in the industrial world of work using the example of the multinational company Alusuisse. He follows aluminum production across the globe, from Australia to Italy to Switzerland. His history of Alusuisse sheds light on the conflicts between workers and managers and explains how top managers at the Swiss headquarters in Zurich exploited the multiple crises of the 1970s to introduce radical market forms of human resource management.