Why do workers no longer break machines? Manufacturing consent to technological change in the european automotive industry

Recent debates around concepts such as Industry 4.0, digitalization and artificial intelligence have brought the topic of technological change back to the centre of socio-economic research on work and employment. Similarly, this issue is subject of debate and controversy in the political field, resulting usually in greater demand for regulation. Finally, studies on the potentially negative consequences of adopting digital and automation technologies – from technological unemployment, to increased digital surveillance, from work intensification to deskilling – suggest that workers and trade unions have many reasons to resist such changes. Yet, so far there is little evidence that they do, and the opposite response – i.e. the acceptance of new technology – seems to prevail. Why is this the case? This paper seeks to provide an answer to this question from the point of vue of European industrial relations by analysing how industrial workers from three different European countries consent to technological change and how effective production regimes depoliticise technological change. The analysis draws on long-term and extensive research on work and industrial relations in the Austrian, French and Italian automotive industries : interviews with workers, trade union representatives and management, observations and factory visits in the three counties. Our goal is to understand how production regimes – which include work organisation and political institutional apparati that shape and regulate the former – contribute to workers’ acceptance of technological change. This acceptance is anything but given as history bears numerous examples of workers’ resistance to technological change, from Luddites in the 19th century to industrial sabotage in the 1970s. As we face a new wave of technological change in the workplace, the question workers’ attitude towards technology arises again. Here, we provide empirical evidence on how management builds consent to technological change in the manufacturing sector: we distinguish a « high-road » (Austria) from a « low-road » (France and Italy) towards a technological hegemony built around the company's profit strategy. In the first case, consent to technological change is the product of an alignment of the points of view of workers, trade unions and management, either around a redistributive policy or around maintaining the dominant position of the industry. In the second case, even if the digital technologies used reinforce the lean organisation of work, technological change is accepted because it is seen as a guarantee of continued employment in declining industries. Finally, we show that this process ultimately leads to the depoliticisation of technology among workers and trade unions.