Date of Award

Fall 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Political Science

First Advisor

Mares, Isabela

Abstract

This dissertation examines trade unions' responses to the employment risks generated by labor-saving technological change in British and West German manufacturing during the third quarter of the twentieth century, an era of rapid technological advance and the period during which British manufacturing fell behind the German competition. Drawing on previously untapped archival evidence from both countries, this dissertation challenges existing views in comparative political economy and economic history regarding unions' attitudes toward technological change and the welfare state as well as received contrasts between coordinated capitalism in West Germany and its supposed opposite in Britain. Focusing on the engineering industry, the largest part of manufacturing in postwar Britain and West Germany, I show that unions in both countries rejected the idea that the risks associated with automation could be satisfactorily addressed through the provision of compensatory benefits for displaced workers through the welfare state. I argue that unions' rejection of a compensatory solution reflected the limited extent to which governments in capitalist economies could feasibly compensate workers for the costs of job loss. Recognition of the limits of the welfare state drove unions in both countries to propose an alternative model of workforce adjustment to technological change that would avoid automation-induced job loss by compelling employers to retain and retrain workers whose existing roles within the firm were made redundant through the introduction of new technologies. Implementing this alternative model required depriving employers of the freedom to dismiss workers as they saw fit. Exploiting within-country as well as between-country heterogeneity in union strategy, I show that the strategies that unions adopted to protect their members against job loss varied on the basis of their members' ability to deter employers from initiating dismissals through the threat of collective action. This ability was, in turn, a function of the composition of a union's membership and the institutional constraints under which its members operated. Due to the limited capacity of its members to undertake collective action, the leading union in West German engineering was ultimately compelled to accede to the compensated dismissal of workers rendered redundant by automation, in contrast to its closest counterpart in Britain. The seemingly more consensual pattern of workforce adjustment to technological change in West German engineering was thus a result of workers' weakness and not a reflection of superior enlightenment or a tradition of social partnership. This dissertation's findings carry implications for our understanding of the role of organized labor in the process of technological change and throw light on the limits of the welfare state as a means of addressing the employment risks generated by automation.

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