New Clothes from Old Techniques: Restructuring and Flexibility in the US and UK Clothing Industries

With lagging productivity rates in key industrial sectors, manyfirms in the UK and the USA have struggled to remain competitiveagainst low cost imports from newly industrialized countries.Structural readjustments by firms have involved downsizing andefforts to reorganize the labor process. Firms have definedthe problem as one of production rigidities and have developedstrategies designed to reshape the division of labor. That changeis occurring is not in question; it is rather the precise natureand implications of that change, particularly its consequencesfor the role of labor. This paper argues that many firms havesought, and continue to seek, competitive viability throughan amalgam of new technology merged with old work practices.Restructuring is occurring under the guide of enhancing flexibility,but the motives remain rooted in cost lowering, as opposed toproduct and process improvement, strategies. The enhanced economicuncertainty and sustained import penetration have not thereforeled to new production paradigms, as many claim, but are merelyreconfigurations of old ones.