Living Labour: Life on the line at Peugeot France [Hardcover]

This book is an important and original account of life in the new lean production workplace - the car industry where it all began. It brings together the two emblematic features of the twentieth century: a working class meant to topple the social order, and a product that largely provided the developmental model of that same order. This book is neither a retrospective assessment nor a prediction for the future: it reveals what has changed and what has remained the same, in a workplace that remains a major part of the makeup of our society.Introduction Peugeot-Sochaux: A Solid Inheritance and Incessant Change The Line Seen from Below Career Trajectories & the Composition of Identity The Labyrinthine Complexities of Informal Adjustment Possible Future for the Sochaux System

This is an outstanding study of 'life on the line' at the trim and final assembly shops of Peugeot's Sochaux complex, 'the biggest factory in France'. The author's central concern is to understand and analyse the changes that have been wrought in persuit of lean production, but they emphasize the complex and contested character of these developments.

JEAN-PIERRE DURAND is Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Centre de Recerches Pierre Naville at the University of Paris - Evry. He is the co-author of After Fordism (1997), with Robert Boyer and is a member of the International Steering Committee of GERPISA.

NICOLAS HATZFELD is a labour historian and worked on the Peugeot line for two years (1998-99).