Workers and Automation

"This is a book written with conviction and supported by well researched data. It should attract the attention of both academicians and practitioners who would like to make the world a better place to live in." --Management & Labour Studies "Bagchi's and Samaddar's work is important for several reasons. Despite the fact that neither book is explicitly concerned with the social shaping of technological change in India, and both are, rather, concerned with the social and economic impacts of new technologies, they provide critical insights into the behaviour of Indian industrial management and into the process of effects of technological change there. This sort of material tends to have very poor visibility in the West, and this makes their contribution all the more valuable for our understanding of the dynamics of capitalism at a global level in this era of information technology. The work of Bagchi and his colleagues in particular underlines, in the Indian context, the claims of economists of technology who have examined the reasons for success and failure of technological change in other countries in the Asian economic bloc. Furthermore, Samaddar's insistence on the importance of linking labour market to labour process dynamics in fact makes a valuable contribution to the social shaping of technology approach." --Work, Employment & Society "This is an important thesis, which opens up exciting perspectives.... Samaddar describes and criticises in detail the round of national wage negotiations in the mid-1980s.... An inspiring defence of class analysis and class politics." --Capital and Class "This book is a well-researched volume containing a wealth of information regarding the process of automation in the newspaper industry. . . . The author aptly identifies how new technology has brought in new issues and how inadequately prepared the union leaders are for addressing these issues on behalf of labor. The author has clearly brought out how the working life of the laborer is affected by the induction of new technology. . . . The study is well researched and enlightening." --Productivity "With its unusual organization and framework and new research data, the book constitutes a significant contribution to the corpus of theoretical studies on the labor process." --Finance India "This is an important thesis, which opens up exciting perspectives. I enjoyed the book and learned much from it. The final chapter in particular contains an inspiring defence of class analysis and class politics, in which he points out that while erstwhile 'friends' of the labour movement declare that the working class is dead, the functionaries of capital are quite clear that it is alive, and kicking, and a formidable adversary. And he exposes neatly the murderous lie which lurks behind the pristine rhetoric of 'rationalisation': 'The more thoroughly business rationalises itself, the more extreme becomes the chaos in organised working class life'." --Martin Spence in Capital and Class Political power is the determining force behind much of industrial evolution. In Workers and Automation, Ranabir Samaddar discusses the political impetus driving the introduction of computerized technology in the Indian newspaper industry. Samaddar identifies and assesses the impact of change on three main issues: the institutionalized process of wage settlement; the dissemination of technological information among the workforce; and the impact of new technology on the bargaining processes of industry labor unions. As the effects created by this technological progression are examined, parallel shifts within the power structure that engendered them also emerge. Offering a cogent and detailed exploration of this crucial topic, Workers and Automation will prove an indispensable volume to students and professionals in such fields as sociology, indust