Automotive White-Collar: The Changing Status and Roles of Salaried Employees in the North American Auto Industry

Abstract

Abstract These headlines tell the story of unsettling change for the white-collar employees of the U.S. automotive industry. The middle managers, corporate and divisional staff, engineers, clerical employees and firstline supervisors at General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler now find themselves affected by all of the woes commonly associated with blue-collar production workers-layoffs, outsourcing of work, concessions in pay and benefits, and redundancies due to the reorganization of work for greater efficiency. Indeed, in the early 1990s, some of these white-collar employees found themselves worse off than hourly employees represented by the United Automobile Workers (UAW), with pay freezes, required co-payments for medical benefits, and less job security. Besides the erosion of status this implies, white-collar employees also face many new demands in their jobs, including more work, more decision-making responsibility, more cross-functional interaction, and more of a support role vis-a-vis blue-collar workers.