Skilled maintenance workers under lean production: a car industry case study.

This thesis adds to such debates by exploring a novel area of discussion largely ignored in the literature: skilled maintenance workers, engineering craft apprentices and their unions. It does so by considering the trajectory of these groups and how they evolved over the lean era.

The thesis draws upon a single case study of a UK car plant to assess the trajectory of skilled maintenance across time. It combines shop-floor interviews with skilled workers, engineering apprentices, union representatives and operational managers with supporting archival documents from the plant and union archives. Overall, the research finds a largely negative trajectory for skilled workers and apprentices following the introduction and embedding of lean practices.