Innovation in Work and Industrial Relations: The Experience of Fortex

Abstract

The paper will trace the innovations in doing business achieved by the Fortex Group, which were reliant on a reworking of the forms of work and industrial relations typical to the meat industry. The innovations used by Fortex included: I) the integration of niche marketing and new forms of processing; 2) the use of shift work and the move to the year round employment of meatworkers; 3) the adoption of TQM and teamwork involving the meatworkers ' union; and 4) the attempt at new contracts with its farmer-suppliers, in which the union played an important part. The paper will go on to account for why these significant developments failed to secure the firm. In this regard it will be argued that the study of work and industrial relations requires an appreciation of not just the sites where deals between management and labour are produced but of the embeddedness of these deals within the networks of the industry. The causes of the failure of Fortex are identified as: 1) the erosion of its competitive edge; 2) the inability to subordinate its farmer-suppliers; and 3) the vulnerability of the firm in competition for stock. Fortex can be said to have fronted an effort to rework the networks of the meat industry and although the firm obtained the close support of the meatworkers' union in its plants it was nevertheless undone by an alignment of interests outside the fi rm.