A Perfunctory Sort of Post-Fordism: Economic Restructuring and Labour Market Segmentation in Britain in the 1980s

It has been claimed that the changes of the last decade represent a transition from a `Fordist' towards a `post-Fordist' pattern of economic organisation. A review of aspects of economic change in Britain in the last decade suggests that popular versions of this theory are misleading. Despite the international importance of some sectors, the British economy as a whole continued its relative decline. The labour market is being restructured through the contraction and truncation of internal labour markets, alongside the dualistic development of external labour markets. These trends are redrafting the map of labour market `places' and altering the balance of selection criteria governing access to them. The effect is to heighten employers ability to differentiate between workers according to the different terms under which they are available. In Britain's idiosyncratic version of `post-Fordism' long-established status inequalities associated with gender, race, age and class, are mobilised as key axes of segmentation in the labour market.