Trade Union Power and the Quality of Working Life Under Industry 4.0: Bargaining Outcomes in Truck and Car Components Plants

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines how labour shapes the relationship between Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and the quality of working life (QWL) via a 2‐by‐2 comparative study in the truck and car components sub‐sectors in Belgium and the Netherlands. We conceptualize labour as a strategic agent that frames QWL challenges, mobilizes power resources and shapes bargaining outcomes. Distinct production regimes—flexibility‐driven in trucks and automation‐based in car components—generate specific discontents. Labour mobilizes associational and structural power by framing these discontents and leveraging institutional and coalition‐based resources to articulate them as actionable grievances. These processes vary by sub‐sector and country, shaping how integrative and distributive bargaining trade‐offs between QWL dimensions, including job insecurity, are negotiated in each case. By highlighting the dynamic, context‐dependent negotiations, we update labour process debates for the I4.0 context and advance power resource research by shifting focus from static capital–labour configurations of power to context‐dependent, labour‐led processes of change.

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