278 RÜDIGER HACHTMANN
run, fl extime and precarious forms of employment have become more
and more commonplace in all three economic sectors since the end of
the 1980s. Growing job insecurity, but also the desire for more personal
fulfi llment, have forced “entreployees”—a fashionable term that sums up
this new kind of dependency in an off hand rather than truly analytical
way—to engage in “self-marketing” and “self-optimization.” Simultane-
ously, simple jobs have become more prominent in the tertiary sector in
particular, where they have appeared in the context of the McDonald’s
production system, which leans strongly toward a (neo)Taylorist model.^87
Yet the picture becomes even more complex because the diff erent eco-
nomic sectors and industries, as well as the diff erent business segments
(size, sales outlets, etc.), have developed their own particular structures.
The large core companies in the automobile industry, for example, have
been working toward the full automation of their fi nal assembly lines
as demanded within a Fordist production regime since the 1980s. The
recognition of the fact that there are still roadblocks standing in the way
of a completely robotic production line has only slightly curbed this trend.
Simultaneously, Toyotist structures have also been kept. On the other
hand, smaller companies (such as suppliers and businesses in those in-
dustries dominated by midsize companies, such as the woodworking in-
dustry) have often retained a stripped down form of Fordism or manual
production techniques in the face of pressure to keep costs down. The
resilience of older production systems has surely contributed to the fact
that the Wertewandel (change in values) within the industrial workforce
has not been nearly as radical since the 1970s as many sociologists and
some historians have assumed, in part because older notions of work
have persisted.^88
Indeed, the lines of historical continuity are quite strong in general,
despite all the major changes that have beset the East in particular over
the last few decades. This consistency becomes all the more apparent if
we do not limit ourselves to a regional focus, but rather shift our gaze
beyond the borders of Germany and Europe. We can clearly see through
such a wider lens that the digital revolution and automation have by no
means done away with older kinds of manufacturing. Even in the IT hard-
ware production industry, which is the backbone of the digital revolution,
relatively primitive forms of a Fordist production regime are still being
used, replete with “mass workers,” most of whom are unqualifi ed, fe-
male, highly segmented, and poorly paid. Of course, these kinds of em-
ployees are not often found in the industrial core of Europe these days
because outsourcing and the international division of labor “regulated”
by the markets has shifted production to other parts of the globe. Since
the 1980s, for example, the production of this hardware has primarily