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This paper focuses on the cultural and social consequences of the new forms of work organisation variously described as engineered workplace culture, flexibilisation, teamwork, employee involvement, quality circles and post-Fordism. Some celebrate the new form of worker this creates as a consumer of organisationally provided meanings. However, the choices are quite limited for workers in engineered cultures, and for the self-discovering subjects of consumer capitalism more generally. The language, norms and values of engineered cultures become internalised and dominate employees' subjectivity. Further, a sociological analysis of institutional structures of consumer capitalism, and engineered cultures in particular, points to how they encourage workers to develop moral frameworks that are individualistic, with little concern for other people. Simone Weil's studies of the workplace are used to argue that a culture that encourages an ethical orientation of respect for the other is at the heart of good work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While capitalism is increasingly organised on a global basis, effective opposition to capitalist practices tends to be manifest locally. The traditional response of the labour movement to global capitalism has been to try to forge international links between workers' organisations in different countries. This strategy, despite some successes, has generally failed and the paper argues that the relationship between the labour movement and the New Social Movements requires further analysis in terms of the local and the global. The rationale and characteristics of such an analysis are discussed in the context of opposition to the practices of the transnational corporations, the transnational capitalist class and its local affiliates, and the culture-ideology of consumerism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]