Largely unnoticed by the public in recent years global manufacturing enterprises have developed which take on a major part of the production of known brand manufacturers (Alcatel, Nokia, Philips, Siemens, and so on) without being identified as the manufacturer of the end product: Who knows such names as Flextronics, Solectron, Sanmina SCI or Jabil, the leading contract manufacturers with thousands of employees and annual turnovers of several billion and producers of, for example, a major part of the mobile phones or computer components in circulation today? Lean production therefore has a considerable hidden substructure: while the proprietary manufacturers increasingly concentrate on marketing and product design, pure manufacturing is in large part taken care of by extremely flexible, but at the same time mass producing, global contract manufacturers. Their function as buffer between the marketing aims of the proprietary manufacturer and constantly changing market conditions has specific consequences for working conditions and industrial relations. On the one hand, contract manufacturing – also in low cost regions – is highly modern production: brightly lit, well ventilated establishments, the latest technology, usually a low noise level, and high safety standards. On the other hand, not only are precarious employment (above all fixed time and temporary employment), low wages, and frequent alternation of dismissals and hirings typical of contract manufacturing enterprises, but also a corporate identity policy controlled from above in which the prevailing customer orientation predominates as the central criterion. Also under such circumstances – and although they in principle accept the constraints of international market constellations – the personnel of these firms and the trade unions which represent them formulate demands which for them are non-negotiable. These demands become notionally embedded in the model of a “normal globalization.” This model enables the employees and their representatives on the one hand to constitute a “counter-power” to the management, but on the other hand contains specific contradictions which can even be counterproductive for trade union activities.