Economic Geography paper

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This individual paper should be at least 2000 words (bibliography excluded) to fulfill the University of Florida’s Writing and Math Requirement. Appendices are not allowed. Use an easy-to-read font such as 12 point Times New Roman or 11 point Arial. Your manuscript can be single- or double-spaced. There is no need to include a title page or a table of contents. Objective The aim of this descriptive paper is to discuss the recent economic evolution of a region of your choice using a variety of statistical sources. Start by finding an interesting case study. The case study must a sub-national region, such as Florida, Greater Atlanta, or the Rocky Mountains, not a country. Then, go to Google Scholar and/or UF’s library and search for 3-5 recent publications that relate to your case study. Based on these publications, identify what the main challenge of your region is. This will help you formulate a short and explicit research question. Structure The paper should be structured as follows: The introduction discusses what the main challenges of the region are. Depending on the region, you may want to focus on demographic decline, housing prices, the lack of infrastructure, suburbanization, etc. (10 points). The methodology section discusses the sources of data used in the paper (5 points) The empirical section presents your main findings using tables, graphs and maps (10 points + 5 points for own figures) The conclusion explains why your findings are important, what are the limitations of your work and whether there is a need for more research (5 points); The bibliography lists all the articles, books and sources of data used in the paper (5 points). Citation style and plagiarism When quoting a book or an article, make sure that the source is cited properly and that your paper is not plagiarized, wholly or in part. Feel free to use any referencing style you want (MLA, APA, Chicago, Harvard etc.). General statements must be presented as follows: Cities tend to attract creative workers (Florida 2002). Excerpts must be presented in quotation marks to show that a particular portion of your paper is from a different source. Include the name of the author, the date, and page numbers, as follows: According to Glaeser (2011: 65), “national policy should strive to enrich and empower everybody”. References must be placed at the end of the paper, not in footnotes, and sorted alphabetically: Book: Fujita M, Krugman P, Venables A. 2000. The Spatial Economy. Cities, Regions and International Trade. Cambridge MA, The MIT Press. Article: Boschma R, Coenen L, Frenken K, Truffer B. 2017. Towards a theory of regional diversification: combining insights from Evolutionary Economic Geography and Transition Studies. Regional Studies 51(1): 31-45. Book chapter: Thrift N. 2008. Space: the fundamental stuff of human geography, in Clifford N, Holloway S, Rice SP, Valentine G. (eds). Key Concepts in Geography. Thousand Oaks, Sage: 85-96. Electronic documents: Walther O, Kuépié M, Tenikue M. 2017. When social networks become a burden for African traders. Washington DC, The Brookings Institution, Africa in Focus Series, Jan 3, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2017/01/03/when-social-networks-become-a-burden-for-african-traders/  (Links to an external site.) . Web links are subject to changes and are therefore not considered as references.

147Topics covered in thischapterDefinitions of work and employment and theirchanging relationship in time and space.Contemporary changes in the workplace andtheir geographies.Different theories of employment transition.The implications of employment change forlabour and trade unions.The emergence of a new labour geography.Chapter 7the contemporary era (stemming from the late 1970s),critically assessing different theoretical perspectives onthese changes and their geographies. In particular,this part of the chapter considers the shift towardsmore service-based forms of work in the developedeconomies, the erosion of more stable forms of workand the development of labour market flexibility. Thesechanges are then framed in a geographical perspective,highlighting their uneven impact upon places. This isfollowed by a discussion of the implications of thesechanges for trade unions, while the final section ofthe chapter looks at the emergence of a ‘new labourgeography’ approach that views labour as an active participantin the construction of the economic landscape.7.1 IntroductionFor many people, regular interaction with the ‘economy’takes place through work in its different forms, andour chances of making a decent living are shapedChapter mapThe chapter begins with some basic definitions of workand employment, together with a brief examinationof how the relationship between them varies in timeand space. It then proceeds to explore some of the keychanges to the world of work that have characterizedChanging geographies ofwork and employmentChanging geographies of work and employment148by our relationship to prevailing forms of work andemployment. In the developed capitalist economies,the majority of us make a living through forms of paidemployment, where we exchange our human labourfor a wage. In less developed countries, much of thepopulation is still engaged in non-capitalist forms ofwork linked to subsistence agriculture. The increasingintegration of the world into a single global capitalisteconomy often threatens such traditional lifestyles,although it also opens up the possibility for somegroups to escape feudal or more traditional formsof oppression to work as waged labour. As such, theprocesses of geographical uneven development andeconomic restructuring that we have considered inearlier chapters take on particular significance in termsof how they affect our conditions of employment andlivelihoods. It is in this sense that economic geographyhas been defined as the geography of people’s attemptsto make a living (Lee, 2000, p.195).In this chapter, our purpose is to examine the natureof employment change in the contemporary economy,exploring in particular the transformation of work thathas occurred since the 1970s and the role played bygeography in shaping change. We also emphasize that,unlike other factors of production, labour is not passiveto processes of economic restructuring but plays amore active role. At both the individual and collectivelevels (through organizations such as trade unions),labour helps to shape the changing landscape of capitalism,although it is often at a strategic disadvantagebecause of its relative immobility (Herod, 2001).7.2 Conceptualizing workand employment7.2.1 DefinitionsHuman beings have to perform basic work tasks (e.g.hunting and gathering food, finding shelter, makingclothes, looking after and raising children, etc.) toreproduce daily life. In this sense, work is essential toall societies, however primitive or advanced. How workis organized has varied and changed dramatically overtime, as societies have developed from early and rudimentarynomadic peoples to the more advanced globalcapitalist society of today. In section 3.3 we examinedlabour as a basic category under capitalism and developedan understanding of how a more complex divisionof labour emerged with the growth of an industrializedsociety. The concept of a division of labour allows us todifferentiate between different forms of work, some ofwhich are paid and other forms that receive no financialreward.The determination of which work or jobs are paidand which are not and how much different types ofwork are paid relates to the social division of labour(section 3.3.2). Under advanced capitalism, a basic distinctioncan be made between two very different formsof work. Being in employment, selling your labour towork for an employer in the formal economy, is usuallypaid (although see next section), whereas many formsof household or domestic labour, typically undertakenby female family members, are not. Arguably, householdwork is more valuable to the basic reproduction ofsociety than many forms of employment in the formaleconomy. The fact that it is (usually) not financiallyrewarded reflects prevailing values and (gendered)power relations within society. As Pahl observes:Someone arriving from another planet might besurprised and puzzled by the way that we distinguishbetween work and employment and thedifferential rewards that are paid to employeesbased on the kind of work they do and the kindof person they are. Interesting, creative and variedemployment is highly rewarded; dull, repetitive androutine work is poorly rewarded. Men receive morethan women, and this is related to social attitudesand conventions more than the actual amount orquantity of work that the individual or the gendercategory does.(Pahl, 1988, p.1)The broader point is that work is highly differentiatedand these differences reflect facets of social identitysuch as gender, ethnicity and age. Up until relativelyrecently, women were discouraged and actively discriminatedagainst in the labour market (both throughgovernment legislation and employer attitudes).Indeed, in most countries, wages for women’s employmentare usually lower than the equivalent for men.Wage discrimination also continues to apply on the1497.2 Conceptualizing work and employmentbasis of ethnicity, religion and even age. While mostadvanced industrial economies have laws promotingequal opportunities, employers continue to discriminateon the basis of social identity.Geography is critical in understanding how workand employment are organized. As we have noted inpast chapters, the economy under capitalism is characterizedby spatially uneven development and thegeographical differentiation of work is an importantpart of this. Through the development of large multiplantcorporations and the construction of a spatialdivision of labour (section 4.3.2), a highly differentiatedlandscape of employment emerges reflectingvariations in the nature and type of work between differentplaces. With the emergence of a global economyand through the activities of MNCs this has beentranslated into a ‘new international division of labour’as noted in Chapter 6 (section 6.3.2). The importantpoint to note here is that these spatial variations inlabour (at national and international levels) are, inturn, important for future rounds of capital investment,allowing firms to make location decisions based uponthe different types of labour (e.g. rates of pay or levels ofskill) available across the economic landscape.Spatial divisions of labour are reflected in variationsin employment conditions between places, mostobviously in the wide discrepancies in wages betweendeveloped and developing countries (Figure 7. 1), encouragingthe relocation of low-wage production byMNCs (section 6.3.2). These differences exist withincountries as well as between them. For example, inthe US, the average hourly earnings of a manufacturingworker in Dakota were found to be 60 percent of those in Michigan in the 1990s (Hayter, 1997,p.88). More recent data from the US Bureau of LaborStatistics indicate considerable variation by region inthe incidence of unemployment (Figure 7.2). Stateshit by deindustrialization, such as Michigan in thenorth, or predominantly rural states heavily dependenton agricultural and other traditional sectors, such asMississippi or Kentucky, continue to suffer the highestrates of unemployment. However, the recent financialcrisis has also hit formerly prosperous states such asFlorida and California that have been more exposedto the crash in property prices. Spatial variations inemployment do not only amount to wage or unemploymentdifferentials but also include different cultures oflabour associated with particular industries (sectionBangladeshChinaIndiaIndonesiaCzech RepublicThailandMexicoTurkeyBrazilUKUSGermanyItalyNorway0 5,000 10,000 15,000 20,000 25,000 30,000US$ per year35,000 40,000 45,000Figure 7.1 Differences in labour cost between selected countriesSource: Adapted from World Bank, 2006, Table 2.6.Changing geographies of work and employment1504.3) (see also Peck, 1996). These include differences inworking practices, levels of unionization and the waylocal labour markets operate (e.g. through differentkinds of recruitment and training strategies).7.2.2 The transition toindustrial workThe forms of employment that we have come to associatewith the capitalist economy are relatively recentin historical terms. Prior to the development of theIndustrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century,the concept of paid work was relatively marginal to theoverall functioning of the economy. The vast majorityof the population lived ‘off the land’ and engaged, toa varying extent, in forms of subsistence agriculture(Malcolmson, 1988). Within the pre-industrialeconomy wage labour was used to supplement otherhousehold activities as a way of ‘making a living’ andwould have taken the form of supplying labour tolarger farms and estates at particular times of the year,such as during harvesting (Figure 7.3). Some men andwomen may also have been employed as maids, cooksand other servants within the household of local elites.Additionally, the idea of ‘going to work’ in the senseof travelling to a dedicated ‘place of work’ would have10.0% and over7.0% to 9.9%6.0% to 6.9%5.0% to 5.9%4.0% to 4.9%3.0% to 3.9%2.0% to 2.9%1.9% or belowFigure 7.2 Unemployment rates by state, seasonally adjusted, July 2010 (US rate 9.5 per cent)Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistics.1517.2 Conceptualizing work and employmentbeen an alien concept. Work would have been centredupon the household. Early craft work, for examplein textile and weaving activities, would have takenplace within the home, the origins of the term ‘cottageindustry’. At a broader geographical scale, work wasdispersed across the landscape, in contrast with themassive concentrations of work in large towns andcities that were to develop with the emergence ofmodern industry and industrial capitalism. In theworld’s first industrial economy, the UK, there hadbeen only two cities, London and Edinburgh, witha population of over 50,000 in 1750 (Hobsbawm,1999, p.64). By 1851, there were nine cities, with twoof over 100,000 people and over half of the populationwere now living in urban areas as a result ofindustrialization.The transition to an industrial society thereforecaused massive spatial and social upheaval, and in theprocess fundamentally transformed the nature of work(see also sections 3.2.4 and 3.3.2), as the renownedMarxist historian Eric Hobsbawm puts it:It transformed the lives of men beyond recognition.Or, to be more exact, in its [the IndustrialRevolution] initial stages it destroyed the old waysof living and left them free to discover or make forthemselves new ones.(Hobsbawn, 1999, p.58)For the majority of the working population, this transformationmeant the destruction of a predominantlysubsistence rural lifestyle, largely controlled by theseasons, to forms of routine, paid work under the strictsupervision of employers in densely populated townsand cities.Figure 7.3 Labouring in a pre-modern landscape: ‘The Harvesters’ by Hans BrasenSource: Corbis.Changing geographies of work and employment1527.2.3 Work and employmentin the contemporary globaleconomyA consequence of the transformation of work was theemergence of a large industrial working class, whosesole means of ‘earning a living’ was employment orwaged labour. The appalling conditions faced by labourin the early phases of industrialization (see Chapter 3)gave rise to the emergence of trade unions in the latenineteenth century, as collective organizations gearedtowards defending the interests of the working class(see Box 7.1). Trade unions reflect the inherent conflictbetween employees, concerned with earning a livingthrough paid employment, and a capitalist class ofemployers dedicated to producing higher profits andreducing costs.While employment has become the dominantcategory of work in the global economy, its geographicalincidence is highly uneven. Castree et al. haveHarvey’s concept of a spatial fix wasused in earlier chapters to highlightthe role of firms in constructing thegeography of the economy. But labouralso shapes the economic landscapedirectly through its own strategiesand actions in defending and promotingits interests. The fundamentalinterests of labour are focused uponsecuring improved wages and conditionsand the interaction betweenthis and the profit-seeking imperativeof capital are of critical importance.This focuses on the organizations setup by workers to promote their interests,principally trade unions. Theformation of unions was the resultof struggle by groups of workers todefend their interests and improvetheir lot, beginning in the industrialheartlands of the UK in the nineteenthcentury before spreading to continentalEurope and the US (Hudson,2001, p.100). Such struggles wereBox 7.1The emergence of trade unions as key actors in the landscape of capitalism55504540353025201510501900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000UKCanadaUSAYearDensity (%) Figure 7.4 Trade union density: Canada, US and UK, 1900–2004Source: Blanchflower, 2006.1537.2 Conceptualizing work and employmentestimated that three-quarters of world employment(waged labour) is located in only 22 countries with‘almost half of the world’s labour force located infour countries: China, India, the United States andIndonesia’ (Castree et al., 2004, p.11). Within the globalsouth, the incidence of wage labour varies considerably,reflecting differences in levels of integration withinthe global economy. In many parts of Africa, Asia andLatin America, forms of subsistence agriculture persist,although attempts to modernize economies have oftenled to the forced destruction of such traditional waysof ‘making a living’, without always replacing themwith sustainable alternatives. For much of sub-SaharanAfrica, in particular, integration into the globaleconomy continues to be defined by the production ofprimary commodities such as minerals and agriculturalproducts such as coffee and cotton (Chapter 8), withthe higher-value-added activities such as manufacturingand processing taking place in Europe, NorthAmerica or South-east Asia.Even in those countries where wage labour hasgrown with industrialization, the conditions of workare often poor, as evidenced by the difference in labourcosts between countries (Figure 7.1). Child labour –the employment of children under the age of 16 – isalso common place in the Global South, more oftenthan not under extremely exploitative and badly paidworking conditions. In China, for example, childrenare employed to make toys for 12 to 16 hours per dayfor a wage of less than 14 cents per hour (Hudson,2001, p.245). The ILO estimates that there are approximately246 million child labourers (aged between fiveand 17) working in the world, 70 per cent of whomare engaged in hazardous work in mining, chemicalsindustries or with harmful pesticides in agricultureor with dangerous machinery (UNICEF, 2006, p.46).Seventy-three million child labourers are under the ageof ten (ibid.).Although wage labour has spread with the developmentof globalization, it is important to emphasizethat only around half the population at any one timeare in paid employment. There are also other forms ofwork that are unpaid, notably housework, voluntarywork and the work of many carers (particularly familymembers), looking after older people, children andthe disabled. Attempts to reduce state welfare provisionin many countries since the 1980s have meantthat unpaid care work has become increasingly criticalboth to supporting the economy – through the supervisionof children and their ‘socialization’ for futureemployment – and in providing for the more disadvantagedsections of society. Unpaid housework is still thedominant form of domestic labour in both advancedand less-developed economies, although the situationis slightly complicated by the existence of paid workfor some household tasks (e.g. nannying or cleaning)particularly in many western societies in the US andwestern Europe, where both members of a householdoften conducted against employerswho were bitterly opposed to tradeunions, sometimes supported by thestate.The role of unions is to securebetter wages for their members and topromote the interests of labour moregenerally. As part of a broader labourmovement, unions have been closelyassociated with social democraticand socialist political parties in manycountries, with the British LabourParty, for example, closely tied totrade unions throughout its history.Unions had considerable success insecuring better conditions for theirmembers alongside their politicalallies over the middle decades of thetwentieth century. By the late 1960s,growing union strength (see Figure7.4 for historical trends in Canada,US and UK) in the manufacturingsector in particular was leading todemands for higher wages, as well asa challenge to management’s abilityto control the nature and speed ofwork. Since the late 1970s, however,unions in the advanced industrialcountries have faced tougher times,reflected in falling memberships,as many of the heavily unionizedtraditional industries have collapsedand as governments have placedincreased legal restrictions on theiractivities. Despite such reversals,organized labour remains an importantforce shaping the geography ofcapitalism.Box 7.1 (continued)Changing geographies of work and employment154are engaged in full-time paid employment (Gregsonand Lowe, 1994).Alongside paid work, other categories include theself-employed, the definition of which often varies intime and space according to differences in employmentlaws and regulation. Additionally, a growing numberof the global labour force is subject to unemploymentor underemployment. The extent of this againvaries over time, dependent upon the pendulum ofuneven development. A growing number of peoplein western Europe has been exposed to unemploymentin various forms since the 1970s, while after thecollapse of Communism unemployment rocketed ineastern Europe during the early 1990s. More recently,the financial crisis of 2008–09 has greatly increasedlevels of unemployment in western and eastern Europeand North America with less notable impacts in LatinAmerica, Africa and South and East Asia (ILO, 2010,p.9). Even within countries, the crisis has shownmarked variations – a feature that we explore in greaterdetail in section 9.5.A final category of work to comment on here is slaveor forced labour, which sadly remains a feature of theglobal economy (see Box 7.2). One of the more perniciousoutcomes of globalization has been an increase inthe trafficking of people in conditions of forced labour,particularly for the sex trade. Illegal immigrants wholack the status of citizens in their destination countriesare particularly vulnerable to highly exploitativeemployers with an estimated two and a half millionWhile wage labour has become thedominant form of employment undercapitalism, other more exploitativeforms of labour continue to exist. Inparticular, the slave trade, from thefifteenth to the nineteenth centuries,was critical in the emergenceof an international system of capitalismand represents one of the mostignominious episodes in Europeancolonial history. As part of colonialexpansion, various European statesengaged in the enforced transfer ofslaves from the African continentto work in the new colonies in theAmericas. Although slavery largelypredated formal political colonialism,its effect was arguably as devastatingfor the countries involved. Fromthe late seventeenth century untilthe nineteenth, it is estimated thatsomewhere between eight and 10.5million slaves were transported fromWest Africa to the Americas to workprimarily in tobacco, sugar and cottonplantations (Potter et al., 2004,p.59). Apart from the appalling situationof slavery itself, the conditionsof transportation were dreadful andinhumane; on an average Dutchslaver in the seventeenth century,for example, 14.8 per cent of slaveswould die en route, from diseasessuch as smallpox, dysentery andscurvy (ibid.).With the abolition of slavery in thenineteenth century, many countriesdeveloped systems of ‘indenturedlabour’, whereby Asian workers, inparticular, were recruited to work inEuropean colonies. Workers would beemployed under contract to a singleemployer for a fixed period (typicallybetween four and seven years)in return for transportation, accommodationand food. In practice,conditions for indentured workerswere little better than slavery. Manydied during transportation whileworkers were unable to terminatetheir contract. Employers, however,had the freedom to sell indenturesbefore the end of the contract period.Despite the near universal rejectionof slavery by states in themodern economy, it sadly persistsin various guises. The InternationalLabour Office’s 1998 Declarationon Fundamental Principles andRights at Work has drawn attentionto the continuing use by employersof what it terms ‘forced labour’ inthe global economy. Forced labouris defined as ‘all work or servicewhich is exacted from any personunder the menace of any penaltyand for which the said person hasnot offered themselves voluntarily’(ILO, 2005a, p.5). Although difficultto accurately measure, for obviousreasons, a conservative estimate isthat over 12 million people are insome form of forced labour globally,with Asia and the Pacific Regiondominating the trade (ibid., p.12).Two million people are in ‘state ormilitary imposed’ forced labour, suchas prisons, while another growing categoryis sexual exploitation with overone million ‘workers’ forced to selltheir bodies for sex. Forced labouris a highly gendered affair and ofteninvolves children: women and girlsaccount for 56 per cent of totalforced labour and 98 per cent of thesex trade.Box 7.2Forced labour under capitalism1557.3 Changing forms of employmentpeople engaged in forced labour as a result of trafficking(ILO, 2005b, p.14).and deconstruct the myths to show which aspects ofthem carry credibility and which do not’ (Bradley et al.,2000, p.2).7.3.1 A post-industrialeconomyThe first set of claims relate to the decline of employmentin manufacturing and the shift to a service-basedeconomy. Certainly, in the most advanced industrialeconomies, there has been a massive shift fromemployment in manufacturing to services. What thismeans for the nature of the employment relationshipis another matter. The implications of the growth ofservice work have been the subject of a number of wellknowntreatises since the 1970s, when manufacturingdecline was becoming increasingly apparent. Manyhave chosen to characterize this as a shift towards apost-industrial society where the whole relationshipbetween work and society has changed (e.g., Bell, 1973;Gorz, 1982; Lash and Urry, 1994). The following claimsare typically made about the implications for the natureof work:The growth of services has led to an increasingnumber of people in middle-class, white-collaroccupations. Linked to the emergence of high-techindustries, a growing proportion of the workforce isin more educated and professional forms of employment,which involve more autonomy and control incontrast to Fordist mass production. In the context of a global economy, advanced economiesshould prioritize knowledge-based activitiesfor jobs growth. With the advance of global communicationsand information technology, more routineactivities in both services and manufacturing willbe increasingly exposed to low-wage competition.Labour market policy should focus upon skills andtraining.Reflecting the increasing interaction with consumers,new social relations are established throughservice-related forms of work, which involve workers‘performing’ scripted roles under the supervision ofmanagement. Job prospects and career enhancementare increasingly differentiated by quality of anindividual’s performance and the individual’s ability7.3 Changing forms ofemploymentThe nature of employment has changed through time,reflecting broader changes within the capitalist economy.The shift from a craft-based form of production tolarge-scale factory-based production was critical to thereorganization of the work and the introduction ofa more complex division of labour in the nineteenthcentury (section 3.3.2). More recently, there has beenconsiderable debate about the changes taking place in thecontemporary workplace, particularly since the 1970s. Inpart, these are linked to TNC restructuring and a developingglobal division of labour as firms seek out cheaperlabour resources in the Global South (see Chapter 6)but changes have also been driven by the process ofdeindustrialization and the emergence of a service-basedeconomy. Restructuring also reflects more deep-seatedtensions between employers and employees over both theorganization and control of work (labour process), andthe distribution of the surplus generated by production(i.e. wages versus profits).Many commentators have viewed the subsequentperiod from around the mid-1970s to the present dayas a new phase of capitalism, characterized first andforemost by a transformation in the nature of employment.We explore two sets of claims here: argumentsabout a transition from an industrial to a post-industrialsociety; and debates about the shift from Fordism(see section 3.2.2) to more flexible production. Bothhave aroused considerable academic controversy and,in evaluating the claims made, it is important to bewary of what we term ‘myths at work’, and to ‘unpick In what ways has the nature of work changed withthe transition from a pre-industrial to an industrialsociety?How does geography affect different people’s experienceof work in the global economy?ReflectChanging geographies of work and employment156to internalize management’s wishes (du Gay, 1996;McDowell, 1997).Traditional class identities are becoming erodedwith the decline of the industrial working class thatformed the basis of trade union strength. In thepost-industrial economy, a new dominant middleclass is emerging in the service economy, while theerosion of traditional working-class livelihoods hasleft a residual underclass of male, unskilled workersstripped of their traditional identities (McDowell,2003).The idea that the post-industrial economy is knowledgeintensive and provides plenty of jobs, as long as theworkforce has the appropriate skills, is a particularlypowerful myth which has been a major element ofdomestic economic policy in both western Europe andNorth America since the early 1990s. For example,Robert Reich, President Clinton’s Secretary for LaborFigure 7.5 Call centres: ‘an assembly line in the head’?Source: Sherwin Crasto/Reuters/Corbis.1577.3 Changing forms of employmentduring his first term of office (between 1992 and 1996),famously claimed:The most rapidly growing job categories areknowledge-intensive; I’ve called them ‘symbolicanalysts’. Why are they growing so quickly? Whyare they paying so well? Because technology isgenerating all sorts of new possibilities . . . Theproblem is that too many people don’t have theright skills. (Quoted in Henwood, 1998, p.17)However, the evidence suggests that this is overstated.In both the US and the UK, for example, the fastestgrowing job categories in recent years have been inmore menial work that does not require high skill oreducation levels (Henwood, 1998 Thompson, 2004).In contrast, evidence suggests a continuing decline in‘middle level, craft and skilled manual employment’(Thompson, 2004, p.30). In this respect, the discourseof the knowledge economy has been advanced by politicians,academics and policy-makers in the context ofthe disappearance of relatively well-paid and securejobs in the manufacturing sector and their replacementby lower-paid, lower-skilled work in service activities.Many of the jobs being created are often very similarto the more routine kinds of work associated withmanufacturing assembly lines, where work is strictlycontrolled and monitored by management (Figure 7.5),often highly intensive, pressurized and monotonous(Beynon, 1997; Henwood, 1998). A good example hasbeen the growth in call centre work, one of the mostrapidly growing areas of employment in the UK overthe past decade (see below). Because of the routinenature of much of the work – answering customer callsin a heavily scripted way with little autonomy or creativity– one call centre worker memorably describedthe job as an ‘assembly line in the head’ (Taylor andBain, 1999).The shift from manufacturing into services has alsobeen accompanied by a growth in female employmentrelative to male. For some, this reflects the greaterpersonal abilities of women when dealing with customers,which makes them more suitable for serviceemployment. However, it should be noted that many ofthe jobs created for women are lower paid than thoselost to men, while one of the highest growth rates hasbeen recorded in part-time employment (Dex andMcCulloch, 1997).7.3.2 A variegatedgeography ofdeindustrialization andservices growthAt a more fundamental level, we might challenge theusefulness of the term ‘post-industrial’ in the contextof an integrating global economy where the majorityof the world’s population is undergoing rapid processesof urbanization and industrialization, while therich minority experience deindustrialization and a shifttowards service work. What is more plausible is that weare seeing the latest phase in an unfolding economicgeography of uneven development both between andwithin the world’s major regions. Much of the manufacturingand heavy industrial work is shifting to theTable 7.1 Deindustrialization in selected developed economies: an unevenglobal pictureShare of industrial employment (%)1990 2007France 29.7 22.6Germany 38.6a 30.0Japan 34.1 27.9UK 32.3 22.4US 26.2 19.8a For West Germany onlySource: OECD in Figures, various editions, available at http://www.oecd.org.Changing geographies of work and employment158global south: already 73 per cent of the world’s 3.1billion workers are in developing countries with anestimated 46 million new workers joining the globallabour force each year (Ghose et al., 2008).In the developed world this equates to a variablegeography of manufacturing decline and servicesgrowth. While there has been a generalized shift inemployment out of industrial activities into services,the rate of change has varied considerably betweencountries (Table 7.1). Germany and Japan, for example,have been more successful at retaining manufacturingemployment than the US and UK. Within countries,deindustrialization has affected areas of traditional andheavy industry (e.g. coal mining, steelmaking and shipbuilding,textiles and auto production) particularlyhard (see section 4.3). However, experiences have onceagain been very variable between countries. Recentevidence from western Europe’s old industrial regions,for example, indicates that French and Spanish industrialregions have proved more resilient in protectingmanufacturing employment than their UK andGerman counterparts (Birch et al., 2010), suggestingthat national policy agendas might play an importantrole in mitigating processes of global competition(Figure 7.6).The shift towards service employment has tended tobe uneven within countries. In the UK, for example, thegeography of employment in the service economy continuesto reflect a pronounced spatial division of labourbetween London and the South-east, and the rest ofthe economy. In peripheral cities and regions, such asthe north-east of England and Scotland, employmentgrowth has been dominated by lower paid and moreroutine jobs (see Box 7.3), while the lion’s share of highstatusjobs has been concentrated in the south-east ofEngland. The massive growth in call centre work, inparticular, as larger corporations in the business servicessector outsource more routine work to lower-costlocations in the peripheral regions, has almost directlymatched earlier phases of spatial reorganization byEU15GERMANYDüsseldorfMünsterArnsbergSaarlandSPAINPais VascoFRANCEPicardieNord-Pas-de-CalaisLorraineUKTees Valley and DurhamNorthumberland, Tyne and WearLancashireSouth YorkshireDerbyshire and NottinghamshireShropshire and StaffordshireWest Wales and The ValleysSouth-western Scotland–50 –40 –30 –20 –10 0 10 20 30 40Figure 7.6 Manufacturing employment change in selected European old industrial regions, 1996–2005Source: Eurostat, Regions – Science and Technology.1597.3 Changing forms of employmentmanufacturing firms (Massey, 1984). Rather than thenew environment producing better jobs, for many ofthe UK’s regions it has led to a deskilling and downgradingof work (Hudson, 1989).7.3.3 The transition fromFordism to flexibilityA second very influential perspective on the changingworkplace is associated with the shift towards post-Fordism or flexible working (section 4.3.3). Not onlyhave variants of this become dominant within academicand management discourses, but they have alsoproved very popular with certain politicians, keen topursue labour market deregulation as a route to competitivenessin the global economy. During the UK’s2005 Presidency of the European Commission, PrimeMinister Tony Blair urged his continental counterpartsto adopt what he termed the ‘Anglo-Saxon model oflabour market flexibility’ (reported in The Guardian,1 July 2005), while in April 2006 the French PrimeMinister was forced to withdraw a new law proposinggreater flexibility for employers to ‘hire and fire’younger workers in the face of mass public protests.Fordism as a concept was derived originally from themass production system introduced into the Americanautomobile industry by Henry Ford. As mass productionspread throughout industry in the early part ofthe twentieth century, the term Fordism became usedin a wider sense to encapsulate the system of modernwork under capitalism. The Italian Marxist, AntonioGramsci, was one of the first to use Fordism in thisway, associating it with the innovative American modelof capitalism that he saw as replacing more antiquatedforms. Fordism subsequently has been associated witha particular phase of industrial capitalism and workorganization, originating in the early 1900s, but havingits heyday between 1945 and 1970 when it spread fromNorth America to western Europe. In employmentterms, the key features of Fordism were (Table 7.2):During its heyday at the end of thenineteenth century, Glasgow wasknown as the ‘second city of theBritish Empire’, and was synonymouswith the growth of the shipbuildingand heavy engineering industriesto service the infrastructure andmarkets of the empire. The twentiethcentury heralded a long periodof decline, culminating in one ofthe most rapid rates of deindustrializationin western Europe, losing68 per cent of its manufacturingjobs between 1971 and 2001 (Turokand Bailey, 2004, p.41). Althoughthe city experienced a net increasein employment between 1981 and2006 of 14,000 jobs, most of thesewere in low-paid, part-time servicework, and full-time employment actuallyfell by over 34,000 during thesame period (Cumbers et al., 2009).As a consequence, and despite therhetoric espoused by city elites of apost-industrial renaissance as a cityof culture, there is a grim reality ofa heavily divided city that has someof the highest levels of deprivationin the UK. The labour market ismarked by a growing schism betweenrelatively affluent professional andgraduate workers who inhabit theplusher suburbs and fashionable WestEnd districts of the city, and the lessskilled and poorly qualified inhabitantsof inner city and peripheralhousing estates (Turok and Bailey,2004). Over 40 per cent of householdsin Glasgow are living below thepoverty line, defined as half of themedian income (Dorling and Thomas,2004), while 27.2 per cent of theworking age population are definedas economically ‘inactive’, comparedwith a UK average of 21.2 per cent(Cumbers et al., 2009, p.11).Economic deprivation alsocontributes to severe social andmedical problems; in Glasgow this isreflected in appalling differences inhealth and mortality rates betweenthe more prosperous areas such asthe West End and some neighbourhoodsin the east of the city whereaverage life expectancy for menis below 60. Research has shownthat the city has nine out of thebottom ten areas of the countrywith the worst premature mortalityrates (Shaw et al., 2005), reflectinga distinct ‘Glasgow effect’ (relatedto culture and lifestyle) in additionto severe social and economicdeprivation.Box 7.3Glasgow’s troubled post-industrial transitionChanging geographies of work and employment160 a highly detailed division of labour with considerabledeskilling and management control over jobtasks (i.e. Taylorism); the development of large corporations with complexand extremely hierarchical ‘internal labour markets’through which recruitment and promotion wereorganized; relatively high job security, centred around the normof the white full-time male worker; recognition of trade unions as ‘social partners’ withgovernment and employers in regulating and managingemployment conditions, with high levels ofunion membership and national level collectivebargaining.As part of the response to the economic crisis of the1970s, European and US firms began to rethink theirmodels of employment organization in order to (i)reduce costs and (ii) create more flexible organizationalstructures that allowed them to better adaptto increasingly unstable markets arising from globalcompetition (see Table 7.2). For our purposes here wecan distinguish between two types of effect: changesto the way work is organized (i.e. labour process),and changes to the way employers recruit and selectworkers (i.e. labour market).Labour processThe replacement of systems of mass production andTaylorist work practices with new high performanceforms of production, most often termed ‘lean production’(Womack et al., 1990) or flexible production(Peck, 2000). Heavily influenced by the success ofJapanese auto manufacturers during the late 1970sand 1980s, particularly the example of Toyota inout-competing US firms, lean production methodsinvolve slimming down the workforce, a greaterattention to quality and the elimination of waste(through quality circles and total quality control andmanagement). As part of the commitment to moreefficient methods, just-in-time production methodswere introduced, whereby manufacturers keep onlythe bare minimum of components, eliminating thecostly investment in huge stocks associated withTable 7.2 Fordist and after-Fordist labour marketsFordist–Keynesian After-FordistProduction organization Mass production Flexible productionLabour process Deskilled and Taylorized, detailed divisionof labourFlexible, functional and numericalIndustrial relations High union densities; strong workerrights; centralized bargainingDisorganization of unions; individualizedemployment relations; decentralizedbargainingLabour segmentation Institutionalized; rigid hierarchies; large,internal labour marketsFluid; core-periphery divide; breakdownof internal labour marketsEmployment norms Male, full-time workers; occupationalstability and job securityPrivileging adaptable workers;normalization of employment insecurityIncome distribution Rising real incomes and declining payinequalityPolarization of incomes and payinequalityLabour market policy Full employment; secure and high levelof male employmentFull employability; ensuring workforceadaptabilityScale characteristics Privileging of national economy foreconomic management and labourregulationDe-privileging of national; globaleconomic imperatives; decentralization oflabour regulationGeographical tendencies Dispersal ConcentrationSource: Peck, 2000, p.139.1617.3 Changing forms of employmentFordism. This necessitates greater interaction andproximity (both in terms of geographical and managerialdistance) with suppliers.For employees, these new production conceptsrequire a shift away from the deskilled and intensivedivision of labour associated with Fordist assemblywork towards a more multi-skilled and multi-taskedlabour force, more able to be flexibly deployedbetween different parts of the production process orindeed able to switch to new products as the needarises.The alienated worker of Fordism, subjected tostrong and coercive managerial control, is replacedby a more involved worker, who has greater skillsand knowledge of the labour process, has greaterautonomy over his/her work.For some, this brings about the potential for achange in the social relations between managementAgency temporariesSubcontractingSelf-employmentCore groupPrimary labour marketFunctional flexibilityFirst peripheral groupNumerical flexibilitySecondary labour marketIncreased outsourcingSecond peripheral groupPartJobPublicShortrecruitmenttraineescontractstimesharingDelayedsubsidytermFigure 7.7 The flexible firm modelSource: Allen et al., 1988, p.202.Changing geographies of work and employment162and worker with a culture of confrontation givingway to trust and cooperation (Oliver and Wilkinson,1992).Labour marketAccompanying the shift towards lean production,firms are restructuring their workforces, shiftingaway from internal labour markets where recruitmentand selection are organized within the firmtowards dual structures where the workforce isdivided into ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ elements (seeFigure 7.7). Consequently there has been a declinein permanent full-time work and an increase innon-standard forms of employment such as parttime, temporary, self-employed and agency workers.This increase in non-standard forms of employmentprovides firms with ‘numerical’ flexibility, wherebythe workforce can be reduced or increased in linewith fluctuations in product markets (Atkinson,1985). In return for job stability, workers in the core segmentsof the model agree to greater ‘functional’flexibility, whereby managers can move thembetween job tasks to a greater extent than hitherto.This involves agreeing to perform a wider range oftasks as part of the job in the short term, or evenagreeing to retrain or move to another job within thefirm in the longer term.The introduction of a range of non-standard formsof work also provides firms with increased temporalflexibility. By being able to draw upon part-timelabour, for example, firms can vary shift patterns andtimes, or even introduce extra shifts into a workingday.Finally, the transfer of much of the workforce tonon-permanent status often means that firms canreduce the non-wage labour costs, such as thepayment of redundancy, health and social insurance,and holiday pay, providing them with considerable‘financial’ flexibility.7.3.4 The limits to flexibilityfor workersWhile these changes to the nature of employment havebeen perceived as important by politicians and businessesto enhance competitiveness in the context of aglobal economy, it is clear that for individual employeesthe effects can be more pernicious, depending on whichside of the core-periphery divide you fall. Variouscommentators have catalogued how the processes of‘downsizing’ and rationalization that have accompaniedthe search for greater employment flexibility have led tothe shedding of hundreds of thousands of jobs withinTNCs (e.g., Harrison, 1994; Gordon, 1996).Even for those remaining in work, there is littleimpression – contrary to lean production rhetoric –that the work environment has been enhanced throughskills upgrading, greater empowerment in decisionmakingor a greater spirit of collaboration and teamworking. Rather, research has suggested an intensificationof work, increased monitoring and control of jobtasks and growing dissatisfaction and insecurity at work(Green, 2001, 2004; Grimshaw et al., 2001; Beynon etal., 2002; Thompson, 2003). Indeed, one group of criticshas even suggested that the much vaunted Japaneseproduction methods, used in the automobile industry,have more in common with Fordism than many wouldadmit, being first and foremost about the speedingup and intensification of work, although made moreefficient through added attention to quality and stockcontrol (Williams et al., 1992). Additionally, there islittle data for a more egalitarian workplace with thedata suggesting the opposite. Research by the US tradeunion confederation, the AFL-CIO, found that the ratioof chief executive pay to the average worker had risenfrom 1:41 in 1980 to 1:344 by 2007 (see: http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/).7.3.5 The variablegeography of flexibility in aglobal economyAlthough these trends are evident in most advancedeconomies (Standing, 1999), the use of flexibility hasbeen greater in the Anglo-Saxon world, in countriessuch as the UK, US and Australia, where successive1637.3 Changing forms of employmentgovernments have pursued policies of labour marketderegulation and where job protection legislation isminimal. Firms find it easier therefore to ‘hire and fire’workers, compared with many countries in continentalEurope where employment legislation means thatfirms have to pay much higher redundancy and othersocial costs. For example, when the French automobilemanufacturer, Peugeot, decided to close its plant nearCoventry in the English Midlands rather than one of itsdomestic plants, trade unionists at the plant contrastedthe £50,000 it cost to lay off a British worker comparedwith as much as £140,000 for a French worker (TheGuardian, 20 April 2006).Recent research by the International Labor Officeconfirmed that, despite increasing global economic integration,there remain wide variations in labour marketflexibility. This is reflected in the average length of timethat workers spend in a particular job. Once again, themain contrasts exist between a continental Europeanlabour market model and the Anglo-American with,for example, the average tenure of American workersbeing almost half that of larger European countriessuch as Italy and France (Table 7.3). The differences areeven greater when we consider the proportion of theworkforce with under a year’s tenure: 24 per cent in theUS, compared with 11 per cent for Italy. Japan is theother country in the developed world with a traditionof more stable employment, where employers in thelarge corporate sector have traditionally provided lifetimeemployment guarantees, in return for functionalflexibility from employees.Advocates of labour market flexibility claim thatit helps to reduce unemployment by encouraginglabour to move from declining sectors and regionsto ones that are growing. The US labour market isheld up as the model here, because historically it hasconsistently outperformed that of the EU since themid-1990s (Sorrentino and Moy, 2002, p.19). TheUK, as another model of labour market flexibility,has also outperformed its European neighbours, butit should be pointed out that there are wide variationsin experience between European countries withsimilarly ‘rigid’ systems of employment protection,while no study has been able to find a decisive linkbetween economic performance and labour marketflexibility (ILO, 2005b). Additionally, many of thejobs created in the UK and US are in contingent ortemporary work that is highly exploitative (see Box7.4). Moreover, the most recent evidence suggests thatthe US and UK have seen much more rapid rises inunemployment than their supposedly over-regulatedcounterparts, France and Germany. In 2009, unemploymentin the US at 9.4 per cent was higher than inboth France (9.1 per cent) and Germany (7.4 per cent)(OECD, 2010).Table 7.3 Average job tenure and tenure distribution for selected OECDcountriesAverage tenure (years) Workers with< 1 year tenure (%)Workers with

1 year tenure (%)GreeceJapanItalyFranceGermanyDenmarkUKUS13.612.212.211.210.68.38.26.69.88.310.815.314.320.919.124.552.143.149.344.241.731.532.126.2Source: ILO, 2005a, Table 4.1 p.191.Changing geographies of work and employment1647.4 A crisis of tradeunionism?7.4.1 The decline of themass collective workerTaken together, the shift towards a post-industrialeconomy and a more flexible workforce is seen asheralding the decline and perhaps ultimate demise oftrade unions and the ‘mass collective worker’ (Hudson,One of the most tangible signs ofthe new flexible labour market hasbeen the growth of the temporaryagency. In the US, it is estimated thatone in five jobs created since 1984has been through a temping agency(Peck and Theodore 2001, p.475).The number of temporary workers inthe US grew from 250,000 (0.3 percent of the workforce) in 1973 to4.4 million by 1999 (4.3 per cent).Temporary agencies traditionally havebeen associated with supplying officeworkers, particularly women, to lowerleveladministrative positions withinfirms. However, recent research indicatesthat they have greatly expandedtheir remit, both spatially and sectorally.Some temporary agencies arenow global multinationals in theirown right. The two leading agencies –Adecco and Manpower – both operatein over 60 countries, with combinedsales of over $30 billion per annumand the placement of over two millionworkers (Ward, 2004, p.252).The greater use of temporaryworkers by firms and other organizationshas meant that the use ofagencies has expanded beyond theoffice to the factory, the warehouseand even the public sector (e.g.in schools and hospitals). In theseconditions, Peck and Theodore’s(1998) study of temporary agenciesin Chicago found emerging divisionswithin the temporary workforce. Forsome workers (typically highly experiencedadministrative workers orsecretaries working in the corporatesector) with highly prized skills andattributes, the flexibility provided bytemporary work can be empowering.During periods of low unemploymentit allows them to choose betweenemployers and make considerabledemands in terms of pay and conditions.In the words of one agencymanager:If you’re really good, mostcompanies will hire you on. If[good temps] tell me Friday theywant to change placements,Monday I will have a job forthem. They’re that good. I haveto keep them busy or their otheragency will take them.(Manager, small office placement)For the majority of workers in thetemping sector, however, who lack theskills to differentiate them from otherworkers, the experience is more negative.At the bottom end of the labourmarket (in areas such as warehousework, cleaning and construction)many temporary workers are hired,by the day, in impersonal hiring halls,encapsulated by the phrase ‘warmbodies delivered on time’. The benefitto the employer of this system isthat the disciplining of workers isalso outsourced to agencies who areasked to filter out workers with the‘wrong attitude’. In addition, thecosts benefits are enormous, revealedin the following quote from an agencymanager:They’d have to pay $8–9 an hourwith benefits, vacation time, sickdays, payroll taxes, they’d have tohire someone to pay them . . . Andtheir orders fluctuate so much . . .Now they can cut 50–100 peoplein a day. All they have to do iscall us.(Peck and Theodore, 1998,p.661)From a firm’s point of view, usingtemporary agencies to recruit labourreduces the non-wage costs andincreases their numerical flexibility.In this way, labour is subject to aprocess of ‘hyper-commodification’(ibid.), in the sense that employeesreally are treated as no more thancommodities whose labour can bebought and sold on a daily basis. Atthe same time, the scope for formingunions and organizing for betterconditions is greatly reduced by theprecarious and ephemeral nature ofemployment.Box 7.4The growth of the temporary agency To what extent is the shift towards a post-industrialeconomy improving conditions for the averageworker?What are the main elements of labour market flexibilityand how do these vary across space?Reflect1657.4 A crisis of trade unionism?1997). Five themes, in particular, run through thesearguments: In the industrial economy, social identities weretied to and constructed through the workplace (e.g.car worker, shipbuilder, steelmaker, etc.). Workerstended to work in the same occupation for most oftheir working lives and therefore work became animportant ‘fixing’ element in their social consciousness.By contrast, employment in services – for lessskilled workers – tends to be more fluid and casualized.People move between jobs more frequentlyand social identity is less associated with work butmore with consumption activities (Lash and Urry,1994, p.57). Subsequently, workers are becoming more individualisticin attitude and less inclined to jointrade unions. The fragmented nature of the serviceeconomy with large factories giving way to smallerand more dispersed office and retail workplacesmake it difficult for unions to organize.Trends towards employment flexibility also weakenthe position of trade unions. The slimming down ofthe core, unionized workforce and the creation ofmore temporary and agency workers underminestraditional union strength in the large single workplacesof Fordism.Additionally, increased outsourcing and geographicalrelocation of work to non-union plants in areaswithout a culture of union organization furtherweaken unions, as well as providing employers withincreased opportunities to play off workers in onelocation against those in another.Finally, the increased ‘feminization’ of the workforcealso undermines trade unions, as women are lesslikely to join trade unions than men.Undoubtedly there is some truth in these claims, butthe extent of trade union decline is often exaggerated.Undoubtedly, union membership has declined considerablyin most advanced industrial economies since itsheyday in the 1970s but the extent of this decline is oftenexaggerated (Table 7.4). A factor has been the decline ofmanufacturing, where union strength has traditionallybeen high, and the growth of service-related employment,where unions have traditionally been weaker. Butother factors are also at play. If we consider the internationalcomparative evidence of union decline, whatis significant is that decline has been greatest in thosecountries where employment regulation is weakest andgovernments have been most hostile to unions (Table7.4). Union membership in the UK declined fasterthan most other countries in the 1980s and 1990s butthis was in the context of Conservative governmentsTable 7.4 Geographical variations in trade union decline for selected OECDcountries (measured in terms of union density % of workforce in union)1980 2008AustraliaCanadaFranceGermanyItalyNetherlandsNew ZealandNorwaySwedenUKUSA49.534.718.334.949.634.869.158.378.050.719.518.627.17.719.133.418.920.853.368.327.111.9Source: OECD Trade Union density figures, available at http://stats.oecd.org.Changing geographies of work and employment166passing anti-union laws restricting the right to strikeand encouraging employers to de-recognize tradeunions. US, Australian and New Zealand unions similarlyhave seen their influence declining in the contextof neo-liberal economic policies (see Chapter 5), hostilegovernments and anti-union employment legislation.In other countries where governments have beenless willing to challenge trade unions, they remain astronger force in the labour market, particularly insome northern European countries such as Norway,Germany and the Netherlands. This does not meanthat unions have not been on the back foot in thesecountries. Indeed, the evidence from Germany suggeststhat employers have been attempting to withdraw fromnational systems of national collective bargaining tomore decentralized plant- and company-based systems(Berndt, 2000; Zeller, 2000). However, critically, here, asin other western European countries, political supportfor the idea of social partnership still persists, evenif employers are demanding more labour flexibility(Jeffreys, 2001).It is also worth noting that the situation facingtrade unions is different in much of the Global South.In South Africa, trade unions experienced considerablegrowth in the period between the mid-1980s and1990s, both in membership and prestige, due to theirwider role in campaigns for democratic change alongsidetheir ability to organize in the context of rapidindustrialization (Adler and Webster, 1999). Similarly,the trade union movement in Brazil expanded duringthe 1980s associated with the struggle for democracy,although it has subsequently fallen back in recentyears as employers seek to subcontract more workfrom the formal unionized sectors of the economy tothe small firm-dominated informal sectors (Ramalho,1999). Indeed, in many developing countries, duringthe 1990s unions have started to come under pressuresfrom processes of corporate restructuring and similarpatterns of outsourcing by employers to non-unionworkplaces as those described for unions in the globalnorth.7.4.2 The end of tradeunions or a crisis of aparticular form?The tendency to write off trade unions as dinosaurswhose days are numbered has been criticized by manycommentators who point to the continuing importanceof labour action and struggle in the global economy(Herod 2001). Not only are there very different experiencesbetween countries, but even in those placeswhere unions have suffered the worst setbacks, thereare signs of revival in recent years. Notably in the UK,the election of a more sympathetic Labour governmentin 1997 and the passing of new laws providingunions with improved, though still restricted, rights toorganize has resulted in a dramatic upsurge in agreementswith firms to bargain collectively helping stemthe decline in the number of members (Figure 7.8).More perceptive commentators point to contemporaryunion decline as representing the crisis of aparticular form of trade unionism in time and space,that derived its strength from the economic conditionsof the post-1945 period, namely the development oflarge manufacturing-based workforces, nationally regulatedeconomies and systems of collective bargaining,and the social model of a male breadwinner in permanentemployment (Munck, 1999). As these realitieshave changed, trade unions need to ‘change their spots’,8007006005004003002001000Number of recognition agreements199719981999200020012002200398.587.576.5Union membership (millions)YearRecognition agreementsUnion membershipFigure 7.8 Trade union recognition andmembership levels in the UK, 1997–2003Sources: Adapted from Labour Force Survey TUC; Cumbers, 2005.1677.5 New labour geographiesmaking themselves more relevant to the dispersed andfragmented economy of services by appealing to nontraditionalconstituencies such as women and those innon-standard work, who have little social protection.Some have also called for unions to become less narrowlyoriented to workplace issues, but instead to workfor broader social and political goals, forging allianceswith other social movements within local communitieson issues such as housing and combating poverty(Wills, 2003) or what has been termed a new socialmovement unionism (Moody, 1997). Others argue fora new labour internationalism, capable of facing upto the emerging global networks of TNCs by unionsthemselves becoming less nationally oriented and morecapable of operating globally (Waterman, 2000).Perhaps the most serious issue facing trade unionsworldwide is the growth of a massive non-unionizedand highly exploited labour force in the global south,stemming from the increasingly complex divisions oflabour. The ILO recently noted that the fastest growingarea of employment in both Latin America and Africawas in the urban informal economy, accounting for90 per cent of all jobs in the latter during the 1990s(ILO, 2005b, p.6). Significantly, this sector includesa growing number of ‘unregistered’ workers engagedin outsourced work linked into global productionnetworks, but with minimal social protection andemployment regulation. Not only are such workerssubject to considerable exploitation by managers andkey customers, but their presence also drives down thewages and conditions of workers in formal employment.Tackling the unorganized workforce is now acommon problem for unionized workers in the northand south, which could become a rallying cry for a newlabour internationalism.7.5 New labourgeographies7.5.1 Constructing labour’sspatial fixIn the past, geographers have considered the distributionand organization of labour across space and how thisshapes the geography of the economy. More recently,however, a new generation of economic geographershas emphasized the active role that labour plays inconstructing the global economy. The persistence ofmeasures of employment protection and regulation inall advanced economies (even in the Anglo-Americanworld) and the growth of trade unions in some of themost important economies of the Global South suggestsa need to understand how workers, as well as employers,help to organize and regulate the changing landscape ofcapitalism. As one of the leading lights of the ‘new labourgeography’, Andy Herod, puts it:the production of the geography of capitalism is notthe sole prerogative of capital. Understanding onlyhow capital is structured and operates is not sufficientto understand the making of the geography ofcapitalism. For sure, this does not mean that laboris free to construct landscapes as it pleases, for itsagency is restricted just as is capital’s – by history,geography, by structures that it cannot control,and by the actions of its opponents. But it doesmean that a more active conception of workers’geographical agency must be incorporated intoexplanations of how economic landscapes come tolook and function the way they do.(Herod, 2001, p.34)While there is a long-established tradition withinMarxist geography of studies that explore how workersseek to ‘defend place’ in the threat of plant closure andindustrial restructuring (e.g. Hudson and Sadler, 1986),labour geographers (see Coe and Jordhaus-Lier 2010;Rutherford, 2010) have been pursuing research thathighlights the more proactive role of trade unions in creatingtheir own ‘spatial fixes’. Critical here, in the contextof globalization, is the need for trade unions to rethinktheir own geographical strategies to respond to the moreglobal production networks being developed by MNCs.How well equipped are traditional forms of tradeunionism to meet the challenge of globalization?ReflectChanging geographies of work and employment1687.5.2 The ‘re-scaling’ oftrade union actionThe need for trade unions and workers to develop newspatial strategies to deal with the changing economiclandscape of globalization has been termed rescaling bylabour geographers (e.g. Bergene et al., 2010; Herod etal., 2003). Four themes are evident in the research thatis underway on the subject: Studies exploring attempts by trade unions todevelop more effective organizational geographiesthat allow them to get to grips with the globalorganization of production (e.g. Cumbers et al.,2008; Wills, 2002). While the labour movementhas always seen itself as international – going backto the time of Karl Marx and the InternationalWorking Men’s Association (often referred to asthe First International) in the 1860s – and haslong had trans-national structures, such as theInternational Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)and global union federations (GUFs) that representparticular sectors, effective power has always beenheld in national affiliate unions (Cumbers et al.,2008). Different spatial strategies are now beingadvocated to transcend national level organizationsto deal with MNCs. On the one hand, many in thetrade union hierarchy have prioritized the importanceof developing a set of minimal internationallabour standards (with regard to pay and conditions,gender equality, the right to join unions and the endto child and forced labour) by lobbying governmentsand key global institutions such as the WorldBank and IMF. Others have prioritized the signingof collective agreements with MNCs as a means ofimproving workers’ rights. Since 1994, a number ofglobal union federations has signed Global FrameAgreements with over 40 MNCs, which seek todevelop basic standards through each corporation’sglobal production, although there is little evidencethat they have been effective in combating MNCpower (Cumbers et al., 2008). In opposition to these ‘top-down’ internationaliststrategies, others have championed a more grassrootsapproach that seeks to develop independentnetworks of workers within global production chains(Waterman, 2000; Castree, 2000; Ryland, 2010).This approach tends to be more militant, viewingattempts by union leaders to forge social partnershipsat an international level with governmentsand employers as inevitably compromised. Instead,emphasis is placed upon workers autonomouslydeveloping their own networks of communicationand struggle that allow them to ‘scale up’ localdisputes to maximum effect (Box 7.5). However,while grassroots initiatives between workers of differentcountries may result in short-term victories,they can often prove unsustainable without effectivesupport from national and international leaderships(Cumbers, 2004).A focus upon creative ways that unions areresponding to the spatial reorganization of production(Herod, 2001; Holmes, 2004; Tufts, 2007).For example, instead of assuming that post-Fordistgeographies of production will inevitably underminethe position of trade unions, researchers havepointed out that much depends upon the strategiesdeveloped by unions themselves. Rutherfordand Gertler (2002) have observed that one effectof employers introducing more flexible productionthat requires a skilled labour force will mean agreater dependency upon the workers who have keyskills and knowledge about production.Attempts to organize workers locally in the dispersedand fragmented landscape of the post-industrialservice-based economy (Walsh, 2000; Wills, 2005;Tufts, 2007). As labour geographers have been quickto point out, not all capital is mobile. Much servicework in particular is tied to place. Restaurants andhotels, cleaning and security work, and employmentin public services all have to locate where thecustomers are and, in particular, within large urbanareas. Nevertheless, as we have already documented,such work is often low paid and non-unionized. Thegeographical dilemmas facing unions in this contextare about developing more effective strategies fororganizing across a city in multiple workplaces,rather than focusing upon the single large-massworkplaces typical of the industrial economy. Acrossthe US, coalitions of trade unions, church groupsand other social activists have achieved considerable1697.5 New labour geographiessuccess in recent years, in an otherwise hostileindustrial relations climate in winning ‘living wagecampaigns’ at the local level (Box 7.6).In June 2009 a strike broke out atthe Lindsey oil refinery in north-eastLincolnshire, England (Figure 7.9).The immediate cause of the disputewas the decision of a contractingfirm, Shaws, to refuse to consider51 workers, made redundant followingthe completion of the firststage of contract work, for vacancieson the second stage of a newconstruction contract at the refinery.The dispute had arisen on the backon an earlier strike action in Februaryof 2009, when the 51 workers at thecentre of the June walkout had beeninvolved in organizing a protest bylocal workers at the employment ofa foreign workforce, primarily Italianand Portuguese workers. The refusalto consider the 51 workers for thenew vacancies resulted in ‘unofficial’strike action by all 647 constructionworkers at the refinery. The responseof the owners of the refinery, Frenchoil multinational Total, with its subcontractors,was to sack the workers,and to refuse to negotiate until thestrike was called off.In an impressive show of solidarity,hundreds of workers at 17 other oiland gas plants across the UK walkedout in sympathy. The dangers that anescalation of industrial action mightBox 7.5Workers’ geographies and autonomous networks in the Lindsey oil refinerydisputeFigure 7.9 Lindsey oil refinerySource: Anthony Ince.Changing geographies of work and employment170threaten Britain’s energy suppliesbrought the Labour government intothe struggle with calls for the twosides to sit down and negotiate anend to the dispute. Within two weeksthe employers had been forced tonegotiate with the workforce leadingto the reinstatement of many of thoseoriginally laid off by Shaws.The dispute was an excellentexample of the complex and increasinglycontingent geographies ofemployment in a global economy,but also of the way that grassrootsworkers can develop their own autonomousgeographies of struggle tochallenge a powerful MNC. Becauseof their positioning within a criticalspace – the oil refinery network – ofthe British and European economies,the workers were able to exerciseconsiderable relational power in theway their local actions had muchbroader spatial implications (seeAllen, 2003).Equally critical, however, was theway that the ‘local’ workforce wasable to scale up its struggle throughits own broader networks. The workforceat Lindsey, in common with theengineering construction industrygenerally, is a mobile and itinerantone. The majority of workers – especiallythe more skilled workforce– do not live in the local area andmany have experience working atdifferent refineries throughout theUK as well as in the North Sea in theNorwegian and British sectors. Fromthe point of view of the campaignagainst Total, this was importantbecause the strikers were able touse their existing contacts and networksto scale up the dispute tothe national level. Indeed, it wasprecisely a national escalation of thedispute – in the name of protectingnationally agreed conditions – thatwas essential to mobilizing workersin other refineries.Box 7.5 (continued)The ‘living wage movement’ in theUS has been described by celebratedcolumnist Robert Kuttner as ‘themost interesting (and under-reported)grassroots enterprise to emerge sincethe civil rights movement)’ (www.livingwagecampaign.org). Living wagecampaigns show that local interventionscan still be highly effectivein a global economy. They involvethe passing of laws by local or cityauthorities guaranteeing decent wagelevels to all workers employed eitherdirectly in the public services or byprivate employers contracted to thepublic sector. The living wage campaignin the US has cleverly linkedpay to public spending, suggestingthat the latter should not be usedto subsidize ‘poverty wages’ and itssuccess can be measured by the factthat Republican as well as Democratcity authorities have signed livingwage ordinances. In some cities,a ‘living wage’ ordinance has beenused as a local marketing strategy, ineffect using a ‘progressive localism’to attract more socially concernedinvestors.The first living wage coalition waslaunched in Baltimore in 1994 when,in the context of deindustrializationand a process of gentrified waterfrontregeneration that had done little todeal with the problems of povertyand alienation affecting the traditionalworkforce, an alliance betweentrade unionists and religious leadersforced the city government to pass alaw requiring a ‘local living wage’ forpublic sector workers. Subsequently122 cities across the US have followedsuit and had passed livingwage ordinances by April 2006.The living wage movement has alsobeen gaining ground in other countries.A campaigning group, LondonCitizens, has been active in promotingthe concept of a living wage for theUK capital’s low-paid workers. Thecampaign has had considerablesuccess since its launch in 2001 andhas added an estimated £24 millionto the wages of low-paid workers(London Citizens, http://www.londoncitizens.org.uk). London Citizens lists85 employers from the private, publicand voluntary sectors that currentlypay the living wage of £7.60 per hour(£1.87 above the national minimum).They include multinational bankssuch as Barclays, the accountancyfirm Price Waterhouse Coopers, QueenMary University and the LondonSchool of Economics. In addition topaying the living wage, employersmust also provide employees with atleast 20 days paid holiday plus bankholidays, eligibility for ten sick daysper year and access to join a tradeunion. Perhaps the biggest coup of thecampaign to date was persuading theConservative Mayor, Boris Johnson, toalso sign the city government up topaying living wages on its contracts.Box 7.6Organizing city-wide: the ‘living wage movement’ in the US1717.5 New labour geographies7.5.3 Global networks oflabourAlongside the collective agency of labour, it is alsoimportant to highlight the way workers at an individuallevel help to shape the global economy. The mostobvious manifestation of this is through the decisionto move in search of a better job or way of making aliving. In the global economy an estimated 100 millionworkers are now living away from their countries oforigin (Castree et al., 2004, 189). In contrast to previousphases of international migration, what is notableabout the current period is the complexity of linkages,although in broad terms movements are from the globalsouth to the north, reflecting the different global geographyof income opportunities (see Figure 7.10).Different kinds of labour migration can also beidentified, which reflect the nature of underlying powerrelations within the capitalist economy and the divisionsthat exist within the global workforce. On the onehand, we can identify a small group of highly skilledinternational migrants who form a trans-nationalcapitalist elite, working in the areas of global financeand management. This privileged group of ‘workers’operate in a global space of flows (Castells, 2000),located in and moving freely between the headquartersof the world’s most powerful TNCs in global cities suchas London, New York, Tokyo and Paris (Beaverstock,2002). They exercise considerable power as the ‘moversand shakers’ of the global economy whose decisionsaffect the lives of most of the rest of the world. On theother hand, the vast majority of labour migrants havea less exalted status and are differentiated variouslyby the extent to which they are temporary or permanent,skilled or unskilled, and voluntary as opposed to‘forced’ (see Box 7.1), and legal or illegal.As Castree et al. (2004, p.191) note, despite the rhetoricof globalization and a borderless world, ‘nationalgovernments actively regulate the international migrationof workers’, filtering, in the same way that firms do,workers on the basis of their ‘desirability’. Not only aremigrants increasingly assessed in terms of educationand skill levels, but racial and ethnic characteristics typicallystill inform immigration policy. Racist discoursesand nationalistic stances towards immigration oftenlead to policies that are contradictory from the pointJapanEuropeAfricaArab oil countriesAustraliaSouthAmericaCanadaUSAIndiaIndonesiaChinaFigure 7.10 Major international migration movements since 1973Source: Castles, S. and Moller, M., 1998, The Age of Migration, 2nd edn, Macmillan, reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan.Changing geographies of work and employment172of view of capital; for example, tight immigration controlsoperating during periods of low unemploymentand economic boom, when there is a high demandfor foreign labour. Evidence from the US suggests thatimmigration actually fuelled economic growth duringthe 1990s when around 13.5 million people enteredthe country (The Guardian, 3 December 2002), whileanother report on the UK estimated that the economyneeded 150,000 migrants per year to maintain thelabour force at current levels in the face of an ageingworkforce (reported in The Observer, 8 December,2002). Despite these facts, official policy still tendstowards ever stricter immigration controls.Although international labour migration can betaken as evidence of worker agency in moving to findwork, requiring considerable resourcefulness, ingenuityand courage, migrant workers continue to be amongthe most exploited groups in the global economy (Box7.1). Undocumented or illegal workers are routinelyabused by unscrupulous employers, sometimes havingtheir lives endangered as well as suffering appallingworking conditions. One of the worst incidents inrecent times was the deaths of 23 Chinese migrantworkers in the UK, by drowning in the MorecambeBay area of Lancashire while being employed as cocklepickers (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/3827623.stm).Figure 7.11 Illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican–US borderSource: Danny Lehman/Corbis.7.6 SummaryThe nature of employment has changed dramaticallyin the period since the 1970s through processes ofde industrialization and the reorganization of workfrom Fordist to flexible workplaces. This has spawneda number of important debates about the magnitudeof the changes taking place and their geographicaleffects. In this chapter we have critically reviewedthese claims, drawing upon both data and counterarguments.While we find considerable evidence ofa changing workplace, particularly a shift to greaterflexibility and insecurity, there is less evidence that In what ways can workers scale up their actions tocombat the actions of MNCs?Reflect1737.6 Summarythese changes have brought positive benefits for themajority of the workforce. There continue to be widespatial variations and divisions within the workforce,in terms of pay and conditions, and little evidence ofa more egalitarian workplace that some commentatorspredicted with post-Fordism.We have also highlighted the importance ofgeography. Continuing variations in the politicaland institutional framework within which work isembedded between countries and regions continueto account for spatial variation in the adoption ofnew forms of work. Another key theme is the role ofworkers and their unions in shaping economic landscape,as highlighted by the ‘new labour geography’.While labour has been on the ‘back foot’ in processes ofglobal restructuring, due to the increasing mobility ofcapital, we have highlighted the continuing possibilitiesfor labour action at a number of different scales in theglobal economy. Some of the more interesting researchin economic geography in recent years has been thatexamining the new spatial strategies being developedby unions in response to globalization.ExerciseUsing Table 7.2 as a starting point and employmenttenure as a measure of labour market flexibility,compare the economic performance of two ‘flexibleeconomies’ with those of less flexible ones.

Is there any evidence that labour market flexibilityleads to better economic performance and socialwellbeing?
What other indicators might be used to assess thesocial impact of flexibility?
Does the use of such statistics provide us withadequate knowledge of geographical variations inthe performance of labour markets?
What other methods might be used to understandthe different experience of flexibility for individualworkers?
How have the different national models of labourregulation performed in the recent economicdownturn?Key readingBergene, A.-C., Endresen, S.B. and Knutsen, H.M. (eds)(2010) Missing Links in Labour Geography, Aldershot:Ashgate.An excellent set of articles relating to current debates onlabour geography with many of the leading protagonists inthe field. The collection includes both recent advances intheories concerned with labour agency as well as a widervariety of empirical studies on union efforts to organize in theGlobal North and South.Bradley, H., Erickson, M., Stephenson, C. and Williams, S.(2000) Myths at Work, Cambridge: Polity.A thorough and critical analysis of various theories aboutchanges in the contemporary workplace. As the title suggests,the book usefully unpacks the various myths aboutemployment transition with particularly valuable chapters onflexibility and the ‘end of trade unionism’.Castree, N., Coe, N., Ward, K. and Samers, M. (2004) Spacesof Work: Global Capitalism and Geographies of Labour,London: Sage.An excellent general text on labour geography with the firsttwo chapters providing useful introductions to the spatialvariations in the experience of work in the global economyand key concepts in understanding employment relations. Inlater chapters there is a wealth of empirical data and maps tohelp illustrate essays.Pahl, R. (ed.) (1988) On Work: Historical, Comparative andTheoretical Approaches, Oxford: Blackwell.A little dated but contains a number of very useful chaptersabout the history of work from the pre-industrial periodthrough to the industrial. It is particularly good at understandingthe changing social and technical divisions oflabour through time, evaluating changes in gender and classrelations.Peck, J. and Theodore, N. (2001) ‘Contingent Chicago:restructuring the spaces of temporary labor’. InternationalJournal of Urban and Regional Research, 25(3): 471–6.A detailed empirical case study of the workings of the flexiblelabour market for those at the sharp end of the US economy.The paper offers real insights into how the labour market isbeing restructured and how the meaning of flexibility is verydifferent for firms and employees.Changing geographies of work and employment174Useful websites:http://www.//ilo.orgInternational Labor Organization’s website: the UN body thatcarries out research into global labour issues. Produces dataand research papers on a range of labour issues from tradeunions membership to trends in labour flexibility.http://www.icftu.orgInternational Confederation of Free Trade Unions. The mainwebsite for the umbrella body that represents the internationaltrade union movement.http://www.aflcio.orgThe website for the main US trade union federation.http://www.//tuc.org.ukBritish trade union confederation site.http://www.bls.gov/US Bureau of Labor Statistics.http://www.//nomisweb.co.ukUK Official Labour Market Statistics.

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