L7 - spatiality's of labour: what place for workers

Question 1

Circuit of capital

Answer 1

• All processes linked by CHANGE = what is produced is consumed …
• Can use this to distinguish different types of capital
• Savings = spend on consumer durable goods
• ‘state functions’ = money from state to reinvest into economy (e.g. healthcare, security, education) = provides benefits to consumers/labour force who pay these taxes

Question 2

Scalar perspective

Answer 2

• Firms, employers, labour, and regulatory system (governments, etc)
• SCALE UP to national level = varieties of capital, how regulation/legislation play out
• Super national scale
• Beyond that = WTO, World bank = GLOBAL scale

Question 3

Firm strategies for labour control

Answer 3

• leaving place = find cheaper labour elsewhere
• rationalising in place = downsize operations or increase productivity, replace workers with machines
• De-integrating operations in place (e.g. forms of outsourcing)

Question 4

State strategies for labour control

Answer 4

• ‘External’ macro-economic deregulation = labour markets deregulated and selective migration
• Re-scaling of economic competition
• ‘Internal’ labour market de-regulation = de-regulation within particular state
• Rolling back of welfare support
• Privatization and downsizing the public sector

Question 5

Three geographical arguments

Answer 5

• Many of these mechanisms act in conjunction in particular places
• Labour control mechanisms can impact differentially within a particular locality
• Combination of mechanisms used varies from place to place, even if they have similar industrial structure

Question 6

Labour control regimes in S. E. Asia

Answer 6

Penang
- recruitment of migrant workers
- controlled hostel environment
- national legislation resists worker organisations
Batam
- housing of domestic migrants in hostels
- militaristic approach to labour control
Cavite/Laguna
- tightly controlled industrial estates
- close links to local politics (e.g. to provide security)

Question 7

Geographies of Labour to labour geographies

Answer 7

• Moving from thinking about where workers are and how they are affected by the global economy to workers who actively intervene and thereby shape economic geographies
• Some workers, in some places, have the necessary agency to improve their relative position
• All production grounded in place, and production increasingly interconnected at global scale – creates potential for action

Question 8

Worker actions in situ

Answer 8

• Workers can act alone, or in collaboration with others
• Acting alone: e.g. the GM UAW dispute in June 1998 (Herod, 2000). Used weak points of JIT production to halt production – 3,400 workers in Flint, Michigan went on strike – and within days over 200,000 workers affected at huge cost to GM
• Community unionism: workers collaborate with non-work-based groups to tackle particular issues, e.g. Living Wage Campaigns
• Cross class alliances: workers, firms and local government work together to attract investment e.g. bids for major development/sporting projects

Question 9

Upscaling worker actions

Answer 9

• Different spatial scales: from neighbouring towns to global action…
• Benefits: workers less likely to be played off against each other; strength in numbers; more resources can be mobilised
• Globalization of capital has meant increased emphasis on worker internationalism of various kinds
• Broadly speaking, can be based around either consumption or production politics

Question 10

Proactive labour migration

Answer 10

• Willing and strategic migration of high skill employees, either within TNCs or for family/individual reasons
• E.g. the transnational technical communities within the IT industries of the Pacific Rim
• Element 1: the importance of migrants from Taiwan, India and China for the continued vitality of Silicon Valley
• Element 2: the importance of return migrants – e.g. to Hsinchu, Taiwan – in driving economic development there and other high-tech hotspots of Asia
• Element 3: the population of circulatory migrants or ‘argonauts’ that serve to bind California to high tech regions of Asia

Question 11

Alternative ways of working

Answer 11

• Alternative formal employment spaces e.g. community-owned and run businesses, charity sector, cooperatives (Mondragon)
• Alternative informal employment spaces e.g. self-provisioning, mutual aid and paid informal work
• Where measured, even in advanced economies, unpaid work (e.g. childcare etc.) is a huge component of ‘the economy’