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Globalisation and Labour

Globalisation and Labour. Structure and Objectives of the Lecture. To illustrate major changes in the work regime since the 1970s and bring out spatial aspects of these changes

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Globalisation and Labour

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  1. Globalisation and Labour

  2. Structure and Objectives of the Lecture • To illustrate major changes in the work regime since the 1970s and bring out spatial aspects of these changes • To outline the role of trade unions in the contemporary global political economy, the problems these organisations face and possibilities for development of a global labour movement

  3. Section One: National (Atlantic) Fordism (were we came from) • Section Two: Development of Post-Fordist regime of labour control and its broader implications • Section Three: Position of Labour Movements today and the prospects for universal solidarity.

  4. Section One • Atlantic Fordism • What is/was Atlantic Fordism? • (1) Particular Method of Organising Production • Talyorism (Scientific management) 1911 • Between 1898-1902 one third of US manufacturing assets subject to merger

  5. Talyorism really only secured in 1940s during WWII • Destruction of Autonomy • (2) Social Contract (Linked to brutality of work and communism) • Job Security • Institutionalised representation and rising wages • Leisure Time!

  6. Increasing Social Wage • Links Demand and Supply (Keynesian) • (3)Relatively autocentric • (4) Way of Life • Nuclear Family (The Family Wage). Also capitalist and social democratic dream (both Collective and Individual progress)

  7. Grammar School, The extension of universities and polytechnics in the 1960s. • Warwick was established to established to service the most aspirations sections of working class and middle class.

  8. Different national patterns of exclusion/ inclusion based on gender/race etc. • Swedish Fordism relatively inclusive (national level social bargaining), US Fordism less so (a lot workers lay outside the compact) • Outside of the ‘Atlantic social area’ Fordism still relevant but as a reality for minority of workers not a general social arrangement (Japan tricky).

  9. Elite working class arrangement in Third World. Formally employed workers enjoy tenure. Again a reflection of political logics.

  10. Section Two • Post-Fordism: Secular crisis in work regime/ regime of accumulation early 1970s • Not simply a cyclical downturn • Reinvention of mode of social control/labour regulation since this point

  11. Spatial restructuring key role in reinvention • Wages perform different functions in integrated and relatively auto centric economies • Movement of capital and immigration perform a vital role in disciplining labour and crafting new work regimes

  12. What key features of Post-Fordist Work Regime? • According to Lipietz. Two distinct national processes of restructuring • One focuses on empowering workforce and involving them in production regime. Compete on skill. Limited flexibility in terms of hiring and hiring • Trade Unions as partners • Redistribution of rents of competitiveness

  13. Post Fordist social democratic welfare state. Constrained by competitiveness but not radically restructured • Other response: Focus on what Lipietz calls external flexibility. Hiring and Firing. Lower wages. Continuation of Talyorism

  14. Different strategies give advantages in different sectors but for Lipietz the first is better in social, economic and political terms.

  15. Importantly for Lipietz (as opposed to Sabel etc) the two responses are mutually exclusive. Sees responses as national (structured) choices • Focus on manufacturing.

  16. My argument (influenced by Harvey): • Empirical Evidence is towards the dominance of the flexiabilisation of the work contract • It simply wrong to assume US and UK cannot compete in high skilled industries (advertising, financial services, media)

  17. No contraction between neo-liberalism and high skill • Extreme individualisation of work regime (McDonald’s stars.UK teaching) • The post-modern economy is being constructed around pre-modern systems of labour control. The ‘third world in the first’.

  18. The growth of micro enterprises that sub-contracting has entailed has created space for the growth of “domestic, artisanal, familial and paternalistic (god-father, guv’nor or even mafia like)” systems of labour control (Harvey, 1990: 152)

  19. Partial continuation of Fordism (and even its extension) in certain areas (Warwick academics) • Brutal Talyorism (Call centres etc) “a systematic assault on established custom and practice” (Hyman) • May be a extension of certain sectors which involve worker autonomy and innovation (not so much craft production as image production)

  20. Third World, Structural Adjustment and the decline of peripheral Fordism (not Talyorism)

  21. Section Three • Uneven (global) crisis in membership • New forms of corporate organisation hostile to Unions • Move highly defensive form of unionism • TUC partners in competitiveness (employability). Trade Union Congress (2003) High Performance Workplaces, London, Trade Union Congres • Acceptance of mobility and adoption of progressive competitiveness • Agenda 2010 and Alliance for Jobs in Germany

  22. Idea of globalisation is as important as the reality. • Not necessarily new problems but problems exacerbated by globalisation • Not simply necessary to ensure continuation of capital relation but competitiveness of space.

  23. Munck argue crisis not of trade unionism but of a particular mode of trade unionism • See solution as social unionism (fits into ILO work on role of unions in developing world) as internationalisation • If business is global than labour must also be global

  24. Problem is that ignores problem of combined and uneven development (ignores continued power of the state ) • Workers in different countries are not simply divided by nationalist sentiment but by real differences in material interests. • Equally idea of social unionism is problematic.

  25. Munck arguments do not offer a clear solution to the problem that unions exist within and against capital (Bit ambiguous on whole question of capitalism) • In acting material interests of members trade unions must secure the competitiveness of national economic space

  26. Only through a commitment to breaking the wage-labour nexus and production for the market can the contradictions of unionism be resolved • In contrast to both Munck (privileging the spatial) and Bourdieu I argue crisis not so much of trade unionism as reformism

  27. This crisis of unionism links back to last weeks arguments about the crisis of politics of becoming • Unions important political actors in secular projects of becoming • Dravid, Fascism, Indian Secular Democracy and the Cricket Shirt.

  28. Birth centenary programme of M. S. Golwalkar • 'one flag (saffron), one leader and one ideology'.

  29. Conclusions • The transition from Fordism to Post-Fordism marked by increase in intensity of work and insecurity • Globalisation created crisis for labour unions with no obvious resolution

  30. Links back: Harvey, MNCs • Links forward: Welfare and Feminism

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