Saskia Sassen - Denationalisation and networked cities

Losing control? : sovereignty in an age of globalization 320.15
Global networks, linked cities / edited by Saskia Sassen

Cities and the creative class / Richard Florida

Silver, BJ. Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization Since 1870 (Cambridge, 2003)

"Manuel Castells argued that the dawn of the "information age" has transformed state sovereignty and the experience of work in ways that undermine the labour movments ability to act as a "major source of social cohesion and workers representation." It has also undermined any possibility that workers might become emancipatory "subjects" in the future - the source of a new "project indentity" aimed at rebuilding the social institutions of civil society. Non-class-based indentity movements, for Casstells are the only "potential subjects of the information age." p2

The power of identity / Manuel Castells
The rise of the network society / Manuel Castells
The Castells reader on cities and social theory / edited by Ida Susser

"The relocation of industrial capitalism in a geographic fix "each created new, strategically lcoated working classes which in turn produced pwoerful new labour movements rooted in expanding mass production industries." p5-6

"There is some irony in the fact that early 20th century observers of the transformations associated with Fordism were certain that these changes spelled the death of labour movmenets." p6

"This transnational capitalist class is increasingly "both a class-in-itself and for it-self...pursuing a class project of captalist globalisation." the "transnational working class" (while not yet a class-for-itself") is increasingly a "class-in-itself" thus providing the objective basis for labour nationalism." p 9 she goes on to mention how some saw seattle as the basis for this new movement


Working-Class Power, Capitalist-Class Interests, and Class Compromise
EO Wright - The American Journal of Sociology, 2000 - JSTOR
Class counts : comparative studies in class analysis / Erik Olin Wright


"In particular the idea that there is no alternative has had a powerful demobilising impact on labour movements. As Frances Piven and Richard Cloward put it the "idea of power" itself has been an important source of workers' power. Mobilisations over the past century have been fueled by the belief that workers do have indeed have power and moreover that their power can be used effectively to transfomr their conditions of work and life for the better." p16

"The insight labour and labour movements are continually made and remade provides an important antidoe against the common tendency to be overly rigid in specifying who the working class is (be it the 19th century craft workers or the 20th century mass production workers.) Thus rather than seeing an "historically superseded" movement" (Castells, 1997) or a "residual endangered species" (Zolberg, 1995) our eyes are open to the early signs of working class formation. as well as "backlash" resistance from those working classes that are being "unmade." p20

"Marx was incorrect to infer that just because capitalists treat workers as interchangeable, workers themselves would willingly relinquish nonclass bases of indenity. Indeed precisely because the ongoing making and remaking of working classes creates dislocation and competitive pressure on workers, there is also an endemic tendency for workers to draw non-class borders and boundaries as the basis for protection from the maelstrom." p22

"To put it in a sentence, the trajectory for the world automobile inudstry suggests that where capital goes, conflict goes. Or to paraphrase David Harvey, the geographical location of production is a "spatial fix" that only "reschedules crises"; it does not permanently resolve them." p41

Harvey, David The condition of postmodernity : an enquiry into the origins of cultural change G 909.82

Spaces of hope / David Harvey

"In both cases, as in the case of the so-called NIC's (newly industrialising countries),which are discussed later, the labour movement strenghtened (and was strenghtened by)other movements aimed at broad, social, economics and political transformations." p53

Citizenship rights and social movements : a comparative and statistical analysis
Tarrow. Democracy and disorder : protest and politics in Italy, 1965-1975 322.44

"Japanese automobile producers established a multilayered subcontracting system that simultaneously allowed them to guarantee employment and to establish co-operative relations with a core labour force while obtaining low cost inputs and flexibility from the lower rungs of the supply network." p70

technological fix - spatial fix and product fix

"The "peripheralisation" of the textile complex in the early decades of the 20th century coincided with the rise of an innovative mass-production automobile complex, centered in the United States - the new leading sector, not just in economic terms but in setting the social and cultural standards of the time." p77

so the rise in a services industry has led to the rise in the idea of the single non associatinal consumer?

Peter Fairbrother and Gerard Griffin (eds) Changing Prospects for Trade Unionism: Comparisons Between Six Countries. (Continium, 2002)

"Trade unions historically were rooted in the occupational communities of skilled workers or as Hyman puts it, "the relatively undifferentiated work situation of labour in the expanding sectors of mas production." For much of the post-war period there was an expansion of mass production and mass consumption, giving rise to arguments about the relationships between macro-economic policies and forms of mass production associated with Fordism. Critical to these arrangements was the state as the "regulator of economic relations and provider of social benefit and protection." p3

"An alternative model has been the view of unionism where the emphasis is on organizing and providing the basis as Hyman, suggests, for a "living collectivity". In this account the membership is an active participant contributing to the development of the collective focus and organisation of the union." - 5

The four causes of union density decline often outlined is structural shifts in the ecomony, changes in employer attitude and outlook, the changing relationship between unions and governements and the changing needs and identities of employees.

page 147 carries a good numerical account of the decline of union density in Ireland.

US multinational "employers employ adopt well integrated sets of "soft" human resource policies, charcterised by good pay and conditions, profit sharing, extensive provision for the excercise of employee voice, high levels of investment in training and development, team working and employee involvement and sophisticated approaches to recruitment, selection, appraisal and other aspects of "flow" management." - p167

Union subsititution strategies.


To read from this book:

http://www.apl.org.ph/APLPrimer/aplprimer_part4.pdf


From Solidarity to Fluidarity: social movements beyond'collective identity'--the case of … - group of 3 »
K McDonald - Social Movement Studies, 2002 - Taylor & Francis

Unions in transition : entering the second century / edited by Seymour Marti. - San Francisco, Calif. : ICS Press, 1986. GEN 331.880973

Strategy and Trade Union Effectiveness in a Neo-liberal Environment
P Boxall, P Haynes - ingentaconnect.com

The politics of trade unionism: evidence, policy and theory
P Fairbrother, J Waddington - Capital and Class, 1990

New frontiers in European industrial relations / edited by Richard Hyman, An. - Oxford : Blackwell, 1994
GEN 331.094/HYM

Kelly, John E., John Edward, 1952-. - Rethinking industrial relations : mobilization, collectivism and long waves. - London : Routledge, 1998. - (Routledge studies in employment relations
GEN 331/KEL

Union participation

… in collective action? Social psychological determinants of individual participation in trade unions C Kelly, J Kelly - Human Relations, 1994 - hum.sagepub.com


The Politics of Identity; Class, Culture, Social Movements (Paperback)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415904374/sr=8-1/qid=1145454391/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-5162034-7556903?%5Fencoding=UTF8


New Issues for Labour Internationalism
Trade Union Internationalism in the Age of Seattle
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1467-8330.00187