Global Restructuring and the Power of Labour

Bill Dunn considers and contests accounts of globalization and post-Fordism that see structural economic change in the late Twentieth-century as having fundamentally worsened the conditions and weakened the potential of labour. Including a comparative survey of restructuring in four major industries; automobiles, construction, microelectronics and finance, the book suggests the timing of change and its complex and contradictory nature undermine structural explanations of labour's situation. It redirects attention towards labour's political defeats and own institutional shortcomings.

Auteur

BILL DUNN has taught International Political Economy at the University of Bristol and Sociology the University of the West of England where he was also awarded his PhD. He has had work published on capital mobility and the experiences of transport and communications workers and on international construction contracting.

Résumé
One of the commonly assumed consequences of globalization - that workers are worse off and no longer have the power they once had to fight effectively on their own behalf - is still often taken for granted. Labour, suggest mainstream theories of restructuring, has been dispersed across space as capital flits to wherever it can pay the lowest wages. Meanwhile old collectivities are destroyed and labour is also socially dispersed - divided by skills, gender and nationality in increasingly isolated workplaces within diffuse subcontracting networks. Bill Dunn challenges these assumptions. He argues that changes in the structure of capitalism are overstated, cannot account for workers' experiences and do not preclude effective organisation by labour.

Contenu

PART I: UNDERSTANDINGS OF GLOBAL RESTRUCTURING AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR LABOUR Introduction Globalization, Labour and the State Capital Mobility and the Spatial Dispersal of Labour Post-Fordism and the Social Dispersal of Labour PART II: AN INTER-INDUSTRY COMPARISON OF RESTRUCTURING AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR LABOUR Automobiles Construction Semiconductors Finance Assessing Global Restructuring and Labour PART II: CONCLUSIONS Towards a Strategic Research Agenda