IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v20y2006i2p369-387.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Scaling labour

Author

Listed:
  • Bradon Ellem

    (The University of Sydney)

Abstract

In recent years the ore-rich region known as the Pilbara, in north-western Australia, has been the site of intense struggles over the regulation of labour.Two of the world's biggest resource companies have been pitted against an oftendivided local labour force, but they have not had things all their own way. Drawing on the work of a number of geographers, the article shows how these disputes can be understood more richly than simply as another bout of union recognition disputes. If physical geography – rich ore bodies and isolation from metropolitan centres – or the contest between global capital and local labour are important, they are only the starting points for a textured,‘spatialized’ understanding of capital-labour relationships.The article argues that space is made and argued over in many ways and that there are many scales in addition to the local and the global at which conflicts are constructed and resolved.

Suggested Citation

  • Bradon Ellem, 2006. "Scaling labour," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 20(2), pages 369-387, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:20:y:2006:i:2:p:369-387
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017006064275
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0950017006064275
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0950017006064275?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Sadler & Bob Fagan, 2004. "Australian Trade Unions and the Politics of Scale: Reconstructing the Spatiality of Industrial Relations," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 80(1), pages 23-43, January.
    2. Jess Walsh, 2000. "Organizing the Scale of Labor Regulation in the United States: Service-Sector Activism in the City," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 32(9), pages 1593-1610, September.
    3. Andrew Jonas, 1996. "Local Labour Control Regimes: Uneven Development and the Social Regulation of Production," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(4), pages 323-338.
    4. Bradon Ellem & John Shields, 2001. "Placing Peak Union Purpose and Power: The Origins, Dominance and Decline of the Barrier Industrial Council," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 12(1), pages 61-84, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andrew Cumbers & Jane Atterton, 2000. "Globalisation and the Contested Process of International Corporate Restructuring: Employment Reorganisation and the Issue of Labour Consent in the International Oil Industry," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 32(9), pages 1529-1544, September.
    2. Steven Tufts, 2007. "Emerging Labour Strategies in Toronto's Hotel Sector: Toward a Spatial Circuit of Union Renewal," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 39(10), pages 2383-2404, October.
    3. Zhiwei Zhao & David Walters & Desai Shan, 2020. "Impediments to free movement of Chinese seafarers in the maritime labour market," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 31(3), pages 425-443, September.
    4. Elena Baglioni, 2022. "The Making of Cheap Labour across Production and Reproduction: Control and Resistance in the Senegalese Horticultural Value Chain," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 36(3), pages 445-464, June.
    5. Kafui Attoh, 2017. "Public transportation and the idiocy of urban life," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(1), pages 196-213, January.
    6. Katie J Wells & Kafui Attoh & Declan Cullen, 2021. "“Just-in-Place†labor: Driver organizing in the Uber workplace," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(2), pages 315-331, March.
    7. Winifred Curran, 2004. "Gentrification and the Nature of Work: Exploring the Links in Williamsburg, Brooklyn," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 36(7), pages 1243-1258, July.
    8. Scott Baum & Anthea Bill & William Mitchell, 2008. "Labour Underutilisation in Metropolitan Labour Markets in Australia: Individual Characteristics, Personal Circumstances and Local Labour Markets," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 45(5-6), pages 1193-1216, May.
    9. Radwan, Lukas & Kinder, Sebastian & Dispan, Jürgen, 2013. "Opportunity structures for co-determination in innovations: The case of the Stuttgart area," MPRA Paper 53252, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2013.
    10. Glynne Williams & Steve Davies & Crispen Chinguno, 2015. "Subcontracting and Labour Standards: Reassessing the Potential of International Framework Agreements," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 53(2), pages 181-203, June.
    11. Elena Baglioni, 2018. "Labour control and the labour question in global production networks: exploitation and disciplining in Senegalese export horticulture," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 111-137.
    12. Fichter Michael & Stevis Dimitris & Helfen Markus, 2012. "Bargaining for corporate responsibility: The global and the local of framework agreements in the USA," Business and Politics, De Gruyter, vol. 14(3), pages 1-31, October.
    13. Fuchs Martina & Dannenberg Peter & López Tatiana & Wiedemann Cathrin & Riedler Tim, 2023. "Location-specific labour control strategies in online retail," ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography, De Gruyter, vol. 67(4), pages 189-201, December.
    14. Aidan While & Andrew E G Jonas & David C Gibbs, 2004. "Unblocking the City? Growth Pressures, Collective Provision, and the Search for New Spaces of Governance in Greater Cambridge, England," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 36(2), pages 279-304, February.
    15. Hodgkinson, Ann & Markey, Ray, 2005. "Assessing the Impact of the Workplace Relations Act From 1996 to 2004: Increasing Flexibility or Decreasing Collectivism?," Economics Working Papers wp05-30, School of Economics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia.
    16. Jane Wills, 2008. "Making Class Politics Possible: Organizing Contract Cleaners in London," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(2), pages 305-323, June.
    17. J Wills & A Lincoln, 1999. "Filling the Vacuum in New Management Practice? Lessons from US Employee-Owned Firms," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 31(8), pages 1497-1512, August.
    18. Celal Cahit Ağar & Steffen Böhm, 2018. "Towards a pluralist labor geography: Constrained grassroots agency and the socio-spatial fix in Dȇrsim, Turkey," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 50(6), pages 1228-1249, September.
    19. Azmeh, Shamel & Nguyen, Huong & Kuhn, Marlene, 2022. "Automation and industrialisation through global value chains: North Africa in the German automotive wiring harness industry," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 125-138.
    20. Sally A. Weller, 2008. "Are Labour Markets Necessarily 'Local'? Spatiality, Segmentation and Scale," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 45(11), pages 2203-2223, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:20:y:2006:i:2:p:369-387. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.