Union Retreat & the Regions

by Martin, Ron L.; Sunley, Peter; Wills, Jane; Regional Studies Association (London, England)

• ISBN13: 9781853022555
• ISBN10: 1853022551
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-03-01
• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Pub

Summary

Since the beginning of the 1980s, British trade unions have experienced a dramatic retreat, marked by rapidly falling memberships and declining industrial power. The authors examine the regional dimensions of this retreat of organized labour, paying particular attention to the resilience of the unions' historical heartland areas, the impact of economic restructuring on local union traditions, the shrinking landscape of industrial militancy, the geographical decentralization of the new industrial relations, and the link between these factors and the more general debate on regional development and regional labour markets.
An important synthesis of economic geography and industrial relations work, this book marks a major contribution towards the newly emerging field of labour geography.

Author Biography

Ron Martin is Director of the Graduate School of Geography and a lecturer in Economic Geography at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of St. Catharine's College, Cambridge.

Table of Contents

List of Tables
List of Figures
List of Abbreviations
Preface
The Disorganization of Organized Labour	p. 1
Situating Trade Unionism: Spaces of Regulation and Representation	p. 23
The Contours of Decline: Union Retreat and Resilience in the Regions	p. 40
Labour Market Restructuring and Regional Unionism	p. 83
Striking Out the Past? Geographies of Industrial Action	p. 121
Decentralization And Local Industrial Politics	p. 156
Mapping Union Futures: Representation and Organization in a Detraditionalized Economy	p. 190
Appendix	p. 207
Bibliography	p. 211
Subject Index	p. 227
Names Index	p. 239
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.