Trade Unions and Regions: Better Work, Experimentation, and Regional Governance

227 Pages·2022·10.173 MB·English

by  Christian Lévesque, Peter Fairbrother, Blandine Emilien, María C. González, Lucie Morissette

Routledge Studies in Employment and Work Relations in Context
TRADE UNIONS
AND REGIONS
BETTER WORK, EXPERIMENTATION,
AND REGIONAL GOVERNANCE
Edited by
Christian Lévesque, Peter Fairbrother, Blandine
Emilien, María C. González, and Lucie Morissette
Trade Unions and Regions
Trade Unions and Regions: Better Work, Experimentation, and Regional Governance is about
the place of workers and their unions in the modern world. It addresses current
challenges for unions working in regions and the experiments that may take place at this
level of governance.
The book addresses pressing questions concerned with the conditions for better
work and a humane society. The focus is on the capacities of unions to address questions
relating to regional governance, in both supranational and sub-national regions. It
examines workers and their unions in a variety of contexts: multinationals, industries,
workplaces, and communities. The authors address the experiments that can be initiated
by unions, governments, or employers and the ways in which collective organisations
engage to address these matters in regional contexts. The analysis takes as a starting point
the fracturing and divisions evident in various regions, in Australia, Canada, Mexico,
Spain, the United Kingdom, and USA. The contributors propose novel analyses with
lessons for unions. It should be of interest to union activists and leaders, political parties,
governments, and those who make decisions in and about regions.
Researchers and students of labour markets, political mobilisation, and employment
relations will take the analyses further.
Christian Lévesque is Professor of Employment Relations at HEC Montréal, Canada
and the co-Director of the CRIMT (Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization
and Work).
Peter Fairbrother is Professor of Management and Labour, Tasmanian School of
Business and Economics, University of Tasmania, Australia and Affiliated Professor,
HEC Montréal, Montréal, Canada.
Blandine Emilien is Associate Professor in Human Resource Management (HRM) at
the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Canada.
María C. González is tenured Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of
Oviedo, Spain.
Lucie Morissette is Associate Professor of Employment Relations in the Department of
Human Resource Management at HEC Montréal, Canada.
Routledge Studies in Employment and Work
Relations in Context
Edited by Tony Elger and Peter Fairbrother
The aim of the Employment and Work Relations in Context Series is to address
questions relating to the evolving patterns and politics of work, employment,
management, and industrial relations. There is a concern to trace out the ways in
which wider policy-making, especially by national governments and transnational
corporations, impinges upon specific workplaces, occupations, labour markets,
localities, and regions. This invites attention to developments at an international
level, marking out patterns of globalisation, state policy, and practices in the context
of globalisation and the impact of these processes on labour. A particular feature of
the series is the consideration of forms of worker and citizen organisation and
mobilisation. The studies address major analytical and policy issues through case
study and comparative research.
Wildfire and Power
Policy and Practice
Edited by Peter Fairbrother and Meagan Tyler
Crossing Boundaries
Work and Industrial Relations in Perspective
Russell Lansbury
The Regulation and Management of Workplace Health and Safety
Historical and Emerging Trends
Edited by Peter Sheldon, Sarah Gregson, Russell Lansbury, and Karin Sanders
Contesting Inequality and Worker Mobilisation
Australia 1851–1880
Michael Quinlan
Trade Unions and Regions
Better Work, Experimentation, and Regional Governance
Edited by Christian Lévesque, Peter Fairbrother, Blandine Emilien, María C. González
and Lucie Morissette
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Studies-in-Employment-and-Work-Relations-in-Context/book-series/
SE0840
Trade Unions and
Regions
Better Work, Experimentation,
and Regional Governance
Edited by Christian Lévesque,
Peter Fairbrother,
Blandine Emilien,
María C. González, and
Lucie Morissette
First published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Taylor & Francis
The right of Christian Lévesque, Peter Fairbrother, Blandine Emilien,
María C. González and Lucie Morissette to be identified as the authors
of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-37012-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-32009-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-00108-9 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003001089
Typeset in Bembo
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents
List of Figures vii
List of Tables viii
List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xiv
1 Understanding Union Power and Regional Governance 1
PETER FAIRBROTHER AND CHRISTIAN LÉVESQUE
PART I
Organisational Experimentations 21
2 Urban Regimes: Experiments and Institutional
Innovation 23
GLENN MORGAN AND MALU VILLELA
3 Collective Bargaining and Regional Resilience:
Recalibrating Labour Relations in the Great Lakes
Region Automotive Industry 46
JOHN HOLMES
PART II
Institutional Experimentation 65
4 Reflections on Labour Strategy in Urban and
Regional Governance 67
IAN MACDONALD AND THORBEN WIEDITZ
vi Contents
5 Institutional Experimentation in the Montreal Taxi
Industry: What Role for the State and Collective
Action? 85
URWANA COIQUAUD AND LUCIE MORISSETTE
PART III
Comparative Studies of Experimentation 103
6 Marginalising Manufacturing: The Politics of
Downgrading in the UK Apparel Industry 105
NIKOLAUS HAMMER AND LUCY BRILL
7 Power Dynamics, Regional Governance Institutions,
and the Quality of Work: A Comparison of Baja
California and Queretaro Aerospace Clusters 126
CHRISTIAN LÉVESQUE, REDI GOMIS, BLANDINE ÉMILIEN,
AND JORGE CARRILLO
PART IV
The Interconnections between Organisational and
Institutional Experimentation 147
8 An Instance of Tripartite Successful Institutional
Experimentation: Dual Vocational Education and
Training in Spain 149
MARÍA C. GONZÁLEZ AND AROA TEJERO
9 From Organisational to Institutional Experimentation
in the Montreal Aerospace Industry: Understanding
the Role of Trade Union Strategic Capabilities 165
CHRISTIAN LÉVESQUE, CASSANDRA BOWKETT,
MARC-ANTONIN HENNEBERT, AND LUCIE MORISSETTE
10 Unions Interrogating Regions and Regionalism in
Australia: The Challenges of Experimentation 184
PETER FAIRBROTHER AND RUTH BARTON
Index 205
Figures
1.1 Conditions, forms, and consequences of experimentation 10
2.1 Elements of the urban regime: changing over time 27
7.1 Processes of experimentation for better work 129
Tables
1.1 Experimentation in the making 7
3.1 Summary of UAW and CAW Bargaining Outcomes
2005–2015 50
5.1 Confrontation between Forms of Institutional
Experimentation in the Montreal Taxi Industry 97
6.1 Enterprise Structure across Sub-Sectors and Regions 108
6.2 Turnover, Gross Value Added, and Employment Costs,
1998–2016 114
6.3 The Manufacture of Wearing Apparel in the UK,
1998–2016 115
7.1 Main features of the Mexican aerospace industry 133
7.2 Characteristics of regional governance institutions in
Baja California and Queretaro 139
9.1 Evolution of the processes of experimentation 171
Contributors
Ruth Barton is a Senior Lecturer at the Tasmanian School of Business and
Economics at the University of Tasmania. She is a co-researcher at the
Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization and Work (CRIMT).
Her research interests lie in deindustrialisation, place, regeneration, and
trade unions and their interaction, especially in Tasmania. As well, she is
interested in ideas, narratives, and imagery and their role in mobilising
trade union and community members.
Lucy Brill is the Director of the international labour rights charity,
Homeworkers Worldwide (HWW). She joined HWW in 2017,
initially researching precarious working conditions in UK garment manu-
facturing, and currently leading work in South Asia, with brands sourcing
leather footwear and clothing from homeworker supply chains in South
Asia. Lucy’s doctoral thesis (Bradford 2004) explored gender and
precarious work under globalisation, and civil society responses, based
on fieldwork in the UK and Chile. Lucy also worked for Oxfam,
managing their livelihoods programme in England (2007–2014), and as a
researcher at universities in Bradford (2003–2007) and Manchester
(2015–2017).
Cassandra Bowkett is a Lecturer in Human Resource Management and
Employment Relations at the University of Manchester. She completed
her post-doctorate at HEC Montréal, affiliated with the CRIMT research
network and associated research centre, following her PhD research at
Cardiff University. Her interests focus on the future of work and skills,
particularly around the impacts of new technologies on HRM and
employment relations in the manufacturing industries.
Jorge Carrillo has a PhD in Sociology from COLMEX and is a co-founder
and has been a researcher at the El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF)
since 1982. He is Emeritus Researcher of the National System of
Researchers (SNI). In 2015, he received the State Prize of Science and
Technology of Baja California. He has wide recognition in Mexico and
abroad for his studies on the maquiladora industry, the automotive,