Rescaling Employment Relations
Key Outcomes of Change in the Privatised Rail Industry
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4142018 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Douglas Mackinnon (0000-0003-2901-5081, University of Aberdeen, corresponding author), Danny Mackinnon, Andrew Cumbers (0000-0002-9876-5241, University of Glasgow, corresponding author), Jon Shaw (0000-0002-7066-0632, University of Plymouth, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 1347-1369 |
| Publication date | 2008-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environment and Planning A Economy and Space (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0308-518X • E-ISSN: 1472-3409 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1068/a39203 |
| OpenAlex | W2044518339 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 38 |
The past decade has witnessed a revival of interest in the role of labour in political and economic restructuring. Following a period in the 1980s and early 1990s when trade unions and employees were routinely portrayed as passive victims of corporate restructuring, the past ten years have seen a resurgence of work by geographers highlighting the continued agency of labour. Despite this 'new labour geography', however, there has been little empirical research examining the uneven development of employment relations at a broad industry level. We address this issue by examining the changing geography of employment regulation in the UK's privatised rail industry. A major shift in the scale at which industrial relations are organised has taken place under privatisation, away from national collective bargaining to a system of localised company bargaining. On the basis of secondary data gathered from industry sources, we provide an initial assessment of key outcomes of employment change in the rail industry. Our analysis indicates that considerable disparities in pay and conditions exist between different groups of workers, companies, and regions, although these are perhaps less extreme than suggested by the unions. In addition, the number of industrial disputes has escalated in the aftermath of privatisation. Moreover, instead of the set piece national strikes that took place in the nationalised industry, the majority of this strike action has been conducted against particular operators at the local and regional scales, reflecting the logic of company-level bargaining. At the same time, the membership of the three main unions has actually increased in recent years against a backdrop of long-term decline, suggesting that the decentralisation of collective bargaining presents unions with opportunities as well as challenges
Business · Collective bargaining · Economics · Economy · Labor relations · Labour economics · Management · Market economy · Political science · Politics · Restructuring · Sociology · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · Transport and Economic Policies · Finance · Industrial Relations
Organizing the landscape
Spaces of Work
Spatial Divisions of Labour
Consumption and Identity at Work
Geographies of governance
Moving and shaking
Uneven Geographies of Capital and Labour
Embedded Internationalisms
From a Geography of Labor to a Labor Geography
Geographies of Trade Unionism
The Geography of Union Organising in Low‐Paid Service Industries in the UK
Regionalisation, Devolution and the Trade Union Movement
In Search of Regional Industrial Culture
Genuine Renewal or Pyrrhic Victory? The Scale Politics of Trade Union Recognition in the UK
Accountability and the Non-elected Local State
Ownership or Competition? An Evaluation of the Effects of Privatization on Industrial Relations Institutions, Processes and Outcomes
Organizing European Labour
Community unionism and trade union renewal in the UK
Labouring Differences
Labour in ‘lean’ times
Trade unions, coalitions and communities
Re-scaling collective bargaining
A tax on success? Privatization, employment and the ‘Windfall Tax’
UK rail privatisation five years down the line
Active citizenship and local governance
Spaces of dependence, spaces of engagement and the politics of scale, or
Taking on the CosmoCorps? Experiments in Transnational Labor Organization
Organizing the Scale of Labor Regulation in the United States
Geographic Scale and Grass-Roots Internationalism
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,38 |
| Citation span | 2010 - 2026 (17) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |