Steve Jefferys

Globalization and Precarious Forms of Production and Employment

This important and cross-disciplinary book explores globalization alongside precarious forms of production and employment, and how these factors have impacted on workers and trade unions.

Job regulation and the managerial challenge to trade unions: evidence from two union membership surveys

Data from a survey of union activists in twelve unions, and from a survey of members of the Communication Workers Union, are used to argue that changes in labour management and work organisation do not provide scope for social partnership at work, but do represent new difficulties for collective representation.

Representing Identity and Work in Transition: The Case of South Yorkshire Coal-mining Communities in the UK

This chapter explores the changing face of the former South Yorkshire coalfields.1 The place of coal mining in this area was essential to the economy of the region from the turn of the twentieth century, intensifying and consolidating its production following the Second World War. These developments powerfully transformed and shaped the region, embedding cultural traditions and social identities that defined South Yorkshire through the working of both coal and steel.

Approaching Regional and Identity Change in Europe

What have been the effects of de-industrialisation across key European regions over the past forty years? The decline of industrial economies came to define many parts of Europe during this time, radically altering ways of working and notions of livelihood formed over time. Once distinctive regions and localities shaped by economic development evolved as sub-systems of much wider national formations and traditions, which were commonly shaped through conceptions of nation and state, culture and economy. From the early nineteenth century, the emergence of the Industrial Revolution began the uneven transformation of European nations. Already by the 1950s in most parts of Europe and in other industrialised nations, specific regions had developed distinct identities primarily through the increasing importance and the dominance of industrial work: this could be found, for instance, in coal mines, in factories, in shipyards. Yet as radical economic restructuring in many of these areas began after the 1970s, there was a fragmentation of these established structures, formations and traditions. New products and production methods and technologies and the growth of the service sector rapidly altered the condition of labour, the nature of communities and the lives and experiences of people. One rapid and major effect of this was the rise of unstable and precarious social conditions, leading to the development of flexible forms of work, irregular working hours and a growing discontinuity and transformation in working lives (see Beck, 1992; Sennett, 1998; Thornley et al., 2010).

Changing Work and Community Identities in European Regions

List of Figures and Tables Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Approaching Regional and Identity Change in Europe J.Kirk, S.Contrepois & S.Jefferys Industrial, Urban and Worker Identity Transitions in Nuremberg L.Meier & M.Promberger Industrial Decline, Economic Regeneration and Identities in the Paris Region S.Contrepois A Tale of Two Spanish Cities: Elda and Alcoy at the Crossroads M.Arnal, C.Castro, A.Lahera-Sanchez, J.Revilla & F.Tovar De-Industrialisation in Upper Silesia K.Wodz, K.L?cki, J.Klimczak-Ziolek & M.Witkowski The Zonguldak Coalfield and the Past and Future of Turkish Coal-Mining Communities H.?engul & E.Aytekin Representing Identity and Work in Transition: The Case of South Yorkshire Coal-Mining Communities in Britain J.Kirk, S.Jefferys & C.Wall A Skyline of European Identities S.Contrepois, S.Jefferys & J.Kirk Bibliography Index

Surviving the Global Financial Crisis: Automobiles and Finance in Central and Eastern Europe

Over the last 15 years two huge economic events have shaken Central and Eastern Europe: the shift from a command to a market economy in the mid-1990s, and the global financial crisis at the end of the 2000s. Within a very brief period of time, most working people in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) were first exposed to liberalization or privatization and in many cases began to work directly for companies based outside their own countries. Then they were subjected to the consequences of the collapse of the world financial bubble.

A Skyline of European Identities

This book set out to raise questions about the impact of deindustrialisation in several regions of Europe. Our objectives were to look at the effects of economic restructuring central to the remaking of distinct areas characterised by work patterns that had been formed from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution up to the late twentieth century and had constituted distinctive cultures, communities and identities. The implications of these altered conditions would prove profound, playing a significant role in transforming many European landscapes and spaces.

Globalizing Employment Relations and Crisis: Multinational Companies and Central and Eastern European Transitions and Transfers

The 1990s witnessed the conjuncture of two major economic events: the financialization of global capitalism and the entry of this new, highly mobile capitalism into the Central and Eastern Europe command economies. Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) experienced an unprecedented rapid explosion of inward foreign direct investment (FDI), whose associated risks were lowered significantly by the 2004 and 2007 European Union (EU) accessions of first eight and then two more of the former communist states. Hundreds and then thousands of multinational corporations thus invested in the region either to take advantages of its highly skilled but low-cost labour supply or to position themselves to take advantage of opportunities (many created by massive privatizations) to access rapidly growing local markets.