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Organizing the Scale of Labor Regulation in the United States: Service-Sector Activism in the City

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  • Jess Walsh

    (Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3052, Australia)

Abstract

Geographical scholarship on the localization of labor regulation, militant particularism in class struggle, and labor-union activity has highlighted the need for workers to contest the scales over which their working lives are produced. Because these analyses have focused on the role of spatial competition and capital mobility in defeating labor struggle, and on the production of scale by manufacturing firms and workers, prescriptions for activism have tended to privilege interregional and international labor solidarity and regulatory mechanisms that might allow labor to operate at the same scale as capital. With a case study of service-sector activism in the US city of Baltimore, I argue for attention to the metropolitan scale of pro-worker labor-market regulation and organizing. By removing local labor activism from a juxtaposition against mobile capital, I add to existing geographies of labor regulation and resistance a theoretical and empirical focus on the importance of ‘spatial fixes' for workers at the local scale, and highlight the processes through which local struggles can be articulated both with each other and with overarching regulation.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:32:y:2000:i:9:p:1593-1610
    DOI: 10.1068/a32102
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. 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.
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    Cited by:

    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Kafui Attoh, 2017. "Public transportation and the idiocy of urban life," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(1), pages 196-213, January.
    4. 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.
    5. Laura Wolf-Powers, 2007. "Reading Rival Union Responses to the Localization of Technical Work in the US Telecommunications Industry," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 39(2), pages 398-416, February.
    6. Lydia Savage, 2004. "Public Sector Unions Shaping Hospital Privatization: The Creation of Boston Medical Center," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 36(3), pages 547-568, March.
    7. 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.
    8. Bradon Ellem, 2006. "Scaling labour," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 20(2), pages 369-387, June.

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