Rethinking 'Regional Industrial Relations': Space, Place and the Social Relations of Work

Abstract

The dismantling of centralised modes of labour regulation and the emergence of new spatial divisions of labour under 'globalisation' have produced renewed interest in 'regional industrial relations'. Yet much of the existing literature in this genre—and industrial relations scholarship in general—remains wedded to a positivist conception of space. The most promising avenues for reconceptualising the spatiality of capital-labour relations are to be found in the work of radical economic geographers. They recognise that space itself is a human construct and that capital and labour have differing mobilities and, therefore, different subjective and strategic orientations to space and to particular places. From these premises, they argue that local labour markets are the points of intersection between production and reproduction and the primary focus of attention of local modes of labour regulation. These insights, we suggest, provide the means to rethink what has been described as regional industrial relations and capital- labour relations more generally.