Labour’s lines of flight: Rethinking the vulnerabilities of transnational capital

This article investigates the possibilities for diffusing trade union power across space through the lens of the Driving Up Standards (DUS) campaign, a public transport sector initiative between two American unions, the SEIU and IBT, and the British T&G. I argue that the DUS highlights the continuing resonance of scalar analysis, despite recent criticisms of combining topological and territorial understandings of space (Marston et al., 2005). By expanding the scale of their resistance to transnational corporations, the unions involved multiply the connections amongst countervailing forces and thus also the points of corporate vulnerability which can be targeted. Moreover, although the possibilities for transnational industrial action may be minimal, this does not give a full account of unions’ strategic position. Comparing recent developments in union campaigning methods to Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of lines of flight, the article traces the campaign’s many micro-segmentations as it seeks to exploit the contingencies of space by leveraging not only the uneven distribution of union power in a TNC, but also the uneven practices and expectations of states, consumers, and shareholders in different national environments. The paper concludes by emphasising the importance of combining spatial and temporal lenses, as the inconclusive outcomes of the campaign illustrate the protracted character of transnational labour struggles and the importance of attrition.     

FDI policy and political spaces for labour: The disarticulation of the Bolivian petroleros

Recent literature asserts that labour movements worldwide have been disempowered as a result of the various processes and discourses linked to economic globalisation. But there is a need to explore more carefully the mechanisms by which these processes and discourses affect resources for and constraints on effective union organisation. The purpose of this paper is to understand the construction of political spaces for organised labour and how these have been influenced by one such discourse: the policy discourse on foreign direct investments (FDI). It analyses the relationship between this policy discourse and political spaces for Bolivian petrolero unions through a case study of the period from 1984 to 2006. The policy discourse shifted the function of the state, fragmented symbols of collective identity, introduced flexible contracts, decentralised negotiations, rewarded individual achievement, and fostered competition rather than cooperation between employees. The shift towards an internationally integrated, FDI-driven economy shapes political spaces that allow collective action to be restructured from the workplace-based demands of unions to demands for democratic and indigenous rights of NGOs and other non-labour civil society organisations.     

Mining shareholder value: Institutional shareholders,transnational corporations and the geography of gold mining

The ownership and activism of institutional investors in large publicly traded gold mining companies have re-oriented business strategies toward maximising value for shareholders. This paper examines these strategies in the context of the commodity boom (and bust) of 2003–2015. A study of the activities of some of the largest gold mining companies reveals a re-alignment of their operations to satisfy the yield requirements, investment motives, and risk tolerance of institutional investors. By prying open the black-box of corporate decision-making, the expansion and subsequent contraction of mining activities are shown to have in part been enabled and constrained by the investment appetite of a particular class of investors. The findings make the case for a more situated analysis of corporations, a key but understudied actor in political ecology studies.     

The extrusion of foreign labour from the South African gold mining industry

The South African gold mining industry has traditionally drawn its migrant labour force from a variety of domestic and foreign labour reservoirs. Since 1970 the migrant labour system has undergone profound change with considerable social and economic implications for foreign workers, their home communities and their governments. The proportion of foreign labour in the mine workforce fell precipitously between 1974 and 1977 but has since stabilized at around 40%. The widely accepted notion of labour force ‘internalization’ is an inadequate depiction of these trends and of mine labour policy generally in the 1970s and 1980s. The continuing importance of foreign workers to the industry, in the face of a large domestic surplus of mine labour, is related to a number of political and economic factors including the industry's recent stabilization campaign.     

Building the ‘competitive city’: labour and Toronto’s bid to host the Olympic games

Toronto’s quest to host the Summer Olympic Games has dominated both contemporary planning discourse and practice. For some, the pursuit of the games embodies Toronto’s transformation into a ‘competitive’ global city. Relatively unexplored in this discourse are the contradictory roles that labour plays in contemporary urban development. I argue that the new labour geography can provide some interesting insights into such processes. Specifically, labour geographers have given workers with divergent interests greater agency in shaping economic landscapes and have noted the multi-scalar organisation of labour. The paper looks at the contradictory and conflicting positions held by different labour unions in Toronto toward the city’s bid to host the 2008 Olympics. The case study suggests that labour is an active agent in processes shaping contemporary Toronto and support the bid for complex reasons ranging from the promise of jobs to potential future organising opportunities.     

Re-scaling collective bargaining: union responses to restructuring in the North American auto industry

Historically, political struggles to define the geographical scale at which labour relations and collective bargaining will be conducted have been of crucial significance to the labour movement. Today, workers and their unions face very difficult challenges. In many manufacturing industries changes in the organizational structure of production at different geographical scales have undermined the effectiveness of the organizing and collective bargaining strategies associated with traditional industrial unionism. This paper focuses on collective bargaining strategies developed by North American autoworkers’ unions to respond to the extensive restructuring of the automotive industry that took place during the 1990s. These strategies include innovations in the structure and content of collective bargaining and efforts to redefine the scale at which collective bargaining takes place. Following a brief discussion of the challenge posed by the integration of Mexico into a continent-wide production system, the analysis focuses on the strategies devised by the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union during the 1996 and 1999 rounds of collective bargaining to address issues raised by outsourcing and modular manufacturing. With outsourcing, the automakers are not so much eliminating jobs as they are deciding who gets to do them, at what price, and under what working conditions. With modular manufacturing, the organizational boundaries between firms are blurring and the terms and conditions of work in one firm arguably are becoming dependent upon management decisions made in another firm. The CAW’s response has been to develop new collective bargaining strategies including the concepts of ‘work ownership’ and ‘satellite bargaining’ which involves redefining the traditional geographical extent of the bargaining unit. While the empirical focus is on the North American automobile industry, the general issues related to the re-scaling of production, and especially outsourcing and modular manufacturing, are common across a range of manufacturing industries.     

Development of GIS as a tool in the Ministry of Mining and Energy,Serbia

On behalf of the Serbian Government, the Ministries of Mining and Energy and of Science and Environment Protection are signatories to a master plan for the promotion of the mining industry in Serbia. This is being achieved with the assistance of the Japanese Government through the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), who engaged a mining company from Tokyo–Mindeco (Mitsui Mineral Development Engineering Co. Ltd) to partner the Serbian ministries, the Mining and Geology Faculty in Belgrade, the Geological Institute of Serbia (Belgrade), the Copper Institute (Bor), and the Military Geographical Institute (Belgrade), as well as private companies dealing in geological exploration, etc. Apart from other things, the master plan contains a newly‐formed GIS application, which registers exploration, exploitation fields and other relevant data. This GIS web application was one the first steps towards the realization of ‘e‐Government’ in the field of geological exploration and mining activities within the Republic of Serbia.     

Labouring geography: Negotiating scales, strategies and future directions

In our editorial introduction to this themed issue on labour geography, we outline some important on-going debates in the relatively young field of labour geography and suggest future directions for research. First, there is the key question of labour as an active agent in the production of economic landscapes. The agency of labour will likely remain a defining feature of labour geography, but perhaps it is not as important to construct theoretical analytical boundaries as it is to define labour geography as a political project. Second, debates continue surrounding the production of scale and the multiscalarity of organized labour. Third, labour geographers have yet to engage in any sustained fashion with unpacking the complex identities of workers and the way in which those identities simultaneously are shaped by and shape the economic and cultural landscape. Fourth, there is some debate on the costs and benefits of a ‘normative’ labour geography which emphasizes what workers and their organizations ‘could’ or even ‘should’ do. Lastly, we challenge the assumption that labour geographers have not yet asserted themselves as activists in their own right. We conclude the editorial by introducing the articles included in the issue. While these articles may not address every gap in the literature, they do contribute in significant ways to move the labour geography project forward.     

“We will go side-by-side with you.” Labour union engagement with Aboriginal peoples in Canada

The inclusion of new groups of workers has been an important component of union renewal efforts. Several unions in Canada have begun to dedicate significant resources to better organize and represent Aboriginal workers. Drawing on interviews with union activists, organizers and representatives from two national public sector unions in Canada, we present an overview of union strategies to engage with Aboriginal peoples. Results suggest that understanding the distinct territorial context of Aboriginal peoples’ relationships to work and unions has been necessary to the success of these union strategies. This approach begins by drawing connections between Aboriginal peoples’ present-day relationships to work and their prior occupancy of, and dispossession from, lands and resources. Because of the geographical specificity of how the colonial experience affected Aboriginal peoples’ relationships to work and unions, unions have had to adopt non-normative approaches to their engagements with Aboriginal peoples. In workplaces where settlers were dominant, addressing racism in the workplace and gaining support for initiatives to hire and train Aboriginal workers were important. Alternatively, in Aboriginal workplaces, organizing was a priority. Here questions of union legitimacy have taken precedence and the focus of unions has been on partnership building. Most importantly, however, engagement with Aboriginal peoples has brought attention to the colonial practices within unions and helped to foster growing Aboriginal voice within the labour movement.     

Tanzanite as conflict gem: Certifying a secure commodity chain in Tanzania

Shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, the Wall Street Journal published an article claiming that al Qaeda sympathizers were using an obscure gemstone commodity known as tanzanite to raise funds for terrorist activities. Despite subsequent disclaimers by the US State Department, this allegation effectively marked tanzanite as a “conflict gem,” and set in motion a complex set of political maneuvers designed to rehabilitate the tanzanite industry’s reputation. This paper analyzes the immediate fallout from the Wall Street Journal article and the subsequent effects of anti-terrorist rhetoric on the tanzanite industry. I explore the origins of the “conflict gem” discourse and the political movement that has taken shape over the past decade to reform gemstone mining. Drawing on theories developed by critics of the fair trade movement, I examine a series of steps taken by the main corporate miner active in the tanzanite industry to re-brand and certify tanzanite as “conflict-free.” I underscore the degree to which these efforts have been inflected by new security provisions embodied in the USA Patriot Act.     

‘Fair trade gold’: Antecedents, prospects and challenges

This paper critically examines the challenges with, and impacts of, adopting the models in place for fair trade agriculture in the artisanal gold mining sector. Over the past two years, an NGO-led ‘fair trade gold’ movement has surfaced, its crystallization fuelled by a burgeoning body of evidence that points to impoverished artisanal miners in developing countries receiving low payments for their gold, as well as working in hazardous and unsanitary conditions. Proponents of fair trade gold contest that increased interaction between artisanal miners and Western jewellers could facilitate the former receiving fairer prices for gold, accessing support services, and ultimately, improving their quality of life. In the case of sub-Saharan Africa, however, the gold being mined on an artisanal scale does not supply Western retailers as perhaps believed; it is rather an important source of foreign exchange, which host governments employ buyers to collect for their coffers. It is maintained here that if the underlying purpose of fair trade is to improve the livelihoods and well-being of subsistence producers in developing countries, then the models that have proved so successful in alleviating the hardships of agro-producers of ‘tropical’ commodities such as coffee, tea, bananas and cocoa, should be adapted to artisanal gold mining in sub-Saharan Africa. Campaigns promoting ‘fair trade gold’ in the region should view host governments, and not Western retailers, as the ‘end consumer’, and focus on improving governance at the grassroots, organizing informal operators into working cooperatives, and addressing complications with purchasing arrangements - all of which would go a long way toward improving the livelihoods of subsistence artisanal miners. A case study of Noyem, Ghana, the location of a sprawling illegal gold mining community, is presented, which magnifies these challenges further and provides perspective on how they can be overcome.     

Economic relationships among southern African states

It is widely held that the large majority of African countries are too small in terms of population and purchasing power to allow meaningful and rapid economic development to take place within the constraints of their domestic economies. Sub-regional groupings of states are called for in order to overcome the drawbacks of small size. Many attempt at establishing larger economic unions in Africa have failed. Particular interest therefore attaches to the southern African sub-region where South Africa, as the only industrial power south of the Sahara, functions as a powerhouse for neighbouring as well as more distant economies. The article provides a factual sketch of existing economic ties (infrastructure, trade, labour, tourism, finance and technology). Attention is paid to South Africa's efforts to create a constellation of states, and also to to the counter-measures of nine neighbouring states.     

Global economic restructuring and the world of labor in Brazil: the challenges to trade unions and social movements

The crisis and challenges faced by labor, including the trade unions and social movements have proportions not yet fully understood. The repercussions, owing to globalization, also reached Third World countries, especially intermediate countries that hold important industrial estates such as Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, etc. Brazil is part of an economic, social, political and cultural context which has universal traces of global capitalism, but also possesses singularities. During the last decades, Brazilian trade unions and social movements have either followed a different path. There was a widespread and highly significant strike movement (in the 1980s) with a notable expansion of trade unions organizing salaried sector (teachers, bank workers, public sector workers, etc.); there was also the rise of the Union Congresses such as the CUT-Central Única dos Trabalhadores (Workers Central) and the advance of rural unionism and the Landless Workers' Movement (MST, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra) and new urban social movements such as the Homeless Movement. By the end of these decades, we joined in a more significant way the challenges which were presented to the unionism and social movements. These challenges are discuss in this paper.     

Biosecurity and the multiplication of crises in the Egyptian agri-food industry

Through a case study of Egypt’s agri-food industry this paper examines biosecurity as a set of technologies, institutions, and practices that attempt to govern national agri-food industries and global agri-food trade by marrying a political economy perspective and an analysis of ‘nature–society relations’. Consistent with other agri-food industries in the global South, Egypt’s agri-food industry has undergone waves of corporate consolidation during the neoliberal period. By detailing the growth of the poultry industry and the endemic spread of HPAI H5N1 (avian flu), this paper presents an argument that the industry grew and consolidated through emergent and recurrent zoonotic and plant diseases, the management of which has been governed in part by biosecurity measures.     

Internal colonisation, hegemony and coercion: Investigating migration to Southern Lazio, Italy, in the 1930s

This paper investigates the Italian fascist regime’s use of internal colonisation as part of a wider ruralisation policy aimed at promoting population growth, curbing rural-urban migration, staunching emigration, and halting the spread of industrial urbanisation. By focusing on the case study of the Pontine Marshes, the paper demonstrates how, through targeted selection procedures aimed at displacing defined social and political undesirables, migrants were chosen and effectively coerced into migrating to the “fascist” landscape of the marshes. The area, reclaimed and developed in the 1930s, was celebrated as a sign of the regime’s engineering and social success. The paper utilises Antonio Gramsci’s thought on hegemony, and argues that the overt use of coercion hints at the fact that fascism, although ideologically totalitarian and hegemonic, was contested. Although statisticians, demographers and state bureaucrats were organised and institutionalised in the construction of hegemony based on consent, fascism based itself more in coercion than in passive consent in the case of internal colonisation.     

矿业权价值的构成及其经济实现

矿业权(包括探矿权和采矿权)是由矿产资源所有权派生出来的, 由他人行使的一种权能, 它是通过有偿取得的, 因此, 矿业权人在市场上进行交易并获得经济效益, 应当被认为是合理的.矿业权交换价值是由矿产资源本身的使用价值和地勘成果价值两部分组成的.前者就是级差矿租和绝对矿租(统称为矿租或矿山地租), 是通过收益现值法公式计算出来的超额利润.后者通常是利用定额劳动消耗或费用效用法求得的.最后, 根据矿业权流转方式的不同对两者分别提出了不同的经济实现方式和作法.      

Intervening in the environment of the everyday

This paper seeks to explore the radical democratic potential in urban artistic interventions. It does so through bringing Gramsci’s concept of nature together with his ‘cultural writings’ and broader debates around avant-garde artistic practice. Empirically, I focus on the work of City Mine(d), a Brussels-based interventionist collective, and Siraj Izhar, a London-based artist-activist. Within Gramsci’s writings, I argue, socio-natural relationships emerge through sensuous activity or work. Making a somewhat more ambitious claim, I suggest that Gramsci’s concept of nature rests on what geographers have come to understand as the production of nature. Whilst attention has only recently turned to this implicit political ecology, much greater attention has been focussed on Gramsci’s cultural insights. For Gramsci, cultural struggles are an integral part of the effort to shape a new reality. Whilst he emphasises the ‘bottom up’ nature of such struggles, the intervention of enlightened outsiders is often a necessary and frustrating complement. However, by turning attention to the manner in which hegemony relates to the production of nature, and through bringing this into dialogue with radical artistic practice, such implicit elitism might be challenged. City Mine(d) and Izhar, I argue, develop a non-vanguardist politics that sees the contestation of hegemony as a struggle integral to the day-to-day nature of cities.     

Turn up the heat! Contesting energy poverty in Buffalo,NY

Energy poverty – or the condition of households that cannot adequately heat their homes – is produced at the confluence of multi-scalar processes, from regional labor market restructuring, to urban disinvestment, to geopolitical and geoeconomic struggles over extraction. Critical theorization of the concept is in its nascent phase and the notion itself has received relatively little attention in the United States. Our paper aims to address these lacunae by mobilizing an urban political ecology framework to consider a community-based campaign that targeted residential energy conservation funds in Buffalo, New York. We analyze how the community campaign drew upon the “network crisis” of the energy-poor home to frame critical justice demands that foregrounded energy poverty as the product of uneven socionatural development. Through spatial claims and scalar strategies, the campaign highlighted the contribution of neoliberal conservation programs to deepening patterns of uneven development, and demanded redress of disinvestment in urban housing stock through funding of weatherization for low-income households. We argue that contests over urban energy metabolism offer a fruitful area to explore the possibilities of transforming uneven development from below.     

纽蒙特矿业公司经营活动的特色

纽蒙特矿业公司是世界上人于南非的著名的黄金勘探。生产企业、集采、逸、冶、科、工、贸于一身,从该公司海外开拓、生产与勘探的关系,环境保护意识及勘探和科研费用投入４个方面介绍了其发展史及成功的基本要素。