The British defence industry in the 1990s: a labour market perspective

Lovering, John

doi:10.1111/j.1468-2338.1991.tb00630.x

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Control and conception functions were generally consolidated in the southeast, largely because of the inelastic supply and growing demand for scientists and engineers, with production and assembly plants increasingly dispersed to take into account local labor market conditions (Dickson, 1983;Saxenian, 1989;Lovering, 1990bLovering, , 1991b. Cumulative causation effects were therefore being felt in the contraction and rationalization of capacity.…”

Section: Scotland In the Current Restructuringmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Military industry cannot therefore be easily slotted into geographies of production based on modes of social regulation and regimes of accumulation (Lovering, 1990c). According to Lovering (1990aLovering ( , 1991b, capital and labor in the arms industries formed discrete class fractions because of their specific relations to the process of production and appropriation of surplus. These relations converged with the Fordist model more closely than most of British industry, as the institutionalization of organized labor meant formalized internal labor markets, including labor "hoarding" by firms and collective bargaining procedures "generally ensuring good pay, conditions and chances of advancement.…”

Section: A Dialectics Of Space: the Geography Of Uk Military Industrymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the early 1990s, the restructuring and contraction of the British arms industry seemed to be giving rise to a new and more comprehensive spatial division of labor as single-site across-the-board capacity fragmented by function (Lovering, 1991a). Control and conception functions were generally consolidated in the southeast, largely because of the inelastic supply and growing demand for scientists and engineers, with production and assembly plants increasingly dispersed to take into account local labor market conditions (Dickson, 1983;Saxenian, 1989;Lovering, 1990bLovering, , 1991b. Cumulative causation effects were therefore being felt in the contraction and rationalization of capacity.…”

Section: Scotland In the Current Restructuringmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Melting the Cold War Permafrost: Restructuring Military Industry in Scotland

Law

1999

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Military industry stands at the confluence of local, national and global processes. This paper examines the restructuring of this peculiar industry in one region, Scotland, from a perspective that takes the geography of production to be a joint, though contradictory, creation. Following the work of Lovering for the UK as a whole, the case of Scotland—often imagined as “militantly proletarian”—allows a specific study of the accumulation strategies of state and capital and the role of organized labor in mediating the spatial fix. Until the early 1990s accumulation was premised on additive “capital widening” strategies. Since then, both “capital narrowing” rationalization strategies and “capital deepening” intensification strategies have been pursued. Through restructuring, the UK military industry attempts to utilize the abstract spaces of the social economy to expediently and opportunistically reconstitute the concrete spaces of production and renegotiate its dependency on the refractory material of proximate living labor. Yet spatial shifts have not uniformly benefited the southern core of the UK military industry. One reason for thecontinuing salience of military industry in Scotland has been the role of a pan‐class alliance, “the Scottish lobby,” in campaigning against closures and for the allocation of defense contracts. Trade unions have attempted to mediate the contradictions of restructuring by supporting external strategies to retain firm survival in their present localities, even as internally workforce numbers are cut in half and management regimes become more abrasive.

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Section: Scotland In the Current Restructuringmentioning

confidence: 97%