Kruger Incorporated purchased the aging pulp and paper mill in Corner Brook in 1984, armed with a federal‐provincial modernization agreement and a pattern‐breaking contract with the mill unions. It is argued that changes made in the decade since then correspond most closely with a form of lean production. Six elements of lean production are found at Corner Brook: tighter coordination of production and automation; a continued concentration on core activities; the farming out of ancillary activities; shrinking and segmentation of the workforce; environmental compliance, increasing technical efficiency; and the co‐opting of the workforce into the mission of the firm.

Although industrial restructuring in a resource region might appear at first glance to impact mainly on the predominantly male labour force, in practice it often results in a broader range of economic and social changes as women expand and intensify their entrepreneurial activities as home-based paid workers, and as shifts occur in gender divisions of waged and unwaged labour. The Corner Brook region represents an example of these transformative processes of change. Since restructuring in resource regions occurs in situ, it is necessarily contingent on local place-based geographies and histories, but its impact has profound implications for gender identity and social relations in economically marginalised regions. Copyright (c) 2006 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.

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