From ‘Sitting by Nellie’ to the Classroom Factory? The Restructuring of Skills, Recruitment and Training in a South Wales Motor Components Plant*

Rutherford, Tod D.

doi:10.1111/j.1468-2427.1994.tb00279.x

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…In the first place, employment relations in the OIRs were never linked to a phase of Fordist style accumulation as some have recently suggested (e.g. Rutherford 1994). This in turn suggests that there are problems in trying to recast contemporary changes as either a shift away from fordism or the development of neo-fordism.…”

Section: Elements Of Continuity and Change In Employment Relations Dumentioning

confidence: 98%

Continuity or Change in Employment Relations? Evidence from the UK's Old Industrial Regions

Cumbers¹

1996

Capital & Class

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Recent years have seen a considerable degree of change in the nature of employment relations, nowhere more so than in the UK's older industrial regions where new forms of work have partially replaced traditional activities. The author argues that such changes cannot automatically be read off as part of a wider transformation, but need to be firmly embedded within particular local social relations. Recognition of such complexities is necessary if suitable socialist strategies are to be developed.

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Section: Elements Of Continuity and Change In Employment Relations Dumentioning

confidence: 98%

Continuity or Change in Employment Relations? Evidence from the UK's Old Industrial Regions

Cumbers¹

1996

Capital & Class

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“…Thus coupled with an increase in firm labour market power due to higher unemployment, firms were effectively ‘taking control’ of recruitment. As Sayer and Walker (1992) and Rutherford (1994, 1995) stress, the adoption of new forms of work organization necessitating increased reliance on employee discretion, judgement and commitment to the firm have been coupled with significantly more stringent recruitment standards to better ensure that these qualities are present in the workforce. More generally, employers saw changes to the EILM as associated with social control issues.…”

Section: A Tale Of Two Cities: the Restructuring Of Ilms In Kitchener...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Requiem or rebirth? Internal labour markets and labour market restructuring in the Kitchener and Sault Ste. Marie regions

Rutherford

2006

Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennes

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Since the 1980s, social scientists and economic geographers have stressed that ‘standard’ forms of employment and internal labour markets (ILMs) which characterized Fordism have declined and have been displaced by post‐Fordist non‐standard and contingent employment arrangements. However, some researchers are critical of the assumptions of a universal decline in ILMs and stress that although ILMs have been significantly restructured, they remain an important part of firm employment strategies. On the basis of a postal survey and interviews conducted with ninety firms and institutions in Kitchener‐Waterloo and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in 1995–1996, I assess the role of ILMs. Although shifts towards non‐standard arrangements are evident, employers are clearly aware of the need to maintain if not develop ILM structures. Finally, I argue that geographers need to reconceptualize the relationships between ILMs and external labour markets (ELMs) as integrated phenomena. Thus firms do not use contingent or ELMs and ILMs in exclusion to each other but as part of a continuum of strategies leading to increased blurring of the ILM and ELMs.

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“…A third analytical strand developed within this paper is to trace the relational labour-market impacts created in the wake of the arrival and departure of a flagship inward-investment project. Existing research suggests that a combination of local skills shortages and the need to reduce the`ramp-up' time to commercial production have privileged recruitment strategies which look to poach`off-the-shelf ' workforces in an attempt to reduce both training budgets and`lag times' (Huggins, 2001;Rutherford, 1994). However, we know very little about the imprints such strategies place upon local labour markets.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Labour-Market Geographies: Volatile ‘Flagship’ Inward Investment and Peripheral Regions

Dawley

2007

Environ Plan A

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In recent years a series of high-profile flagship plant closures and short-lived investment projects across peripheral regions in the United Kingdom provided a stark reminder of the potential fallibility of peripheral region development strategies based upon inward investment. Nevertheless, inward investment promotion remains a common component within the economic development strategies of UK peripheral regions. In particular, capturing the potential positive labour market contributions offered by flagship projects has been used by policymakers to legitimate the continued pursuit of inward investment. In this paper I move beyond the static analysis of employment outcomes of investment episodes by investigating the detailed structure of labour-market processes and imprints across workforce formation and dissolution. I use the example of the fluctuating and youthful history of the semiconductor fabrication industry in the old industrial region of the North East of England to illustrate the spatial, occupational, and sectoral labour-market imprints of investment episodes. Using the example of two large-scale high-technology inward-investment projects, Fujitsu and Siemens, I expand our understanding of both the labour-market dynamics associated with volatile flagship investment and the policy implications for peripheral regions.

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From ‘Sitting by Nellie’ to the Classroom Factory? The Restructuring of Skills, Recruitment and Training in a South Wales Motor Components Plant*

Cited by 7 publications

References 26 publications

Continuity or Change in Employment Relations? Evidence from the UK's Old Industrial Regions

Continuity or Change in Employment Relations? Evidence from the UK's Old Industrial Regions

Requiem or rebirth? Internal labour markets and labour market restructuring in the Kitchener and Sault Ste. Marie regions

Making Labour-Market Geographies: Volatile ‘Flagship’ Inward Investment and Peripheral Regions

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