Regulating the new urban poor: Local labour market control in an old industrial city

Re-embedding agency at the workplace scale: Workers and labour control in Glasgow call centres

“…Since Helms and Cumbers (2006) first emphasised the key role of call centre work in Glasgow's local LCR -with high turnover posited as the main resistance strategy of workers -more recent research has revealed a fall in temporary contracts from 27.4% in 1997 to just 5.3% in 2011 and a rise in full-time contracts from 65.5% to 76.9% over the same period (Taylor and Anderson, 2012; see Table 1).…”

“…Although the local LCR framework has received largely intermittent attention within labour geography, it has been the subject of some theoretical critique (Ellem and Shields, 1999;Helms and Cumbers, 2006). Ellem and Shields (1999), for instance, identified several shortcomings in Jonas's account, including the treatment of capital as the prime agent of change and the underplaying of the role of both the state and organised labour.…”

“…A 'critical mass' of 117 centres were recorded in the broader 'travel-to-work' area in 2011, employing 31,405 workers which is estimated to account for 12.2% of Glasgow's total employment (Taylor, 2015;Taylor and Anderson, 2012). Accordingly, the industry has emerged as a strategic component within Glasgow's increasingly workfare-oriented local LCR (Helms and Cumbers, 2006), with call centres promoted as a means of absorbing segments of the local workless population. For instance, Cumbers et al (2009) have shown how jobcentre staff have sought to promote call centre work to job-seekers, addressing the 'cultural lag' of continued aspirations for traditional 'blue collar' manual work among young males in particular (see Hudson, 2005).…”

“…At the same time their emphasis on structural constraints and the organising power of firms, recruitment agencies and local governments under-plays the role of worker agency in inhabiting, adapting and at times challenging the local LCR from below. Following Jonas's original conception of labour resistance, a second strand is concerned with tensions and discontents across the spheres of production, reproduction and consumption (see Ellem, 2003;Helms and Cumbers, 2006;Wills, 2001).…”

“…Closely informed by the regulation approach (see Goodwin and Painter, 1996), Jonas's local LCR theory built on the growing call for more local analysis of labour-capital relations and regulatory experimentation (Goodwin and Painter, 1996;Storper and Walker, 1989). It focuses on problems of controlling workers not only at the point of production, but also in the linked spheres of reproduction and consumption (Jonas, 1996;Helms and Cumbers, 2006;Cumbers et al, 2010). By way of solution, local LCRs provide stable, local institutional frameworks for accumulation and labour regulation which are constructed through reciprocities between these spheres (Jonas, 1996: 323).…”