Trade Unions and Regions: Better Work, Experimentation, and Regional Governance is about the place of workers and their unions in the modern world. It addresses current challenges for unions working in regions and the experiments that may take place at this level of governance. The book addresses pressing questions concerned with the conditions for better work and a humane society. The focus is on the capacities of unions to address questions relating to regional governance, in both supranational and sub-national regions. It examines workers and their unions in a variety of contexts: multinationals, industries, workplaces, and communities. The authors address the experiments that can be initiated by unions, governments, or employers and the ways in which collective organisations engage to address these matters in regional contexts. The analysis takes as a starting point the fracturing and divisions evident in various regions, in Australia, Canada, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, and USA. The contributors propose novel analyses with lessons for unions. It should be of interest to union activists and leaders, political parties, governments, and those who make decisions in and about regions. Researchers and students of labour markets, political mobilisation, and employment relations will take the analyses further.
Chapter 1: Understanding Union Power and Regional Governance, Part I: Organisational Experimentations, Chapter 2: Urban regimes, experiments and institutional innovation, Chapter 3: Collective Bargaining and Regional Resilience: Recalibrating Labour Relations in the Great Lakes Region Automotive Industry, Part 2: Institutional Experimentation, Chapter 4: Reflections on Labour Strategy in Urban and Regional Governance, Chapter 5: Institutional Experimentation in the Montreal Taxi Industry: What Role for the State and Collective Action?, Part 3: Comparative Studies of Experimentation, Chapter 6: Marginalising Manufacturing: The Politics of Downgrading in the UK Apparel Industry, Chapter 7: Power Dynamics, Regional Governance institutions and the Quality of Work: A Comparison of Baja California and Queretaro Aerospace Clusters, Part 4: The Interconnections between Organisational and Institutional Experimentation, Chapter 8: An instance of a tripartite successful institutional experimentation: Dual Vocational Education and Training in Spain, Chapter 9: From organizational to institutional experimentation in the Montreal aerospace industry: Understanding the role of trade unions strategic capabilities, Chapter 10: Unions interrogating regions and regionalism in Australia: The challenges of experimentation
Christian Lévesque is a Professor of Employment Relations at HEC Montréal, Canada and the co-Director of the CRIMT (Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization and Work). Peter Fairbrother is a Professor of Management and Labour, Tasmanian School of Business and Economics, University of Tasmania, Australia and Affiliated Professor, HEC Montréal, Montréal, Canada. Blandine Emilien is an Associate Professor in Human Resource Management (HRM) at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), Canada. María C. González is a tenured Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oviedo, Spain. Lucie Morissette is an Associate Professor of Employment Relations in the Department of Human Resource Management at HEC Montréal, Canada.
