Item – Theses Canada

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OCLC number
910984281
Link(s) to full text
LAC copy
LAC copy
Author
MacDonald, Ian Thomas,1980-
Title
Labour and the city : trade union strategy and the reproduction of neoliberal urbanism in Toronto and New York.
Degree
Ph. D. -- York University, 2011
Publisher
Ottawa : Library and Archives Canada = Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, [2013]
Description
4 microfiches
Notes
Includes bibliographical references.
Abstract
<?Pub Inc> This dissertation defines an avenue of research into the relationship between the political economy of labour and the political economy of urban space through a two city/two industry comparative study. Against the prevailing view that economic globalization has dismantled the spatial foundations of trade union bargaining power across the North American economy, the dissertation builds on insights from economic geography and labour geography to argue that the production of neoliberal urban spaces creates points of leverage for labour organization and workers struggles in the city. However, as part of a more general strategic realignment within the labour movement - a realignment that has been conceptualized within labour studies as renewal' but which more closely approximates accommodation with neoliberalism - unions have developed spatial strategies which either do not challenge neoliberalism, or accommodate to it in some form. The empirical chapters trace out the relationships between accumulation strategies and labour strategies in my two case industries, public transit and hospitality, in both Toronto and New York. The recent transit strikes in these cities demonstrate the power of workers struggles over the production of space at the same time as they reveal a normalization of anti-strike injunctions and back to work legislation. The critical concept of lean transit' establishes the basis for labour-community alliances that could establish new, more expansive strategies for labour. These cases are followed by chapters on hotel workers unions' new land-use organizing campaigns and the role that these unions have carved out within urban development regimes. The chapters highlight a contradiction which emerges in cases where redevelopment entails the transformation of working class neighborhoods into spaces of production and luxury consumption. It is argued that negotiating distributional shares out of prospective increases in land values in such cases encourages union-community coalitions to prioritize workplace over residential demands, in turn reproducing structural divisions between labour and community. The dissertation concludes on a critical register, arguing that labour's spatial agency will tend to reproduce neoliberal urbanism if it falls short of challenging reified forms of consciousness and traditional forms of workplace organization.
ISBN
9780494886878
0494886870