Beyond the Capitalist Labor Process Workplace Change, the State and Globalisation'

Abstract

Analysis within or influenced by a labor process tradition has largely failed to capture the complexities of relations between capital, labor and the state, and has tended to leave policy issues to the optimistic scenarios of post-Fordist and related perspectives. Focusing on the political requires a comparative perspective. In this paper we want to examine the interplay between international competitiveness, national institutions and workplace politics. The central paradox facing us is that just as the nation has been written into debate, the power of the global marketplace and what some see as the 'hollowing out' of the national economy has increased significantly. We explore that paradox analytically by exploring the multi-faced transactions between the nation, state, and international political economy that condition changes in labour-capital relations at workplace level Empirically we focus on a comparison between British and Australian experiences: a sharp contrast between a form of economic restructuring not only without, but explicitly aimed at the expense of labor, and one of the few cases of a modernizing project that was labor-led or at least mediated. We argue that proponents of the globalisation theses and universalist paradigms of production systems underestimate the resilience of institutional diversity within nation states. Secondly, that the operations and choices of TNCs themselves help to shape the diversity in that they do not simply accommodate to local 'rules of the game' (Sorge, 1995: 122) nor their own home-country practices, but create 'hybrid' forms of adaptation which local capital may seek to emulate. Thirdly, we argue that state industry policies are not simply barriers or filters to the homogenising effects of corporate interests, but through their own competitiveness strategies, can remake their own 'niche' within the international division of labor.