Towards a Relational Approach for Analysing Labour Control Regimes and Union Agency in GPNs

Abstract This chapter introduces central tenets of relational thinking in economic geography and then develops a relational approach for analysing labour control regimes and union agency in GPNs. It conceptualises place-specific labour control regimes at specific nodes of a GPN as emerging from the articulation of six horizontal (i.e. territorially embedded) and vertical (i.e. network embedded) processual relations: the labour process and workplace, wage, labour market, employment and industrial relations at the horizontal dimension, which in turn intersect with sourcing relations at the vertical, ‘network’ dimension of the GPN. Moreover, it develops a relational heuristic framework for analysing union agency in GPNs through the lens of three interrelated spaces of labour agency that unions construct through practices of building relations: (1) spaces of organising comprising internal union relations as well as unions organising practices; (2) spaces of collaboration constructed by unions through building relationships of collaboration with other labour and non-labour actors at various levels; and (3) spaces of contestation constructed by unions around specific labour struggles through building antagonistic relationships with employers, lead firms and state actors as well as through practices of drawing other allied actors into spaces of contestation to activate moral power resources.