Labor and Agglomeration: Control and Flexibility in Local Labor Markets

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Abstract
Through a critique of Allen Scott's recent work on the economics of labor market agglomeration, the paper develops an approach to labor and agglomeration in which labor control has a central role. Scott's work provides new insights into the processes of labor market agglomeration but understates the importance of labor control in particular and social relations in general. The social character of labor is therefore denied. Consequently Scott does not adequately confront the contradictory relationship between labor and agglomeration. I identify a variety of labor control strategies and also suggest that the strategy deployed reflects, first, the particular ''coupling'' of the labor process and the supply of labor, and second, the ways in which struggles around workplace discipline and labor reproduction are socially regulated at the local level. Setting labor markets and labor control strategies in their local social context throws light on the question of why firms in some situations find it necessary to relocate in order to restructure their employment relationships, while others are able to effect in situ adjustments. Following from this, further work is needed on the relationship between processes of industrial restructuring and the political dynamics of local labor markets.