Re: help

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:41 AM 6/13/2005, you wrote:
> Can someone suggest some articles/books about the regional economic shifts
> to the US south in the post-war period and especially since the early 80s?
> Thanks

"Capital Moves: RCA's 70-Year Quest for Cheap Labor" by Jefferson Cowie

From amazon.com:

From Library Journal
Cowie (industrial and labor relations, Cornell Univ.) highlights the power
of financial capital in his examination of four RCA factory sites: Camden,
NJ; Bloomington, IN; Memphis, TN; and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. RCA moved
production from one site to the next in search of cheap, compliant, and
usually female labor; as workers developed a sense of entitlement to their
jobs and demanded better conditions, the company saw them as less desirable
and looked for less-sophisticated substitute workers. Cowie outlines the
history of labor relations at each site along with the surrounding
political conditions. He also takes a wider look at labor organization and
its ties to politics, noting that while capital became international, labor
organization remained local, giving workers less power. In describing one
company in depth, Cowie provides valuable insight into the increasingly
global work force. Recommended for academic and larger public
libraries.AA.J. Sobczak, Covina, CA

From Booklist
Much has been written to document and lament the loss of American jobs to
cheap labor abroad. Cowie's study of RCA, though, shows that U.S. companies
have a long history of seeking out inexpensive labor. Before moving to
Juarez, Mexico, in the 1970s, RCA had already moved its television
manufacturing operations twice within the U.S. Cowie traces RCA's journey
from Camden, New Jersey, to Mexico. After its manufacturing facilities were
successfully unionized in the 1930s, RCA decided to decentralize operations
and relocated a major factory to nonunion southern Indiana in 1940. In the
1960s, the company experimented with expansion into the South, but
operations in Memphis were shut down within five years. Cowie shows how the
same factors that determined RCA's first two moves were the same ones that
influenced the move to Mexico. He does not focus, however, on the painful
economic consequences of plant closures. In spite of the shutdowns, he
shows that wherever RCA opened a new plant, each community was permanently
transformed by the economic empowerment of its workforce.


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