17 research outputs found

    The UAW and CAW Confront Lean Production at Saturn, CAMI, and the Japanese Automobile Transplants

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    The North American auto marketplace witnessed a major restructuring during the 1980s. This article examines UAW\u27s and CAW\u27s quite different and distinctive responses to these developments at two union plants: the UAW\u27s and GM\u27s joint operation of the Saturn plant and the CAW\u27s adversarial shop floor labor-management relations at CAMI, a GM-Suzuki joint venture. Then the article focuses on the common challenges both unions have to overcome in organizing Hyundai, the South Korean automaker, and the six Japanese plants. The article closes by exploring the risks and opportunities both unions face from the North American Free Trade Agreement

    Dreams of sustainability: beyond the antinomies of the global sustainability debate

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    Sustainable development joined the global vocabulary of the 1990s as a catchword or rallying cry at international conferences and other forums. This essay begins by clarifying two key terms - the "local" and the "global" - in the sustainability debate by examining the contested meaning and implications of the adage, "think globally, act locally". A critique of the deployment of those terms in the strategy of "green globalism" - a particular rendering of sustainable development put forth by major political power brokers and economic and financial stakeholders - follows. This critique serves as a springboard for a critical examination of the perils of environmental moralism expressed in Agenda 21 and other international sustainability declarations put forth in recent years. Recognising that the achievement of local sustainable development must be linked with demands of countries of the South for programmes of global economic redistribution, this analysis then develops a critique of the Brundtland Commission report as a prelude to a detailed critical analysis of the sustainable development policies of the World Bank's 1992 World Development Report. Finally, the paper attempts to surpass localist/globalist contradictions in the global sustainability debate by speculating on the promise and possibilities of a New International Economic Order (NIEO).Brundtland Commission; New International Economic Order; sustainable cities; World Bank.

    Canadian Recruitment of East Asian Automobile Transplants: Cultural, Economic, and Political Perspectives

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    This article probes the historical and cultural roots of Canadian federal and provincial economic development strategies and the politics of Canadian foreign direct investment. Then it focuses upon the impetus for Canada\u27s intense interest in East Asian automobile transplant recruitment, the political and economic dynamics behind the recruitment of three Japanese transplants and one South Korean transplant to Ontario and Quebec, the extent to which this foreign investment experience is continuous with the United States\u27 long-term hegemony in the Canadian automobile marketplace, and the genuine and superficial differences between the Canadian and American Asian industrial recruitment experiences against their deeper con
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