Union Retreat and the Regions

Since the beginning of the 1980s, British trade unions have experienced a dramatic retreat, marked by rapidly falling membership and declining industrial power.

The authors examine the regional dimensions of this retreat of organised labour, paying particular attention to:

• The resilience of the unions'' historical heartland areas.
• The impact of economic restructuring on local union traditions.
• The shrinking landscape of industrial militancy.
• The geographical decentralization of the new industrial relations.
• The link between these factors and the more general debate on regional development and regional labour markets.

An important synthesis of economic geography and industrial relations work, this book marks a major contribution towards the newly emerging field of labour geography