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Far from simply being a 'bookend' of the industrial age, deindustrialization is an integral part of capitalist development and thus has a long history. In the North American context, the early scholarship on deindustrialization emerged from the efforts to resist plant closures as they were happening. More recently, the field of deindustrialization studies has been reinvigorated by authors who have shifted the centre of gravity from the US Rust Belt to Europe and increasingly to other parts of the world. This introduction traces the emergence and recent transformations in the field of deindustrialization studies. It also introduces this themed issue on the politics of deindustrialization, which tells the stories of shuttered mines, mills, and factories within the wider restructuring of the international division of labour in the late twentieth century. The articles, written from a range of disciplinary perspectives, extend outward to how workers, their unions, state actors, and the general public responded to the challenge of deindustrialization. The authors are all affiliated with the 'Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time' (DePOT) research project (deindustrialization.org), which brings together many of the world's leading deindustrialization scholars to put the field in transnational perspective. By extending the range of comparisons and scales of analysis, this special-themed issue invites us to broaden our understanding of deindustrialization, both thematically and methodologically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the racialized experiences of industrial closure and economic restructuring of the former Pilpilco coal mine through oral histories and feminist arts-based methods. We argue that Pilpilco's industrial closure illuminates the layers of historical violence exerted on bodies and land as inseparable categories to colonize and extract resources and labour in the Chilean coal basin in Mapuche land. Pilpilco's industrial closure illustrates how coloniality operates in Latin America, perpetuating racial, gender, political and social hierarchical orders and prescribing value to certain peoples and territories while disenfranchising others (Quijano, 2000, Lugones, 2008). The article reflects on the colonial wounds that continue to harm inhabitants and their environments, prolonging their inability to heal intergenerational pain. Finally, we analyse residents' creative strategies to reclaim Pilpilco's land through heritage recognition, women's solidarity, and alliances with indigenous struggles. The study expands the reach and depth of deindustrialization studies, providing insights into how processes of industrialization, deindustrialization, and reindustrialization unfolded through the entanglements of settler colonialism and indigenous dispossessions, authoritarian regime and political repression, and neoliberalism and social demobilization. It also contributes to the field by providing a perspective on industrial closure from women's experience – those unpaid care workers who sustained life in coal mining communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the political history of the failed struggle to require companies to justify their plant closing decisions in Canada's industrial heartland of Ontario. Demands for the public review of plant closing decisions began, locally, in the auto town of Windsor in the 1950s and 1960s and reached Toronto with the closure of Dunlop Tire in 1970. Another wave of closures struck in 1980, this time reaching deep into rural and small-town Ontario as well as larger industrial towns and cities, generalizing concern. The resulting Select Committee on Plant Shutdowns and Employee Adjustment, created by the Ontario legislature, took it upon itself to conduct the kind of public review of recent closures that was long demanded. Due to the strength of the political opposition to any interference with management rights, it was essential that proponents could point to precedents in Western Europe. Trade unionists also grounded their argument in favour of government regulation in the moral economy idea that long-service workers accrued a proprietary right to their jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Factory occupations are rare and sporadic events which shed light on the processes associated with the collective mobilization of workers' power. This article utilizes Kelly's agential and Atzeni's structural explanations of worker mobilization to examine two disputes which took place during Britain's long experience of deindustrialization: the occupations of Caterpillar's tractor factory in Uddingston, Scotland, during 1987 and Vestas' wind turbine plant on the Isle of Wight during 2009. Each occupation shared the context of multinational divestment and collective workforce grievance based on a common perception that their plant was economically viable and vital to the local economy. However, contrasting sources of leadership mobilized this sentiment in each case: union stewards from within Caterpillar, socialist activists from outside at Vestas. The article concludes that an effective explanation of occupations must synthesize structural and agential factors, emphasizing the coalescing role of activist networks and workers' perceptions of their labour's social utility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on research into three female-led occupations that occurred across central Scotland in 1981 and 1982. The actions at Lee Jeans, Lovable Bra and Plessey Capacitors were each in response to closure and relocation and, crucially in the context of this time period, were at least partly successful in opposing full closure. The piece considers the uses and limitations of mobilization theories in accounting for the collective action that emerged at the plants. Rejecting the individualistic frameworks that place extensive importance on injustice, it is suggested that the immediate impacts of manufacturing decline through the process of deindustrialization were a crucial factor in sustaining the action. Through an analysis of the statements made by the workers, their leaders and supporters at the time, along with an examination of oral-history interview narratives, the argument develops that these disputes were not localized actions at one site against one plant closure. By placing the factories and the workers within the social and economic contexts in which they took action, the research indicated that the process of collective action was dynamic and motivations were inevitably multiple, but that the detrimental impacts of deindustrialization – particularly as they related to the future of the localities – was crucial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the closure of the steelworks in Teesside, North‐East England, this paper focuses upon social class inequality and the re‐scripting of place. The study explores local responses to programmes such as Benefits Street and Location, Location, Location filmed in Middlesbrough. The study contributes to transnational debates on urban territorial stigmatisation in three ways. First, by extending the gaze from "spectacular" sites of multi‐ethnic urban unrest, to consider seemingly "mundane" post‐industrial peripheries. Second, by identifying how the recipients of spatial stigma might demonstrate agency through various acts of popular resistance including place re‐inscription. This includes developing alternative narratives of place, through commemorating Teesside's rich industrial heritage, supporting ex‐steelworkers, and challenging governmental stigma and media geographies declaring Middlesbrough to be a "benefits town" and the "worst place to live in the UK". Third, by considering the unfolding of place as event, where contingency, complexity and unpredictable constellations and re‐inscriptions might emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current understandings of worker mobilisation against factory closure and capital migration in Britain are dominated by the perspectives of male industrial workers. The narratives of displaced miners, shipbuilders and steel workers are prominent in the historiography and collective memories of deindustrialisation. There is considerably less understanding of the response of female manufacturing workers to these processes and the ways in which women mobilised in opposition to the free movement of capital. This article presents the testimony of Margaret Robertson, shop steward at the Lee Jeans factory in Greenock, Scotland, where the predominantly female workforce conducted a successful seven-month occupation in opposition to proposed closure beginning in February 1981. The contribution highlights the specific gendered challenges encountered by women workers. The occupation occurred in a period of accelerated factory closure in Britain, yet supporting female unionists resisting job loss was not a priority for the male-dominated union executive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article observe the industrial plant shutdown stories in Detroit, Michigan with the experience of deindustrialization that can lead to resignation and a belief in the inevitability of a dehumanizing capitalism. It highlights plant-shutdown stories from displaced autoworkers like Gabriel Solano of General Motors, and Diane Garner of Ford Motor Company; and ways in which deindustrialization infuses and structures the life stories of Detroit workers.

All three global automakers currently manufacturing vehicles in Australia have announced their total shutdown of operations there by 2017. This shutdown has sparked some fears that Canadian auto manufacturing may follow a similar trajectory. This article reviews the factors contributing to the closures in Australia and considers key structural, economic, and policy differences between the Australian and Canadian cases. The Canadian industry enjoys several structural advantages compared with Australia, chief among them its large and bilateral trade relationship with the United States. These advantages suggest that the Canadian industry has a better prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade unions often face complex and uncertain relations with multinational employers, particularly in old industrial regions. Such corporations have long histories in such regions, often attracted by a range of incentives such as financial support, cheap energy and a skilled workforce. However, the plants themselves often experience changes in ownership and face economic uncertainty. This constitutes the terrain within which recognised unions seek to organise, exercise their capacities and realise their purposes. Workers and their unions organise and operate in these plants, usually developing established routines and practices in relation to the terms and conditions of employment and advocacy of worker concerns. However, they also face difficult choices in relation to corporate decisions to restructure and/or close regional plants. In order for unions to respond to the shifting terrain of the employment landscape they must be able to mobilise around political and economic factors that impact on employment. These themes are addressed with specific reference to union struggles in North West Tasmania, a region that is undergoing a process of de-industrialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores some of the ways in which deindustrialisation and factory closures are figured in contemporary French cultural production. In doing so, it reflects on the visibility and invisibility of industrial workers and their work in representations of the social world. Having noted a significant preoccupation with these issues in French cultural production since the 1990s, the discussion focuses particularly on the closure of the well-known domestic appliance company, Moulinex, in September 2001. It contrasts the dominant media discourse on industrial closures with the literary narrative offered by Franck Magloire (son of a Moulinex worker) in Ouvrière (2003). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the closure of Pillowtex Mills (formerly Cannon Mills) in Kannapolis in July 2003, a mass layoff that was the largest in the state's history, with almost 5000 workers losing their jobs. The Pillowtex closure was part of the broader demise of the textile sector, which lost 700,000 jobs between 1994 and 2002, the bulk of them in the southern states. It was also part of the wider decline of manufacturing industries in the United States. To date, most studies of deindustrialization have concentrated on the 'Rust Belt' states in the Northeast and Midwest, but this study of the Pillowtex closure reveals that deindustrialization is a truly national phenomenon. Although the Kannapolis workers lived in a 'sunrise' region associated with economic growth, and although their plight attracted a great deal of attention from both the media and politicians, the effects of the closure were still devastating. The decline of the textile industry is, moreover, hurting workers and communities across the South but scholars have not yet studied it extensively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deindustrialization, stagnant real incomes of production workers, and increasing inequality are latter day features of many economies. It is common to assume that such developments pressure policymakers to relax environmental standards. However, when heavily polluting industries become less important economically, their political importance also tends to diminish. Consequently, a regulator may increase the stringency of environmental policies. Like some other studies, we find that declining industrial employment translates into stricter environmental standards. In contrast to previous studies, but consistent with our argument, we find that greater income inequality is associated with policies that promote a cleaner environment. ( JEL Q58, P16, J31, C23) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study looks at the reorganization of production in the context of a multi-plant firm in the automotive industry. Changes in such firms may result in the closure of some plants and/or the opening of others. The article provides a method for assessing the risk of plant closure, and then applies that method to a specific case: the automotive plants located in the Spanish region of Navarre. This entails acknowledging the factors that increase what has come to be known as the "degree of vulnerability" of the plant, including sunk costs and relative productivity levels. This paper can also be understood as a source of information for designing developmental after-care programmes for foreign direct investors in the periphery of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plant shutdowns shape industry productivity, the dynamics of employment, and industrial restructuring. Plant closures account for more than half of gross job destruction in U.S. manufacturing. This paper examines the effects of firm structure on U.S. manufacturing plant closures. Plants belonging to multiplant firms and those owned by U.S. multinationals are less likely to exit. However, the superior survival chances are due to the characteristics of the plants rather than the nature of the firms. Controlling for plant and industry attributes, we find that plants owned by multiunit firms and U.S. multinationals are much more likely to close. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the macroeconomic and structural aspects of the Dutch disease in Russia Federation. Such economic problem, which refers to the deindustrialization of an economy due to the discovery of a new natural resource, was observed in the 1970s in the Netherlands which was associated with the exploitation of gas deposits in the North Sea. It involves real exchange appreciation as a result of trade balance improvement that reduces the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry. Dutch disease affects all non-raw-material branches of the economy, which produce tradable outputs such as goods and services that have the potential for free export and import.

This article analyzes the 1985 Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel strike and places it in the context of the declining American steel industry and deteriorating relationship between the steel companies and the United Steelworkers of America. Within the hostile 1980s economic and political climate, steelworkers at Wheeling-Pin unleashed a repertoire of bargaining tactics that would help them achieve at least some of their demands while preventing the company's liquidation. Besides exploring the reasons why steelworkers struck a bankrupt company and how they secured their demands, the article demonstrates how the strike offered new strategies for negotiating with capital at a time when unions' options were severely limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mexico's sugar mills face an uncertain future: the closure of San Sebastian may well presage others if the climate for sugar production on national and international levels does not improve. While the continued squeezing of small cane producers reflects processes affecting peasant agriculture generally in Mexico, and indeed beyond, the fate of the mill workers made redundant when the mill closed similarly mirrors broad tendencies in labor in both the developed and developing world under neoliberalism. Former workers fell back upon personal, family, and community resources by migrating to the U.S. or locally reconstructing livelihoods characterized by a reduction in income, security, and access to social benefits. This article reports on the impact of the mill closure on the livelihoods of former mill worker families in the community of San Sebastian and offers some observations on their responses to the situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The methods developed for full-power probabilistic safety assessment, including thermal-hydraulic methods, have been widely applied to low power and shutdown conditions. Experience from current low power and shutdown probabilistic safety assessments, however, indicates that the thermal-hydraulic methods developed for full-power probabilistic safety assessments are not always reliable when applied to low power and shutdown conditions and consequently may yield misleading and inaccurate risk insights. To increase the usefulness of the low power and shutdown risk insights, the current methods and tools used for thermal-hydraulic calculations should be examined to ascertain whether they function effectively for low power and shutdown conditions. In this study, a platform for relatively detailed thermal-hydraulic calculations applied to low power and shutdown conditions in a pressurized water reactor was developed based on the best estimate thermal-hydraulic analysis code, MARS2.1. To confirm the applicability of the MARS platform to low power and shutdown conditions, many thermal-hydraulic analyses were performed for the selected topic, i.e. the loss of shutdown cooling events for various plant operating states at the Korean standard nuclear power plant. The platform developed in this study can deal effectively with low power and shutdown conditions, as well as assist the accident sequence analysis in low power and shutdown probabilistic safety assessments by providing fundamental data. Consequently, the resulting analyses may yield more realistic and accurate low power and shutdown risk insights. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract. My focus is on the problem of plant closings, which have become increasingly common as the deindustrialization of America has proceeded since the early 1980s. In a well-known article, Joseph William Singer proposed that workers who sued to keep a plant open in the face of a planned closure might appropriately be regarded as possessing a reliance-based interest in the plant that merited some protection. I seek to extend this sort of argument in two ways. In the first half of the paper, I point to the way in which “tacit obligation” emerges in friendship between persons in the absence of explicit commitments. Employers and employees are of course not as such friends. But I argue that the development of tacit obligations binding friends provides a useful analogy for understanding the growth of similar tacit obligations binding plant owners to workers and local communities. In the second half, I draw on Margaret Radin's work on property and identity to ground a related argument. I suggest that the potential contribution of plants—and the traditions and networks of relationships they help to create and sustain—to the identities of workers and communities provides reason for at least some legal protection of employee and community interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cet article identifie les enjeux induits par le phénomène des " fermetures malveillantes d'usines " (FMU) ou Ershing Kuanchang qui ont lieu a Taïwan depuis 1989. Son but est d'explorer les stratégies de gestion qui se dissimulent derrière la vague généralisée de fermetures d'usines. Se basant sur une étude s'étendant sur quatre ans, les résultats démontrent que la stratégie impliquant une supression des FMU est probablement relié avec des arrangements institutionnels, le style de gestion, les relations de pouvoir assymétriques entre les employeurs et les employés et les politiques d'État. Cet article conclut que les travailleurs sont vulnérables et sans défense face à la mobilité du capital en l'absence d 'une politique interventionniste de l'État. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the feelings and reactions of these employees shortly after the announcement of the plant closing. Recently, many employees in the U.S. have been displaced as a result of downsizing, reengineering, work force reductions, and plant closings. Between 1983 and 1988, a total of 4.6 million workers lost their jobs. Fully 2.7 million of these workers lost their jobs as a direct result of plant closings, a figure that accounts for 57.9% of all the displaced workers. A plant closing may have a traumatic effect on the health and well-being of both the dislocated workers and the surrounding communities. Some researchers have focused on the negative attitudes, adverse health consequences, increased alcoholism, suicide rates, divorce rates, and reduced psychological well-being of individual workers who have been displaced. The major advantage of advance notice is that it gives employees and the surrounding communities time to adjust to the loss of the plant. Advance notice also reduces the duration of time individuals are without work but has no impact on their subsequent earnings. it has also been shown that productivity is not affected by the announcement of a plant closing.

Six months after closure of their steelworks, 1655 ex-employees were interviewed. The main purpose of the study was to evaluate a programme of retraining provided to assist redundant people to obtain new work. Job finding was seen to be associated with a combination of retraining, age and work orientation. Ex-employees who had received pre-closure training reported a stronger preference for their new jobs than did non-trainees, but there were no differences between these groups in post-redundancy wage levels. Job-seeking behaviour was also examined and compared to the patterns described in earlier studies. Recommendations were made for retraining procedures in future redundancy situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a study on job security in the U.S. A spate of plant closings during the recent recession added to growing fears of deindustialization and stimulated considerable discussion of the job security question. The broad perception is that the appropriate locus for decisions on job security and job rights is that of the exchange process of the individual or collective bargain. The major assistance available to displaced workers is that offered by the unemployment insurance system. In a fundamental sense, displaced workers have made the decision that they do not wish to purchase job security either initially or at the point of displacement.

During the first three years of the 1980s, the United States has watched its economy undergo immense dislocations. Technological obsolescence, declining competitiveness in world markets, a severe recession, and other factors have combined to force drastic structural changes in many sectors, particularly in the heavy industries. Steel, automobiles, machine tools, textiles, and rubber have provided a strong foundation for the American economy for over half a century, but now they find their very survival is at stake. Associated with these industries' efforts to adjust is the movement of capital in pursuit of new priorities and the consequent economic disruption associated with plant closings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pre- and post-shutdown annual earnings reported to the Social Security Administration are used to measure the economic impact of plant closure on the income of workers exercising different vocational choices. Workers who sought new jobs in the local labor market suffered substantial reductions in post-shutdown annual earnings. With the influence of age, skill, sex, seniority, education, race, and pre-shutdown earnings held constant, short-term training did not improve the situation significantly. Workers who elected the interplant transfer option increased their annual earnings by more than $2,000, suggesting that government support of measures to increase the use of interplant transfers should be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the demolition of Dounreay's redundant nuclear fuel plants. It mentions that Dounreay's manufactured more than 10,000 fuel elements for research material test reactors in England and abroad. However, it was shut down in 2004 and by 2007, radioactive materials has been removed, active plant has been dismantled, and the building was decontaminated. Simon Middlemas, site director, declares that the demolition underlines the progress they are making to reduce and eliminate the major hazards at the site. It is noted that the building will be completely demolished by the spring of 2008.

Background and Aims The light availability on a temperate, deciduous-forest floor varies greatly, reflecting the seasonal leaf dynamics of the canopy trees. The growth and/or reproductive activity of understorey plants should be influenced by the length of the high-irradiance period from snowmelt to canopy closure. The aim of the present study was to clarify how spring-blooming species regulate the translocation of photosynthetic products to current reproduction and storage organs during a growing season in accordance with the changing light conditions. Methods Growth pattern, net photosynthetic rate, seed production, and shoot and flower production in the next year of Trillium apetalon were compared between natural and experimentally shaded conditions. Furthermore, translocation of current photosynthetic products within plants was assessed by a labelled carbon-chase experiment. Key Results During the high-irradiance period, plants showed high photosynthetic ability, in which current products were initially used for shoot growth, then reserved in the rhizome. Carbon translocation to developing fruit occurred after canopy closure, but this was very small due to low photosynthetic rates under the darker conditions. The shading treatment in the early season advanced the time of carbon translocation to fruit, but reduced seed production in the current year and flower production of the next year. Conclusions Carbon translocation to the storage organ had priority over seed production under high-irradiance conditions. A shortened bright period due to early canopy closure effectively restricts carbon assimilation, which greatly reduces subsequent reproductive output owing to low photosynthetic products for fruit development and small carbon storage for future reproduction. As populations of this species are maintained by seedling recruitment, acceleration of canopy closure timing may influence the maintenance and dynamics of populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the decision of the Swedish government to shut down a nuclear power plant in Barsebäck, Sweden in May, 2005. Information on a power plant that was also shut down in 1999; Reason behind the shut down; Outcome of the appeal filed by the municipality of Kävlinge towards the shut down.

Reports on the plan of BP Plc to shut down its linear alpha olefin production facility in Pasadena, Texas. Reason behind the closure.

Reports on the shutdown of the operation of Cascades FjordCell, a pulp mill of Cascades Inc. in Jonquière, Quebec.

Reports on the announcement of Dow Wire & Cable on the plan of Union Carbide Corp. to shut down its manufacturing facility in Bound Brook, New Jersey by the end of July 2004. Products manufactured at the facility; Location of the facility where products are to be transferred; Function of the facility following the shut down.