Power, Place And Scale: Union Recognition In The Pilbara, 1999–2002

Abstract

Towards the end of 1999 BHP Iron Ore set out to reduce if not eliminate effective union presence from its operations in Western Australia's Pilbara. Early in 2002, its rival Rio Tinto, balloted its employees on a shift to non-union collective agreements. The empirical task in this article is to explain the nature of worker and union response to these developments. In both cases, these management strategies have been much less successful than earlier attempts to re-regulate industrial relations in the Pilbara. The article shows that union activists have constructed strategies which are explicitly informed by their own readings of local histories and geographies, and that arguments grounded in ‘place consciousness’ were a source of union power, as was the construction of disparate scales of action and discourse by unions. The central argument is that ‘geography matters’. This article demonstrates exactly what this means in its examination of union power and weakness across particularly hostile terrain. It suggests that in general, too, the conceptual tools of space, place, and scale can enrich our understanding of contemporary union struggles.