The contradictions of flexibility: Labour control and resistance in the Los Angeles banking industry

Abstract

There is widespread agreement that employers are seeking more ‘flexibility’ in their relations with labour and that the economic climate of the past 20 years or so has proved particularly favourable to employers as high unemployment and changes in labour market regulations have weakened the bargaining power of trade unions. In this paper, however, I examine the contradictions embedded in labour market flexibility, and some points of leverage for labour, by examining the recent extension of part time and hourly work in the banking industry in Los Angeles. Unlike other industries, which can opt periodically to relocate in order to refashion their employment relations, the viability of the largest retail banks in Los Angeles is tied to their presence and visibility in Los Angeles and other urban centres throughout California. Banks must, in essence, reconstruct their employment relations in situ. To do this, banks have experimented by recruiting a very different labour supply to staff the part time and temporary positions now being created in branches to replace full time positions. This form of external flexibility is generating some unintended outcomes, however, in the form of higher turnover and problems with labour control. By way of conclusion, I suggest that this ‘labour fix’ in Los Angeles may simply reflect the depth of the ongoing crisis in the banking industry, and not its resolution.