Abstract
Charnock, Purcell and Ribera-Fumaz argue that it is of crucial importance to understand the longer-term historical role played within the new international division of labour (NIDL) by relatively late industrialising countries that are today bearing the brunt of crisis and ‘internal devaluation’ in a ‘unified’ Europe. Focusing on Spain, they argue that it is precisely on the material basis of its full integration within the NIDL from the mid-1970s that the conditions of the reproduction of the working class were re-shaped, and it is this ‘historical component’ in the reproduction of the Spanish accumulation process that has prefigured the process of the differentiation of the conditions of the reproduction of the working class within and across its borders ever since.
This chapter draws, in part, upon our collaborative research that was conducted with funding from the Spanish government (awards CSO2010-16966 and SB2010-0060).
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Notes
- 1.
In 2013, the average overall employment rate in the EU stagnated at 64 per cent, with a declining rate among men; the EU-28 unemployment rate had increased to 11 per cent; and between 2008 and 2013 the overall pool of unemployed workers in the EU had grown by 10 million people. The proportion of long-term unemployed in the EU rose to 47 per cent in 2013. Nearly one in five EU workers then held a part-time job, with the proportion of available part-time to full-time work increasing markedly for lowest-skilled manual workers from 2008 (ETUI 2014: 43).
- 2.
Fourteen EU countries have registered a decline in real wages since 2010—the largest reductions being in Greece (more than 23 per cent), Cyprus (−14 per cent), Romania (−13 per cent), Ireland (−6.8 per cent), Portugal (−6.5 per cent), and Spain (−6.1 per cent). Mediterranean and Central and Eastern European have also moved toward a more ‘fragmented and decentralised model of collective bargaining’ since 2009 (Schulten and Müller 2015: 350, 353; see also ETUI 2014: 68).
- 3.
See Charnock et al. (2014: 40–4) for a review of the historical development of capital accumulation in Spain prior to the Civil War.
- 4.
In 1979, Spanish wages in the automotive industry were 20 per cent less than in France, and 52 per cent less than in Germany (Pallarès-Barberà 1998: 350).
- 5.
The number of producers in these markets has fallen from 36 in 1970, to 31 in the 1980s, 22 in the 1990s, and 14 by 2003 (Heneric et al. 2005: 34).
- 6.
It is noteworthy that relations between the INI and the Italian investor Fiat became increasingly fractious from 1971, culminating in the latter withdrawing its stake in SEAT in 1981—the main issue being rapidly increasing labour costs as a result of concessions to the increasingly more militant trade union representing SEAT workers (Tappi 2007: 119–20).
- 7.
Across Europe from the 1980s, there emerged a broader national and regional pattern of the uneven development of automotive production—a pattern into which the Spanish car industry’s relatively backward position was further embedded. A spatial hierarchy in production emerged from the 1980s, with its productive and geographical centre in southern Germany (Bordenave and Lung 1996). There, and typified by Volkswagen, producers have since specialised in the production of larger, high-end, technologically advanced cars using the most complex labour processes, with the highest levels of labour productivity and concentration of R&D development and adoption (Rubenstein 2001: 343).
- 8.
In some models, 80 per cent of components are supplied by sub-contractors (Minetur 2011: 49).
- 9.
Including the differentiated capacities for different workforces to engage effectively in collective bargaining, depending upon the structural position of the capital employing them within the supply chain (see, for example, Las Heras 2015).
- 10.
This remains a defining characteristic of local small capitals in Spain. By 2014, over 90 per cent of firms in Spain employed fewer than nine workers, and more than 50 per cent of workers were employed by firms with a workforces of less than 50 employees (compared with 23 per cent in Germany and 32 per cent in France) (European Commission Staff 2015: 18).
- 11.
- 12.
See Charnock et al. (2014: 77) for a discussion of Spain’s other notable ‘success story’ since the 1990s—its fast fashion clothing production and retail industries, associated with brands such as Mango and Zara.
- 13.
In 2007, construction accounted for 15.4 per cent of industrial output in Spain, compared with 4.7 per cent in Germany, 7.3 per cent in France, and 6.4 per cent in Italy (Cabrero Bravo and Tiana Álvarez 2012: 83).
- 14.
The role of cheap credit in the internationalisation of some Spanish capitals was reflected in the rising level of corporate debt on the Spanish stock market in the mid-2000s; while private sector debt increased by 192.8 per cent between 1996 and 2010 to reach 227.2 per cent of GDP (Eurostat 2012). The debt of non-financial corporations nearly doubled relative to GDP during the boom, from 74 per cent of GDP in 2000 to 137 per cent in 2008; by 2011, non-financial private sector debt reached 134 per cent of GDP, a rate second only to Ireland (Roxburgh et al. 2012: 27).
- 15.
For an analysis of the material bases for overproduction in the Spanish real estate market, such as downward pressures on interest rates, land reform, the impact of the dot.com crash, the expansion of tourism and inward migration, and endemic rentier practices at the regional and municipal local state scales, see Charnock et al. (2014: Chap. 4).
- 16.
International Monetary Fund data from 2011, at http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/HDTGPDESA163N (accessed 14 May 2013).
- 17.
The ratio of household debt-to-income in Spain remained around 146 per cent at the close of 2014; while the total stock of private debt in Spain stood at 182 per cent of GDP—72.4 per cent of which was household debt, according to European Commission Staff (2015: 25, 29).
- 18.
There are, of course, longstanding gender dimensions to the fragmentation of Spanish labour markets that have been exacerbated by the most recent crisis (Rodríguez Modroño 2014). For an analysis of the differential impact of the crisis on the disabled, migrants, the young, and the elderly, see Martinez-Molina et al. (2014).
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Charnock, G., Purcell, T.F., Ribera-Fumaz, R. (2016). New International Division of Labour and Differentiated Integration in Europe: The Case of Spain. In: Charnock, G., Starosta, G. (eds) The New International Division of Labour. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53872-7_7
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