Geoforum 57 (2014) 138–149

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Geoforum

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Of steel and strawberries: Greek workers struggle against informaland flexible working arrangements during the crisis

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.08.0140016-7185/� 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

⇑ Corresponding author at: Hellenic Open University, Department of EuropeanCivilization, Par. Aristotelous 18, 26335 Patra, Greece.

E-mail addresses: stgialis@gmail.com (S. Gialis), aherod@uga.edu (A. Herod).

Stelios Gialis a,b,⇑, Andrew Herod b

a Hellenic Open University, Department of European Civilization, Par. Aristotelous 18, 26335 Patra, Greeceb University of Georgia, Department of Geography, Athens, GA, 30602, USA.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 7 April 2014Received in revised form 16 August 2014

Keywords:Labour GeographyInformal and flexible employmentLabour agencyEconomic crisisGreeceSouthern Europe

This paper studies workers’ resistance to the spread of informal and flexible employment patterns inGreece during the ongoing economic crisis. It focuses upon the spatial aspects of two strikes, the firstby immigrant agricultural workers employed in the strawberry fields of Nea Manolada, in the Peloponne-sus region, and the second by steelworkers employed at the Hellenic Steelworks SA in Aspropyrgos, in theAttica region. The paper analyses workers’ agency in both these cases, viewing it as a relational phenom-enon strongly determined by the economic specificities of the sector to which workers’ employersbelonged, by the workers’ ability (or not) to develop trans-local networks of solidarity and by the timingof the two struggles. We view the paper as a contribution to the growing body of Labour Geographyresearch in two ways: (i) it speaks to how to theorise worker agency in a more nuanced manner; and(ii) it argues that, rather than viewing workers as simply social actors who are caught up in labour mar-kets that are assumed to be structured by the actions of capital and the state (as per much economic the-ory), workers can actually play important roles in shaping how labour markets function and in resistingthe tendency for precarious employment relations to spread across them.

� 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.[‘The Last Station’, George Seferis, 1944.]

Introduction

Something, it is alleged, is seriously awry with capitalist labourmarkets in many parts of the world (Harvey, 2006; Michael-Matsas, 2010; Berberoglu, 2011). Nowhere does this appear to bemore so than in the crisis-ridden countries of southern Europe –principally Italy, Spain, Portugal, and, most of all, Greece – whichhave been presented by much of the world’s commentariat asthe posterchildren for economic dysfunctionality and which havebeen vilified for their supposed initiative-stifling employee protec-tions, tolerance of corruption, too much public spending and mas-sive tax evasion (Selçuk and Yılmaz, 2011). The principal problemwith these countries’ labour markets, at least according to myriadEuropean Union (EU) and other ‘experts’, is the various ‘rigidities’which have been built into them.

Even before the present crisis materialised in 2008 the ‘prob-lem’ of ‘excessive’ worker protections against dismissal was ameme which had become popular amongst critics of the welfarestate forms of economic organisation that emerged across muchof Europe after World War II. Beginning in the 1990s, policy mak-ers within the European Commission had begun to assault wel-fare statism in the southern EU by warning the region’sgovernments that they should follow pan-European trends andprovide for a less-strict regulatory and administrative framework,one which would enhance ‘flexicurity’ in the region’s labour mar-kets (EC, 2008, 2009). A neologism coined by the social demo-cratic Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the termflexicurity refers to a body of practices that are designed toencourage labour market flexibility but without reducing socialprotections for workers. It is viewed by its advocates as a wayto preserve the EU social model whilst also improving competi-tiveness. Flexicurity, then, has been presented as a solution toeconomic crisis and stagnation because, it is argued by many inBrussels, it is the ‘limited availability’ of flexible and atypicalemployment, together with ‘undue’ protections against employeedismissals, that have been the central factors causing labour

1 The material used here was gathered as part of an ongoing post-doctoral researchproject on ‘flexicurity’ and atypical employment in the southern EU. Data gatheringinvolved a mix of methods, including in-depth interviews and analysis of secondarymaterial. The interviews were carried out by the first author between September andNovember 2011 and November and December 2012. Fourteen (14) key informantswere interviewed, of whom seven (7) were related to the steelworkers’ struggle andseven (7) to the strawberry workers’ case. Four (4) of the interviews in each case wereconducted with workers, either unionised or not. In the steelworkers’ case, a unionistfrom the plant in Volos was interviewed. Other interviews were carried out withsupervisors or company owners (but only for the steelworkers case, as employers inManolada were unwilling to speak), unionists, and solidarity actors. Also, the firstauthor participated in many solidarity gatherings in order to observe and record thebeliefs and reactions of the participants. All of the interview material collected hasbeen enriched with findings coming from an extended analysis of secondary sources(e.g., articles in newspapers).

2 The historical development of Labour Geography has been covered in severalcomprehensive reviews, including Castree (2007), Herod (2010) and Lier (2007). Thus,we do not feel the need for an extensive recap here.

3 It should also be noted that ‘downscaling’ has also been a focus of interest bysome authors (Herod, 2014).

S. Gialis, A. Herod / Geoforum 57 (2014) 138–149 139

market rigidity and thus persistent unemployment in the south-ern EU.

Although some southern EU governments did, in fact, makemoves towards implementing flexicurity prior to the crisis, theirefforts have largely been condemned by the Organisation for Eco-nomic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as not having beenimplemented forcefully enough because of elected officials’ unwill-ingness to make ‘tough economic decisions’. The result of such anarrative of political cowardice has been that the rather painfulconsequences that the contemporary crisis is having upon south-ern EU countries have been widely represented as inevitable out-comes flowing from poor policy choices. Consequently, the crisisand its attendant capital restructuring have been particularised,viewed as the outcome of local conditions and decisions ratherthan as perhaps the manifestation of deeper structural problemswithin global capitalism (Sakellaropoulos, 2010; Shaikh, 2011;Mavroudeas, 2013).

However, if we put the crisis within the broader context of theglobal restructuring of capitalism, two important things becomeevident. First, terms such as ‘flexible employment’ take on quitedifferent meanings in diverse socio-economic contexts and thus,if implemented, may have quite different outcomes in differentplaces. What may work at the northern economic core of the EUmay not work in its southern periphery. Second, work and work-place restructuring is inherently a socio-spatial process, onestrongly influenced by employers’ will and workers’ agency, whichare themselves shaped by socio-spatial context. These often-neglected facts are important when considering the peculiaritiesof southern European labour markets and the unequal power rela-tions and institutional forces therein (Peck, 1996; Hadjimichalis,2011).

During the past three decades or so, the liberalisation and dereg-ulation/reregulation of labour markets have been closely associatedwith the new imperatives of accumulation, increasing competition,and the rise of new technologies enabling complex geographic rear-rangements of production and exchange (McGrath-Champ, 1999;Harvey, 2006; Mavroudeas and Papadatos, 2012). The increasedmobility of financial capital has also been seen as an important con-tributing factor (Hudson, 2002). However, in many studies of labourmarket restructuring which draw upon neo-classical economicsand even many Marxist approaches (e.g., Kalleberg, 2003; Selçukand Yılmaz, 2011), labour has generally been conceived of as a pas-sive actor – labour market restructuring is seen to happen to work-ers. It was only at the end of the 1990s, with the emergence of thenascent field of Labour Geography, that geographers really began toexplore both theoretically and empirically how labour itself canshape labour markets, either proactively or through its reaction tothe actions of capital (Peck, 1996; Herod, 2001, 2010; Lier, 2007;Mitchell, 2011).

Our paper, then, aims to contribute to efforts to understandworkers’ roles in reshaping local labour markets by adopting a spa-tially informed perspective to study workers’ struggles to resist thespread of precarious employment and the implementation of aus-terity measures in Greece. Greece has a rich history of workersopposing capital’s interests, both through trade union collectiveaction and through other, less formal, yet equally important,means (Leontidou, 1990, 1993; Gialis, 2014). Given this, here weexamine the spatial strategies adopted by two groups of workersas they have challenged employer efforts to undermine workerprotections as a way to ‘solve’ the crisis. The first group are immi-grant agricultural workers engaged in the strawberry fields of NeaManolada, a community in the Peloponnesus region of southernGreece, about 260 km west of Athens. The second group are steel-workers employed by Hellenic Steelworks SA (Hellenic HalyvourgiaSA) in Aspropyrgos, only a few kilometres from Athens, in the

region of Attica. The study draws upon interviews with key infor-mants and other secondary material.1

Whereas many studies conducted under the banner of LabourGeography have focused upon successful worker struggles, belowwe look at worker collective action in a context of both successand defeat. We do so as a way to examine labour agency as a rela-tional phenomenon, one strongly shaped by the capitalist intereststhat workers must confront and the economic specificities of thesector to which their firm belongs. We also seek to explore theeffects of multi-scalar levels of solidarity on workers’ practice.The failure of the steelworkers to form a local-to-local tie betweenthe two different cities in Greece where their firm had branches,despite several efforts to do so, is theorised as a loss of the ‘upscal-ing advantage’ which is often seen as key to spreading local dis-putes. By way of contrast, the strawberry workers were able todevelop upscaling to their advantage. Part of the reason for this,we argue, is the impact of sectoral specificities, temporality andtiming (Castree, 2007) on both disputes, with these being morehelpful in the latter than in the former case.

The paper is structured as follows. First we provide a brief dis-cussion of some questions related to worker agency that haveemerged within Labour Geography, together with an indicationof how this paper contributes to furthering debate. Next, we out-line competing explanations of the cause of the Greek crisis, alongwith some recent data showing how it has impacted production,employment and worker agency. We do this to contextualise thetwo disputes. We then present the empirical findings for the twostruggles studied. In the final two sections we discuss these find-ings and make some tentative conclusions.

Labour Geography: expanding the conversation over workeragency2

Labour Geography has made a strong claim to viewing workersas active agents in producing the economic geography of capital-ism (Castree, 2007; Herod, 2010, 2012). One aspect of this has beena focus upon the spatiality of particular worker struggles (for anoverview, see Herod, 2014). A central theme in many studies hasbeen that of how workers have tried to ‘upscale’ disputes and theimplications this has had for the relationship between differentplaces.3 Thus, numerous studies have detailed local actions for eitherlocal (e.g., place-based campaigns) or non-local (e.g., consumer boy-cotts against labour practices in other places) purposes, whilst manyothers have examined how workers in different places have unifiedacross space in trans-spatial activities to secure common goals, as inthe case of inter-regional or global union campaigns (Tufts andSavage, 2009; Mitchell, 2011).

140 S. Gialis, A. Herod / Geoforum 57 (2014) 138–149

A number of criticisms of much of this work, however, haveemerged as Labour Geography has matured during the past twodecades or so. These include the need to better theorise workeragency, to develop a more explicit focus upon normative and polit-ical aspects of worker agency, to reflect upon the potential missinglinks between agency and workers’ everyday practices and to con-sider more fully the role of the state and wider regulatory mecha-nisms as shapers of worker agency. In this regard, Peck (2013) hassuggested that Labour Geographers should recall Doreen Massey’s1984 admonition to remember that agency, class and politics arealways relational and regionalised. Thus, echoing Mitchell (2011:586), Peck stresses that any prioritisation of agency should avoidneglecting the importance of ‘structure’ and that Labour Geogra-phers should not only recount the stories of workers’ strugglesbut also work to sustain new forms of agency and solidarity inan era of the profound jeopardising of the working and living con-ditions for millions of people.

At the same time that there have been appeals to better theoriseagency, there have been numerous calls for analytical attention tobe broadened from a focus upon unionised workers engaged in typ-ical employment in Global North economies to include non-union-ised, precarious or even informal labourers of the Global South(Tufts and Savage, 2009; Bergene et al., 2010; Coe and Lier, 2011).One example of focusing on informal and very atypical work is thatof Carswell and De Neve (2013), whose analysis of Indian garmentworkers showed that labour agency is shaped by both the ‘verticaleffect’ of global production networks and the ‘horizontal effect’ ofsocio-cultural relations and regionally specific livelihood strategies.Their argument is in line with Cumbers et al.’s (2010) findings onthe need to theorise agency in the context of class struggle and toattempt linkages between production and reproduction. Signifi-cantly, both of these contributions seek to develop a more nuancedconcept of worker agency by drawing upon Katz’s (2004) disaggre-gation of agency into acts of resistance, reworking and resilience. Inthis disaggregation, Katz sees resistance as that form of social prac-tice that reflects an advanced consciousness regarding the oppres-sive power of employers, social hierarchies and the state andwhich acts to fundamentally change all these constraints. For itspart, reworking is an intermediate form that, although it does notchallenge the hegemonic power of the state, capital and otheroppressive actors, does attempt to create a new balance of powerrelations and a redistribution of wealth that is more favourablefor the oppressed or workers’ interests. Finally, resilience is a ratherindividualistic type of agency related to people’s tactics of adjust-ment to their condition, one which reflects limited consciousnessand limited challenges to the existing social order.

In light of these efforts to disaggregate the concept of agency,this paper seeks to expand the conversation by analysing theactions of both unionised industrial and non-unionised agriculturalworkers in Greece, a country which, though an EU member, is alsoa country of the ‘advanced South’ and so sits awkwardly betweenthe Global North and the Global South. Whereas the steelworkersupon whom we focus represent the kinds of workers who have fre-quently been the subject of Labour Geography studies, the immi-grant strawberry workers are the types of workers who have lesscommonly been studied. Moreover, whereas much LabourGeography has looked at worker actions designed to protect jobsand/or limit capital flight, here we explore actions designed to fightagainst the growing precariousness, a-typicality and flexibilisationof work itself.

The post-2008 Greek crisis and consequences for labour

Mainstream scholars (e.g., Garcia Pascual and Ghezzi, 2011;Kollintzas et al., 2012; Theocharis and van Deth, 2013) and EUofficials (Barnier, 2012) have tended to explain the Greek crisis in

terms of bad political choices made by Greek elites, corruption,inflexible working arrangements and high-wage increments. Forthem, what happened in Greece, this ‘errant peer’ of the EU, hadlittle, if anything, to do with the 2007–2008 global crisis. Moreimportantly for our purposes, these scholars have generally eithernot incorporated workers’ agency into their analytical frameworksor, if they have, they have usually treated it in the additive terms ofit being a supplemental ‘negative externality’ (i.e., they haveviewed militancy and continuous strike activity as just one morefactor explaining the country’s falling competitiveness)(Featherstone, 2011).

By way of contrast, a variety of heterodox analyses stress thatcapitalism is a crisis-prone system and see the Greek case from sucha perspective (Milios and Sotiropoulos, 2010; Sakellaropoulos,2010; Selçuk and Yılmaz, 2011; Lapavitsas, 2012). As with hetero-dox theorists so for many Marxists, a key part of the explanationof the Greek crisis lies in the worsening imbalance between capi-tal’s power and the lack of an appropriate labour response. Thus,they see the resurgence of class struggle as a possible way out(Harvey, 2006; Berberoglu 2011; Hadjimichalis, 2011; Smith andButovsky, 2012; Mavroudeas and Papadatos, 2012; Mavroudeas,2013; Hadjimichalis and Hudson, 2014).

Without question, the crisis’s impact upon workers has beendramatic (see Gialis and Herod, 2013; Hadjimichalis, 2011). In par-ticular, the growth of unemployment has been staggering –whereas unemployment was less than 10% before 2008, in early2014 it was nearly 30% for the country as a whole (and much worsein some localities). As the following data from EUROSTAT show,there have been dramatic changes in Gross Value Added (an indi-rect measure of trends in capital accumulation), the number ofemployees (which shows what has been happening to wage-dependent/salaried workers specifically, rather than to the‘employed’ in general), and the cost of labour during the period2004–2014. Significantly, the critical year of 2008 lies in the mid-dle of this time period (see Figs. 1a–3b).

When considered together, these three indicators help to illus-trate the collapse of the Greek economy. In particular, the mostworrying figure is that of the fall in the total number of employees,a decline which started as soon as the global crisis began (the fallsin output and labour cost only came later and were not as acute).Most severe is the drop in the number of industrial employees.Thousands of jobs have been lost and work has intensified – thisis evidenced by the fact that the GVA produced is not significantlylower when compared to the pre-crisis period, despite being gen-erated by many fewer workers. The data show that workers inthe primary sector have fared relatively better (see Figs. 1b, 2band 3b). They also show that the gap between what is happeningin Greece and what is happening within the Euro-area as a wholehas been growing. Hence, with the exception of employees inindustrial and primary activities and total employees, all Euro-areafigures are today above their 2008 levels. However, the opposite isthe case for Greece. Significantly, the volume of industrial employ-ment in Greece has returned to 1960s levels whilst that for theEuro-area is close to the 2007 level. Equally, Greece’s supposedlyhigh labour cost has been declining since 2009 and is now lowerthan it was in 2005, whilst in the Euro-zone as a whole there hasbeen a continuing increase since the crisis erupted in 2008.

The result of these changes is that, perhaps unsurprisingly,Greece now has one of the most insecure labour markets in theEU (Karamessini, 2008; Michael-Matsas, 2010; Ioannides et al.,2014; Gialis, 2014). There have, then, been significant increasesin the levels of some less common forms of atypical employment,such as part-time work, whilst there have been divergent trendsregarding other, historically more-common forms of atypical, andeven informal, work (self-employment, temporary employmentand family work). One key thing to note is that the share of the

Fig. 1a: Total GVA Fig. 1b: GVA for industrial and primary activities

Fig. 2a: Total employees Fig. 2b: Employees in industrial and primary activities

Fig. 3a: Total Labour Cost Index Fig. 3b: Labour Cost Index for industrial activities

Figs. 1–3. The divergent impact of the 2008 crisis upon Gross Value Added (GVA), Employees and Labour Cost Index, Euroarea and Greece, 2004–2012 (Index, 2008 = 100).Source: Eurostat and authors’ compilation. All data are seasonally adjusted and adjusted by working days. GVA is at basic prices. Missing data for Euro-area: Industrial GVA2011–12, Labour Cost Index 2004–2007. Labour Cost Index is based on total wages and salaries and not calculated for primary activities (agricultural, forestry and fisheries).

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142 S. Gialis, A. Herod / Geoforum 57 (2014) 138–149

labour force that worked part-time grew from 5.8% in 2009 to 7.9%in 2012. Likewise, the share which was self-employed during thistime period increased from 21.3% to 24.9%, whilst the proportionthat were temporary workers was marginally reduced (from12.1% to 11.5%) (the result of widespread dismissals). Accordingto reports by the government’s Labour Inspectorates, in 2012 morethan 60% of those newly hired were employed on an atypical basiswhilst one in three labourers was employed under various viola-tions of employment legislation.

To summarise, then, the austerity policies imposed since early2010 by the ‘troika’ – the International Monetary Fund (IMF), theEuropean Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission (EC)– to control the Greek economy (Hadjimichalis, 2011), togetherwith the fact that no currency devaluation has been allowedbecause of ECB rules, mean that there has been aggressive capitaldevaluation in Greece. Early-2014 data show this is continuing,along with the squeezing of wages and the bankruptcy of thou-sands of firms. Several elements of such devaluation are present,including a halt to major state-funded projects (which encouragesthe deterioration of current infrastructure) and massive abandon-ment of plants, machinery and technology. There has also been aprofound reformation of national policies and local alliances,which has reduced the power of the old political elites to controlthe political system and is allowing the emergence of new politicalactors, both radical leftists and ultra-conservative, xenophobicrightists. These changes are spawning new spaces of accumulationand a dramatic reduction in workers’ living standards.

These economic changes, however, have gone hand-in-handwith the re-emergence of worker militancy. More than 20 generalstrikes have been organised since 2008, in addition to hundreds offirm-level and sector-wide actions and instances of workplace sab-otage. Numerous grassroots and alternative/non-profit initiativeshave also been organised (Evripidou and Drury, 2013). Neverthe-less, despite the fact that trade unionism and political activity inGreece in response to the crisis have been more widespread thanin most EU states, the labour movement is being subjected to widerdismantling trends. Thus, ongoing deunionisation, alienation,bureaucratisation, and subordination to the state’s and employers’will, as well as a gradual loss of the class-based approach to politicswhich had developed after the Greek dictatorship was removedfrom power, all mean that it has been difficult for many workersto limit the austerity measures imposed in response to pressurefrom Greece’s creditors (like Germany).4 This, however, does notmean that they have been completely impotent, as we shall nowexplore.

Workers challenge labour market restructuring in two Greeklocalities

The case of immigrant farm workers in the strawberry fields of NeaManolada, Peloponnesus

Almost 90% of Greek strawberries are produced in the fieldsaround the small rural town of Nea Manolada, a relatively prosper-ous community of 3500 inhabitants. Many small producers, follow-ing the pattern introduced by the region’s wealthy farmers in theearly 1990s, have recently turned from growing potatoes to grow-ing strawberries, to the point where more than 1000 hectares of

4 The national trade union federation of Greece (the General Confederation ofGreek Workers [GSEE]) retains strong connections to the social-democratic party(PASOK) that came to power in 1981 and ruled Greece for more than two-thirds of thepost-dictatorship period. Despite its anti-neoliberal rhetoric, GSEE lost much of thesupport it had previously gained during the period of the dictatorship because, aswith PASOK, it has become highly bureaucratised over time. This has resulted in itadopting a fairly cozy relationship with Greece’s capitalist class and speakingfrequently of the need for social partnership and inter-class compromise.

strawberries are cultivated in the area. The result is that by 2011Greece had become the world’s 24th-largest strawberry producer,up from 36th in 2008.5 Nevertheless, production is dominated bythe twenty or so farmers who formed an agricultural cooperativein 2003. These farmers have applied advanced crop techniques, builta modern packing plant in the area, and promoted their productthrough participating in international exhibitions. Their success ledformer Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, when addressingan official gathering of innovative agricultural entrepreneurs inMay 2011, to laud them for their actions and named their productGreece’s ‘red gold’.

Because they are very delicate, in Greece strawberries are usu-ally cultivated in close proximity to where they will be sold orrefrigerated. Intensified production has led farmers to cultivateannual, rather than perennial, plants in greenhouses, with morethan 20,000 plants per acre. According to an interviewee who is alocal agricultural engineer providing services to the farmers’ coop-erative, a typical annual yield is between 2 and 5 tonnes per acre. Atrecent market prices this has resulted in net profits of about €900per acre. Almost 30,000 tonnes are produced annually, of whichmore than 85% are exported. Production is labour-intensiveyet also requires some significant capital investment, at least dur-ing the construction of the greenhouses and the purchase ofmachinery and plants. Typically, the equivalent of about 70–75worker days is required to collect the crop and €5000–6000 areneeded for the extra yearly costs. This is in addition to the €8500or so spent for greenhouse construction (all figures refer to per acrecosts). This means that a large and cheap labour pool had to befound in order for production to occur. To solve their labour prob-lems growers turned to immigrant workers, who are employed ona seasonal basis and who can easily be recruited in a country wheremore than 1.1 million immigrants live. Consequently, beginning inthe mid-1990s migrant workers began coming to the area to workin the industry, to the point where today there are some 3500–4000workers living locally who can provide a total of 30,000 or so work-days per year. Most of these immigrants, though, are not officiallyregistered with the authorities and possess neither a valid worknor residence permit.

Many of these immigrants are Bulgarians of Roma origin, butthere are also large numbers of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Theworkers live in the fields in sheds made of tin, paper and nylonunder fairly inhumane conditions. Four cardboard settlements,with limited infrastructure, have been developed around the town.Some workers have access to electricity and water supply but mostdo not. The immigrants pay an informal rent to the owner of theland upon which these illegal settlements have been developedbut they are under the strong monitoring of ‘superintendents’who work for their immediate employers or the landowner(Fig. 4a). Their access to the town is ‘regulated’ by their fear of hav-ing their informal migrant status discovered and thus they preferto stay in their shanties during most of the day. Because of this,informal supermarkets have been developed by the landownersas the only ‘cheap’ provision-buying option for the immigrants.Although many of the local farmers’ representatives admit thatthe immigrants’ living conditions are indeed ‘bad’, they think thatthe problem primarily lies in the fact that there is no state-pro-vided cheap housing that could be used by the workers duringthe growing and picking season (from November until May).Another common perception in the area is that the workers them-selves ‘prefer to live’ in these settlements as a way to save money.Needless to say, the social divisions that run through the informalagro-workers’ community (e.g., between different ethnic groups or

5 All data related to strawberry production come from FAOSTAT, the officialatistical database of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.

st

Fig. 4a. Strawberry workers live under inhumane conditions (photo credited tohttp://icantrelaxingreece.wordpress.com).

Fig. 4b. Strawberry workers and their supporters demonstrate against their livingconditions (photo credited to http://zbabis.blogspot.gr/).

S. Gialis, A. Herod / Geoforum 57 (2014) 138–149 143

between workers affiliated with different employers or settle-ments), combined with the fact that they are heavily dependentupon the farmers’ whims when it comes to being able to retaintheir jobs and/or avoid being expelled from Greece, are reproducedby the farmers in a divide-and-rule manner.

In this context, on 18th April, 2008 hundreds of workers gath-ered in the town’s central square to protest against their poorworking conditions and a several months’ delay in payment oftheir wages – by some estimates the total shortfall was about€130,000 (Fig. 4b). They also argued that their salaries (€23.50 fora 12-hr working day) should be increased to €30. For the first timein Greece, a three-day strike was organised by immigrant workers.According to the strawberry workers we interviewed, as tensionescalated bodyguards hired by the big farmers organised a night-time action against the immigrants, trying to stop the strikethrough assaulting several workers. The local police remained pas-sive and much of the local Greek population remained silent anddid not support the workers’ struggle because of its extended kin-ship and family connections to the farmers, as well as a commonbelief that the locality’s interest and reputation should be pro-tected against the ‘ungrateful’ immigrants and their ‘invading’ sup-porters. However, the attack on the immigrant workers did soondraw help from across the country. The result was that a strongsolidarity network developed as supporters began arriving in NeaManolada. Most of these supporters were unionists and represen-tatives of left-wing political parties and/or activists from othercities and towns of Pelloponesus (e.g., Patra and Pyrgos) and fromacross Greece. Several militant trade unions, some of them allied inTrade Union Fronts (such as the All-Workers Militant Front [Pane-rgatiko Agonistiko Metopo – PAME], which is affiliated to theWorld Federation of Trade Unions), played a central role in this

trans-local, networked mobilisation. The unionists and other activ-ists who came to Nea Manolada decided to remain in the town’scentral square as a way of actively supporting the immigrant work-ers. The immigrant workers, in turn, were strongly encouraged bythe presence of supporters from other localities and kept on withthe strike whilst their claims went unaddressed. For instance, theyexpanded their grassroots deeply into the local immigrant commu-nity by making speeches in several different languages.

When a Greek doctor and an activist who were present in thearea were attacked by some of the superintendents, the solidaritynetwork further escalated its activities and the national mediabegan to broadcast stories concerning what was going on in thearea. Demonstrations were organised in front of the Greek Ministryof Employment and the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Athens, thelatter of which is responsible for policies affecting migrant work-ers. Letters of support were also issued by various national Greekpolitical parties and unions, as well as by several internationalunions (e.g., the communist Centre of Indian Trade Unions, oneof the biggest workers’ organisations in India). Basic food provisioncame from other towns. As almost all of the key informants inter-viewed verified, by the fourth day of the strike the employers rea-lised that they faced two major problems: (i) the fact that a halt instrawberry picking for several more days could destroy a signifi-cant part of their yearly production; and (ii) the fact that theextended trans-local solidarity network had managed to radicalisethe local political climate. Furthermore, the farmers recognisedthat they could not expect to receive the active support of theGreek state and police because many of them had engaged in infor-mal employment practices and had hired immigrant workers ille-gally – this latter was largely a function of the absence of aneffective temporary migration program like those found in Canadaand some other Western capitalist countries (Preibisch, 2010).Thus they decided to negotiate. The Association of Bangladeshimigrants in Greece, which had been a part of the solidarity net-work since the strike’s first day, actively participated in these nego-tiations. Workers returned to work after winning an importantincrease of about 20% in their salaries and some promises forimprovements in their living and housing conditions.

Although this represented a significant victory, it is importantto note, however, that it then made the employers more aggressiveand the workers more militant, both in response to the employers’aggression and because they were buoyed by their own accom-plishment. For instance, after demanding their back pay, in mid-April 2013 at least twenty-eight strawberry workers were shotby guards and transferred to hospital (Keep Talking Greece,2013). [An analysis of these more recent aspects of the struggleis left for a forthcoming paper.]

Steelworkers go on strike

Steel production is one of the most defining elements of a coun-try’s productive dynamism. The industry has played a central rolein the historical geography of European capitalism. Indeed, the EUitself is descended from the European Coal and Steel Communityfounded in 1951 as a way to bind the economies of France and(West) Germany together so as to avoid future conflicts betweenthem. Currently there are about 500 steel plants across the EU-25 which provide work for more than 350,000 direct employees,together with a significant number of jobs that are reliant uponthe industry through various types of subcontracting activity.However, despite its importance, more than 65,000 steelworkingjobs have been lost since just 2008, a dramatic change that recallsharsh memories of the period between the two world wars. Long-term employment losses can be attributed to European producersbeing undercut by cheaper steel coming from places like Chinaand South Korea and to the increasing organic composition of cap-

ig. 5. ‘Hands off steelworkers, all Greece is a steel plant’. Steelworkers workers andeir supporters march together (photo taken form http://mediaoasis.word-

ress.com/).

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ital in steelmaking, which has been particularly evident in the pastfour decades or so. Thus, the introduction of continuous castingand other advanced technologies have led to increased productiv-ity and a concomitant fall in labour requirements, irrespective ofperiodic fluctuations in demand. The result is that today a greatervolume of steel is produced by less than half the number of work-ers who were employed in the industry in the late 1960s (Eurofer,2013).

When looked at globally, China and India dominate both theproduction and the consumption of steel. Within the EU, Germanyis the leading producer, smelting close to 25% of the total 170,000metric tonnes produced each year. The German industry employssome 90,000 workers. Other important producers are Italy (17%),Spain (8%) and the UK (6%) (Eurofer, 2013). For its part, Greece sitstowards the bottom of this hierarchy, producing only 0.74% of EUoutput and employing some 1700 employees in 2012. This is a con-siderable drop since the beginning of the crisis, when Greece pro-duced 1.25% of EU totals. Greece is one of only two countries – theother is Bulgaria, which has been dealing with the closure of state-owned mills as part of the ongoing transition away from a centrallyplanned economy – to have lost half of its output between 2008and 2012 (Eurofer, 2013). The principal reason for this is thedecline in domestic construction, as this was mainly supplied bysteel produced within Greece. Thus, the Greek construction indus-try (which had enjoyed a boom due to a real estate bubble createdby financial speculation just prior to 2008) has been reduced to aquarter of its pre-crisis level, whilst all major highway and otherinfrastructure projects have been halted because of governmentausterity measures. This has led to an 85% drop in domesticdemand between 2008 and early 2014 (Zafiropoulos andLeontopoulos, 2014). Although EU steel exports have begun togrow in the past few years, given that Germany and Italy havetwo of the more efficient steel industries it is they who have ben-efited disproportionately from this.

Such changes have placed immense pressures upon Greek steelmanufacturers, who in turn have sought to pass the crisis on totheir workers. Thus, in late October 2011 the country’s second-largest steel maker – Hellenic Steelworks SA (Hellenic HalyvourgiaSA) – decided unilaterally to reduce both wages and working hoursby 60% in its plant in Aspropyrgos (just outside Athens) because ofreduced demand.6 The firm was able to do so because of recentemployment legislation that flexibly de/reregulates labour marketsby giving employers the right to impose ‘partial employment’ duringperiods where such an action is ‘justified’ and falling demand isproven. In fact, ‘partial employment’ had already successfully beenimposed upon the employees of the company’s other two plants,located in Volos, which is about halfway between Athens and Thes-saloniki. The company manager indicated that workers in Aspropyr-gos would have to accept this sudden reduction or else nearly half ofthem would have to be fired. In response, the plant’s union called atwo-day strike in order to press employers to withdraw their plan.

The employers’ response was immediate and aggressive: 36workers were made redundant on the spot whilst the companywarned that 160 more, out of a total workforce of 400, would soonfollow. During that same period, new legislation voted by the Greekparliament increased the numbers of workers employers can leg-ally dismiss in any one month to 5% of their total employees.7 In

6 One of Greece’s biggest industrial producers, the firm had been quite profitablebefore the 2008 crisis. It was experimenting with innovative products and is listed onthe London Metal Exchange.

7 This new threshold was established by Article 74(1) of Act 3863/2010 in July2010. Prior to this, Law 2874/2000 provided that companies employing 20–199workers could lay off a maximum of four people per month whilst those employingmore than 200 could lay off up to 3% of their workforce (though no more than 30employees). The government did not oppose the firm’s actions but merely called uponit to negotiate with the union and the employees.

Fthp

reaction, the union decided to resist once more and started a series ofrolling strikes, with each strike action being approved on a weeklybasis after General Assemblies of all of the plant’s union members.Despite the fact that the strike lasted for nine months and endedup being one of the longest anywhere in the southern EU duringthe past two decades, the majority of workers remained active andkept voting against any compromise with their employer’s plans untilabout 2–3 weeks before its termination. Their militancy created astrong solidarity movement whilst, in turn, various support actionsorganised locally helped sustain the strikers (Evripidou and Drury,2013).

Significantly, for our purposes here, the union developed a spa-tially integrated strategy of resistance (see Gialis and Herod, 2013).In addition to weekly meetings to discuss whether or not to renewthe strike, a lot of local actions were organised. These included reg-ular talks, concerts and demonstrations organised in front of theplant. However, a number of extra-local initiatives were alsoundertaken by unions and institutions located in other cities, bothwithin Greece and abroad. For example, symbolic demonstrationswere organised by members of the Greek diaspora in front of theGreek Embassy in London and the Consulate-General inMelbourne. Efforts to develop trans-spatial organizing were alsoimportant and resulted in synchronised demonstrations held inmany Greek cities, especially the two biggest ones (Athens andThessaloniki), where almost 60% of the country’s population andindustrial GDP is concentrated. Other types of solidarity actions,such as statements of support from various unions and other agen-cies, either national or international (e.g., the Trade Union Interna-tional of Energy, Metal, Chemical, Oil and Allied Industries), werenumerous (see Fig. 5).8

There were several key moments in the articulation of thisspatially conscious strategy. Three of the most important werethe following. First, at the end of December 2011 a support strikewas organised by the Local Trade Unions Association (LTUA), asecondary-level labour association representing workers of theAspropyrgos-Elefsina-Thriasio region. This region is one of the five

8 The Trade Union International of Energy, Metal, Chemical, Oil and AlliedIndustries is one of six TUIs affiliated with the World Federation of Trade Unions(WFTU). These TUIs unite workers in the same sector across national boundaries.They are similar to the Global Union Federations associated with the InternationalTrade Union Confederation (ITUC). For more on the history of the WFTU and theInternational Confederation of Free Trade Unions, which is the predecessor to theITUC, see Herod (1998).

S. Gialis, A. Herod / Geoforum 57 (2014) 138–149 145

most-important industrial areas in Greece and contains manufac-turing sites where both working-class and immigrant populationsreside (Christofakis and Tsampra, 2012). The fact that the LTUAbecame involved represented a significant degree of support. Sec-ond, in mid-January 2012 a regional-level support strike, one thatincluded the whole Athens metropolitan area, took place. Supportin the area was reinforced on May Day 2012 when Athens-basedunions organised a demonstration in front of the Aspropyrgosplant and some 15,000 protesters gathered there. Third, steelwork-ers travelled some 350 km from Athens to participate in threedemonstrations in Volos, in front of the company’s two otherplants. Whilst there, the Athenian workers tried to persuade theircolleagues to turn the strike from a plant-level to a firm-level one.

As those unionists and steelworkers interviewed told us, thefirst two of these actions were deemed to have been relatively suc-cessful because the workers managed to engage in a lengthy strikeat the very time that the government and industrial associationswanted the Halyvourgia dispute to come to a quick end for fearthat worker militancy there could have a ‘demonstration effect’(Wills, 1998) that could trigger broader actions against the govern-ment’s austerity programme and the spread of precarious workacross the country. The ability of the steelworkers to carry on theirdispute for so long, despite the chronic problems of deunionisationand the disinclination of many union members to go on strike at atime of significant political tension and economic insecurity (threegovernments came to power in a short space of time), is testamentto their resolve and ability to organise to protect their interests.However, the third action, one seeking to develop a trans-spatiallynetworked action across all plants in the firm, completely failed.This is because the union in the Volos plants remained passiveand kept repeating that any synchronised strike was doomed to fail– a self-fulfilling prophesy which then materialised. The sameapplies to the secondary-level (sectoral) union representing metaland steelworkers, the Panhellenic Association of Metal Workers,which took no important actions that could potentially encompassall steel firms in the country.9

The failure of these workers to upscale the dispute has much todo with the politics of place and mirrors other situations in theindustry (and other industries with relatively fixed capital). Thus,Hudson and Sadler (1983) found that during the long and militantstrikes against the restructuring of the European steel industry inthe early 1980s, the initial trans-spatial solidarity actions organ-ised by workers of various plants in the UK and France againstplans to rationalise the industry were, after a few months, turnedinto a spatial politics that sought to ‘defend jobs in our place’. Thus,in the Aspropyrgos case the union, once it realised that it did nothave the support of Halyvourgia steelworkers in Volos, tried toresist the gradual isolation and marginalisation of its strike byretreating from its initial claims and declaring that workers wouldgo back to work if further dismissals stopped and if managersaccepted a commonly agreed-upon plan for gradual reinstatementof those made redundant. However, the employer ignored theseovertures, kept firing workers and then announced its official plansto stop any production in Aspropyrgos due to the strike activity.

At the same time that company managers were announcingplans to halt all production in Aspropyrgos, elements of the Greek

9 Sectoral-level federations often have the potential power to halt production in allfirms of a sector within a region/country. For example, in the case of the MEVGAL milkcompany, when a single employee was fired from the Athens branch on 7th October,2011, several workers stopped the production process and demonstrated in front ofthe branch. In response to the company’s threats towards these workers, the sector-level federation – the Hellenic Federation of Milk, Food and Drinks Workers andEmployees – called upon the firm’s broader employees to protest management’sactions. Demonstrations and strike actions were organised in all branches in threedifferent cities on 9th October, 2011. Given the firm’s heavy dependence upon dailydistribution of milk, it immediately recalled the workers and strike activity stopped.

state were also mobilizing (To Vima, 2012). In the early morning of20th July, 2012, following talks between the Greek Prime Ministerand the General Prosecutor, riot police initiated a special operationagainst the steelworkers, raiding the plant and violently terminat-ing the strike. Fewer than half of the initial employees returned towork, although the managers announced that as soon as demandrecovered many more would be rehired. Ironically, employees inthe Volos plants, who had returned back to full-work during thestrike due to the company’s strategy of switching the productionlost at Aspropyrgos to Volos for the period of the dispute, werere-introduced to ‘partial employment’ as well. However, despitecompany promises to rehire workers once demand picked up, byearly 2014, almost two years after the strike’s end, and with nofurther strike actions recorded in any of the company’s plants,production in the company had almost completely stopped. Inmid-February 2014 Hellenic Steelworks, after several months ofreduced demand, announced to its remaining 108 employees thatthe company would close. Almost simultaneously one of its majorcompetitors, Halyvourgiki, made 200 of its own employees redun-dant. Both companies put the blame on continuously fallingdemand and the policies of the Greek state, specifically the highcost of electricity.10 Despite the fact that the Volos workers rejectedupscaling and remained passive in the hope of saving their own jobs,disaster, then, appears to have come for all.

Explaining different capacities for worker agency in the twodisputes

The two cases presented have some commonalities. Forinstance, both groups of workers managed to upscale their dis-putes to a degree as support from left-orientated unions, institu-tions, parties and individual employees helped expand themacross the country and even internationally, thereby overcomingsome of the restraints that ‘staying local’ can impose upon a strug-gle. But there were also differences. Hence, in the steelworkers’case the development of a trans-spatial solidarity network was aconscious policy from the struggle’s beginning, though Aspropyr-gos workers failed to convince steelworkers in Volos to participatein their upscaling efforts and what upscaling there was involvedpeople who did not have a legal relationship with Hellenic Haly-vourgia, the common employer. This was different from the caseof the strawberry workers, whose spontaneous reaction toemployer violence received much support from people across thecountry who were sensitive to the problems faced by informalimmigrants in Greece. Perhaps the biggest difference, though, isthat whereas the strawberry workers were largely successful intheir efforts to challenge their employers’ plans to make their workmore precarious, the steelworkers largely failed to prevent preca-rity spreading in their industry. We suggest that there are threemain reasons for these different outcomes. These relate to: (i) thedifferent types of capital that the workers had to confront; (ii)the role of local and trans-local solidarity and networking; and(iii) the timing of the struggle in relation to trends in the sectorand the economy in general.

The different characteristics of the sectors to which the firmsbelonged played an important role in shaping the two disputes.Factors such as the technology-intensive or labour-intensive char-acter of production, the seasonality of production and products,and the national and international trends and prospects of differ-ent economic sectors frequently influence firm strategy duringworker struggles (McGrath-Champ, 1999). Big, export-orientated

10 Greek steelmakers presently pay €77 per MWh of high voltage electricity and€104.40 per MW h of medium voltage current. The equivalent prices per MW h inItaly and Germany are €30–35, in France €40–46 and in Bulgaria €46 (Zafiropoulosand Leontopoulos, 2014).

146 S. Gialis, A. Herod / Geoforum 57 (2014) 138–149

and technologically advanced firms are usually more able toimpose trans-national restructuring strategies upon their employ-ees than are small, local firms that have no easy alternatives whenproduction is halted. At the same time, such small firms are oftenmore flexible when it comes to drawing upon informal practices.This was certainly the case here, as the strawberry employers didnot have to worry about, for instance, their export markets beingtaken over by producers in other countries because the delicatenature of strawberries (at least compared to metal) means thattheir market area tends to be more geographically constrainedthan that of steel. Equally, the strawberry producers were less ableto weather a lengthy dispute than was Hellenic Steelworks becauseof the nature of the two companies’ products – their perishablenature means that strawberries have to be harvested and deliveredwithin a few days of ripening. This meant that the strawberryworkers, despite being immigrants hired on short-term informalcontracts, in some ways actually had more sway over theiremployers than did the steelworkers, even though the latter wererepresented by a formal trade union and may have worked at thesteel mill for many years.

Both groups of workers enjoyed a certain degree of effective-ness in combining in place and across space elements of their strug-gles. In Greece, industrial workers are generally more unionisedand militant than are immigrant agricultural workers but this doesnot necessarily mean that it is always easier for them to win.Hence, the steelworkers were employed in a firm that is well inte-grated into global production networks and the capital fragmentthe firm represents belongs to the core of the Greek capitalist class.The latter, despite its secondary position within the global hierar-chy of capitalist classes, nevertheless has important nichesthroughout the EU and the globe (as in the case of the shippingindustry, banking and the construction sector). As a result, HellenicSteelworks management could exert great pressure upon workers.

The strawberry workers, on the other hand, were not unionisedand, because they are immigrants from varied backgrounds,tended to not have much class-consciousness, especially as manyof them consider their jobs in the sector to be intermediate and/or short-term (Gialis et al., 2014). Nevertheless, they were opposedby a relatively weak fragment of capital, as most of their employerswere middle-sized agricultural entrepreneurs with few interna-tional connections and a less advanced capital base. Additionally,because their final product (strawberries) had to be collected andrefrigerated within a few days, these employers are locally-depen-dent. Thus, they have no important support in terms of alternatesupplies of raw materials and labour during a dispute, nor can theytransfer or externalise production to other places. Strawberry fieldsare few and dependent upon local climatic conditions and cultiva-tion efforts, and this imposes spatial fixity upon employers. By wayof contrast, Hellenic Steelworks not only had greater degrees offreedom in respect to such factors but also was able to make upfor lost capacity by putting employees in its two remaining plantsback to work full-time.

The two groups of workers examined here also had differentdegrees of local embeddedness and capacities for trans-local net-working, a fact that had an effect upon their political practice andmilitancy. Certainly, both had an important level of attachment tothe places in which they live and work. Even the strawberry work-ers living in cardboard settlements knew that this was their homefor the time being as they made a living. However, they wereattached to places in different ways. Thus, the strawberry workershad no investments in houses nor any kind of kinship ties or muchof a sense of affection for the locality in which they worked. Whatwas crucial for them was receiving a good salary, at least in relationto their usual standard of living, and getting paid on time, as almostall were sending remittances back home. Their attachment toGreece is short-term and their plan is to, sooner or later, return

home or move elsewhere within the EU. Nevertheless, althoughthey were not unionised, they did rely upon unions to support theirstruggle. The positive outcome they achieved, then, had as much todo with union support as with the strong familial, kinship andfriendship ties they retain within their ethnic communities andthe common experiences they developed within the locally-bounded practices of exploitation to which they had been sub-jected. This form of local social capital, in combination with trans-local solidarity exerted by them and on their behalf, were both fac-tors that reinforced their unity during the few days of the strike.

The situation for the steelworkers, however, was quite differentas they sought to defend their jobs and communities in bothAspropyrgos and Volos. Workers’ local embeddedness was impor-tant in both cities where Hellenic Steelworks plants are located butplayed out in quite different ways. Thus the workers at the Aspro-pyrgos plant live in a big urban-industrial area with a strong labourmovement tradition. This habitus provided them a source of sup-port upon which they could draw as they challenged their employ-er’s imperatives. For workers in Volos, however, the city’s positionas a smaller, peripheral one with a less storied history of class con-sciousness because of its relative lack of industrial productionmeant that compromising with their employer – and so benefittingfrom greater levels of work during the dispute in Aspropyrgos –seemed the best thing to do for preserving their abilities to supporttheir families within the locality in which they live. In other words,the potential for agency was different due to diversified practices,livelihoods and social relations between the two areas (Carswelland De Neve, 2013).

Finally, the temporality and timing of worker action was also animportant factor that strongly affected the two groups of workers.Hence, the immigrant strawberry workers acted before the impactsof the recession really began to surface, in a period when it was rel-atively easy to claim better payment and working conditions. Thesteelworkers, on the other hand, found themselves in conflict withtheir employer during a tense political period in which a general,though spatially uneven, economic contraction had started to unfoldand a general capital-driven offensive to attack workers’ living sta-tus so as to increase profitability was being implemented at an accel-erating pace. What this suggests is that the timing of actions acrossdifferent scales is important and that worker agency is differentiallysupported (or constrained) by what is going on at different times interms of restructuring, economic change, financial (in)stability andrelated factors (Tufts and Savage, 2009; Herod, 2010).

The effectiveness of worker agency was also shaped by the roleof state authorities and their oppressive apparatus. As seen, thestate remained relatively neutral in the case of strawberry workers,despite the severe violations of labour and migratory laws in thearea. In the case of the steelworkers, though, the government inter-vened violently, sending in riot police. Despite these differences inresponse that contributed to the dissimilar ends of these struggles,it is important to recognise, though, that the state has either implic-itly or explicitly facilitated employers’ plans to increase precarious-ness in both cases examined. By accepting the socially violentagenda dictated by the ‘troika’ (often adopting very ‘innovative’ways of implementing it, as in the case of the ‘urgent tax’ imposedthrough citizens’ electricity bills [see Gialis and Herod, 2013]) andleading the way with fundamental rights’ violations, cutbacks anddismissals, the state has turned austerity in Greece into a ‘natural’phenomenon (Milios and Sotiropoulos, 2010).

Both cases studied show how agency is relational and how itmatters (or not) under specific socio-spatial configurations andtiming. In addition to being shaped by factors such as the sizeand fraction of capital, the degree of solidarity networking, andthe particularities of the sector, the strawberry workers’ strugglewas partially successful because they exercised significant resis-tance to their employers’ will. This resistance has been strong

S. Gialis, A. Herod / Geoforum 57 (2014) 138–149 147

and effective due to the unity of this marginal group of workersduring the crucial moments of the struggle (i.e., the picking sea-son). Strawberry pickers had no other choice than to stay thereand fight united as, in addition to the harsh working and living con-ditions they were already experiencing, their salaries had been sus-pended.11 Their employers, on the other hand, had no alternativelabour pools or productive locations/plants to draw upon, whilstthey could not expect the Greek state to actively support thembecause of the illegal hiring practices in which they had engaged.In other words, the spatial immobility of both groups involved inthe struggle, along with timing, played a crucial role and pushedthe employers to compromise with the workers.

In the case of the steelworkers, on the other hand, the size of thecapital involved, its sectoral characteristics and the absence ofunity on a firm-level had a very negative role from the very begin-ning. Workers in Aspropyrgos were locally-embedded, trans-spa-tially organised, and militant, but their employers were more‘spatially flexible’ than their immobile workers. Their flexibilitywas based on the will of the workers in Volos to cover the extrademand during the strike. Managers also knew that future produc-tion output will continue dropping due to the falling competitive-ness of Greek steel producers.

Both of these cases, we feel, offer a more nuanced theorisationof agency that might be useful when seeking to forecast the likelysuccessfulness of future labour struggles. There are two mainpoints to be made. First, what the studies show is that agencycan be effective and lead to victory, even for marginal groups likemigrants, when united groups of locally-embedded and spatiallyimmobile workers are able to develop trans-spatially organisedsolidarity networks in instances when they have an advancedknowledge of ‘where and when’ to push their employers hard. Inother words, agency can be effective if it is strategically organised,informed about the economic specificities of the sector, andspatially-integrated. Second, a better understanding of workers’agency and its relative nature should involve an explicit accountof the role of acts of hindrance in labour struggles. Based on thesteelworkers’ case and other examples (Hudson and Sadler, 1983;Herod, 1997: 167; Brown, 2000), we see this form of agency as adistinct and important one that is additional to the three formsdescribed in Katz’s categorisation. Despite holding a few common-alities with acts of resilience, hindrance is quite different as it ismore or less a conscious act of concession by groups of employeeswho seek to protect their interests by actively (though not alwaysloudly) supporting their employers in periods during which thereis an ongoing struggle between managers and workers in a firm.By acting in such a manner, and at the expense of their colleagues’demands, these workers offer the employers extra forms offlexibility in rejecting other workers’ demands. Thus, there is aneed for an explicit focus upon what produces these divergenttypes of agency, which is what we have attempted to do in thispaper. [A more thorough analysis of this issue based on recentlyacquired data for the steelworkers case in Greece is left for aforthcoming paper.]

Though implied above, two final clarifications are necessary.First, despite the strawberry workers’ success, it is important notto over-emphasise what they achieved for fear of presenting toooptimistic an argument, for they have not managed to significantlyrework their own existing spatial fixes to their own purpose(Herod, 2001). Indeed, they still continue to live and work under

11 They have managed to transform their structural power (‘power that resultssimply from the location of workers within the economic system’) into anassociational power (‘the various forms of power that result from the formation ofcollective organizations of workers’) (Wright, 2000, p. 962), based on the fact thattheir product was highly internationalised and sensitive to interruptions in produc-tion. Selwyn (2012) has detailed a similar situation with Brazil’s grape pickers.

very difficult circumstances, as the 2013 shootings show. Rather,we need to stress the relative character of their success (i.e., nota complete success but more than one might have imagined, giventheir status) when compared to the steelworkers’ case, as theymanaged to make their employers compromise (at least once).The relative character of these workers’ success, therefore, goeshand-in-hand with the notion of agency being contextual.

Second, both of the cases examined and their outcomes must beseen within the context of the restructuring of the Greek and otherSouthern EU capitalisms as they lose their competitive placewithin the unequal hierarchy of EU and global capitalisms(Sakellaropoulos, 2010; Fornero, 2013). They also speak to thechronic and structural weaknesses of the Greek and global labourmovements (Michael-Matsas, 2010). This appears only to haveworsened during the crisis as employers have engaged in an offen-sive against workers as a way to restore profitability, with theresult that worker rights are being threatened as thousands of jobsare lost, hundreds of firms close, and even more workers acceptdramatic reductions in their direct salaries and welfare provisions.The labour movement seems weak in the face of such challenges.Nevertheless, as the strawberry workers showed, all is not lost. Itis possible for workers, even under such terrible conditions, tostruggle and win.

Concluding remarks

Although precarity of work through the growth of contingentemployment and labour flexibility are often seen to be the shapeof things to come, especially given the strength of capital’s andthe state’s assault on workers across the southern EU (and else-where) through the imposition of austerity policies and theundermining of longstanding employment protections, somegroups of workers are nevertheless developing strategies tooppose such changes and the casualisation of their work. In thiscontext, we have tried to do two things in this paper is. The firstof these is to seek to understand better some of the ways in whichlabour agency is constrained and some of the ways in which it isfacilitated in different places at different times. Put another way,we have sought to push an understanding of agency as beingrelational. Through doing so we have attempted to explain whyone group of workers whom one might have expected to havehad little chance of winning their struggle – immigrant, non-unionised, contingent workers with few connections to the localcommunity – were, in fact, successful whereas the other groupwhom one might initially have expected to have been moresuccessful – unionised workers who are well embedded in theircommunities and who are members of long-standing organisa-tions with significant institutional power – largely failed in theirfight. Our purpose in so doing is to advance discussion of howlabour agency can be better conceptualised within the broaderbody of scholarship which goes by the name Labour Geography.As such, we have sought to respond to calls by scholars likeCastree (2007) and Coe and Lier (2011) for a more nuanced under-standing of agency.

The second thing that we have attempted to do is to expandunderstandings of how labour markets function and are shapedboth spatially and structurally by showing how workers can beactive players in either accepting or rejecting efforts to encourageflexibility and/or precarity. Whereas neo-classical approaches andmany Marxist ones view how labour markets function as largelya result of the decisions of employers, a growing body of literatureis arguing that workers, too, can play important roles in this regard.Mann’s (2007) book Our Daily Bread, for instance, details how theconcept of the wage under capitalism is ‘a much more comprehen-sive, explicitly political and cultural category when mobilised by

148 S. Gialis, A. Herod / Geoforum 57 (2014) 138–149

wage earners than by wage payers’ (p. 25) and so is constitutedculturally and politically in different ways at different times andin different places. The point he seeks to make, though, is thatworkers play an active role in this, which then shapes how labourmarkets unfold. Through the cases outlined above – and particu-larly the largely successful struggles of the strawberry workers –we show how workers can resist the onslaught of precarity andthus play an active role in labour market restructuring. Workers,in other words, are not just embedded in labour markets and thensubject to the labour market restructuring whims of capital.Rather, they are active agents in shaping how such labour marketsare constituted and restructured over time.

Acknowledgments

This research was conducted as part of the first author’s post-doctoral research activity under the title ‘The Southern EU flexicu-rity project’ and jointly funded by the Greek Ministry of Education,General Secretariat of Research and Technology (Funding Decision:11409/31-8-2012) and the EU.

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