Globalizing Firms and Small Communities: The Apparel Industry's Changing Connection to Rural Labor Markets.

AMERICAN business enterprises; CLOTHING industry; CLOTHING & dress; LABOR market; LABOR costs; EMPLOYEES; LABOR supply; EMPLOYMENT forecasting; COMMUNITY life; ECONOMICS

WISCONSIN; UNITED States

This paper explores changing relationships between apparel firms and rural labor markets in Wisconsin over the last decade. Mainstream explanations of recent changes in the apparel industry suggest that rural communities will lose tedious or physically demanding, low-skilled apparel manufacturing jobs but will gain more information-intensive and desirable "apparel service" employment. Through case studies of apparel firms located in two Wisconsin communities, the paper argues that current changes in the industry not only affect communities unevenly but, even in regions where apparel service firms have provided significant numbers of new jobs, these jobs are less well paid, more casually structured, and less secure than manufacturing employment has been. The paper argues that current concepts of the economic embeddedness of firms in communities need to be refined to permit consideration of the kinds of leverage and voice that community organizations have in confronting new forms of corporate capital. The two case studies demonstrate that corporate embeddedness and its labor market outcomes are linked to changes in the global market in which firms compete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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