Capital Moves: RCA's 70-Year Quest for Cheap Labor [Paperback]

Jefferson R. Cowie (Author), Jefferson Cowie (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1565846591 | ISBN-13: 978-1565846593 | Publication Date: April 2001

The highly acclaimed account of one renowned company's labor struggles in its rise to global power. Globalization is the lead story of the new century, but its roots reach back nearly one hundred years, to major corporations' quest for stable, inexpensive, and pliant sources of labor. Before the largest companies moved beyond national boundaries, they crossed state lines, abandoning the industrial centers of the Eastern Seaboard for impoverished rural communities in the Midwest and South. In their wake they left the decaying urban landscapes and unemployment rates that became hallmarks of late-twentieth-century America. This is the story that Jefferson Cowie, in "a stunningly important work of historical imagination and rediscovery" (Nelson Lichtenstein), tells through the lens of a single American corporation, RCA. Capital Moves takes us through the interconnected histories of Camden, New Jersey; Bloomington, Indiana; Memphis, Tennessee; and Juárez, Mexico—four cities radically transformed by America's leading manufacturer of records and radio sets. In a sweeping narrative of economic upheaval and class conflict, Cowie weaves together the rich detail of local history with the national—and ultimately international—story of economic and social change. 22 black-and-white photographs.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Cowie (industrial and labor relations, Cornell Univ.) highlights the power of financial capital in his examination of four RCA factory sites: Camden, NJ; Bloomington, IN; Memphis, TN; and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. RCA moved production from one site to the next in search of cheap, compliant, and usually female labor; as workers developed a sense of entitlement to their jobs and demanded better conditions, the company saw them as less desirable and looked for less-sophisticated substitute workers. Cowie outlines the history of labor relations at each site along with the surrounding political conditions. He also takes a wider look at labor organization and its ties to politics, noting that while capital became international, labor organization remained local, giving workers less power. In describing one company in depth, Cowie provides valuable insight into the increasingly global work force. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.AA.J. Sobczak, Covina, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Much has been written to document and lament the loss of American jobs to cheap labor abroad. Cowie's study of RCA, though, shows that U.S. companies have a long history of seeking out inexpensive labor. Before moving to Juarez, Mexico, in the 1970s, RCA had already moved its television manufacturing operations twice within the U.S. Cowie traces RCA's journey from Camden, New Jersey, to Mexico. After its manufacturing facilities were successfully unionized in the 1930s, RCA decided to decentralize operations and relocated a major factory to nonunion southern Indiana in 1940. In the 1960s, the company experimented with expansion into the South, but operations in Memphis were shut down within five years. Cowie shows how the same factors that determined RCA's first two moves were the same ones that influenced the move to Mexico. He does not focus, however, on the painful economic consequences of plant closures. In spite of the shutdowns, he shows that wherever RCA opened a new plant, each community was permanently transformed by the economic empowerment of its workforce. David Rouse --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (April 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565846591
• ISBN-13: 978-1565846593
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #38,287 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jefferson Cowie is an associate professor of history at the ILR School at Cornell University. He is the author of Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (The New Press, 2010), which received the Francis Parkman Prize, the Merle Curti Award, and was a finalist for the Anthony Lukas Award for nonfiction, in addition to winning several other national prizes. He is also the author of Capital Moves: RCA's Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor (The New Press, 2001), which received the Philip Taft Prize for the Best Book in Labor History for 2000. He is also the co-editor of Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization (Cornell University Press). He lives with his family in Ithaca, New York.

More at: www.jeffersoncowie.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars His Master's Voice: A critical look at RCA, July 9, 2000

By 

William F.Munn (Marion, IN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Capital Moves: RCA's Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor (Hardcover)

Cornell University's Jefferson Cowie has penned a critical look at the business and labor history of RCA. In this work, Cowie traces the communications giant's business and labor history from the late 20's in Camden, N.J. to Bloomington, Indiana, to Memphis,Tennessee to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Combining interviews with displaced workers with statistical information, the author effectively explains the playing out of a consistent corporate strategy in the company's migration in search of low wages and compliant workers.

Particularly moving is Cowie's examination of the closing of the Bloominton, Indiana factory.Both managers and line workers are given voice in recounting the traumatic experience of plant closing and its subsequent impact on the community.

This significant work should be read by members of any community trying to come to grips with the issues of NAFTA, plant closings, and corporate responsibilty. Cowie has produced a substantial and readable book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars RCA Corp. from a Labor/Management Perspective, January 11, 2002

By 

"[e-mail]" (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Capital Moves: RCA's Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor (Hardcover)

This book discusses RCA from a different perspective than the book "RCA" by Robert Sobel, instead concentrating on labor-management interactions. RCA started out in Camden, New Jersey, but as labor got more organized the company relocated it's operations to reduce labor costs, first to Bloomington, Indiana, and later to Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso. Of particular interest to CED VideoDisc enthusiasts will be the chapters on Bloomington, as that was the location of CED Player manufacturing. RCA announced on March 5, 1984 that VideoDisc player manufacturing was moving to Mexico, but a month later on April 4th the RCA Board of Directors voted to phase out player production completely. The book also discusses the post-RCA era in Bloomington and how conditions deteriorated, particularly under GE and to a lesser degree under Thomson, until electronic manufacturing finally ceased there in 1998.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Original and Interesting Book!, July 10, 2003

By 

Mark R. Jorgensen (Saint Paul, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Capital Moves: RCA's 70-Year Quest for Cheap Labor (Paperback)

The other reviewers rightly commend this original, interesting and highly readable book. As this book shows, RCA's readiness to shift factories to areas of cheaper and more tractable labor sowed the seeds of decline for America's consumer electronics industry long before the Japanese onslaught started in the 1960s. Couple this with a series of critical management mistakes, product development failures and hundreds of millions of mis-spent dollars, and you begin to understand why RCA sought out GE as a buyer in 1985. By the mid-1980s RCA management backed the company into a very tight box and it was either voluntarily sell the company or wait for a possible hostile takeover. "Capital Moves" illustrates the grim capitalist logic underlying the processes of globalization -- in RCA's case on a regional and later an international scale.

Related books are Margaret Graham's "RCA and the VideoDisc," Robert Sobel's "RCA," and Alfred Chandler's "The Electronic Century." Although each of these has a diffent purpose and scope, they are all good books about RCA. Jefferson Cowie's "Capital Moves" perfectly complements them and fills a gap in understanding why some American industries "vanished" in a generation. It is a sad story that didn't have to be.