Labour’s lines of flight: Rethinking the vulnerabilities of transnational capital

This article investigates the possibilities for diffusing trade union power across space through the lens of the Driving Up Standards (DUS) campaign, a public transport sector initiative between two American unions, the SEIU and IBT, and the British T&G. I argue that the DUS highlights the continuing resonance of scalar analysis, despite recent criticisms of combining topological and territorial understandings of space ( Marston et al., 2005). By expanding the scale of their resistance to transnational corporations, the unions involved multiply the connections amongst countervailing forces and thus also the points of corporate vulnerability which can be targeted. Moreover, although the possibilities for transnational industrial action may be minimal, this does not give a full account of unions’ strategic position. Comparing recent developments in union campaigning methods to Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of lines of flight, the article traces the campaign’s many micro-segmentations as it seeks to exploit the contingencies of space by leveraging not only the uneven distribution of union power in a TNC, but also the uneven practices and expectations of states, consumers, and shareholders in different national environments. The paper concludes by emphasising the importance of combining spatial and temporal lenses, as the inconclusive outcomes of the campaign illustrate the protracted character of transnational labour struggles and the importance of attrition.