1.5 Who loses from the Global
Shift and Globalisation?
Deindustrialisation - MEDCs
Deindustrialisation
• The decline in the number of people
employed in the secondary sector as
manufacturing industries have closed.
• Deindustrialised areas include south Wales
(incl. ‘The Valleys’), northeast England
(Tyneside, Wearside, Teesside) and the Ruhr
region of Germany and the ‘Rust Belt’ area of
the north eastern USA e.g. Detroit.
north east England
The Ruhr Region of
Germany –
Cities include
Dortmund, Bochum,
Duisburg
The ‘Rust Belt’ of USA
Change in total number of
manufacturing jobs in
metropolitan areas, 19542002.
brown >58% loss
Factors leading to Deindustrialisation:
• WHAT? decline in manufacturing
• WHERE? Regions of North America and Europe
• WHEN? That had industrialised in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries and really declined around the 1980s (late
twentieth century).
Reasons for deindustrialisation:
• many products at the end of their life cycle - newer
products have replaced the old.
• Outmoded production methods have been replaced by
newer technologies requiring less labour
• Labour has clung to old practices and there has been poor
labour management
There is competition from cheaper locations with low labour
costs
LEDCs
BRIC
NICs
RICs
There was recession in the 1980s.
GDP change in USA
• oil price rises OPEC 1970s
• rapid inflation followed
• tight government policy to control
inflation (Cut in spending)
• Mrs. Thatcher UK and President
Reagan USA
Government support for industries such as coal and steel has
been removed.
British Steel PLC was a major British steel producer. It originated
as a nationalised industry, the British Steel Corporation (BSC),
formed in 1967. This was converted to a public limited company,
British Steel PLC, and privatised in 1988. It was once a
constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The company merged with a
Dutch steel company to form Corus Group in 1999. Corus taken
over by Tata Steel (of India) in 2007.
Firms have needed to rationalise production.
When a company, system, or industry is rationalised, it is made more
efficient, usually by getting rid of staff and equipment and sites that are
not essential.