Seaborne trade is the backbone of the world economy. About 90 percent of world trade is transported by ships. Since World War II, shipbuilding has gone through major changes. While the global construction volume increased enormously, British initial dominance was first undermined by Japanese competition from the 1950s, but then Japan was in turn overtaken by South Korea in the 1990s, only to be outcompeted by the People's Republic of China since the 2008 crisis. Labour processes and employment relations have changed dramatically during these shifts. In twenty-four case studies, covering all continents, this volume reconstructs the development of the world's shipbuilding and ship repairs industries, and the workers' responses to these historical transformations.

This collective volume aims at studying a variety of labour history themes in Southern Europe, and investigating the transformations of labour and labour relations that these areas underwent in the 19th and the 20th centuries. The subjects studied include industrial labour relations in Southern Europe; labour on the sea and in the shipyards of the Mediterranean; small enterprises and small land ownership in relation to labour; formal and informal labour; the tendency towards independent work and the role of culture; forms of labour management (from paternalistic policies to the provision of welfare capitalism); the importance of the institutional framework and the wider political context; and women’s labour and gender relations.

This important study details one of the most monumental industrial undertakings in history from an economic geographic perspective.

The U.S. shipbuilding industry now confronts grave challenges in providing essential support of national objectives. With recent emphasis on renewal of the U.S. naval fleet, followed by the defense builddown, U.S. shipbuilders have fallen far behind in commercial ship construction, and face powerful new competition from abroad. This book examines ways to reestablish the U.S. industry, to provide a technology base and R&D infrastructure sustaining both commercial and military goals. Comparing U.S. and foreign shipbuilders in four technological areas, the authors find that U.S. builders lag most severely in business process technologies, and in technologies of new products and materials. New advances in system technologies, such as simulation, are also needed, as are continuing developments in shipyard production technologies. The report identifies roles that various government agencies, academia, and, especially, industry itself must play for the U.S. shipbuilding industry to attempt a turnaround.