This book broadens the research on the underworld of precarious and not-represented workers, through a selection of original case studies from across the globe written by leading experts. The book unveils the working conditions affecting this vast labour force that is so important to capital accumulation in the global age. It also helps us to understand the forms and processes of organization that these groups of workers, almost on an everyday basis, put in place to improve their working conditions and lived experiences.

'All in all, the chapters of the volume provide insightful material 'about how different forms of precarious work are linked to speci?c institutional changes in the labour market and laws governing it but also how they are linked to each other'. . . Situated in the ?eld of Global Labour Studies, the volume goes beyond one of the most central weaknesses of the discipline: its optimistic bias. By systematically including cases in which trade failed or chose not to engage in the organization of precarious workers, the contributions pave the way to a deeper understanding of the challenges within this ?eld.' - British Journal of Industrial Relations With the renaissance of market politics on a global scale, precarious work has become pervasive. This edited collection explores the spread across a number of economic sectors and countries worldwide of work that is invariably insecure, dirty, low-paid, and often temporary and/or part-time. The first part of this cross-disciplinary book analyses the different forms of precarious work that have arisen over the past thirty years in both the Global North and South. These transformations are captured in ethnographically orientated chapters on sweatshops, day labour, homework, Chinese construction workers unpaid contract work, the introduction of insecure contracting into the Korean automotive industry, and the insecurity of Brazilian sugarcane cutters. The case studies all shed light upon how the nature of work and the workplace are changing under the pressures of neoliberal capitalism and what this means for workers. In the second part the editors and contributors then detail some of the ways in which precarious workers are seeking to improve their own situations through their efforts to counter the growth of precarity under neoliberal capitalism, efforts that involve collectively exploring forms of resistance to work restructuring and the failures of traditional trade unions to fully engage with precarious work's growth. Illustrating the impacts of the expansion of precarious work, this book will appeal to students, academics and those generally interested in the issues of the global economy, the reworking of labour markets, the impacts of neoliberal capitalism and ethnographies of the working poor in various parts of the world. Contributors include: L.L.M. Aguiar, M.J. Barreto, S. Chauvin, J. Cock, B. Garvey, M. Gillan, D. Hattatoglu, A. Herod, L. Huilin, K. Joynt, R. Lambert, P. Ngai, J. Tate, M. Thomas, E. Webster, A. Yun

An unprecedented number of children around the world are working today. This volume is a must-have, up-to-date survey for student research. In the 15 examined countries, poverty, lack of education, gender inequity, the demands of the global marketplace, and easy sex tourism are key factors contributing to the child labor crisis. Each chapter depicts the child labor scene in a particular country, along with detailed conditions, the history of the problem, the present state of child labor, political policies, and social aspects, and the ultimate outlook.

Child labor is a complex social and political issue with a long and evolving history. The phenomenon of child labor, including prostitution, has been a focus of debate especially in the last two centuries and continues to generate fierce reactions. An unprecedented number of children around the world are working today. This volume is a must-have, up-to-date survey for student research. In the 15 examined countries, poverty, lack of education, gender inequity, the demands of the global marketplace, and easy sex tourism are key factors contributing to the child labor crisis. Each chapter depicts the child labor scene in a particular country, along with detailed conditions, the history of the problem, the present state of child labor, political policies and social aspects, and the ultimate outlook.

The scope of the topic is wide, and basic definitions of what constitutes child and labor vary from country to country. International laws and conventions promoted by labor and human rights groups are establishing new norms to counteract harsh cultural and economic realities, but these and similar local laws are hard to enforce. These issues are explored, and vignettes from the children's point of view add a human-interest angle to the narrative.

This book refutes prevailing theories that attribute post-1950 state per capita income convergence to (1) neo-classical adjustment mechanisms, (2) institutional sclerosis, and (3) southern industrialization. Wheat and Crown argue that southern income was low because of slavery's legacy--sharecropping, agricultural dependence, low urbanization, poor education, high Black population percentages, and low wage rates. The legacy's dominant feature was the sharecropper-tenant farmer system, which replaced slavery. Sharecropping was the foundation of southern poverty. Sharecropping's collapse, beginning around 1950, affected all of the other features of slavery's legacy. For example, millions of sharecroppers out-migrated from the South, shifting poverty to the North and lowering the South's Black percentage. This out-migration, white in-migration, and the civil rights movement jointly raised educational attainment in the South, further boosting southern income. Southern industrialization had only a marginally significant effect. In 1950's high income region, the West, the transport cost element in the price of manufactured goods shrank because of (1) transportation improvements and (2) rapid manufacturing growth, which reduced the need for long distance imports from the Manufacturing Belt. The resulting decline in the West's relative cost of living led to wage adjustments. Consequently, the West--despite having the highest manufacturing growth rates--had the nation's lowest per-capita income growth rates. Agricultural decline and educational gains stimulated income growth in the Plains. Nationally, per-capita employment gains were a strong influence.

Wages have always been a major expense for businesses. This fascinating book studies the impact of spiralling wage demands in a cotton factory in Ghent during the 19th century and the efforts of management to reduce this cost through investment in new technology and stricter employment policies. The workers' responses to wage cutting are also considered.
The importance of this study lies in its unique collection of wage data -- more than 200 pay books and 100 ledgers from the Voortman cotton factory -- which show, in great detail, the hourly, daily and yearly wages for all categories of workers between 1835-1913. Various aspects of wages are addressed including: changing living and working conditions; wages of women and children in relation to the 'family wage economy'; wage comparison between workers at Voortman and workers in other industries and regions; productivity, purchasing power and industrial relations.

This book showcases issues of work and employment in contemporary India through a critical lens, serving as a systematic, scholarly and rigorous resource which provides an alternate view to the glowing metanarrative of the subcontinent's ongoing economic growth in today's globalized world. Critical approaches ensure that divergent and marginalized voices are highlighted, promoting a more measured perspective of entrenched standpoints. In casting social reality differently, a quest for solutions that reshape current dynamics is triggered. The volume spans five thematic areas, subsuming a range of economic sectors. India is a pre-eminent destination for offshoring, underscoring the relevance of global production networks (Theme 1). Yet, the creation of jobs has not transformed employment patterns in the country but rather accentuated informalization and casualization (Theme 2). Indeed, even India's ICT-related sectors, perceived as mascots of modernity and vehicles for upward mobility, raise questions about the extent of social upgrading (Theme 3). Nonetheless, these various developments have not been accompanied by collective action - instead, there is growing evidence of diminished pluralistic employment relations strategies (Theme 4). Emergent concerns about work and employment such as gestational surrogacy and expatriate experiences attest to the evolving complexities associated with offshoring (Theme 5).

In August 1914 the German labour movement did not oppose the decision to go to war, and workers responded with as much enthusiasm as other social strata: one of the most powerful labour movements in the world failed to live up to the ideal of class solidarity. The movement's relations with foreign workers, particularly Polish coal miners, in the Ruhr in the decades before the war foreshadowed this failure. The rural origins of the Polish migrants and their traditional Catholic religious beliefs led most observers, including their fellow workers as well as recent historians, to view them as obstacles to the labour movement and resistant to working-class consciousness. This study, based on extensive research in archives in Germany and Poland, documents a very different history - one in which Polish miners' militancy exceeded that of native miners, and whose relations with German workers were marked by both xenophobia and solidarity.

This provocative book makes the case that trade unions must intervene in economic restructuring in order to halt the erosion of job quality in today's economy. The author, who is a professor at the Kogod College of Business Administration at The American University in Washington, D.C., specializes in labor-management relations and the social responsibilities of business and has brought both of these disciplines into focus for this book. Jacobs forcefully argues that collective bargaining is not merely a means to determine wages and benefits, but is also a powerful social tool that can move the corporation toward more socially responsible and responsive forms. While American unions are currently very weak, their regeneration should be a matter of public concern.

Jacobs considers shopfloor organization, health-care delivery, and public education in the United States, as well as the process of democratization in Poland and South Africa, and explains how transformational bargaining by trade unions may promote favorable outcomes. The author explores the conventional wisdom in industrial relations theory and argues that business unionism, which focuses on bread and butter, is not an adequate model for American labor. Instead, unions can and must negotiate profound change in organizations. Unions can win bargains that preserve jobs, alter product lines, extend ownership, and redraw organizational boundaries. These possibilities are illuminated in case studies on such topics as auto manufacturing, public schools and Italian unionism.

This book addresses the complicated question of how markets and consumption create the possibilities for cross-cultural exchanges and the multicultural pleasures of omnivorous consumption, whilst at the same time building new boundaries and distinctions, paving the way for new exploitative relationships, and initiating novel modes of status and capital accumulation. The contributors identify that the divide between the economic and ethical dimensions of globalisation has never seemed in sharper relief. With the workings of global markets at odds with fostering cosmopolitan social change, this collection addresses the question of whether we should assume that market logics and consumptive practices conflict with cosmopolitan agendas. It also explores whether the imperatives of economic globalisation and individual consumption practices are opposed to cosmopolitan prospects for global solidarities. Cosmopolitanism, Markets and Consumption will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including in the social sciences, businesses and marketing studies.

This is the first book that takes a theoretical approach to the effects of international immigration by considering the current economic topics confronted by more highly developed countries such as Japan. Developed here is the classic trade model by Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson, McDougall's basic model of the international movement factor, the urban-rural migration model by Harris-Todaro, and Copeland-Taylor's well-known model in the field of environmental economics by introducing new trends such as economic integration including free trade and factor mobility between countries at different stages of development. Coexistence of two types of immigrants - legal, skilled workers and illegal, unskilled workers - without any explicit signs of discrimination, transboundary pollution caused by neighboring lower-developed countries with poor pollution abatement technology, difficult international treatment of transboundary renewable resources, the rapid process of aging and population decrease, the higher unemployment rate of younger generations, and the serious gap between permanent and temporary employed workers-are also considered in this book as new and significant topics under the context of international immigration. Taking into account the special difficulties of those serious problems in Asia, each chapter illustrates Japanese and other Asian situations that encourage readers to understand the importance of optimal immigration policies. Also shown is the possibility that economic integration and liberalization of international immigration should bring about positive effects on the economic welfare of the developed host country including the aspects of natural environment, renewable transboundary resources, the rate of unemployment, and the wage gap between workers.

Europe's mass unemployment and the call for extensive labour market de-regulation have, perhaps more than any other contemporary issue, impassioned political debate and academic research. With contributions from economists, political scientists and sociologists, Why Deregulate Labour Markets? takes a hard look at the empirical connections between unemployment and regulation in Europe today, utilizing both in-depth nation analyses and broader-based international comparisons. The book demonstrates that Europe's mass unemployment cannot be directly ascribed to excessive worker protection. Labour market rigidities can, however, be harmful for particular groups. The weight of the evidence suggests that a radical strategy of de-regulation would probably cause more harm than benefits for European economic performance.

This book investigates the success story of the fast fashion industry-mainly owned by Chinese migrants-in Prato, Italy. It outlines how Prato has become the center of a value chain stretching from suppliers in China and Turkey all the way to buyers in Europe. Despite this, a policy attacking Chinese entrepreneurship has been devised and implemented in Prato. This volume analyzes said policy against the crisis of Prato's textile industry. Based on the author's 15 years of fieldwork in Prato, the book sheds light on the entangled processes of city making and the restructuring processes linked to capital accumulation by tackling issues of governance, territory, migration, division of labor, labor mobility, housing, and human rights.

Outlining important policy requirements for Bangladesh to become an upper middle-income country, the book presents research work conducted during the project "Changing Labor Markets in Bangladesh: Understanding Dynamics in Relation to Economic Growth and Poverty," sponsored by the International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada. Bangladesh has experienced remarkable economic growth rates over the last decade. The country has recently been upgraded from a low-income country (LIC) to a lower-middle-income country (LMIC) as per the World Bank's classification system. By 2024, the country also aspires to graduate from the United Nation's list of least developed countries (LDC). The 7th five-year plan sets an ambitious target of 8 percent growth in GDP by 2020. There are also steep development targets to be achieved under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. All these will require an enormous leap forward from the current level of economic growth rate and sustaining it in the future. The situation also calls for considerable structural change in the economy, facilitating large-scale economic diversification. Rapid expansion of labor-intensive and high-productivity sectors, both in the farm and nonfarm sectors, is thus crucial for Bangladesh. Further, this should take place in conjunction with interventions to enhance productivity, jobs and incomes in traditional and informal activities where there are large pools of surplus labor. Given its relevance for Bangladesh and applicability to many other developing countries, the book offers a unique and pioneering resource for researchers, industry watchers as well as policy makers.

The authors examine developments in labor standards in global supply chains over the past thirty years, analyzing factors that create challenges and opportunities for improving working conditions. They illustrate the complex dynamics within and among key groups, including brands, suppliers, governments, workers and consumers. Using extended examples from China, Honduras, Bangladesh and the United States, as well as new quantitative evidence, the authors analyze stakeholders and mechanisms that create or obstruct opportunities for improving labor rights. They evaluate key clusters of actors and their interests in order to comprehensively map the complex interactions and relationships that make up global supply chains. Original data and analyses, including four in-depth case studies, present a systematic evaluation of the points of leverage for changing labor standards in sectors including apparel, footwear, and electronics. This exciting new contribution to a burgeoning field of study will benefit scholars of labor rights and human rights, as well as students with an interest in labor and working conditions. It also presents critical information for political scientists, NGOs, and practitioners looking to effect change in working conditions and learn more about key players in the global economy.

Employment security is under pressure in public and private sectors because of fluctuating economic conditions and unstable markets. According to Loseby, the proponents of employment security have been lacking in substantive evidence justifying its existence. The majority of big business explicitly displays its disbelief in the practice through employee lay-off at first sign of economic adversity. Lay-offs are shown to create and prolong a number of socio-economic problems for society. Lack of employment affects personal ego, personal and family stress, and self-identity, as well as financial and economic factors associated with basic needs and success. The analyses of data provides focus on intangible and difficult-to-identify criteria such as employee morale and company loyalty. Productivity and financial ratios are also identified, analyzed, and compared. The author continues to review recommended and widely used strategies. Strengths and weaknesses are analyzed and compared, and successful national and global application of strategies are cited. The evolving corporation of the twenty-first century is reviewed to discern its needs, and to determine applicability of employment security to public or private enterprise. The book will be of interest to executives and all levels of management, human resource executives and personnel staff, in addition to professors of management and their students.

This book examines the global and domestic factors that have influenced the decline of South African manufacturing. Quantitative and econometric techniques are used to analyse the macroeconomic conditions that derive improved performance within the manufacturing sector. Empirical evidence is used to set out policy recommendations that would allow the South African National Development Plan to meet its objectives. This books aims to bring together analysis of industrial policy, competition policy, and merger remedies to produce a framework on how to preserve a competitive environment and support output, investment, and employment growth. It is relevant to those interested in African, development, and labour economics.

By assessing the transition in enterprise-employee relations in China over the six decades since the founding of the nation and the three decades since the implementation of a reform and opening up policy, this book investigates these changes from three key perspectives: occupation, operation and governance. The book chiefly analyzes the unit system structure of enterprises and mechanisms such as apprentice systems inside organizations and proposes a combination of systematic governance and civic governance. Further, it investigates in detail the transition in labor relations in township, state-owned and private enterprises under the contract system, market system and project system, reviews the factors contributing to contradictions in labor relations at different periods, and puts forward options for modifying labor relations in various ways, including their system and structure.

An empirical account of one of India's largest indigenous populations, this book tells the story of the Gonds-who currently face displacement and governmental control of the region's forests, which has crippled their economy. Rather than protesting and calling for state intervention, the Gonds have turned toward an informal economy: they not only engage with flexible forms of work, but also bargain for higher wages and experience agency and autonomy. Smita Yadav conceives of this withdrawal from the state in favour of precarious forms of work as an expression of anarchy by this marginalized population. Even as she provides rich detail of the Gonds' unusual working lives, which integrate work, labour, and debt practices with ideologies of family and society, Yadav illustrates the strength required to maintain dignity when a welfare state has failed.

This book provides a political, economic, and sociological investigation of how neoliberalism shapes 'working class capacities,' or the power of the working class to organize and struggle for its collective interests. Efe Can Gurcan and Berk Mete discuss the global importance of the labor question as it pertains to Turkey. They apply the main theoretical framework of the combined and uneven development of class capacities to Turkish trade unionism. They also address Turkey's recent history of neoliberalization and its repercussions for class capacities, as mediated by national regulations, conservative unionism, and Islamic social assistance networks. Finally, the authors explore how neoliberalism generates intra-class fragmentation through public regulatory mechanisms and cultural differentiation in the sphere of social unionism.

This study focuses on the job evaluation procedures used in the federal government to evaluate all white-collar non-supervisory occupations. It examines the factor and factor weighing methodologies developed by the Civil Service Commission to provide the basis for institutionalized standards used to establish existing pay differences. The Factor Evaluation System (FES) appears responsive to recommendations of comparable worth advocates that the criteria for determining job worth be made explicit and as bias-free as possible. The volume provides an extensive analysis of the new FES in an effort to determine fully its usefulness from the standpoint of such advocacy. The study addresses whether the new FES is more beneficial to female-dominated jobs than the old narrative classification system. Female-dominated jobs, it is discovered, were rated lower on all factors used in the federal government's job evaluation system. Dr. Werwie then goes on to explore why this was the case and whether changing the weights assigned to job factors under the new system would alter the pay relationship between male-and female-dominated jobs. Also examined is the extent to which the factors, dimensions and operational indicators of the FES and other evaluation systems adequately define and measure the job content of female-dominate occupations. The results provide insights which will be useful to administrators and researchers interested in moving current job evaluation systems closer toward the goal of a bias-free evaluation system.

In the decades after World War II, inflation undermined the aspiration for full employment in Australia. This book tells the story of how the Australian state was shaped by the confrontation with monetary instability: a pre-history of neoliberalism.

Traces labor migration of women from Eastern Caribbean to oil-producing countries such as Venezuela, Trinidad, Curaðcao, and especially Aruba. Discusses women's participation in the labor force, gender relations, domestic service, the social and economic position of the migrants, and motherhood. Argues that US investments are an important factor in the migration of Caribbean women"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 57.

How can we be happier, healthier and more satisfied in life? This edited collection examines various dimensions of wellbeing among older people, including its measurement; social, environmental and economic determinants; and how research can be translated into policy to improve quality of life for older people. With an increasingly ageing population across countries and an increasing population of older adults, there is growing interest in improving older people's ability to live healthily and happily. With a focus on retirement and aged care, this book is important reading for those interested in Welfare Economics, Health Economics and Development.

Allison Zippay charts the decline of displaced blue-collar workers, part of the fallout of the past decade's dramatic economic shift from manufacturing to an expanded, service-based economy. She challenges the widely held assumption that these workers have been absorbed into the post-industrial economy and raises questions regarding the real nature of their occupational transition. Actually a case study of the Shenango Valley in western Pennsylvania, where an estimated 6,600 jobs were lost due to plant closings, From Middle Income to Poor is unique in its coverage of the vital issue of economic dislocation. Zeroing in on long-term unemployment and income loss, Zippay finds that many of the displaced workers remain unemployed or underemployed and have slipped in status from middle-income to poor. The volume uses data gathered from interviews to explore how persons with a history of steady blue-collar employment have coped with economic dislocation and downward lifestyle shifts, and in the process presents a path-breaking community portrait of industrial displacement. Early chapters focus on blue-collar workers in the 1980s and the economic and social dimensions of the manufacturing decline. They describe the Shenango Valley community setting, mill work, mill workers, and how the lifestyles of the local residents have been shaped by long-standing blue collar traditions. Later chapters investigate the changes in income and employment that prompted a downward slide and examine the processes of rebuilding. Chapter Seven cites incidences of depression and other emotional distress as well as changes in perception of self and community. The final chapter discusses the implications of thefindings and recommends actions that could improve the displaced workers' social and economic well-being. Sociologists, policy analysts, social workers, and those in the fields of labor relations, social welfare, and social economics will find that this intense scrutiny of the Shenango Valley has far-reaching implications for the national economy in the 1990s and beyond.