Changes in the international environment, from the stagflation of the 1970s to the globalization of capital markets in the 1990s, have challenged the ability of all advanced welfare states to maintain postwar achievements of full employment, social security and social equality. Nevertheless, national responses and actual performance differed greatly. This two-volume study examines the adjustment to external economic challenges over three decades in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom Volume I presents comparative analyses of differences in the vulnerabilities and capabilities of these countries, in the effectiveness of their policy responses, and in the role of values and discourses in the politics of adjustment Volume II presents in-depth analyses of the experiences of the countries, including special studies on the participation of women in the labour market, early retirement, the liberalization of public services and international tax competition.

Mass Unemployment and the State shows that domestic political arrangements - the character of party competition, the relationship between interest organizations and the state, and underlying assumptions about the purpose of political authority - have mattered greatly to the economic and labor market policies that European governments pursued in response to the problem of unemployment from the early 1970s to the 2000s. The book concentrates on four European countries: Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden. All these countries have been celebrated as employment "miracles," but for different reasons, and at different points in time. Low unemployment was the linchpin of political arrangements in West European states in the first decades after the Second World War. When mass unemployment became a threat once more in the 1970s, Austria and Sweden - where post-war political arrangements remained intact - responded more forcefully than Denmark and the Netherlands, where political arrangements were already changing. This set these four countries on different paths, with enduring (and sometimes unexpected) political, economic, and social consequences. Political arrangements mattered to economic policies in the 1970s and 1980s, and to labor market policies in the 1990s and 2000s.

This open access book provides a glimpse into the Japanese management technique known as "Kaizen," and the ways it has been disseminated around the developing world. The novelty of this book is three-fold: it provides a contextualized view of the mechanisms of initiatives implementing Kaizen in developing countries; compared with productivity studies, it places the relationship between workers and managers at the center of inquiry, reflecting the intent of SDG8 concerning decent work and economic growth; and it provides an overview of the heterogeneity of Kaizen in terms of geography and firm size. This book explores how improving management techniques can support firms' productivity and quality. Given its wide range of case studies from across Africa, Asia and Latin America, this book will be of value to scholars, policymakers and advocates of sustainable development alike.

Violence, deception, fraud and abuse have always been commonplace occurrences for migrants, not only in their final country of destination but also in their countries of origin and countries of transit. In today's world, the link between mobility and security issues is ever-increasing. Acknowledging this, how can we work to protect and improve migrants' rights? Is the protection for migrants offered by the EU sufficient as-is, or is a more integrated approach that requires greater cooperation from migrants' country of origin called for? What role can the private sector play in all of this? In this book, Borraccetti brings together contributions that analyse how migrant exploitation can be combatted. All essays focus on the protection and promotion of human rights and pay particular attention to the rights of children and other vulnerable people.

This detailed 1996 study contributes to an expanding field of interest: the social history of industrial employers. Using previously untapped primary sources, Organised Capital explores the emergence of employers' organisations in northern England and analyses their policies during the heyday of collective activity. Arthur McIvor evaluates the impact of trade unionism, state intervention, war, economic recession and changing product markets on these organisations, charting their role and patterns of growth. He challenges notions of a monolithic employer group and crude economic determinism, while also rejecting 'revisionist' accounts of weak and ineffective employers. Instead, he reaches a more balanced appraisal of these institutions' role in capital-labour relations and the pursuit of employers' class interests. This book will be of interest both to historians and to students of industrial relations.

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.

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.

Against the backdrop of a robust economy, hundreds of thousands of people in this country remain out of work for long periods of time, causing economic and psychological hardships for entire families. "Hardest TimeS" examines in depth what happens to men, and to their families, when they remain out of work for longer than six months, a period the government designates as long term unemployment. Cottle examines long term unemployment as a traumatic event, which creates in those who experience it conditions resembling symptoms of loss and post-trauma. Through the words of men who have experienced long term unemployment, he demonstrates that work is crucial to the formation of a man's identity, and that without work, many men often find no purpose for living. The in-depth studies that Cottle undertook reveal here why some men abandon their families or, in some instances, are driven to commit murder or suicide in the face of lingering unemployment. These often heart wrenching stories encourage readers to consider the implications of long term unemployment for the men who experience it, the families who endure it, and the society that tolerates it.

Cottle's approach demonstrates that unemployment cannot be examined strictly in statistical terms, but that ultimately it must be explored in human terms, for it affects both the unemployed worker and his family. Instead of treating long term unemployment as simply another social problem, Cottle argues that it must be treated as a serious, often life-threatening, disorder, whose cure is clearly discernible. By reading the words of these men, the reader will understand how, even in this time of shifting gender roles, men in large measure still define themselves by the work they do, rather than the relationships that they cultivate. This unique approach to the problem of long term unemployment gives a human face to the problem and encourages readers to rethink the nature of working and not working and its special importance to men.

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).

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.

The two historical debates studied here are concerned with the impact of technological change on unemployment and on the economy generally. The topic is of enduring interest among both economists and the public at large. The history of these 20th century debates has not previously been studied in detail, and the book provides valuable insight into the evolution of the understanding of a fundamental issue in the economy. By providing insight into idea evolution and economic methodology, the book is a valuable description of the ways in which economists work and react to each other.

This book discusses youth unemployment in post-revolutionary Tunisia, paying particular attention to the so-called skill mismatch. Youth unemployment was one of the major factors triggering the Tunisian revolution, and continues to be a central socio-economic challenge. The Tunisian labour market is marked by a strong increase of higher education graduates while the economic system is dominated by sectors mainly employing a less qualified labour force. This study investigates current labour market trends, and provides insights into the underlying causes of persisting high youth unemployment. The author argues that economic crisis, difficult political conditions since 2011, and inefficient labour market policies did not foster sufficient job creation, and that special attention needs to be paid to the educational causes of the skill mismatch in youth employment in future sustainable development models.

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.

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.

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.

Migration - both within and between countries - is increasingly one of the world's most important policy issues. The faster the Indian economy grows, the larger will be the geographical redistribution of the workforce from localities of low to those of high employment growth. Thus, territorial mobility is fundamental both to realizing the full economic potential of India's people and to allowing the population to escape from rural poverty. The book analyses the decisive factors in labour migration. Based upon a thorough and robust examination of migrants to three slum localities of Delhi stretching over four decades, the author examines why people migrate, the circumstances of their decision and their experience at their destination. He investigates the myths of urban policy - that "rural development" will reduce migration to the cities, that "growth poles" can be created to divert migrant flows, and that government has the power to influence significantly migration scales and directions while pursuing essentially unpredictable market-driven economic growth. Testing the essential theoretical basis for urban policy in India, the book is of interest to academics studying migration of labour and urbanization, and those interested in South Asian Studies.

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.

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.

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.

Are migrant workers needed to "do the jobs that locals will not do" or are they simply a more exploitable labor force? Do they have a better "work ethic" or are they less able to complain? Is migrant labor the solution to "skills shortages" or actually part of the problem? This book provides a comprehensive framework for analyzing the demand for migrant workers in high-income countries. It demonstrates how a wide range of government policies, often unrelated to migration, contribute to creating a growing demand for migrant labor. This demand can persist even during economic downturns. The book includes quantitative and qualitative analyses of the changing role of migrants in the UK economy. The empirical chapters include in-depth examinations of the nature of staff shortages and the use of migrant workers in six sectors: health; social care; hospitality; food production; construction; and financial services.
The book's conceptual framework and empirical findings are of importance to academic and policy debates about labor immigration in all high-income countries. The final chapter presents a comparative analysis of research and policy approaches to assessing labor shortages in the UK and the US. It examines the potential lessons of the UK's Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) for current debates about labor shortages and immigration reform in the US. The book will be of significant interest to policy-makers, stakeholders, academics and students.

Despite the general decline of trade unions throughout the Western world, unions in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have prospered. Why? Galenson cites their ability to organize white collar workers, the special attention they give to recruitment of women, and their ability to undergo structural change under employer pressure. He analyzes these factors in the belief that if unions in other parts of the world understand why and how unionism is succeeding in Scandinavia, its deterioration may be slowed and even reversed. In doing so, Galenson offers specific advice on how industrial relations professionals should manage to avoid breakdown of existing systems elsewhere. Labor unions, officials, and organization executives, as well as executives throughout the public sectors, will find Galenson's views informative and enlightening.

Although there has been a good deal written about the Scandinavian labor movements in Dano-Norwegian and Swedish, there has been nothing comprehensive in English that deals with the labor movements in the three countries. Nor has there been a systematic analysis of their policies and practices. Galenson provides readers, now, with an account of how unions in the Scandinavian countries have managed to secure the world's highest rates of organization: up to 90% of all who are employed in Sweden, and somewhat less in Denmark and Norway, are trade union members, compared with 15% in the United States. The countries in which they operate are welfare states and are among the wealthiest countries in the world, yet remarkably little is known about the systems of industrial relations that have contributed to these results. Galenson's book will fill that gap and in doing so, make a unique contribution to the determination of policy in other countries.