Labour NGOs: An Alternative Form of Labour Organizing in Indonesia, 1991–1998

Although Indonesia's labour non-government organizations (NGOs) are in many ways unique, they are in fact part of a global surge in non-traditional labour activism, in which international and indigenous labour NGOs have played an important role. This contribution examines the contribution of labour NGOs to the reconstruction of the Indonesian labour movement in the 1990s and its implications for our understanding of the contemporary labour movement more generally. It argues that the Indonesian experience suggests theorists and unionists should broaden their understanding of the labour movement to make room for non-traditional forms of labour movement organizations, such as labour NGOs, that have the potential to (and do) contribute to that movement.     

Outsourcing and the US Labour Market

There is worldwide concern about the vulnerability of the current labour force to displacement by future imported services. In the USA, some have suggested that as much as one‐third of the workforce might be vulnerable to such outsourcing. However, the labour market impacts of this displacement are difficult to assess using purely analytical or statistical approaches. In this paper, simulation methods are used to understand how sensitive the US economy and labour market are to increases in services imports. Specifically, the scenario examined assumes that the share of imported services in total employment increases from 0.8 per cent to 7.25 per cent over a time horizon in which workers are unable to change occupations. In response, it is found that all industries increase their use of imported services and their use of the composite input that is comprised of imported services and tradable labour. With the exception of legal workers, all workers in tradable occupations experience declines in their real wages. Demand for non‐tradable occupations labour rises in the industries that expand the most, while demand falls in shrinking industries. The non‐tradable occupations that are used intensively in the shrinking industries experience declines in real wages, while the real wages rise for workers in non‐tradable occupations used intensively in the expanding industries.     

Technology,labour and the rise of a financial newspaper – the early years of Dagens Industri

The financial newspaper, Dagens Industri, published by the Swedish media conglomerate the Bonnier Group, was not only the first successful financial newspaper in Sweden but also one of few newspapers that managed to internationalise. In this paper, it is argued that the survival and success of Dagens Industri could be attributed to the production model that the paper was made to adopt in order to cope with the special technological and labour market-related circumstances that were present at the time of its creation. This includes the outsourcing of composition and printing, something that allowed the paper to stay out of the labour conflicts that rocked the media industry at the time. It is also shown that, because of the differences in the structure of the labour movement, the challenges met, and the solutions used by the Bonnier Group, differed significantly from those of American newspaper companies.     

Labour Relations and Ethical Dilemmas of Extractive MNEs in Nigeria,South Africa and Zambia: 1950–2000

This article examines the ethical characteristics of MNEs employee relations in developing countries. Specifically, it addresses various ethical issues relating to labour relations and trade unions in extractive industries in Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia. Data collected in these countries indicate that criticisms against MNEs relating to labour issues and labour practices in developing countries are not lessening. The discussion is lent focus and direction through the analysis of critical incidents from the perspectives of various stakeholders: government, oil and mining companies, and leaders of trade unions. Tensions over pay, expatriate employments as against the locals, negotiation rights and employees well-being are evident. The argument advanced is that the MNEs operating in the extractive industries of Africa will have to improve their relations with local employees in order to bridge the legitimacy gaps that exist. An improved mutual understanding between the MNEs and trade unions is required for both actors to have a smooth working relationship.     

Do Immigrant Nurses in Canada See a Wage Penalty? An Empirical Study

The purpose of this study is to analyse the labour market for female immigrant nurses in Canada and to address the following question: does a nurse with foreign educational credentials have the same earning potential compared with a nurse who was educated in Canada? This is part of a more general question on economic discrimination against immigrants. Using data from the confidential master files of the 2001 Canadian Census on Individuals, this study finds that nurses educated outside of Canada do face wage penalties. This indicates that their credentials might not be fully recognized and/or valued in the Canadian labour market for registered nurses. This result is important to the business world since it suggests the possibility of a general finding that immigrant credentials may not be readily transferable and compensated in a new country. This can result in qualified workers not being able to gain meaningful employment and this source of labour might not be adequately used to fill jobs in industries facing labour shortages.     

Firm entry and turnover: the nexus with profitability and growth

The paper presents a new sectoral taxonomy, which classifies industries according to the opportunity and cost of experimentation. Econometric tests show for a sample of 24 countries that in the 1990s ‘entrepreneurial’ industries with a mutable and growing firm population experienced the highest growth in terms of value added and employment, but also the lowest growth of labour productivity. ‘Entrepreneurial’ industries generally earned a better profit-ratio than ‘routinised’ industries with an inertial population. The results are consistent with entrepreneurial theories of market competition, which suggest that entry follows profit opportunities but does not deplete them.      

Cones of diversification in a model of international comparative advantage

The hypothesis that all countries belong to a single cone of diversification is often used in studies of international trade. However, contrary to this hypothesis, the range of capital–labour input ratios in US industries does not encompass the range of capital– labour endowment ratios in the world’s economies. Furthermore, among countries with capital–labour endowment ratios below the range of US capital–labour input ratios, wage rates are much lower than in the US. In this paper, the one-cone hypothesis is assessed relative to a two-cone alternative by clustering countries with similar factor proportions, estimating regressions for gross national product and net exports, testing for equality of coefficients, and approximating the posterior odds on one- and two-cone models. Rejecting the one-cone hypothesis, the paper presents estimates of a two-cone model and considers their implications for factor flows and the prospects of emerging market economies.     

Short‐term Consequences of Trade Reform for Industry Employment and Wages: Survey of Evidence from Colombia

Recent research has focused on the short‐ to medium‐term implications of trade reforms for the labour market outcomes and poverty in poor economies. This article summarises the evidence on the short‐term consequences of the Colombian trade reform initiated in 1985 for industry employment and industry wages. Although the reform reduced manufacturing tariffs on average by 40 percentage points from 1984 to 1994, tariff declines were not significantly associated with labour reallocation across sectors. The reform, however, was associated with bigger declines in relative industry wages in sectors that experienced bigger tariff cuts. This evidence is in line with the predictions of short‐ to medium‐run models of trade in which labour is not mobile across sectors. It is also consistent with the predictions of models where imperfectly competitive industries share rents with workers and trade reduces the firms’ profit margins and thus workers’ rents.     

Factor Prices,Factor Substitution and Exporting in US Manufacturing Affiliates Abroad

This paper uses the unique matched individual parent and affiliate data from the foreign investment survey of the Bureau of Economic Analysis to examine how US firms of different industries and capital intensities at home adapt to lower costs of labour and other host‐country characteristics in their foreign production. We find that foreign affiliates of US multinationals carry their parent firms’ technology with them in producing abroad. That is, affiliates of capital‐intensive parents produce in a relatively capital‐intensive manner wherever they are located. Despite these resemblances to their parents, affiliates produce in a more labour‐intensive manner where labour is cheaper and also where the scale of production is small. We found no evidence that more labour‐intensive firms selected production locations where labour was cheaper. Labour costs dominated the methods of production but not its location. Affiliates that export are more responsive in their factor proportions to the labour costs where they produced than affiliates selling only in their host countries. The probability that an affiliate would export, however, did not seem to be much affected by factor proportions. It was much more closely related to the scale of the affiliate's operations; larger affiliates were more likely to be exporters.     

Return on investment for workplace training: the Canadian experience

One of the central problems in managing technological change and maintaining a competitive advantage in business is improving the skills of the workforce through investment in human capital and a variety of training practices. This paper explores the evidence on the impact of training investment on productivity in 14 Canadian industries from 1999 to 2005. Our productivity analysis demonstrates that in 12 out of 14 industries, training had a positive effect on productivity. However, when the analysis is put within a financial context, the return on investment was positive in only four industries. Faced with negative rates of return, why should managers in most of the industries in the study promote investment in training? Probably the best explanation is that new technology requires an investment in training. The investment in training is necessary just for the firm to maintain its current labour productivity. Employee turnover necessarily impedes the efficacy of training, because trained workers leave, and untrained workers arrive. Thus, training in this instance again is necessary just to maintain current labour productivity.     

Challenging APEC: the Asia Pacific labour network and APEC's human resource development working group

This contribution examines the interaction between the Asia Pacific Labour Network and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). In particular it explores the reasons behind the APEC decision to undertake a project to examine successful practices in training, skills development and other human resource activities that have involved labour, management and government. This marks a departure in APEC activiry which to date has neglected labour issues and excluded labour organizations from any substantive role within APEC. The study examines the relationship of APEC to civil sociery, how human resource development issues fit within APEC, the role of the international labour movement in lobbying APEC and the challenges the labour movement might face in participating in APEC including its Human Resources Development Working Group.     

Can Singapore maintain its competitive edge in manufacturing productivity vis-à-vis China and Malaysia?

This article investigates whether Singapore can maintain its competitive advantage in manufacturing from a labour productivity perspective vis-avis China and Malaysia, which are generally viewed as Singapore's competitors in manufacturing. We also investigate the extent to which China is closing the labour productivity gap with Singapore and Malaysia in technology-intensive segments of manufacturing. Our analysis reveals that China has the potential to develop a high labour-productivity and low-wage manufacturing sector. In terms of manufacturing labour productivity, China is moving towards convergence with Malaysia. Compared with Singapore, China's manufacturing labour productivity is still far behind, especially in key technology-intensive industries like electronics and chemicals, such that it is unlikely for China to catch up with Singapore within a decade.     

Distribution of world income in the Ricardo-Mill model of international trade

Changes in the distribution of world income and relative welfare in response to exogenous changes in country size are investigated in a two country many commodity Ricardo-Mill model of international trade. This inquiry was opened by Dornbusch, Fischer and Samuelson for the case of a continuum of commodities. Attention here is focused on the two and three commodity cases and how the production possibility set changes as commodities become neighbors in the continuum.     

The Effects of Globalisation on the US Labour Mark'et: Service Sectors Considered

How has globalisation affected employment and wages in the United States? Existing studies largely ignore the intersector labour movement between the manufacturing and service sectors by focusing only on the intrasector movement within the manufacturing sector. However, by decomposing the aggregate labour demand in the United States, we find that the intersector movement is more substantial than intrasector movement. Motivated by the decomposition results, this study presents a three‐sector model that includes a manufacturing sector and two service sectors at varying skill intensities. The model shows that offshoring might translate into smaller‐than‐expected wage changes because of the intersector labour movement. In line with the theoretical predictions, two notable empirical results are presented. First, an occupation's exposure to offshoring has non‐significant, albeit negative, effects on wages. Second, the more an occupation is exposed to offshoring, the lower its employment in the manufacturing sector as a share of its total employment. Furthermore, these effects are larger for more routine occupations or those requiring less education.     

Jobs and Exposure to International Trade within the Service Sector in Sweden

To establish in which service industries there is international trade (or it may potentially exist), we calculate locational Ginis for different industries. The basic idea is that from this measure of regional concentration of different activities within a country we can identify industries where there appears to be regional trade, and hence also a potential for international trade. Based on our method, we find that: (i) the number of employed in tradable service appears to be at least as large as in the manufacturing sector, (ii) tradable service is much more skill intensive than manufacturing, and (iii) lately, the employment in tradable service has increased substantially. We argue that the last mentioned result is consistent with the substantial growth of skilled labour in Sweden since the mid‐1990s (Rybczynski effect) and factors leading to increased relative demand for skilled labour. Particularly, increased competition from and offshoring to low‐wage countries seem recently to have had a considerable impact on the creation of skilled jobs and the displacement of less skilled jobs in the tradable sector in Sweden. Furthermore, we apply a similar method as for industries to identify tradable occupations. Using our classification of tradable industries and tradable occupations in a Mincer type wage equation, we find that workers in such industries and occupations receive a wage premia of 12–13 per cent.     

Understanding the international mobility of Chinese temporary workers

Using unique panel data on the temporary movement of Chinese workers to 191 economies during 1992–2015, I investigate the patterns and determinants of labour mobility in the services trade. I estimate a gravity model of labour mobility in two categories, namely overseas labour services and overseas contracted projects. I find that distance (proxy for migration costs) and income are not the most important determinants of the latter. For overseas contracted projects, the dispatch of workers is not driven by their pure economic aims but by the Chinese government's policies and strategies such as its overseas project promotion policy. Furthermore, I employ the difference‐in‐differences estimation method to investigate the impact of this policy upon labour mobility. The results show that the policy of promoting overseas contracted projects has causal and positive effects on labour mobility in construction‐related sectors.     

Migration and institutions: Evidence from internal EU mobility

Despite the formal achievement of the free movement of labour within the EU , the institutional characteristics of the labour markets of the Member States may influence European mobility. The paper seeks empirical evidence of the relationship between labour market institutions and intra‐EU migrations, estimating a gravity model for bilateral migration for the period 2001–11. The results indicate that trade union density negatively correlates with the size of bilateral migrations: destinations with relatively high union density are associated with lower migration inflows. Since these countries tend to have a relatively flat earnings distribution, it is also investigated whether their earnings structure reduces their attractiveness as destinations hindering the access to their labour market. Even if a dependence between the earnings dispersion and migrations is found, trade union density remains the main driver of migration patterns. Clear effects of employment protection on EU mobility are not found.     

进口贸易、R&D溢出与中国制造业的就业变动

本文利用1996～2005年中国制造业的面板数据,实证分析了进口贸易的R&D溢出对中国制造业的就业总量变动的影响及影响的部门差异。研究结果表明,考虑到进口贸易对国内制造业的R&D溢出效应后,中国制造业从发达国家的进口没有通过替代国内生产而减少就业,相反,进口贸易通过R&D溢出增加了整个制造部门的就业。由于技术进步的两面性和各部门要素密集度的不同,进口贸易的R&D溢出对就业的影响存在明显的部门差异。由于R&D投资回收期长、国内企业的技术吸收能力较弱,国内R&D投资和进口贸易的R&D溢出对就业总量的影响具有显著的滞后性。中国劳动力市场中的趋势效应、价格效应和规模效应的存在,使就业变动呈现动态调整的特征。     

Foreign firm characteristics,labour market restrictions and FDI spillovers: Evidence from Moldova

This paper investigates how productivity spillovers from foreign to domestic firms are affected by foreign firm characteristics and labour market conditions in Moldova. We use firm-level administrative panel data and annual survey region-sector indicators of labour market conditions in 2005–2014. Baseline regressions show that domestic firms benefit from backward FDI spillovers, while we find no evidence of horizontal or forward spillovers. Spillover effects are heterogeneous and depend on the ownership structure and age of foreign firms. Domestic firms in upstream sectors benefit from both wholly foreign-owned companies (WFOC) and joint ventures (JV). However, JVs need less time in the market for positive spillovers to materialise, while WFOCs only lead to larger spillover effects when they are older. In regions and sectors where firms experience fewer labour market restrictions, backward FDI spillovers are larger. Interacting foreign firm characteristics with labour market restrictions, we find that spillovers through the labour market channel materialise only for older FDI, regardless of ownership type. The results are in line with our expectation that WFOCs need more time than JVs to develop linkages with local suppliers and lead to spillovers through this channel. Moreover, in developing countries labour market restrictions reduce labour mobility and consequently, the size of FDI spillovers across industries.     

Sharing Economy: Nutznießer oder Opfer institutioneller Inkonsistenzen?

The current rules of the social and economic system have allowed the development of the sharing economy. However, through their spread across numerous industries, institutional inconsistencies and discussions on new regulation requirements have emerged demanding a re-assessment of rules, e.g. in tax laws, social security laws, labour laws and in the regulation of specific industries.