Union Strategies,National Institutions and the Use of Temporary Labour in Italian and US Plants

This article analyses variation in the use of temporary labour based on a comparison of two plants of the same US automotive multinational corporation, one in Italy and the other in the United States. We argue that differences in the use of temporary labour are explained by union capacities to make trade‐offs between alternative forms of flexibility as well as trade‐offs in the protection of internal and external groups of workers. Union capacity is dependent on the availability of power resources within different national institutional environments. These resources are shown to influence not only the ways in which temporary workers are used but also bargaining outcomes — including employment conditions — benefiting them.     

Retooling militancy: Labour revitalization and fixed-duration strikes

Despite decades of decline in strike rates, recent scholarship has examined how unions and labour organizations are retooling the strike to confront increasing employer power. This study focuses on a militant labour union and the emergence of an understudied type of strike – the fixed-duration strike – as a source of labour revitalization. Drawing from qualitative data gathered on fixed-duration strikes organized by a union of registered nurses in the United States, I investigate the strategic adaptation of labour militancy and how these strikes overcome the limitations of traditional, indefinite work stoppages. I find that fixed-duration strikes protect the economic interests of nurses and advance their role as patient care advocates, while still imposing financial and reputational costs on employers. These findings suggest that the strategic adaptation of militant tactics, such as the strike, help labour organizations achieve revitalization outcomes like contract victories and enhanced membership activism.     

A ‘Decent Cuppa’: Worker Power and Consumer Power in the Sri Lankan Tea Sector

Consumers are increasingly seen as playing an important role in global labour governance through the establishment of voluntary certification programmes that promise better economic and social conditions for workers in global value chains. In the Sri Lankan tea sector, however, these private forms of governance (Rainforest Alliance (RA), UTZ Certified and the Ethical Tea Partnership (ETP)) at best have no effect and at worst are associated with indecent forms of work. Rather, conditions of work are defended by powerful trade unions that exercise structural power via their strategic position in the value chain and associational power through links with political parties and residual ethnic ties within and between nation‐states. It is evident that through close collaboration between the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the tea sector unions, workers are able to leverage institutional power through both national and international labour standards to reinforce decent work for those at the very bottom of the global value chain.     

租金、力量和绩效——全球价值链背景下对竞争优势的思考

本文以“租金”、“力量”和“绩效”为核心构建概念框架来考察全球价值链中的行动者的竞争优势问题。行动者的竞争优势可以通过多种租金来源而获得,但最终体现为对市场力量和领导力量的掌握,这是由全球价值链的治理特征所决定的。不仅如此,对竞争优势的绩效衡量也应是多样化的．包括经济租金、控制权、在位权和社会就业等,这些绩效目标在一定程度上存在替代关系。     

Industrial Districts and Migrant Labour in Italy

Both the flexibility of labour and wider sociocultural issues have historically been identified as important dimensions of the economic success of Italy's industrial districts. Increasing numbers of labour migrants from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe are now working in industrial districts and living in local communities previously characterized as socially cohesive. Immigration status, Italian employment legislation and the micro‐level conditions prevailing in districts appear as key issues affecting employment relationships for labour migrants, and the social cohesiveness seen to contribute to the success of industrial districts is being undermined through the treatment of labour migrants as people outside the national Italian community in terms of rights and other markers of citizenship.     

Promoting Labour Market Efficiency and Fairness through a Legal Minimum Wage: The Webbs and the Social Cost of Labour

Neoclassical economists, using a competitive demand/supply model of labour markets, typically conclude a legislated minimum wage is harmful to economic efficiency and social welfare. The major theoretical counter-attack by proponents of a minimum wage is to argue that low-wage labour markets are better modelled as monopsonistic. This article develops and formalizes a second theoretical defence for a legal minimum wage law. This defence rests on the concept of the social cost of labour , as originally popularized by Sidney and Beatrice Webb and then further developed by American institutional economists. This analysis is unique in that it continues to use the competitive demand/supply model but nonetheless demonstrates that a legislated minimum wage often simultaneously increases both economic efficiency and fairness, unlike the neoclassical prediction.     

基于渠道控制的市场势力构建模式特征分析

渠道控制能力是研究竞争市场中市场势力构建的核心,其形成对我国企业改变在全球价值链中被低端锁定的现状,增进比较利益至关重要。本文采用案例研究的方法,通过揭示沃尔玛公司在全球价值链中基于渠道控制的市场势力构建模式的特征,阐明了由销售网扩大导致的市场份额提升带来的规模经济和范围经济可以压低产品进价,导致要素的报酬递增并获取丰厚利润;利用先进的信息技术可以降低公司的长期平均成本,尤其是节约物流、订单等环节的运营成本,提高企业的交易效率;通过构建与供应链内关联企业的战略联盟,形成激励相容,可以获取"链"内外部经济和专业化分工带来的效率提升,使得市场份额扩大与先进信息技术引致的成本下降和利益增进可持续。市场份额不断扩大、先进信息技术适时运用、与供应链内关联企业建立的战略联盟这三个维度的形成与互动是沃尔玛提升渠道控制力、构建市场势力的关键。本文的剖析对我国企业,尤其是商业企业的市场势力构建既具有典型的参考价值。又具有普适的借鉴意义。     

Labour Market Dualism and Diversification in Japan

The Japanese labour market has been regarded as ‘dualistic’ in terms of employment status (regular vs non‐regular). While it is true, this perspective misses recent changes in regular employment in terms of labour flexibility. The government has attempted labour market deregulation since the 1990s to increase the flexibility of not only non‐regular but also regular employment, and the labour market has become more diversified. Labour unions lack power resources to resist these neoliberal changes, however, because of their insufficient access to policy‐making, low union density and a lack of solidarity against the background of economic stagnation and competition under globalization.     

From Towns to Hotels: Changes in Mining Accommodation Regimes and Their Effects on Labour Union Strategies

A radical shift in the spatial organization of the global mining industry has occurred over the last three decades. I argue that the shift from the traditional mining town, where workers lived close to the mine, to the new model of long distance commuting, where workers are transported in from distant cities for their shifts, transforms labour union strategies. Drawing on an in‐depth case study from Peru, I show that long distance commuting reduces workers’ capacity to mobilize locally by affecting the dynamics in three social spaces: the mining camp, the home and the union hall. Moreover, and in contrast to prior research, I detail how mining unions have developed new compensatory strategies to maintain their bargaining power.     

Remaking the World of Chinese Labour: A 30‐Year Retrospective

Over the past 30 years, labour relations, and, indeed, the entirety of working‐class politics in China, have been dramatically altered by economic reforms. In this review, we focus on the two key processes of commodification and casualization and their implications for workers. On the one hand, these processes have resulted in the destruction of the old social contract and the emergence of marketized employment relations. This has implied a loss of the job security and generous benefits enjoyed by workers in the planned economy. On the other hand, commodification and casualization have produced significant but localized resistance from the Chinese working class. Up until now, the activities of labour non‐governmental organizations and of the official trade unions have contributed to the state's effort of individualizing and institutionalizing labour conflict resolution through labour law and arbitration mechanisms. Finally, we provide a brief discussion of the impact of 2008's Labour Contract Law and the outbreak of the economic crisis on labour relations. We conclude that the continual imbalance of power at the point of production presents a real dilemma for the Chinese state as it attempts to shift away from a model of development dependent on exports.     

统计分析法在劳动定额中的应用

本文在实践的基础上,针对工厂实际工作中劳动定额存在严重不平衡的问题,对统计分析法进行了探讨。认为:采用期望定额完成率和实际定额完成率之比进行调节,较好地解决了直接引用统计分析法对劳动定额制修订的不足。     

Rule Enactment in a Pan‐European Labour Market: Transnational Posted Work in the German Construction Sector

This article analyses the micro‐level rule enactment of the posting of workers framework in the German construction sector. I examine how actors draw on different power resources in order to influence policies without formal negotiation within transnational workspaces and thereby initiate institutional change. Drawing on interviews with posted workers, managers, unionists, works councillors and labour inspectors I show how transnational subcontracting allows the emergence of different regulatory spaces at national and workplace level. The article concludes that the informal renegotiation of employment relations in transnational workspaces is likely to destabilize the posting framework negotiated at policy level.     

Wages and the Labour Market

In contrast to the traditions of social science, the argument made here is that wage structures are not to be explained by reference to an underlying economic or social rationale through which they contribute to the efficient or smooth functioning of an economy or society. Theories of wages have overstressed coherence and functionality and underplayed conflict and contradictions and the scope for discretionary, random or opportunistic decisions. Wage structures have been held partially in check in the past by institutional and social processes which linked wages across the labour market. Many of these processes, from industry-level pay bargaining to concepts of fair wages, 'going rates' or the family wage, have disintegrated in the 1980s and 1990s. More attention needs to be paid to the role of wages in the redistribution of resources and to the need to re-regulate the labour market.     

Amazon Mechanical Turk and the commodification of labour

Crowd employment platforms enable firms to source labour and expertise by leveraging Internet technology. Rather than offshoring jobs to low‐cost geographies, functions once performed by internal employees can be outsourced to an undefined pool of digital labour using a virtual network. This enables firms to shift costs and offload risk as they access a flexible, scalable workforce that sits outside the traditional boundaries of labour laws and regulations. The micro‐tasks of ‘clickwork’ are tedious, repetitive and poorly paid, with remuneration often well below minimum wage. This article will present an analysis of one of the most popular crowdsourcing sites—Mechanical Turk—to illuminate how Amazon's platform enables an array of companies to access digital labour at low cost and without any of the associated social protection or moral obligation.     

Living at Work: Management Control and the Dormitory Labour System in China

The paper is based on a review of the literature on the use of dormitory labour, in the past and currently within parts of China, especially the Southern Pearl River Delta. It compares the provision of dormitories by firms with provision of housing under paternalist management practices. It explores the benefits that flow from having labour available on tap, as against the potential disadvantages of having short tenure circulating labour as firms aim to move up the value chain which may require the retention of skilled labour with the firm for longer periods.     

全球代工体系下发展中国家俘获型网络的形成、突破与对策——基于GVC与NVC的比较视角

全球价值链(GVC)的分离与整合,形成发展中国家代工者与发达国家的跨国公司或国际大购买商四种现实对接关系集合。其中,俘获型网络治理关系成为发展中国家在现有国际贸易格局下不得不接受的既成事实,由此造成发展中国家的代工企业无法实现功能升级与链的升级的高端价值链攀升过程。俘获型网络的产生源自发达国家的跨国公司所具有的技术势力和国际大购买商所具有的市场势力,因此,发展中国家摆脱GVC背景下被俘获关系的出路在于基于国内市场空间的国内价值链(NVC)的培育。从NVC与GVC的比较视角出发,本文探讨了构建发展中国NVC的内在决定条件以及由NVC向GVC转变的可行路径,并据此提出中国代工企业如何在NVC条件下消除由俘获型网络向均衡型网络转化中的障碍因素,以及相应可实施的四种策略选择。     

Institutional Solutions to Precariousness and Inequality in Labour Markets

It has become widely assumed that the standard employment relationship (SER) is in irreversible decline in industrialized societies. However, non‐standard and precarious work relationships often complement the SER via labour market transitions, and are not displacing it as the focal point of labour market regulation. The co‐ordination and risk management functions of the SER continue to be relevant in market economies, and the SER is adjusting to new conditions. The SER has a complex and evolving relationship to gender and to social stratification. In the European context where the SER originated and achieved its clearest legal expression, institutional solutions to precariousness and inequality are being developed, the most innovative of which avoid simple deregulation in favour of integrated policy responses involving a range of complementary regulatory mechanisms.     

The Domestic Sources of Differences in Labour Market Policies

In this article we analyse what drives both the specific choices and the relative amount of change in labour market policies in two countries, Britain and Spain, in the 1990s. Although we find more substantial and radical labour market reform in Britain, Spain experienced greater union inclusion in policy‐making. We examine the roles of economic institutions and the ideology of the governing party and find that neither accounts satisfactorily for the labour market changes in our cases. Domestic political variables, especially electoral factors and the power and autonomy of government, give more insight into the similarities and differences between the two countries.     

The Korea Labour 'Problem'

This article documents the rise of organized labour and the emergence of overt industrial conflict in the Republic of Korea since democratization in 1987, and the crisis of world competitiveness of Korean industry to which the gains of organized labour contributed. Based on an analysis of the characteristics of the actors in the Korean industrial relations system, the nature of the conflict and its consequences are assessed. It is argued that, in forcing the pace of economic restructuring towards high-tech/high-wage sectors, organized labour, often characterized by state and business elites as a 'problem', may turn out to be a progressive force.