Global Labour Journal

The WFTU – Hydroponic Stalinism

Dan Gallin — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 12:25:55 PST

Review of Rohini Hensman's 'Workers, Unions, and Global Capitalism: Lessons from India'

Mallika Shakya — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 12:25:55 PST

Review of Chris King-chi Chan's 'The Challenge of Labour in China: Strikes and the Changing Labour Regime in Global Factories'

Elaine Sio-ieng Hui — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 12:25:54 PST

Review of Asbjørn Wahl's 'The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State'

Christian Dufour — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 12:25:53 PST

Karl Marx, Class Struggle and Labour-Centred Development

Benjamin Selwyn — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 12:25:52 PST

Karl Marx has often been interpreted as formulating an economic determinist, Eurocentric and historically linear conception of human development. Where they exist, such interpretations understand ‘development’ as capitalist modernisation. If correct, this critique leaves Marxism ill-equipped to interpret and contribute to transformations of the conditions of labouring classes under neoliberal globalisation. This article argues against such interpretations by discussing how, for Marx, the form and content of class struggles, their relations to the national state, and their articulation through the world system were the key to understanding divergent processes of human development. Marx’s insights are particularly relevant under contemporary globalised capitalism. This article argues, further, that Marx provides us with the basis for formulating a labour-centred approach to human development and development studies.

Work and Employment Relations in a Globalized World: The Emerging Texture of Transnational Labour Regulation

Ludger Pries et al. — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 12:25:51 PST

While globalization has led to what can – with reference to Karl Polanyi – be referred to as a disembedding of the labour market from its nationally segmented settings, recent decades bring about a development identifiable as a ‘countermovement’. As the text shows, drawing on the example of European Works Councils and International Framework Agreements, this process of ‘re-embedding’ takes place through a network of different measures of labour regulation. It is for this reason that establishing a relational perspective on cross-border phenomena in the field of labour relations can count as a central future aim in this strand of research.

The ILO’s Domestic Worker Convention (C189): Challenging the Gendered Disadvantage of Asia’s Foreign Domestic Workers?

Stuart C. Rosewarne — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 12:25:50 PST

The International Labour Organization’s Domestic Worker Convention, resolved in June 2011 and soon to come into force, is regarded as a watershed in the struggle by a host of civil society groups to get paid domestic work formally recognised, draw such work out of the shadows and secure employment rights and protections for this overwhelmingly female workforce. In covering all paid domestic work, the Convention can also be seen as an important initiative in promoting decent work for migrant workers and especially the many recruited from Southeast Asia and South Asia. However, improvements in employment rights and conditions will likely be frustrated by the inadequacies of the ILO as a global institutional force able to engage member nation states as well as by the entrenched structural inequities in international labour markets marked by barriers based on gender, race and ethnicity, nationality and religion and irregular employment. Progress will depend on the effectiveness of those civil society groups which were instrumental in the negotiation of the Convention to maintain the momentum to break down the barriers and states’ reluctance to implement measures that abolish labour market disadvantage.

FLA Investigation of Foxconn in China

Auret van Heerden — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 04:06:05 PDT

Review of Michael Burawoy and Karl Von Holdt's Conversations with Bourdieu – The Johannesburg Moment

Ari Sitas — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 04:06:05 PDT

Review of Anita Chan's 'Walmart in China'

Bridget Kenny — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 04:06:04 PDT