Suchergebnisse

The enlargement of the European Union provides opportunities for members to be mobile in seeking various forms of permanent and non-permanent employment, particularly temporary work and contract labour. These changing conditions require quick reactions, overcoming soft issues such as language barriers and coping with culture clashes and political issues that could create problems for the worker. While the influx of foreign workers may bring much needed skills and meet the labour demands of the sector, the existence of an irregular workforce can have an impact on labour market conditions, local economy and health and safety measures. Currently, the use of foreign workers and contractors on construction sites has been identified as one of the major issues confronting clients, employers and unions. This paper will present the benefits and disadvantages of employing foreign workers and contractors in the Swedish construction sector and why the need to examine their working environment.

Workers' rights, fundamental to democracy, are under attack across the world—nowhere more so than in Europe.

The Korean economic miracle of the 1980s drastically altered the regional labor landscape. Once a major labor exporter, Korea has become a prime destination for migrant workers from developing countries due to a severe shortage of unskilled production workers in small- and medium-size industries. Also, Korean workers had developed the so-called "3-D syndrome," an aversion to difficult, dangerous and dirty jobs in factories and sought relatively higher-paying employment in the construction sector. Of the three types of migrant workers ñ the legal employee, the industrial and technical trainee and the undocumented migrant worker, the latter two, in general, are made to endure long working hours, low wages and poor working conditions. In some cases, the trainees receive the least in terms of wages, even less than the undocumented worker because of the Industrial and Technical Training Program for Foreigners (ITTP). The ITTP prevents them from acquiring proper working status and benefits. However, undocumented workers have the least protection from abuse since employers routinely threaten them with deportation. Protests in the mid-1990s forced the implementation of a measure ordering employers to pay at least the minimum wage directly to the workers, reducing the chances of exploitation by agencies handling remittances. In 1998, the Working After Training Program for Foreigners (WATP), which allowed trainees who pass certain skills tests after a two-year period to enjoy workers' rights under the Standard Labor Act and the Minimum Wages Act, was introduced amid protest that it was as flawed as the ITTP. Government likewise announced its intention to strengthen the monitoring of undocumented migrant workers and freeze the total quota of trainees. Pro-migrant workers activists are seeking the implementation of the Employment of Foreign Workers Act as an alternative scheme to maximize the economic benefits from the inflow of unskilled migrant workers without discriminating against them economically and socially. But the ...

Beginning in 1993, Israel began importing large numbers of foreign workers, replacing its traditional Palestinian labor force. This article presents a descriptive history and theoretical analysis of the migration, placing it in the context of Israel's reliance on noncitizen labor from the occupied territories. Dual labor market theory is particularly helpful in analyzing labor migration to Israel, but only by also analyzing the determinants of state policy can we understand how these recent flows began. The Israeli case thus suggests a cumulative model of the initiation of labor migration flows: structural factors create a predisposition toward use of foreign labor, and political factors determine whether and how that predisposition will be actualized.