Suchergebnisse

[Extract] When Singapore seceded from the Malaysian Federation in 1968, the fonner British colony - an island entrepot covering just 682.7 square kilometres of land at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula - had few assets other than its human resources, the resolve of its political leaders, and the advice of a fonner UN economist. 1 Despite the paucity of its resources, Singapore has built a highly successful economy over the course of its short history. Singapore embraced globalization in the early 1960s when the People's Action Party (PAP) government committed the city-state to industrialization, largely funded by multinational investment in export-oriented manufacturing. Its rapid industrialization was complemented by infrastructure building, both social and physical. In the late 1970s, the government began to induce the transformation of the low technology, labour intensive economy into one based on high technology and high value-added enterprise. The management of its labour market is one ofthe keys to Singapore's economic success. As Coe and Kelly (2000: 414) note, 'There can be few other places in the world where the social regulation of the labour market has been so consistently and explicitly a central component of national development strategy as it has been in Singapore'. This chapter elaborates the governance of Singapore's socially and politically constructed labour market (See Gospel, Chapter 2 this volmne). Sustained economic growth led to a labour shortage by the late 1970s. The tight labour market was eased by importing foreign workers, and in the 1980s a programme to upgrade the skills of Singapore workers further improved the capacity of the labour market to supply the needs of industry. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, Singapore was developing its workforce to meet the country's aspiration to become a world talent capital. The government increased institutional efficiency in the management of human resources, enabling Singapore to adjust to and recover from several economic crises, most induced by downturns in the world economy, to which the country's global status makes it vulnerable. The adverse effects of economic crises on the local labour market were short-lived and cushioned by the retrenchment offoreign workers, consistent with the government's emphasis on employment growth rather than protection.

New technologies and new forms of work organisation have prompted the adoption by corporate, national, regional and international policy makers and influencers of a broader concept of skills formation than that evoked by 'vocational education and training'. The scope of 'workforce development', framed by human capital theory, is wider than technical expertise, and takes in the social skills, traits and attributes desired by employers, implemented by human resource managers, and propagated by national governments, and that is high on the agenda of regional and international employer, labour and trade union councils. With examples from each of these levels, and with reference to the debates on the nature of skill, the keynote address will review and assess the effect on and the implications for employment relations of skills formation conceptualised as workforce development.

[Extract] Fear by the propertied of the possibility of organised rebellion by the working classes inspired by the revolutionary spirit of France was the principle reason for the passing of the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800 in Britain. There had been statutory regulation of employment relations in Britain before 1799, including combination acts for single trades, but the Combination Acts were the first statutory provisions to deal directly with the institution of trade unionism, albeit to suppress it. Although the Combination Acts were repealed in 1824-1825, trade unions did not gain a formal legality until the passing of the Trade Union Act 1871. Bills enacted in 1906, 1913 and 1927 completed the legislation - both protective and restrictive - that was in place when the British Colonial Office stepped up its encouragement of trade union ordinances in the territories for which it was responsible. Kerr et al. (1960) hypothesised from their 1950s worldwide studies that industrialising countries would become more like each other. An inherent logic of industrialism would lead them to converge on a future of pluralistic industrialism. In the meantime, diversity could be explained, as well as by culture and the stage reached in the industrialization process, by the different ideologies of the industrializing elites. One class of industrialising elites was that of 'colonial administrators', another was 'revolutionary intellectuals', and another 'nationalist leaders'. Dore (1973), following his study of technologically similar manufacturing companies in Britain and Japan, modified the convergence thesis by suggesting that Japan had leapfrogged pluralistic industrialism and was itself the model for others' industrial futures. By being a 'late' developer Japan had more effectively than elsewhere adapted through 'welfare corporatism' the modern bureaucratic equivalent of paternalism. Regular Japanese employees enjoyed lifetime employment, age-based promotion and seniority wages. While these practices can be a source of rigidity (Dore, 1986) they encourage the incorporation of employees into the enterprise culture and result in strong employee commitment. It has been contended that these practices are a 'highly rational and effective means for inducing worker identification with the enterprise and for creating a highly skilled and pliable core of employees adaptable to rapid technological and organisational change' (Moore, 1987, page 143).

There are alternative conceptualizations of the phenomenon of globalization which as yet remain theoretically weak. Further, whether globalization is a tendency towards one global economy or whether it is just another stage in the internationalization of capital remains contested. This paper overviews the context of globalization and labor relations in the countries of the Asia-Pacific region before proceeding to a more detailed analysis of globalization and labor relationss in Indonesia. One reason for attention to the Asia-pacific countries is that the the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (ASEAN and APEC) have become highly significant regional and supra-regional forces in world trade in the 1990s. The rapid industrialization of many Asia-Pacific countries has sensitised them to the global effects of their economies and to their need to be responsive to global and regional developments in trading relationships. Not least in importance here is the determination of the character of labor relations in each of the countries. In particular, labor relations in Indonesia are of global interest because of a number of factors: the stage of Indonesia's industrialization; the linking of trade preferences with the reform of human and worker rights; the role of labour in the socio-political control of the country; the need for Indonesia to decide where to position itself viz-a-viz globalization; the link between the struggle for independent trade unionism and democratization. Emphasizing the regional dimension, the paper concludes that it might be suggested that the future of labor relations in Indonesia may be looked for more in the agendas of ASEAN and APEC than in the historical stages of any one of the Asian industrialized countries.

This paper reviews the history of the National Union of Plantation Workers from its origins in the uncertainties of the political outcome of the end of the British colonial administrations in the Malayan peninsular through to the dramatic changes taking place in the Federation of Malaysia as that country fast reaches industrialised status. From its ethnic place in the plural order of things under the aristocratic led Government of Tengu Abdul Rahman, the Indian-dominated NUPW, it is argued, achieved little in terms of real improvements in the lives of plantation workers as a confrontational union and has not been all that successful in cooperative and other business ventures. As industrial relations have been moulded and remoulded to meet the imperatives of a more national scheme of things and competition for investors and markets stepped up, the NUPW is likely to be increasingly marginalised, overtaken by the rapidity of industrialisation and the structural changes which have accompanied it.

The Singapore government regulates 'non-resident' workers through employment passes and repatriation in economic downturns. 'Non-residents' make up more than a third of Singapore's workforce. Until recently, Singapore's 'non-resident' manual workers have been segregated from mainstream Singapore society, and largely ignored by Singapore's trade unions. However, in late 2012 a group of bus drivers recruited from China, organised an illegal strike, something unknown in Singapore since 1977. Their action exposed to criticism by Singaporeans of the government's reliance on foreign workers. After the strike and subsequent prosecutions and repatriations, some National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) affiliates began to recruit foreign workers into their memberships. This paper reviews the political and social construction of Singapore's workforce, the re-emergence of industrial conflict, and the responses of the Singapore authorities to it. It reflects on the prospects for labour market regulation of partially incorporating foreign workers into its industrial relations system.

[Extract] This chapter is concerned with industrial relations. It is included here because there is a prima facie case that an understanding of international and comparative industrial relations is relevant to understanding the conduct of international business. The focus is on the Asia-Pacific region, where the transformation of industrial relations and the democratisation of industrialising societies are contemporary and related issues. Within the region, where industrialisation was and is based on export-oriented enterprises, the forces of globalisation are often generalised as the context of industrial relations. The fields of industrial relations and human resource management - the criteria for delineation are contentious - together encompass the varied arrangements, methods and processes of the management of people at work. They include rules, attitudes and behaviour in and around the employment relationship. The main parties or 'actors' in these fields are: employees (workers, if you prefer) and their organisations (especially unions); employers (including managers) and their associations; the state, especially its government institutions that regulate employment matters; values, attitudes and behaviours arising from the employment relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the value of the comparative study of industrial relations with a consideration of developments in industrial relations in selected Asia-Pacific countries. Explanations of the rapid industrialisation of many Asia-Pacific countries have drawn on socio-economic approaches, the 'strong state' argument, neo-Confucian ethics and cultural 'collectivist' models (Verma et al. 1995:336). Rather than pursue cultural typologies, we follow Dore (1979) and discuss the industrial relations contexts that reflect the stages of economic development that these countries are passing through. Classifications may be somewhat arbitrary and there are many differences between the countries within the same category, but a pattern is discernible. The first category includes the industrialised market economies (IMEs) of Japan, New Zealand and Australia. Recent industrial relations reforms in these countries are in part a response to the industrialisation of other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The second category, sometimes referred to as the 'Asian Tigers', comprises the post-Japan, newly industrialised economies (NIEs) of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. The third category comprises the next generation of industrialising economies and includes the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Indonesia. If it maintains its growth rates of the 1990s, the PRC will achieve NIE status within the next few decades. Although Indonesia achieved relatively high growth rates during the early to mid-1990s, the effect of the 1997 Asian economic crisis has been to leave it facing a period of political and economic uncertainty.