Suchergebnisse

Formed to protect workers' rights and improve their working conditions, trade unions are a potential source of power. Today's trend of globalization, however, compels trade unions to reexamine their strategies and modes of action. The liberalization and integration of economies worldwide have compelled local industries, to be more competitive. The most convenient means to raise competitiveness is to lower labor costs through greater flexibility in labor utilization. In the Philippines, labor flexibility entails the unbridled use of labor-subcontracting, contractual labor, part-time, casual/temporary, and probationary employment. While unanimously opposing these measures, most labor unions have not really leveled-off on this issue and the implications of globalization in general. Their responses operate on the present labor relations framework and are remedial in character. Since labor flexibility phenomenon springs from an economic restructuring, labor should be able to intervene in the economic and political decision-making in the country. It must unify its ranks in order to carve its own niche in the present political terrain and eventually to be taken seriously by the employers and the State. Lastly, it must come up with alternatives to such economic restructuring and an agendum to serve the workers' interest amid the globalization of the Philippine economy.

Domestic work remains vastly perceived as non-work in many countries in Asia, including Malaysia. Excluded and unrecognized in labor laws, migrant domestic workers (MDWs) become invisible from protection against human rights abuses; thus, trade unions (TUs) become constrained to represent domestic workers as well as to organize them. The increasing reports of human rights abuses against MDWs led the attempt of Malaysian TUs and non-government organizations (NGO) to organize domestic workers for many years. The NGOs in Malaysia with concerns as human rights, migrants, women, and religious groups initially addressed the problems and conditions of domestic workers. However, TU-NGO relations remain an important factor in differentiating the organizing strategies of NGOs and TUs in responding to domestic workers issues. As the study includes labor-oriented NGOs and non-TU organizations such as self-organized workers as part of the broader labor movement, I intend to show in this discussion, through empirical data, the areas of tensions and spaces for collaboration that exist among these groups in Malaysia. This article discusses the contentious and collaborative relations of civil society groups with the established TUs in Malaysia using the Gramscian notion of establishing hegemony among allied social forces in civil society and establishing linkages between civil society and political society. Keywords: TU-NGO relations, labor organizing, labor migration, domestic workers, migrant workers

This essay examines the implications of economic globalization on the labor markets in the Philippines and Indonesia. Today's economic globalization characterized by liberalization of the market, privatization of state-owned enterprises, and minimal government intervention in the economy, results in job losses, retrenchments and irregular employment and rising wage differentials among workers. Both countries follow liberal economic policies that have constrained the state's response in terms of labor market policies to mitigate the negative impact of economic globalization. Free market proponents consider as labor rigidities the state's policy interventions in the labor market and the participation of trade unions. Labor flexibility and the free interplay of labor supply and demand are the ones valued in the liberalized labor market. Though constrained and weakened to address the economic restructuring brought about by globalization, the labor movements in the Philippines and Indonesia continue to find ways to develop new unionisms and strategies to organize themselves as social movements.

This essay examines the implications of economic globalization on the labor markets in the Philippines and Indonesia. Today's economic globalization characterized by liberalization of the market, privatization of state-owned enterprises, and minimal government intervention in the economy, results in job losses, retrenchments and irregular employment and rising wage differentials among workers. Both countries follow liberal economic policies that have constrained the state's response in terms of labor market policies to mitigate the negative impact of economic globalization. Free market proponents consider as labor rigidities the state's policy interventions in the labor market and the participation of trade unions. Labor flexibility and the free interplay of labor supply and demand are the ones valued in the liberalized labor market. Though constrained and weakened to address the economic restructuring brought about by globalization, the labor movements in the Philippines and Indonesia continue to find ways to develop new unionisms and strategies to organize themselves as social movements.

Diese Studie zeigt, dass die Räume, Grenzen und Strategien bei der Organisation von Hausangestellten durch die politische Ökonomie und das Arbeitsregime eines Landes beeinflusst und geformt werden. Sie orientiert sich bei ihrer Analyse an den theoretischen Rahmenbedingungen des Neo-Gramscianischen Aktionsrahmens von Robert Cox und der Theorie der Sozialen Reproduktion. Die Studie kommt zu dem Schluss, dass die miteinander verbundenen Dimensionen der Prekarität zu einem Kreislauf aus Entmachtung und Ausgrenzung von migrantischen Hausangestellten in Malaysia führen.

Klappentext: We are witnessing a worldwide resurgence of reactionary nationalist, religious, racist, and antifeminist ideologies and movements, as well as a rapid process of global de-democratization. Nevertheless, most studies remain tied to a methodological nationalism, while comparative research is almost exclusively limited to European countries and the USA. But authoritarian transformations in the Global South and the struggles against them have not only been at least as dramatic as in the North, they also often date back longer - and have been studied and theorized by Southern scholars for many years. Twenty scholar-activists from the Global South show in their in-depth studies how national processes of authoritarian capitalism have undermined political systems on a global scale.