Since the onset of the Great Recession, Germany's economy has been praised for its superior performance, which has been reminiscent of the "economic miracle" of the 1950s and 1960s. Such acclaim is ...surprising because Germany's economic institutions were widely dismissed as faulty just a decade ago. InHolding the Shop Together, Stephen J. Silvia examines the oscillations of the German economy across the entire postwar period through one of its most important components: the industrial relations system.
As Silvia shows in this wide-ranging and deeply informed account, the industrial relations system is strongest where the German economy is strongest and is responsible for many of the distinctive features of postwar German capitalism. It extends into the boardrooms, workplaces and government to a degree that is unimaginable in most other countries. Trends in German industrial relations, moreover, influence developments in the broader German economy and, frequently, industrial relations practice abroad. All these aspects make the German industrial relations regime an ideal focal point for developing a deeper understanding of the German economy as a whole.
Silvia begins by presenting the framework of the German industrial relations system-labor laws and the role of the state-and then analyzes its principal actors: trade unions and employers' associations. He finds the framework sound but the actors in crisis because of membership losses. Silvia analyzes the reasons behind the losses and the innovative strategies German labor and management have developed in their efforts to reverse them. He concludes with a comprehensive picture and then considers the future of German industrial relations.
China’s economic success has been founded partly on relatively cheap labour, especially in the export industries. In recent years, however, there has been growing concern about wages and labour ...standards in China. This book examines how wages are bargained, fought over and determined in China, by exploring how the pattern of labour conflict has changed over time since the 1970s. It focuses in particular on the city of Shenzhen where labour conflict and workers’ protests have been especially prevalent. This book includes a detailed account of the transformation of labour relations and labour policy in China more broadly during 2004 to 2009, a period when there have been significant changes in the labour market, labour regulation and labour relations. The author argues that these recent developments have brought to the fore the class basis of workers’ protest in China and have thoroughly undermined the post-Marxist analysis of identity politics. The book makes an invaluable contribution to studies on industry and labour, as well as Chinese studies.
"Chris King-Chi Chan’s book is a particularly well-informed work of scholarship on the process of working-class formation among rural migrant workers in Shenzhen... should prove invaluable both for scholars versed in the study of contemporary China and for those interested in labour politics and urban change in transitional societies." - Eric Florence, Centre for Ethnic and Migration Studies, University of Liege, Belgium; Local Economy, 26(5)
"Why do workers go on strike? How are the strikes organized? How do the strikes affect employers, workers and the government? And what are the implications of the strikes for the future of workers and labour movement in China? In this highly original book, Chris King-Chi Chan answers these questions based on intensive field research in Shenzhen and reveals an emerging picture of ‘class struggle without class organization’ in China. This is a timely and welcome contribution to the field of China labour studies... Chan should be applauded for providing us with valuable insights into workers’ struggles in China. This excellent ethnography study is a must-read for anyone who is interested in Chinese labour issues." - Mingwei Liu, Rutgers University; British Journal of Industrial Relations, 50:1 March 2012
"Chris Chan provides an amazing variety of first-hand information giving detailed insights into the working conditions, discourses and struggles of migrant workers in China’s first Special Economic Zone, Shenzhen." - Günter Schucher, GIGA Institute of Asian Studies, Hamburg; THE CHINA JOURNAL, No. 67
"This book’s rich documentation of a transformative moment in labour relations makes it a valuable addition to the study of labour in China." - Mark W. Frazier; The China Quarterly, 207, September 2011
1. Introduction: Globalisation and Chinese Migrant Workers 2. Labour Conflict in Shen Zhen: a Historical Review 3. Community and Shop Floor Culture: a Prelude to Workers' Protests 4. Strikes and Changing Power Relations in the Workplace 5. Workplace Conflict, Legal Institution, and Labour Regime 6. International Civil Society, Chinese Trade Unionism, and Workplace Representation 7. Conclusion: Workers' Struggle and the Changing Regime in China
Chris King-Chi Chan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Social Science at the City University of Hong Kong, and is an active member of labour NGOs in Hong Kong and on mainland China. He gained his PhD at the University of Warwick, UK, and previously worked as a trade union organiser in Hong Kong.
Black and blue Frymer, Paul
2008., 20110627, 2011, 2007, 2008-01-01, 20080101, Letnik:
96
eBook
In the 1930s, fewer than one in one hundred U.S. labor union members were African American. By 1980, the figure was more than one in five. Black and Blue explores the politics and history that led to ...this dramatic integration of organized labor. In the process, the book tells a broader story about how the Democratic Party unintentionally sowed the seeds of labor's decline.
High economic growth and relatively equitable distribution were among the most conspicuous characteristics of the postwar Japanese political economy. The lure of the Japanese model, however, has ...faded since the 1990s. Growth is in short supply and equality a thing of the past. InWelfare through Work, Mari Miura looks in depth at Japan's social protection system as a factor in the contemporary malaise of the Japanese political economy.
The Japanese social protection system should be understood as a system of "welfare through work," Miura suggests, because employment protection has functionally substituted for income maintenance. A gendered dual system in the labor market allowed a high degree of labor market flexibility, which enabled Japan to achieve high employment rates as well as strong legal protections for regular workers. In recent years, conservatives gradually replaced the productivism and cooperatism that had resulted from earlier party politics with neoliberalism, which, in turn, hampered the effectiveness of the welfare through work system.
In Miura's view, the dynamics of partisan competition fostered ideational renewal, just as the political visions and ideologies of the governing party strongly affected the design of the social protection system. In the scenario Miura describes, the partisan dynamics since the 1990s resulted in the policy change that further undermined the social protection system, and the ensuing disruption has been felt throughout Japan.
The conditions for non-EU migrant workers to gain legal entry to Britain, France, and Germany are at the same time similar and quite different. To explain this variation this book compares the ...fine-grained legal categories for migrant workers in each country, and examines the interaction of economic, social, and cultural rationales in determining migrant legality. Rather than investigating the failure of borders to keep unauthorized migrants out, the author highlights the different policies of each country as "border-drawing" actions. Policymakers draw lines between different migrant groups, and between migrants and citizens, through considerations of both their economic utility and skills, but also their places of origin and prospects for social integration. Overall, migrant worker legality is arranged against the backdrop of the specific vision each country has of itself in an economically competitive, globalized world with rapidly changing welfare and citizenship models.
Based on documents from a long-lost and unexplored colonial archive,Slavery by Any Other Nametells the story of how Portugal privatized part of its empire to the Mozambique Company. In the late ...nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the company governed central Mozambique under a royal charter and built a vast forced labor regime camouflaged by the rhetoric of the civilizing mission.
Oral testimonies from more than one hundred Mozambican elders provide a vital counterpoint to the perspectives of colonial officials detailed in the archival records of the Mozambique Company. Putting elders' voices into dialogue with officials' reports, Eric Allina reconstructs this modern form of slavery, explains the impact this coercive labor system had on Africans' lives, and describes strategies they used to mitigate or deflect its burdens. In analyzing Africans' responses to colonial oppression, Allina documents how some Africans succeeded in recovering degrees of sovereignty, not through resistance, but by placing increasing burdens on fellow Africans-a dynamic that paralleled developments throughout much of the continent.
This volume also traces the international debate on slavery, labor, and colonialism that ebbed and flowed during the first several decades of the twentieth century, exploring a conversation that extended from the backwoods of the Mozambique-Zimbabwe borderlands to ministerial offices in Lisbon and London.Slavery by Any Other Namesituates this history of forced labor in colonial Africa within the broader and deeper history of empire, slavery, and abolition, showing how colonial rule in Africa simultaneously continued and transformed past forms of bondage.
A term specifically found in European politics, social concertation refers to cooperation between trade unions, governments and employers in public policy-making.Social Concertation in Times of ...Austerityinvestigates the political underpinnings of social concertation in the context of European integration. Alexandre Afonso focuses on the regulation of labor mobility and unemployment protection in Austria and Switzerland, two of Europe's most prosperous countries, and he looks at nonpartisan policymaking as a strategy for compromise. With this smart, new study, Afonso powerfully enters the debate on the need for a shared social agenda in post-crisis Western Europe.
This book offers an in-depth analysis of gender-class equality across six countries to reveal why gender-class equality in paid and unpaid work remains elusive, and what more policy might do to ...achieve better social and economic outcomes. This book is the first to meld cross-time with cross-country comparisons, link macro structures to micro behavior, and connect class with gender dynamics to yield fresh insights into where we are on the road to gender equality, why it varies across industrialized countries, and the barriers to further progress. (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku).
The Risk of Social Policy? Giger, Nathalie
The Risk of Social Policy?,
2011, 20110307, 2011-03-07, 20110101, Letnik:
13
eBook, Book Chapter
The Risk of Social Policy? uses a comparative perspective to systematically analyse the effects of social policy reforms and welfare state retrenchment on voting choice for the government. It ...re-examines twenty elections in OECD countries to show if and how social policy issues drive elections.
This book contributes to the existing literature by providing an empirical analysis of the electoral implications of social policy. Giger asks the basic research question: What are the electoral consequences of social policy performance and retrenchment? More specifically, the following questions are addressed in order to provide a systematic test of the topic: Is retrenchment indeed completely unpopular? Do people punish the government for bad performance in the field of social policy? And what are the political implications of such a punishment reaction; does it affect the government composition? It shows empirically that the risks of welfare state retrenchment to incumbent governments may be lower than previously thought, and presents a theoretical framework for re-examining the impact of retrenchment initiatives on election outcome.
Making an important contribution to studies in political economy and welfare by questioning the assumption that social policy is an inherently controversial policy field in times of elections, The Risk of Social Policy? will be of interest to scholars and students concerned with the interplay between government and citizens, social policy and voting behaviour, and the political economy of welfare.
