Exploitation of international migrant workers in the Global North has been increasingly framed in terms of trafficking, in political and legal domains and by the media. Yet posing trafficking as a ...phenomenon that captures the unfreedom experienced by migrants obscures the variegated means through which unfree labour relations are both institutionalized, and related to more ‘mundane’ forms of exploitation including precarious employment (for migrants and non-migrants alike). In this paper we argue that conceptualizing forms of unfreedom along a continuum of labour relations highlights this interrelationship, which for migrant workers includes attempts to harness and control mobilities through immigration regimes that restrict mobility bargaining power within labour markets. We use the example of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) in Canada to show how precarious employment, precarious legal status and unfree labour relations interact, and how they are negotiated and contested by of workers themselves.
The question of social dumping has again climbed the EU policy agenda. In this article, we call into question some established views of social dumping that conceptualize the relationship between EU ...internal market and Member States in binary terms. Based on an analysis of relevant case law, and drawing on the conceptual tools provided by critical legal geography, we show that the project of EU integration relies as much on the scalar differentiation of powers as it does on the ‘upward’ shift of powers from the national‐ to the supra‐national level. We propose an understanding of EU internal market law as productive of a ‘labour law patchwork’, defined by the simultaneous fragmentation and overlap of labour law regulations across and within EU Member States. Here, we re‐conceptualize cross‐border social dumping as a ‘game of jurisdiction’ – a set of strategic moves by actors within a multi‐scalar and multi‐jurisdictional space.
The present study demonstrates how three psychological antecedents (psychological safety, felt obligation for constructive change, and organization-based self-esteem) uniquely, differentially, and ...interactively predict supervisory reports of promotive and prohibitive "voice" behavior. Using a two-wave panel design, we collected data from a sample of 239 employees to examine the hypothesized relationships. Our results showed that felt obligation was most strongly related to subsequent promotive voice; psychological safety was most strongly related to subsequent prohibitive voice; and organization-based self-esteem was reciprocally related to promotive voice. Further, although felt obligation strengthened the positive effect of psychological safety on both forms of voice, organization-based self-esteem weakened this effect for promotive voice. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
One of the main challenges in labour relations in Europe is the ongoing decentralisation of collective bargaining from national and sectoral levels to company levels. Decentralisation might be an ...answer to business needs in competitiveness and organisational flexibility. However, it risks erosion of collective bargaining structures, more inequality in employment conditions and fragmentation in trade unions’ powers. Based on recent qualitative research, this book shows high varieties across European countries and economic sectors in degrees, forms and impacts of decentralisation. The authors explore, in interdisciplinary and multi-level perspectives, continuity and change in regulating and practicing collective bargaining in France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden. In cross-country comparisons, company case studies in manufacturing and retail show the divergent effects of national regimes and social partners’ power resources on trade unions’ strategies and influence in company bargaining.
One of the positive innovations in the field of labour law is the introduction of the "due diligence" standard. Altough this principle has long been known and applied in other areas of law, it is new ...in labour law. The global application of due diligence standard, found in UN, ILO, OECD documents, and soon in the EU directive, as well as in many national laws, should lead to better and more comprehensive protection of the human rights of employees, as well as of all other persons regarding that work. This paper discusses more about the meaning, development and application of due diligence standards in the context of employee rights.
Research on emotional labor focuses on how employees utilize 2 main regulation strategies-surface acting (i.e., faking one's felt emotions) and deep acting (i.e., attempting to feel required ...emotions)-to adhere to emotional expectations of their jobs. To date, researchers largely have considered how each strategy functions to predict outcomes in isolation. However, this variable-centered perspective ignores the possibility that there are subpopulations of employees who may differ in their combined use of surface and deep acting. To address this issue, we conducted 2 studies that examined surface acting and deep acting from a person-centered perspective. Using latent profile analysis, we identified 5 emotional labor profiles-non-actors, low actors, surface actors, deep actors, and regulators-and found that these actor profiles were distinguished by several emotional labor antecedents (positive affectivity, negative affectivity, display rules, customer orientation, and emotion demands-abilities fit) and differentially predicted employee outcomes (emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, and felt inauthenticity). Our results reveal new insights into the nature of emotion regulation in emotional labor contexts and how different employees may characteristically use distinct combinations of emotion regulation strategies to manage their emotional expressions at work.
Using a theoretical approach founded on resilience studies, this article presents a comparative analysis of the reconfiguration of labour relations in Portugal, Poland and Ireland during the ...financial crisis. It proposes a critical understanding of social resilience that captures not only the organisation of the system that emerges post-crisis but also its underlying dynamic power relations, the rule and institutional arrangement systems as well as the redistribution of resources. Moreover, it argues that the crisis created an opportunity for the convergence and liberalisation of labour market models across Europe.
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