Contested Meanings: Protection and Resistance in Labour Inspectors’ Reports in Twentieth-Century Greece

Reports written by Labour Inspectors responsible for the implementation of protective labour legislation in Greek industry during the period 1913–34 are analysed both as discourses that construct new industrial relations and as sources that provide evidence of workers’ resistance. To account for their difficulty in implementing labour laws, Inspectors defined themselves as agents of ‘progress’ struggling against the ‘backwardness’ of the working masses, especially as expressed in gender attitudes. Yet the reports also provide evidence of divergent cultural meanings and unravel the multiple ways in which men and women workers negotiated their identities.     

Labour Regime Transformation in Myanmar: Constitutive Processes of Contestation

This article studies the case of a workers’ strike in Myanmar's ready‐made garment sector to illustrate how differently‐situated actors have engaged at multiple scales to influence emerging forms of labour regulation in the country. The analysis is drawn out through the historicization of domestic regulatory transformation. As a hegemonic project targeting industrial peace for purposes of capital accumulation, Myanmar's labour regime has been shaped by various actors outside of government circles, including International Labour Organization (ILO) personnel, Myanmar trade unionists, foreign governments, transnational corporations, domestic capitalists and Myanmar workers. Proposing a multi‐scalar reading of labour regime transformation attentive to constitutive processes of contestation, the study analyses ways in which varied, and at times unofficial, relations coalesce to shape labour regulation.     

Colonial Constructions of Masculinity: Transforming Aboriginal Australian Men into ‘Houseboys’

In Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia, Aboriginal men made up more than half of the domestic servant population by 1938. They replaced the Chinese and Malay male servants who had worked for British colonists in the early colonial period. Much of the historical work on male domestic servants in colonial situations plots the construction of the ‘houseboy’ as emasculated, feminised and submissive. In contrast, colonial constructions of Aboriginal men as ‘houseboys’ in Darwin emphasise the masculinity of the Aboriginal hunter. Aboriginal men were characterised as requiring constant discipline and training, and this paternalistic discourse led to a corresponding denial of manhood or adulthood for Aboriginal men. While male domestic servants in other colonial settings were allowed some privileges of masculinity in relation to female workers, amongst Aboriginal domestic workers, it was so‐called ‘half‐caste’ women who, in acknowledgment of their ‘white blood’, received nominally higher wages and privileges for domestic work. Aboriginal men were denied what was referred to as a ‘breadwinning’ wage; an Australian wage awarded to white men with families. Despite this, their role as husbands was encouraged by the administration as a method of controlling sexual relations between white men and Aboriginal women. These sometimes contradictory images can be understood as manifestations of the racialised construction of gender in Australia.     

Bringing Workers’ Rights Back In? Propositions towards a Labour–Trade Linkage for the Global South

The idea of forging a linkage between global trade and labour standards has a long history and has been the subject of fierce debate. In a global political economy that incites ‘competition for jobs’, the idea cannot escape controversy. Crucially, it has failed to win significant support from trade unionists in the global South. Drawing on viewpoints voiced by workers’ rights activists in South Africa and Brazil, this article presents four propositions on the features and functions that a labour–trade linkage would have to possess if it is to serve workers’ interests, and explores whether and how these may be accommodated by the ILO and WTO regimes. It is argued that a linkage requiring a new single WTO undertaking is out of the question; a linkage would only make sense if it superimposes ILO rule onto the WTO, not the opposite; a linkage should be premised on positive trade measures; and, finally, it should serve the interests of presently unprotected and unorganized workers. Overall, the main challenge of such a linkage would be to achieve the necessary reform within the ILO.     

(Post)Colonial [1] Encounters: gendered racialisations in Australian courtrooms [2]

This article identifies how the Australian legal system has generated knowledge about ‘traditional’ gender relations in Aboriginal Australia. Using a sample of artefact cases from the Australian judicial system, constructions of Aboriginal gender relations are mapped. By tracing knowledge production in these cases, it demonstrates how the non-Aboriginal Australian legal system has fabricated its own versions of ‘Aboriginal Customary Laws’, or Aboriginal ‘traditions’ about violence committed by Aboriginal men, against Aboriginal women. (Post)colonial understandings about the Aboriginal ‘other’ have occupied spaces in legal understandings and then been enforced in law. The Australian judicial system itself is therefore guilty of perpetuating and privileging the ‘colonial’ in these encounters.     

全球化时代国际劳务移民治理析论

论文基于联合国、国际劳工组织、国际移民组织等机构的数据,重点从国家、地区及多边三个层面,对国际社会有关劳务移民的国际合作以及移民工人权益保护的治理实践进行考察,并对于未来全球劳务移民治理发展趋向加以展望。在国家层面,各国政府通过建立有关劳务移民的法律框架,推动国家间协议以及参与多边体系治理合作等方式维护移民工人权益。在地区层面,在区域一体化进程中,正式区域性组织和非正式机制,积极推动区域内有关劳务移民问题的对话、协商和合作。在全球层面,国际上有关劳务移民的国际公约及法律文书代表着多边倡议,国际劳工组织也致力于政策制定以实现所有移民工人利益的最大化。全球劳动力的流动是全球化未完成的事业。随着当今国际迁移的性质和组成日益复杂,移民治理过程中的国际合作与移民工人的保护有待进一步加强。     

Crafting masculinities: gender,culture and emotion at work in the surfboard industry

This article examines the masculinities of male workers in the context of an emotionally rich form of labour: surfboard-making. Contributing to emerging research around the emotional and embodied dimensions of men's working lives, the article maps the cultural, emotional and embodied dimensions of work onto masculine identity construction. Combining cultural economy theory, emotional geographies and in-depth ethnographic methods, I reveal how surfboard-making has become a gendered form of work; how jobs rely on (and impact) the body and what surfboard-making means to workers outside of financial returns. Following a manual labour process, and informed by Western surfing subculture, commercial surfboard-making has layered onto male bodies. Men perform ‘blokey’ masculinities in relation with one another. However, doing manual craftwork evokes close, personal interaction; among co-workers but also through engagements with place and local customers. Felt, embodied craft skills help workers personalise boards for individual customers and local breaks. Beneath masculine work cultures and pretensions, surfboard-making is a deeply emotional and embodied work. Labour is dependent on haptic knowledge: sense of touch, bodily movement and eye for detail. Contrasting their blokey masculinity, surfboard-makers rely on intimate links between their bodies, tools, materials, customers and surfing places. These ‘strong bodied’ men articulate a ‘passion’ and ‘love’ for ‘soulful’ jobs, demonstrating how waged work comprises alternative masculinities, shaped by working culture, relations and labour processes. A cultural economy framework and emotionally engaged research approach are valuable for challenging hegemonic masculinity, important for achieving more inclusive, tolerant and equitable workplaces.     

On wine,rent and regions: labour market change and housing market processes in non‐metropolitan South Australia

This article reports on research into the relationship between labour market change and the private rental market in non‐metropolitan South Australia for the period 1990–2000. Using Small Area Labour Market data, Census data and records from the Residential Tenancy Tribunal the study investigates the capacity of the private rental market to respond to labour market and population growth. The article finds that there is considerable ‘stickiness’ within the private rental market in regional South Australia and that there has been a limited supply response to changing levels of demand. This has contributed to housing and labour shortages in some regions and over supply in others. Each circumstance has generated considerable dilemmas for public policy. The reasons underlying the imperfect market response are considered and the implications for the future development of the regions are discussed.     

You gotta throw away culture once you become Christian: How ‘culture’ is Redefined among Aboriginal Pentecostal Christians in Rural New South Wales

ABSTRACT This paper is an ethnographic and historical exploration of Aboriginal Pentecostalism, which permeated quickly into the Aboriginal community in rural New South Wales in Australia during the early twentieth century. Today the Aboriginal Pentecostal Christians in this region renounce Aboriginal ‘culture’. This, however, does not mean they reject Aboriginality. By examining Malcolm Calley's ethnography on the mid‐twentieth century Pentecostal movement in this region and drawing upon my own fieldwork data, I show the way in which this group of Aboriginal Christians of mixed descent in a ‘settled’ part of Australia have maintained Aboriginality and reinforced attachment to the community through faith in the Christian God, whilst, paradoxically, developing strong anti‐culture and anti‐tradition discourses. This paper advocates shifting the study of social change from a dichotomised model that opposes invading moral orders against resisting traditional cultures, to one that examines the processual manifestations of the historical development of vernacular realities.     

The ILO: An Agency for Globalization?

The International Labour Organization, set up in 1919 to develop and promote labour standards, is at a crucial point. It has preached that labour is not a commodity and in 1969 received the Nobel Peace Prize. Since then it has run into trouble. This article considers how the ILO has failed to come to terms with the Global Transformation, seeing it as trying to play three roles — a standard‐setter, a technical assistance agency and a knowledge generator — without developing the professional capacity to do so. The big question is whether the ILO could become an effective development agency given the changing character of work and labour in globalizing labour markets and its antiquated governance structure.     

Organic Union or Aggressive Altruism: Imperial Internationalism in East Africa in the 1920s

This article assesses the influence of international questions on the Conservative and Labour parties’ imperial policy in East Africa in the 1920s. Conservatives encouraged a policy of ‘organic union’, which meant the consolidation of settler control in Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika by either formal or informal means. They preferred to ignore or minimise the influence of the League of Nations mandates provisions in Tanganyika, arguing that colonial questions, which in their view included mandatory affairs, were a domestic jurisdiction. The Labour Party was more sympathetic to ideas of liberal internationalism, and pursued a policy of ‘aggressive altruism’ in East Africa when in office, especially in the late 1920s. The article compares the two parties’ respective positions with reference to closer political union, settler relations, labour and land policy, and Indian rights, and by detailing the personal relationship between the conservative governor of Kenya, Sir Edward Grigg, and Labour's colonial secretary, Lord Passfield.     

Whose Ethics? Which Cultural Contract? Imagining Arrernte Traditions Today

The paper uses an account of ‘tradition’ by the philosopher, Alisdair MacIntyre, to argue for the view that local Aboriginal culture that has been through extensive change is nonetheless still specifying for the Aboriginal people involved. Therefore these local traditions must be taken into account in discussions about ‘contracts’ or ‘policies’ concerning Aboriginal people today. An example is drawn from the Lutheran tradition of Western Arrernte people in Central Australia.     

Labour Market Dynamics in Resource Dependent Regions: an Examination of the Western Australian Goldfields

Labour shortages have become an increasingly significant barrier to economic development in regional Australia. Many firms and government agencies are operating below capacity as a result of their inability to fill jobs. In the mineral resources sector, this has been compounded by rapidly rising demand for commodities and the very remote locations of many mine sites. This paper explores the dynamics of labour shortages in the minerals sector of the Western Australian Goldfields. It demonstrates close linkages between commodity price, labour supply and demand, and resource output. Against the background of a state-wide ‘resources boom’, the paper also points to an increase in intra- and inter- regional competition for labour.     

Workers’ Strikes in Vietnam from a Regulatory Perspective

The persistence of factory strikes in Vietnam has strained the country’s industrial relations system. This paper examines workers’ strikes from a regulatory perspective to evaluate the effects and limitations of labour law in establishing harmonious labour relationships. In Vietnam, the Labour Code regulates employment relations on a contractual basis, stipulating certain rights and obligations for both employers and employees. Workers’ struggles for their rights and interests triggered some administrative measures by the state and unions, yet these measures were insufficient to tackle business non-compliance with the law. Based on a case study of a strike-affected enterprise, the analysis shows that employers and workers appeal to different aspects of labour law, which complicates the regulatory effects of strike settlement. The paper argues that labour tensions are symptoms of regulatory loopholes stemming from weaknesses in law enforcement and the ineffectiveness of the law in defending workers’ rights. The outcomes of strike settlement therefore further perpetuate workers’ subordination and workplace injustice.     

Palawa Kani and the Value of Language in Aboriginal Tasmania

Over the past forty years the Tasmanian Aboriginal people, long marked as an iconic case of extinction, have revitalized many elements of their ‘lost’ culture. Palawa kani, the constructed Tasmanian Aboriginal language, is an example of such efforts. The construction and utilization of palawa kani is one element of a broader Tasmanian Aboriginal cultural politics working to strengthen the Indigenous status, authenticity, and presence in Tasmania specifically and Australia more generally. In this article I recount the historical documentation of Tasmanian Aboriginal languages and analyze the process through which multiple historical languages were utilized in the construction and consecration of a single ‘official’ Tasmanian Aboriginal language. Rather than existing strictly as a tool for communication, I argue palawa kani is a cultural artifact that, like an emblem, works to distinguish the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, one that lacks many of the stereotypical components of Australian Aboriginality, within Tasmanian society. As such, it is best understood in relation to Clifford's ‘indigenous articulations’ (2001) and Cowlishaw's mythopoeia of Aboriginality in Australia (2010, 2011). I examine what palawa kani does for, and what it represents to, the larger Tasmanian Aboriginal community.     

Gender Equality and Decent Work in Australia

In 1998 the International Labour Organization (ILO) advanced the notion of ‘decent work’ as a way to enhance opportunities for women and men to obtain productive work in conditions of freedom, equality, security and human dignity. This concept is now both salient and contested in national and international policy debates. In a 2008–09 campaign, the ILO asserted that ‘gender equality [is] at the heart of decent work’. This article examines appeals to decent work in Australian parliamentary discourse and proposes how best to make use of the concept. It argues that gender equality is fundamental to decent work.

1998年世界劳工组织提出了“体面工作”的概念以促进男女在自由、平等、安全和尊严的条件下从事有益的工作。这个概念在国家和国际的政策辩论中都占有显要的位置。国际劳工组织在2008、2009年的活动中,强调性别平等位居体面工作的核心。本文考察了澳大利亚议会的相关言论,并对使用好这个概念有所建议。作者认为性别平等是体面工作的基础。     

The Bullock Report on Industrial Democracy and the Post-War Consensus

The post-war settlement among the policy elite is central to much historical literature. This article considers the rise and fall of the idea of ‘industrial democracy’, and its relationship to this settlement. The elite failed to respond coherently to claims for workplace democracy. The notion that politicians could work with ‘the unions’ and ‘industry’ was shown to be deficient. The unions contained numerous views, many hostile to industrial democracy in the form proposed by Bullock and the TUC. Industry was almost uniformly antagonistic. The notion of consensus ostensibly underpinned the attempts of Labour and Conservative politicians to progress this issue. In truth, this was a curious approach. The debate over Bullock was, at root, an argument over whether the owners of capital should cede some of their power in favour of organised labour. There was never likely to be agreement on this. The inconclusive debate over Bullock ultimately showed how fragile the consensus was. The political elite could not forever smooth over underlying disagreements between capital and labour, or between groups of workers with differing interests.     

Labour's Strategic Defence Review

Labour’s Strategic Defence Review claims to be ‘radical’, leading ‘to a fundamental reshaping of British forces’ while being ‘firmly ground in foreign policy’. Five questions are discussed: 1) Is labour’s defence policy different from that of its Conservative predecessors? 2) Has foreign policy ‘led’ defence policy? 3) How open was the review process and to what extent has Labour succeeded in creating a new consensus on defence policy? 4) Has the SDR successfully addressed the problem of overstretch? 5) Does it provide the ‘modern, effective and affordable armed forces which meet today’s challenges but are also flexible enough to adapt to change’, as it claims? This article argues that on the first two questions the answer is a qualified ‘yes’; that on the third, the process was more open than ever before but that it is difficult to identify specific decisions influence by more open debate; that on the fourth, Labour has attempted a balancing act which may be vulnerable, not least to changes in the economy; and that on the last question, Labour has succeeded in shifting the focus of the armed services towards power projection capabilities as required by their foreign policy baseline.     

Missionary Masculinities,the Homoerotic Gaze and the Politics of Race: Gilbert White in Northern Australia, 1885–1915

The considerable international literature on Christian missions and gender has rarely focused on missionary masculinity, or on the relationship between missionary homoeroticism and the defence of the rights of the colonised. This paper argues that homoeroticism played a part in the humanitarianism of Gilbert White who, from 1900 to 1915, was Anglican Bishop of Carpentaria in northern Australia, a heavily male frontier where inter‐racial tension and violence were common. White's attraction to the Aboriginal male body indirectly assisted all Aborigines by drawing attention to the ill effects of colonisation but his ambivalence to the female body left him uninterested in the plight of Aboriginal women, who suffered ‘extraordinary brutality’ on the frontier.     

Making a Life: Getting Ahead,and Getting a Living in Aboriginal New South Wales

ABSTRACT This paper offers an ethnographically grounded examination of the intersections between work, employment and identity for Indigenous people living in a country town in far western New South Wales, Australia. It argues that work, employment and labour are locally deployed categories that meet mainstream discourse in a precarious fashion and, that this disjunction has clear material and ideological repercussions. For most Aboriginal people in Wilcannia, you are who you are, not by virtue of what you have ‘become’ in any economic, professional or educational sense. Who you are is not a becoming, it is established at birth. These genealogical forms of being through kinship see a construction of self which in many ways is at variance to the standard ‘autonomous self‐regulating individual’ (Sennett 1998:215). This sense of self, for most, is not determined by engagement in the capitalist division of labour; indeed, the greater the engagement in the capitalist economy, the more problematic and fraught a sense of self and of belonging can become.