Working in a Risk Society

Through much of the 1980s, discussions of transformations within work and employment debated the emergence of a new, more 'flexible' era - or, at a different level of analysis, the growth of more 'flexible' working practices. Recent accounts of contemporary socio-economic change have been framed within new sets of theoretical contexts, such as Ulrich Beck's notion of 'social risk'. The central aim of this paper is to evaluate the utility of such an approach, drawing upon empirical work which has investigated changes to terms and conditions of manual employment in British local authorities as a result of the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering.     

Gendered Labour in the Ideological Discourse of French Marxism: The Parti Ouvrier Français, 1882–1905

This article studies the intersection between the Marxist paradigm of class and the feminist paradigm of gender in the ideological rhetoric of the Parti Ouvrier Français between 1882 and 1905, focusing upon the movement’s understanding of women workers. It argues that, although the POF was far more interested in the gender dimension of labour than most historians have recognized, its approach to the female proletariat was vitiated by its ‘productivist’ world view and its tendency to reduce all labour to factory employment, while the French Marxists’ proto-feminist commitment to women workers as a revolutionary force was undermined by recurrent paternalism.     

Impact of the Global Economic Crisis on China's Migrant Workers: A Survey of 2,700 in 2009

An Australian geographer examines the effects of the global financial crisis on China's migrant workers, based on a recent survey of over 2,700 such workers conducted during January-February 2009. The author focuses on the number of migrant workers returning to their home villages for the annual New Year holiday period, the types of workers that were laid off, options available to such workers upon losing employment, and the reasons underlying their subsequent moves. Implications of the findings for labor policy in China are briefly outlined and several directions for future research identified. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: E240, G010, J610, J690. 7 tables, 68 references.     

The Restructuring of Labour in the Automobile Industry in South Korea

Based on a case study of the South Korean automobile industry, this article explores the qualitative shift in employment practices implied by the expansion of contract labour from peripheral services to the main production activities of firms. This new phenomenon involves the greater integration of labour contracting into the production process, together with changes in employment practices and the rights of workers, which poses a challenge to our conventional understanding of labour contracting. The findings of the present study address the importance of investigating the issue of employment relationships and analysing the roles played by workplace actors in order to better understand the process of change in labour contracting and the consequences of increased numbers of non‐standard workers in the workplace. By revealing both the cooperation and the conflicting interests between workplace actors, the study highlights the sources of tension and contradiction associated with changes in labour contracting arrangements and the subsequent restructuring of the workplace.     

Workers’ Compensation and State Employment Growth*

Abstract. Workers’ compensation reforms have been on the table in virtually every state over the last several years, and many states have launched comprehensive reforms. At least nine states undertook major reforms of their workers’ compensation systems in 2004 alone, and the reforms were driven largely by claims that higher workers’ compensation costs are driving away businesses and the employment that comes with them. This paper examines the relationship between workers’ compensation costs, as proxied by benefits/earnings, and employment across U.S. states and the District of Columbia from 1976 to 2000. Workers’ compensation costs are found to have a statistically significant negative impact on employment and wages, but the elasticities are very small, suggesting that workers’ compensation is not a likely cause of jobs woes in most states. Unemployment insurance appears to have an effect of similar magnitude. Medical cost inflation is found to be a significant factor in explaining movements in workers’ compensation costs over time.     

The identification of employment centres in Canadian metropolitan areas: the example of Montreal, 1996

The intrametropolitan distribution of economic activities and, specifically, the formation of suburban employment centres has become a major research and policy issue. In spite of an increasing number of detailed analyses of the geography of employment in individual metropolitan areas, no generally accepted and systematic methodology for identifying employment centres exists. Comparisons between metropolitan areas have been highly limited due to both a lack of consistent and comparable data and a plethora of methods. We first present an overview of various methods that have been used to identify employment centres. Using Montreal as a case study, we then evaluate the suitability of various methods in the light of available data on job location in Canadian metropolitan areas. The method that yields the best results is one based upon dual criteria applied at the census tract level: a total employment threshold and the ratio of employment to the resident workers. We use this method to identify the form of the Montreal space-economy in 1996. The identification of a suitable, although imperfect, method represents a first step towards being able to more objectively and systematically examine a wide range of issues concerning metropolitan economic structure.     

Labour Control in the Tobacco Agro‐spaces: Migrant Agricultural Workers in South‐Western Ontario

International labour migration programs provide a vulnerable workforce that services various sectors in developed economies. The agriculture sector is one arena in which the employment of migrant workers has become more pervasive. Annually, approximately 30,000 workers are employed in the Canadian agriculture sector through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). In this paper, I focus on the SAWP workers in tobacco farming, and investigate the ways that labour control is achieved on two small‐scale farms. I draw upon original empirical evidence from interviews with three Mexican and nine Jamaican workers, two union representatives, and two farm owners in South‐Western Ontario, Canada. My findings show that various factors at multiple scales shape the labour control regime and significantly advantage farm owners over workers. Based on my findings, I argue that the labour control regime is conditioned exogenously by multi‐scalar factors and generated endogenously at the point of production.     

Transnational Organising and Feminist Politics of Difference and Solidarity: The Mobilisation of Domestic Workers in Hong Kong

Domestic work represents a significant share of global wage employment, but domestic workers – the majority of whom are women – remain to a large extent excluded from the scope of labour laws and, consequently, from the legal protection enjoyed by other workers. Since they work behind the closed doors of private homes, domestic workers are also shielded from public attention and are often hard to mobilise. In Hong Kong, women’s activism involving local and migrant domestic workers illuminates points of connection and distance as they are simultaneously privileged and marginalised along the hierarchies of class, ethnicity and nationality. Building on feminist and social movement scholarship, I illustrate how global frames facilitate our understanding of feminist solidarity among local and migrant domestic workers. I argue that the meanings of solidarity that dominate at any particular moment are not stable and enduring, but rather formed out of negotiation and struggle within and across domestic workers’ unions. This framing process involves these women working deliberately to make connections between global processes and local contexts.     

Many Chains to Break: The Multi‐dimensional Concept of Slave Labour in Brazil

This article examines the concept of slave labour through two case studies from Brazil. One involves internal migrant workers and the other cross‐border migrant workers. There have been accusations of slave labour in both cases. I argue that slave labour is a multi‐dimensional concept and that cognate notions (eg forced and unfree labour) could also be reconceived as multi‐dimensional. Recent works have proposed that a continuum viewing labour relations as more or less free should replace dichotomies such as free vs unfree. I argue for taking this further to recognise, first, that workers may be more or less free in different ways, and second, that the resulting conditions of employment can be characterised as more or less degrading, also in different ways. This multi‐dimensional approach allows for a better understanding of the heterogeneity of apparently unfree labour relations and for greater recognition of the agency of workers labelled as slaves.     

Making labour mobile: Borders,precarity, and the competitive state in Finnish migration politics

This article explores how the multiplication of labour migration categories relies upon strategic territorialisations of borders to differentiate between workers' nationalities, worksites, and skills in Finland. We argue that for certain categories of workers, migration policies encourage workers to become mobile in ways that make them more precarious. We analyse worksites that show the different ways that labour is made mobile: the internationalization of higher education; Finnair's labour outsourcing and offshoring practices; and the recruitment of forest berry-pickers from Thailand. We first trace contentious migration politics in Finland, revealing conflicts over labour protections, universal labour rights, the state's obligations to create employment, economic competitiveness, national identity, and the precarisation of work. We show how practices of legal, procedural, and spatial differentiation particularise the conditions of work and argue that, even for skilled workers, the strategic territorialisation of borders works to differentiate between workers and work sites. This differentiation works to make labour mobile in multiple ways and, due to the selective territorialisation of labour protections, the political geographies of migration in Finland tend towards the precarisation of labour for skilled and unskilled workers alike.     

The Effectiveness of Jobs Reservation: Caste,Religion and Economic Status in India

This article investigates the effect of jobs reservation on improving the economic opportunities of persons belonging to India's Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). Using employment data from the 55^th NSS round, the authors estimate the probabilities of different social groups in India being in one of three categories of economic status: own account workers; regular salaried or wage workers; casual wage labourers. These probabilities are then used to decompose the difference between a group X and forward caste Hindus in the proportions of their members in regular salaried or wage employment. This decomposition allows us to distinguish between two forms of difference between group X and forward caste Hindus: ‘attribute’ differences and ‘coefficient’ differences. The authors measure the effects of positive discrimination in raising the proportions of ST/SC persons in regular salaried employment, and the discriminatory bias against Muslims who do not benefit from such policies. They conclude that the boost provided by jobs reservation policies was around 5 percentage points. They also conclude that an alternative and more effective way of raising the proportion of men from the SC/ST groups in regular salaried or wage employment would be to improve their employment‐related attributes.     

The spatial dimension of internal labor markets

We integrate into a unified framework the spatial and the employment dimensions of worker mobility, tracing workers across firms, across establishments, and across regions. Drawing upon the spatial dimension of internal labor markets in firms with multiple establishments in multiple locations, our results indicate that the contemporaneous wage premium to migration is around 3 percentage points. For the case of job switchers, we find that the return to regional migration is due to access to better jobs at the destination. We also document the existence of an urban premium for same‐employer migrants but for employer changes this premium is driven by selection.     

Scales and Skills of Monopoly Power: Labor Geographies of the 1890–1891 Chicago Carpenters’ Strike

Abstract: This paper builds upon labor geography's contributions to our understanding of the role of workers in the production of scale. In addition to examining exactly how a particular group of workers controlled the scale of their labor market, this paper theorizes the connections between that process and struggles over monopoly power. The 1890–1891 Chicago carpenters’ strike, a work stoppage of significance to both the direction of labor politics within Chicago and to the broader 8 h movement in North America at the end of the nineteenth century, serves as a case study.     

The minimum wage and seasonal employment: Evidence from the US agricultural sector

Nearly 40% of agricultural workers in the United States earn an hourly wage that is within 10% of the prevailing state-level minimum wage. We evaluate the impact of the minimum wage on farm employment using county-level data from the United States Census of Agriculture. We employ long-differences specifications and find evidence of a dynamic, negative effect of the minimum wage on seasonal agricultural employment, but no effect on year-round agricultural employment. We estimate a long-run elasticity of total agricultural employment with respect to the minimum wage of about −0.40, which is both statistically and economically significant. Employers’ total expenditures on hired agricultural workers are not affected by the minimum wage. Finally, our analysis suggests that increases in minimum wages may lead to higher capital investment as well as the consolidation of farming operations in the agricultural sector.     

‘Life is War’: Informal Transport Workers and Neoliberalism in Tanzania 1998–2009

This article analyses how informal labourers fare under flexible labour markets and economic liberalization, through a case study of transport workers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It highlights the mainstream conceptualization of urban informality as self‐employment and its influence on policy. The article stresses the importance of class differentiation in the Dar es Salaam transport sector and the predominance of informal wage employment, the uneven degree of power commanded by bus owners vis‐à‐vis informal unskilled wage workers and the pernicious consequences of the lack of regulation of the employment relationship on the workforce itself and on society. It then interrogates the criminalization of the workforce and shows how labour over‐supply, its fragmentation and geographical dispersion explain workers’ lack of response to their plight. The longitudinal study of the rise and fall (1998–2005) of a labour association within the sector further highlights the tensions among the workforce and the forms and limits of their solidarity. The conclusion of this study suggests some policy implications.     

Precarity and guest work in U.S. tourism: J-1 and H-2B visa programs

ABSTRACT

Over the past couple decades, hotels and resorts in the United States have come to rely on the influx of foreign guest workers to meet labor demand during peak tourism seasons. In particular, employers leverage two visas programs: J-1 and H-2B. While helping to solve seasonal workforce issues, these programs have come under scrutiny by worker advocacy groups and other stakeholders who have recognized that both programs at times feature unfavorable conditions for workers. This case study focuses on the precarities embedded in the lives of these foreign guest workers when they come to the United States. Particular attention is paid to the ways that policies crafted to facilitate the flexibilities required by employers have a hand in structuring the precarities associated with living and working in the United States. Results show that workers are at times vulnerable to inadequate housing, questionable employment practices, weak program sponsorship, and, in rare cases, human trafficking. Analysis suggests a general spatial unevenness in the ways that workers experience precarities, especially pertaining to the presence of effective community outreach programs aimed at assisting foreign workers. It is argued that the latter are particularly important for ensuring that guest worker programs can achieve the goals laid out by government agencies of providing employment and protection for workers. Research is based primarily on interviews with major stakeholder groups associated with tourism guest work, including guest workers, advocates, and program sponsors. It is suggested that despite recent reforms, more work is needed to ensure that guest workers' experiences in the United States are not fraught with vulnerability.     

青年农民工就业质量问题的实证研究——以长沙市为例

通过对长沙市301名青年农民工的实证研究表明,青年农民工的就业质量偏低,且受人力资本、社会资本和社会制度的影响显著。要提高青年农民工的就业质量,必须加大青年农民工的人力资本投入,努力扩展青年农民工的社会资本,不断完善现行的社会制度体系。     

What drives the spatial wage premium in formal and informal labor markets? The case of Ecuador

This article investigates the incidence of agglomeration externalities in Ecuador, a small-sized, middle-income developing country. In particular, we analyze the role of the informal sector within these relations, since informal employment accounts for a significant part of total employment in the developing countries. Using individual level data and instrumental variable techniques, we investigate the impact of spatial externalities, in terms of population density, local specialization and urban size, on the wages of workers in Ecuadorian cities. The results show that spatial externalities matter also for a small developing country. Moreover, analysis of the interaction between spatial externalities and informality shows that, on average, workers employed in the informal sector do not enjoy significant benefits from agglomeration externalities. Finally, by investigating the possible channels behind spatial agglomeration gains we show that the advantages from agglomeration for formal sector workers may well be accounted for by better job-quality matches and, to a lesser extent, by learning externalities. For informal sector workers, our findings also suggest possible gains from job changes, which offset a penalty for remaining employed in the same occupation.     

Japanese Working Holiday Makers in Australia and their Relationship to the Japanese Labour Market: Before and After

The Working Holiday is a relatively new but rapidly growing form of transnational mobility. In Australia, Working Holiday Makers (WHMs) form the largest group of Japanese temporary migrants, and their numbers have been increasing. In this paper, I will discuss the experience of returned WHMs in the light of Japanese labour practice. For my interlocutors, the motivations for taking a Working Holiday were frequently related to their dissatisfaction with their status and future prospects as workers. In order to understand this popular but under-researched form of transnational migration, it is therefore important to consider their self-perceptions about their worker status when they re-entered the Japanese workforce, and how they think their life course has changed due to the Working Holiday experience. The employment experience of WHMs upon their return to Japan illuminates their position in the home society in which their migratory decision-making was situated.     

THE SOURCES OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT: WAGES,HOUSING, AND AMENITY GAPS ACROSS AMERICAN CITIES*

ABSTRACT This paper asks whether worker utility levels—composed of wages, rents, and amenities—are being equalized among American cities. Using microdata on U.S. urban workers in 1980 and 2000, little evidence of equalization is found. Comparable workers earn higher real wages in large cities, where amenities are also concentrated. Moreover, population growth between 1980 and 2000 has not been significantly different in low‐ and high‐utility cities, suggesting that other forces are at work shaping the sorting processes that match workers and firms. We outline an alternative view of the drivers of change in the American urban system, and urban development more generally, by applying theory from economic geography.