The Indian Industrial Relations System: Struggling to Address the Dynamics of a Globalizing Economy

2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Hill
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
The State ◽  
Industrial System ◽  
Labour Unions ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Working Age ◽  
Important Challenge

The industrial relations system in India has been under pressure for decades and new problems are emerging as the country becomes more integrated into the global economy. The main architecture of the system was established prior to Independence and remains mostly unchanged. The system is highly centralized and the state is the main mediator between capital and labour. Unions have historically enjoyed a close relationship with the state through party-based federations, but this has undermined their success developing a robust grassroots constituency and experience in collective bargaining. This essay provides a broad overview of the evolution of the Indian system of industrial relations and the labour market reform debate that has arisen in the context of economic change. The structure of the Indian labour market, the overwhelming size of the informal or `unorganized' workforce, and its location outside the industrial system is the fundamental challenge facing Indian industrial relations. There is an urgent need to develop a system that embraces all workers especially given India's demographic profile and the expected increase in the number of working age people over the next decade. The experience of women workers and the failure of both the industrial system and the union movement to understand and accommodate their needs is also an important challenge for industrial relations in India.

scholarly journals Labour Market Adjustment and Women in the Service Industry: A Survey

1970 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Harbridge ◽  
Maryan Street
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Service Industry ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
International Literature ◽  
Employment Contracts ◽  
Labour Process ◽  
Wide Range

The celebration in 1993 of a century of women's suffrage in New Zealand has brought even more sharply into focus the uneven impact of the Employment Contracts Act on the workforce. From the outset, debate about the effects of the Employrnent Contracts Act had focused for some on the likely impacts on women workers. This study is located firmly within the tradition of national and international literature front a range of disciplines including economics, industrial relations, sociology:- law and history, which describes a segmented labour market and labour process. One aspect of labour segmentation theory is gender segmentation, that is, the location of women and men in the labour market and their comparative situations. Much theoretical work and empirical research has been done to describe where women are located in the labour market, why they are located there, and that effects that location has upon them. Even within this field of study there is a wide range of subjects for analysis. For example, the subjects can range from the gender earning gap (Blau and Kahn, 1992) and occupational structures (Terrell. 1992) to the challenge of "flexibility" and the pool of labour women traditionally provide (Walby, 1989). Even the concept of skill itself has bad to be revisited by the gender segmentation theorists (Bervoets and Frielink, 1988). Much of the theoretical framework within which these scholars cited have written, along with numerous others, was codified in the 1970s and 1980s in response to Harry BravetJnan's classic mould-breaking \Vork Labor and Monopol)' Capital published in 1974. Writers such as Phillips and Taylor (1980), Cockbwn (1981, 1983, 1985) and Beechey (1982) remain some of the leading contributors to the discussion and ongoing analysis about women in the vvorkforce. As industrial relations regimes and bargaining structures have altered in the 1980s and on into the 1990s, the changes have been observed to impact differently upon different segments of the labour market

THE NATIONAL EMPLOYMENT PLAN IN BULGARIA - ANALYSIS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR CHANGE

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Venelin Krastev Terziev ◽  
◽  
Ivan Stefanov Ivanov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Emergency Situation ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Financial Resource ◽  
The State

This paper is the part of an extensive study which analyzes and examines the processes on the Bulgarian market that unfold in the emergency situation resulting from the COVID-19 pandemics. The focus is on the state of the labour market before the pandemic crisis and the subsequent changes in the current national employment plan in view of the challenges of the situation caused by COVID-19. It proposes measures and supports actions for restructuring the financial resource for adaptation of the plan to the new challenge to the labour market in Bulgaria.

scholarly journals COVID-19 in Southeast Asia: Implications for workers and unions

2021 ◽  
pp. 002218562110000
Author(s):  
Michele Ford ◽  
Kristy Ward
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
First Year ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
The Public ◽  
Market Effects ◽  
Export Orientation ◽  
Health Measures

The labour market effects in Southeast Asia of the COVID-19 pandemic have attracted considerable analysis from both scholars and practitioners. However, much less attention has been paid to the pandemic’s impact on legal protections for workers’ and unions’ rights, or to what might account for divergent outcomes in this respect in economies that share many characteristics, including a strong export orientation in labour-intensive industries and weak industrial relations institutions. Having described the public health measures taken to control the spread of COVID-19 in Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam, this article analyses governments’ employment-related responses and their impact on workers and unions in the first year of the pandemic. Based on this analysis, we conclude that the disruption caused to these countries’ economies, and societies, served to reproduce existing patterns of state–labour relations rather than overturning them.

scholarly journals Professionalisation of early childhood education and care practitioners: Working conditions in Ireland

2021 ◽  
pp. 146394912110101
Author(s):  
Geraldine Mooney Simmie ◽  
Dawn Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Women Workers ◽  
Early Childhood Education ◽  
Performance Management ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
The State ◽  
Developmental Needs ◽  
Childhood Education ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Education And Care

The last decade has revealed a global (re)configuring of the relationships between the state, society and educational settings in the direction of systems of performance management. In this article, the authors conduct a critical feminist inquiry into this changing relationship in relation to the professionalisation of early childhood education and care practitioners in Ireland, with a focus on dilemmatic contradictions between the policy reform ensemble and practitioners’ reported working conditions in a doctoral study. The critique draws from the politics of power and education, and gendered and classed subjectivities, and allows the authors to theorise early childhood education and care professionalisation in alternative emancipatory ways for democratic pedagogy rather than a limited performativity. The findings reveal the state (re)configured as a central command centre with an over-reliance on surveillance, alongside deficits of responsibility for public interest values in relation to the working conditions of early childhood education and care workers, who are mostly part-time ‘pink-collar’ women workers in precarious roles. The study has implications that go beyond Ireland for the professionalisation of early childhood education and care workers and meeting the early developmental needs of young children.

The Stockpile Thesis and Industrial Relations at Kambalda

1986 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-366
Author(s):  
Helen Lang
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Mining Town ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Nickel Mining ◽  
Industrial Disputes ◽  
Strategic Variable ◽  
Consensual Approach

Some recent work on industrial relations in the Australian minirtg industry has focused on a close relationship between the incidence of strikes and the stockpiling of the mineral mined. It is argued that when demand for a mineral falls and the stockpile grows, management can afford the disruption to production caused by strikes. Hence management will take action to provoke strikes by introducing changes in work practices it knows will be opposed by unionists. Not only are the unions more likely to be defeated, but the company concerned is also able to reduce the size of its stockpile of ore. A case-study of the nickel-mining centre of Kambalda in Western Australia suggests that the size of the stockpile isfar less relevant when management and unions have a consensual approach to industrial relations. The stockpile is a strategic variable rather than a cause of industrial disputes. Whether the stockpile is manipulated as part of management's strategy will depend on innumerable, interdependent factors, including the organization of social life in a mining town and whether effective co operative relations develop between managers and unions.

Into the Vicious Cycle of Precarity: Labour Market, Precarious Work, Social Vulnerability and Youth: The case of Greece within the EU context

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 474-496
Author(s):  
Nikos Papadakis ◽  
Maria Drakaki ◽  
Sofia Saridaki ◽  
Vassilis Dafermos
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Young People ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Vulnerability ◽  
The State ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Development Education ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
Precarious Work ◽  
The Impact

Ιn the last decade, there has been a widespread expansion of both precarious work and precarious forms of employment (such as temporary and low-qualified jobs, seasonal and part-time jobs etc.), in which a growing share of young people work. The impact of precarious work on young people is likely to be permanent, while it seems to affect (even over-determine) their life courses. Non-smooth and early transitions into labour market are very likely to worsen progressively their long-term life chances (Lodovici & Semenza, 2012: 7). Undoubtedly, the long-lasting global economic Crisis and the subsequent Recession, has heavily affected the state of play in the labour market worldwide, provoking severe modifications both in the field of employment and countries’ social cohesion. Based on the above mentioned, the paper deals with precarious work in general, while it emphasizes precarious work among youth. It initially captures, briefly, the state of play in terms of the impact of the Crisis on the widening of the phenomenon of precarious work and then it focuses on theoretical insights and critical conceptual definitions concerning precariousness in the labour market. Further, based on secondary quantitative -data analysis, it analyses the key- parameters and facets of precarious work (focusing on youth) in the European Union and, mainly, in Greece. Additionally, it briefly presents parameters of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on precariousness in Greece. Finally, the paper explores the correlation between precarious work and social vulnerability, especially among young people. The present paper is based on an ongoing Research Project. More specifically, this research is co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Social Fund- ESF) through the Operational Programme «Human Resources Development, Education and Lifelong Learning 2014-2020» in the context of the project “Precarious Work and Youth in today’s Greece: secondary quantitative analysis, qualitative filed research and research-based policy proposals” (MIS 5048510).

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