On the Job, Off the Books: Organizing Against Worker Misclassification in the Neoliberal Era

2021 ◽  
pp. 089692052110580
Author(s):  
Michael R. Slone ◽  
Timothy Black ◽  
Alicia Smith-Tran
Keyword(s):  
Construction Industry ◽  
Economic Reform ◽  
Industrial Change ◽  
Labor Costs ◽  
The West ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
Independent Contractors ◽  
Labor Organizing ◽  
Managerial Strategy ◽  
Neoliberal Restructuring

Worker misclassification is a form of precarious employment in which employers illegally designate their employees as ‘independent contractors’ to cut labor costs. Non-standard employment arrangements and the emergence of the misclassification problem are expressions of neoliberal economic reform and attendant shifts in managerial strategy. Although scholars and government statisticians have documented the prevalence of worker misclassification, extant research on labor-organizing campaigns in response to this practice is lacking. This paper presents case studies of two successful organizing campaigns against worker misclassification: (1) a United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBCJA) effort in the Northeastern construction industry and (2) a Teamsters campaign focused on the West Coast port trucking industry. Both campaigns employ similar frames highlighting competition, free markets, and the necessity of industrial change to achieve these ideals. We conclude with a discussion of the prospects and limitations of these organizing strategies given the countervailing political and economic headwinds posed by neoliberal restructuring.

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

2009 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksander Lust
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Economic Reform ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The West ◽  
Eu Membership ◽  
Economic Expectations ◽  
The Eu

In referenda held in 2003, over 90% of Lithuanians supported joining the European Union (EU), while only two-thirds of Estonians did. Why? This article shows that Lithuanians and Estonians had different economic expectations about the EU. Most Lithuanians hoped that EU membership would help Lithuania overcome its economic backwardness and isolation. By contrast, many Estonians worried that the accession would reinforce Estonia's underdevelopment and dependency on the West. I argue that these expectations reflected the two countries' strategies of economic reform. Lithuania sold state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to their managers and continued to trade heavily with Russia, which slowed down the modernization of its economy. Estonia sold SOEs to foreigners and reoriented its trade rapidly from Russia to the West, which hurt its traditional sectors (particularly agriculture) and infrastructure.

scholarly journals Contemporary Changes in the Role and Spatial Structure of Industrial Production in Hungary

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 127-146
Author(s):  
Ágnes Pál ◽  
Ferenc Győri
Keyword(s):  
Open Economy ◽  
Industrial Production ◽  
Political System ◽  
Considerable Proportion ◽  
Industrial Change ◽  
Capital Investments ◽  
Production Structure ◽  
The West ◽  
Communist System ◽  
Production Value

The aim of our paper is to offer a brief survey of the stages of development of industrial productionin Hungary and the transfomation that followed the changing of Hungary’s political system, as well as the maintrends in the contemporary process of re-industrialization. Hungarian industry has long traditions; as early asthe beginning of the 20th century, in certain branches, it was among the leading countries in the world. Afterthe fall of the centrally planned economy of the communist system and following the crisis treatment policiesof the post-communist years, Hungarian industry, today, has to survive in an open economy. The process ofre-industrializaton in Hungary is, basically, an integral part of global industrial change while, at the same time,it is largely dependent on local industrial developments. The volume indices, the value of industrial investmentsand the number of employees in industry, are all indicators of a positive change. The processing industryrepresents a considerable proportion of industrial production in Hungary and, in addition, vehicle manufacturingis the most dynamically developing segment. At the same time, industry in Hungary can still be characterizedby a dual structure; more than two thirds of its production value us produced by large companies.Small- and medium-sized companies have the possibility of being integrated into the production structure assuppliers. Some of Hungary’s traditional industrial branches have deteriorated, while other segments havebeen able to change their structure and become dynamic again. The main focus of industrial production – dueto capital investments by foreigners – has shifted towards the west, and the largest portion of its productionvalue now comes from Hungary’s western and central Transdanubian regions. The process of re-industralizationis beneficial for those regions in which there is an adequate and ready supply of human resources.

Book Review: In the Ruins of Neoliberalism by Wendy Brown

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chané Henney
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The West ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
Traditional Morality

This review examines Wendy Brown's argument that neoliberalism led to the resurgence of antidemocracy in the West. It is argued that Brown's main arguments offer a valid explanation of the hard-right's appeal to conservatives in the United States. This ultimately led to an overwhelming support for Donald Trump as president of the U. S. The author exposes the antidemocratic effects of the Hayekian view of democracy, which is largely based on the support of free markets and traditional morality.   

scholarly journals Analysis construction industry on the basis of price trends of labor cost

2018 ◽  
Vol 174 ◽  
pp. 04005
Author(s):  
Daniel Przywara ◽  
Adam Rak
Keyword(s):  
Construction Industry ◽  
Cost Estimation ◽  
Labor Cost ◽  
Cost Estimate ◽  
Labor Costs ◽  
Cost Estimates ◽  
Price Trends ◽  
Estimate Rate ◽  
Business Entities ◽  
The Impact

Records of the national, average pay rates in the construction industry, at quarterly intervals, allow cost - planning departments of contractors and investment services to assess current market conditions in the construction industry. Price quarterly publications, such as Sekocenbud and Intercenbud, contain important information, enabling production preparation departments to prepare a comparison of the production in-house labor rates with the market production labor rates. The article attempts to analyze the economic situation of domestic construction production in the years 2010-2016 based on the emerging price trends of the of labor cost estimates in this period, taking into account the impact of seasonal construction services. In "Polish cost estimates standards", the labor cost estimate rate is present in one form: the net labor cost estimate rate, which fully corresponds to the rate defined in calculation formulas. The rates of labor cost estimates, in individual regions of Poland, are shaped according to the presented market situations. This clearly is reflected in the periodic (quarterly) regional records of labor rates in the Sekocenbud system. The Act on prices of July 5, 2001 does not contain any normative regulations regarding the methods of cost estimation of construction works. The necessity to remain competitive forces large construction corporations to use a subcontracting system, involving several or even several dozen smaller, specialized in a narrow range of works, business entities in which labor costs are definitely lower, because they are reduced by a lower value of internal costs.

scholarly journals Harmonisation of Chalk and Cheese

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Davenport
Keyword(s):  
Construction Industry ◽  
West Coast ◽  
East Coast ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
The West ◽  
East And West ◽  
False Premise

This is a response to Towards Harmonisation of the Construction Industry Security of Payment Legislation: A consideration of the success afforded by the East and West Coast Models in Australia by Jeremy Coggins, Robert Fenwick Elliott and Matthew Bell. Towards Harmonisation is based upon the false premise that the objectives of the East Coast and West Coast models are the same. They are chalk and cheese. Each serves a valuable purpose. Each jurisdiction needs both models.  A model for a dual process incorporating both the East Coast and the West Coast models will be found in Davenport (2007).

Deregulation as socio-spatial transformation: Dimensions and consequences of shifting governmentalities in the Danish construction industry

2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 484-502
Author(s):  
Stefan Christoffer Gottlieb ◽  
Nicolaj Frederiksen
Keyword(s):  
Construction Industry ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Spatial Transformation ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Free Markets ◽  
Neoliberal Governmentality ◽  
Existing Structures ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Regulatory Capacity ◽  
Development Agendas

The paper analyses main dimensions and consequences of deregulation in the Danish construction industry. Previous research has often conceptualized deregulation in terms of either the dismantling of states’ regulatory capacity or the layering of initiatives upon existing structures. Using Foucault’s concept of governmentality, we contribute further to this discussion by conceptualizing the process of deregulation as a socio-spatial transformation. This is a complex process of transformative change involving the opening and reconfiguration of institutional spaces. Drawing on an analysis of historical and current developments and changing modes of construction governance in Denmark, we show how the construction sector in the 1940–1960s was rendered governable by disciplinary power in order to achieve national modernization. We then illustrate how the developments since the early 1990s have been moulded in a neoliberal governmentality, with a focus on deregulation and the establishment of free markets. On the basis, we discuss the consequences of a shift in governmentalities, suggesting that new deliberative spaces in the form of mediating and interstitial institutions are likely to be in demand for in order to transgress the bounds of neoliberalism and ensure commitment for alternative development agendas.

Emplacing Indigeneity and rurality in neoliberal disability welfare reform: The lived experience of Aboriginal people with disabilities in the West Kimberley, Australia

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (10) ◽  
pp. 2342-2361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Soldatic ◽  
Kelly Somers ◽  
Kim Spurway ◽  
Georgia van Toorn
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Aboriginal People ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Disability Services ◽  
The West ◽  
Aboriginal Australians ◽  
Neoliberal Restructuring ◽  
The Impact

This article maps the impact of neoliberal restructuring of disability services and income support measures on Aboriginal people with disabilities living in rural areas of the West Kimberley in Australia. The international literature has extensively documented disability and Indigenous neoliberal welfare retraction measures, though as discrete areas of research. We aim to emplace the intersectional experience of such reforms by exposing their unique and qualitatively different dynamics and processes of disablement and Indigenous dispossession in the lived experiences of Aboriginal Australians with disabilities in rural Australia. Interviews conducted with Aboriginal people with disabilities living in the West Kimberley revealed the impact of neoliberal policies of retracting disability supports and rationalising services. The effects were felt in terms of people’s mobility, autonomy and economic security, with chronic, and at times crisis, levels of socio-economic insecurity experienced. Neoliberal spatial structures have led to further peripheralisation of rural and remote populations and a resulting increase in levels of inequality, deprivation and marginalisation for Aboriginal Australians with disabilities, who endure and survive by navigating these disabling spaces.

scholarly journals Factors Affecting Construction Sector Safety Performance: Exploratory Factor Analysis Evidence from China

2022 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
Sun Zhenyun Jia ◽  
◽  
Guanzhong Cao Wei ◽  
Lin Wu Yutang ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Construction Industry ◽  
Chinese Economy ◽  
Safety Performance ◽  
Construction Sector ◽  
Labor Costs ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Profit Margins ◽  
The Government ◽  
New Infrastructure

Construction industry is a significant contributor to the Chinese economy. The industry has more than 12 million employers with over 250 million employees and creates almost $1.9 trillion worth of structures yearly. Civil construction remains the main driver of growth in China. Basically, a task is developed to meet market demands or demands in a timely fashion. Different possibilities may be thought about in the conceptual drawing board, and also the technical and also financial feasibility of each alternative will be assessed and compared in order to select the very best feasible job. The construction industry in China is forecast to grow by 7.7% in 2021, driven by strong Y-o-Y growth in the first quarter, reflecting the comparison to the previous year's period when construction work was halted across most of the country. Thereafter, the construction industry is expected to record an average annual growth of 4.2% between 2022 and 2025. The industry's growth over the forecast period is expected to be driven by investments on new infrastructure, including investment in the areas of 5G networks, Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, and data centers. According to the government-backed think tank, the China Electronic Information Industry Development, the country is expected to spend CNY10 trillion (US$1.4 trillion) on new infrastructure projects between 2020 and 2025. This study evaluated factors affecting construction sector performance: explanatory factor analysis evidence from China. From the literature reviewed, it was established that entering the Chinese construction market is still seen as exciting but difficult by many foreign contractors and consultants. The study found out that rising material and labor costs, labor woes, increased competition and shrinking profit margins were some of the challenges construction firms in Chin face. The study concludes that the implementation of construction safety laws and the rate of subcontracting are relevant factors affecting construction sector in China, while neither the extent of using temporary workers, nor the availability of resources, nor the level of per capita GDP has any effects. Keywords. Construction sector, safety performance, construction sector, labor costs, increased competition, shrinking profit margins

scholarly journals Investment-Wages : Theory and Application

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-398
Author(s):  
Gerhard Reber
Keyword(s):  
Construction Industry ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Framework

After having defined and explained the goals of investment-wages, the author establishes their social and economic framework and gives an example drawn from the West-German construction industry.

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