Effects of the Minimum Wage on Small Firms in China: Spillover Effects from Large Firms

This study investigates how minimum wage affects small firms through spillover effects from large firms. Using firm-level panel data from Anhui Province in China, we find that after a minimum wage increase, small firms will reduce workers’ wages and create jobs due to the inflow of displaced workers from large firms. This spillover effect is larger for micro firms and private firms, where minimum wage compliance tends to be lower. We also find that high-tech small firms are more affected than low-tech ones because of their greater demand for skilled labor. Our findings not only highlight the unintended consequences of minimum wage on small firms in China, but also help to explain the ambiguous employment effects of minimum wage on the covered sector in developing countries.

Labour-saving technology and advanced marginality – A study of unemployed workers’ experiences of displacement in Finland

The article explores the experiences of people displaced from work by the introduction of labour-saving technology in Finland. Interviews with 13 unemployed individuals are used as data. The study is underpinned by a Marxist interpretation of potentially emancipatory technology under capitalism reduced to an instrument for reorganizing skilled workers into an exploitable, precarious cadre of surplus and abstract labour. Loïc Wacquant’s thesis on advanced marginality is used as a theoretical framework to unpack and understand the little-studied experience of being displaced from work by technology. The interviewees share a sense of growing alienation and social exclusion. Feeding these experiences are capricious changes in skill-demands and deskilling under automation and robotisation of work. The experiences are exacerbated by digitalised, vertiginous and isolating job-seeking and employment services that cast responsibility on the unemployed individual. While the participants of this study were not on the brink of acute or extreme socio-economic marginalisation, their experiences are rooted in the very same social, economic and political dynamics as advanced marginality. The findings of the study help anticipate the risk of advancing marginality faced by displaced workers, if social policy reforms are not carried out in the short term. In the long term, the findings support the argument that studies on labour-saving technologies and unemployment pay closer attention to the particular role of technology under capitalism.

Legitimization of Greed—Heartbreak to Workers

Chapter 7 discusses the changes in norms that have made it acceptable to make as much money as possible in any legal way, even at great harm to labor and communities. The chapter also considers the role of the media in glorifying the wealthy, along with its constant reporting of stock prices—which reinforces the belief that corporations exist only for shareholders. The chapter shows how the quest for wealth this century has led to a large, growing disparity in both income and wealth. Then the chapter examines the imprecision of unemployment statistics, showing how the statistics (1) overlook people who are not seeking work, and (2) disregard the change in pay and benefits when displaced workers take new jobs. In trying to assess the permanence of the harm caused to displaced workers, the chapter examines retaining programs under the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which was designed to help workers who lost their jobs as a result of outsourcing. In what may be a surprising result, a number of studies have shown that retraining generally does not improve the employment prospects of displaced workers. Finally, the chapter looks at the tragic effects on two communities from the closing of an automobile manufacturing plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, and the shrinkage of a glass manufacturing company in Lancaster, Ohio.

Adult education and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic: an international perspective

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused one of the worst economic crises since the Great Depression. Although countries responded quickly to support displaced workers with assistance packages and funding for education and training, additional measures might be needed. Each country's economic recovery will most likely depend on how well its workforce is prepared to meet the needs of the changed labour market. Providing workers with opportunities to upskill or reskill is of major importance in meeting these challenges and improving low- and middle-skilled workers' re-employment prospects. This qualitative study examines measures taken in response to COVID19 in adult education and training (AET) in seven countries. The findings are based on key informant interviews with international experts and online sources they provided. Some countries have increased government funding for vocational and continuing education or offered financial support for post-secondary students while others have provided funds to employers to offer training and retraining for their employees.

Mechanisms for Hopeful Employee Career Development in COVID-19: A Hope-Action Theory Perspective

The Problem Under the pandemic, employees face unique career challenges depending on their contexts and situations. For example, essential workers need to find ways for themselves and their families to be safe. Remote workers need to learn about new ways of working and communicating. In addition, for displaced or soon-to-be displaced workers, a job search is a primary career concern. The Solution All agents—the organization, supervisors, and employees—can take actions to help employees sustain hope in their careers and recover from the pandemic. This study outcome which involves 257 intervention ideas can be utilized to support the career development of four different types of workers by employing the Hope-Action Theory framework. The Stakeholders The results of this study can guide Human Resource Development (HRD) practitioners and researchers in assisting employee career development by engaging the entire organization, supervisors, and employees. Organizational leaders and employees can also benefit directly from the study results.

Engels’ ‘proletarisation’ and ‘great towns’ vis-à-vis dispossession, and gendered work in an informal economy

Through a powerful investigation of Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), this paper aims to study the conditions of the working-class population in an Indian metropolis in present times. The paper borrows from an empirical case study of working-class population in Narela, a peripheral region in Delhi, to assess the relationship among labour, capital and state. With deepening inequality, changing labour market relations and spatial restructuring in cities, it becomes essential to understand this relationship in light of existing scholarships on South Asian cities focussing on everyday state, urban informality, social reproduction and periphery. The spatial reorganisation of Delhi was premised on aesthetic improvisation of the city, which aimed at driving the polluting/hazardous industries and working-class population to the peripheral area of Narela in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Drawing from the lived experiences of the displaced workers and new migrant workers, this study addresses concerns around housing and employment, therefore looking at a larger relationship among labour, state and capital. Explaining the process of peopling and industrialisation of this peripheral region, the paper critically analyses the contributions as well as limitations of Engels’ work in Indian urban studies.

Wage Insurance and Labor Market Trajectories

Wage insurance provides income support to displaced workers who find reemployment at a lower wage. We study the effects of the wage insurance provisions of the US Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program using administrative data from the state of Virginia. The program includes an age-based eligibility cutoff, allowing us to compare earnings and employment trajectories for workers whose ages at the time of displacement make them eligible or ineligible for the program. Our findings suggest that wage insurance eligibility increases short-run employment probabilities and that wage insurance and TAA training may yield similar long-run effects on employment and earnings.

Post-pandemic transformation of the labor market

Subject. One of the most important effects of the pandemic on the economy is the labor market transformation. It is projected that there will be a structural transformation of the map of in-demand professions and competencies. The labor market will adapt to the requirements of maximum digitalization of the labor functions process implementation. Objectives. The aim is to study the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the labor market. Our tasks are to investigate the impact of the pandemic on various sectors of the economy, identify new professions in the new environment, find out the skills demanded by employers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods. The study employs dialectical and systems approaches, general scientific methods of logical and comparative analysis to achieve the intended objective and solve the problem of determining the post-pandemic changes in the labor market. Results. We identified short-term and long-term market transformations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. They result in changes in basic competencies and systemic restructuring of the structural and professional component of workforce. Conclusions. The pandemic has a complex and ambiguous effect on the labor market. Companies are committed to accelerating the digitalization of work flows, education, expanding the remote work, and automating tasks within the organization. The impact of the pandemic should be addressed by supporting the displaced workers and monitoring the new opportunities in the labor market.

In The Mid of Closure Lies Opportunity: Live Experiences of the Tourism Displaced Workers

Boracay Island, Philippines is known for being a world’s beach destination. However, rapid infrastructures development and wanton disregard to the physical environment eventually lead to a six-month temporary closure of the Island for rehabilitation purposes based on Presidential Proclamation No. 475. As a consequence, emergence of displaced workers in the Island occurred. In this paper, the researchers aimed to know the perceptions of the displaced workers in terms of their stances, feelings and opportunities relative to the issue. The researchers used Phenomenological study, a qualitative research, to deeply know the lived experiences of the displaced tourism workers in Boracay. Key informants were selected through purposive sampling. This study evinced that the displaced workers carry on their indomitable spirits of survival. Hence, the displaced workers were amenable of the closure of the Island for the preservation for the next generation. Moreover, they established business in their respective places, while others are looking for new opportunities. Nevertheless, they still have plans to go back to the Island because of innermost and better opportunities that await them. It is strongly recommended that all stakeholders must strictly enforce environmental laws owing to the fact that the main attraction of Boracay is their pristine nature; without it, everything about Boracay goes nil.