TY - RPRT T1 - Assessment of the Progress of Nations on Core Labor Standards: Measures of Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining Y1 - 2010 A1 - S. Kuruvilla A1 - Hossain, J. A1 - Berger, S. KW - codes of conduct KW - collective bargaining KW - core labor standards KW - freedom of association KW - labor standards KW - trade agreements AB -

The linkage between labor standards and trade agreements pursued by the US, and the burgeoning corporate codes of conduct that seek to strengthen core labor standards in global supply chains, has resulted in interest in the development of measures (or indicators) of core labor standards by a variety of organizations, such as the US dept of Labor, the ILO and several NGOs. We argue in this paper that measures of freedom of association and collective bargaining that are in use currently are incomplete and flawed, partly because they focus almost exclusively on whether the rights exist, without regard to practice, and partly because they tend to focus on easily available quantitative indicators that are necessary but insufficient indicators of the freedom of association and collective bargaining process. We develop new measures that draw on decades of comparative industrial relations research and which are based on the existing cross-national variation in industrial relations practice. Our suggested measures require national experts to use both quantitative data and qualitative research and judgment in their evaluation, and report it in consistent and transparent ways. Given that the connection between trade and labor standards makes the consequences of violation quite severe for developing countries, reliance on imperfect measures to make decisions about country performance on core labor standards is problematic. The measures advanced in this paper reduce that risk.

PB - Cornell University, ILR School CY - Ithaca, NY L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/310/ ER - TY - CHAP T1 - Adjusting to Globalization Through Skills Development Strategies T2 - Globalization and Change in Asia Y1 - 2007 A1 - S. Kuruvilla ED - D. A. Rondinelli ED - Heffron, J. M. KW - developing countries KW - labor KW - national human resource policy KW - national skills development KW - Singapore KW - skill formation AB -

[Excerpt] The aim of this chapter is to describe and analyze the efforts at skills development in Singapore and in India's booming outsourcing sector. Singapore is an important case because it started its skills development efforts in the early 1980s at a time when outsourcing of manufacturing was just beginning, and it has become one of the best-known examples of a nation that has successfully and continuously upskilled its workforce over the past twenty-five years. India, on the other hand, is just beginning to focus on skills development, stimulated by the growth in outsourcing of high-end services such as software development and business process outsourcing (BPO) of financial and medical research and low-end services such as call centers.

JA - Globalization and Change in Asia PB - Lynne Rienner Publishers CY - Boulder, CO L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/216/ ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Change and Transformation in Asian Industrial Relations JF - Industrial Relations Y1 - 2002 A1 - S. Kuruvilla A1 - Erickson, C. KW - China KW - India KW - industrial relations KW - industrialization KW - Japan KW - Malaysia KW - Philippines KW - Singapore KW - South Korea AB -

Authors argue that industrial relations systems change due to shifts in the constraints facing those systems, and that the most salient constraints facing IR systems in Asia have shifted from those of maintaining labor peace and stability in the early stages of industrialization, to those of increasing both numerical and functional flexibility in the 1980s and 1990s. The evidence to sustain the argument is drawn from seven “representative” Asian IR systems: Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, India, and China. They also distinguish between systems that have smoothly adapted (Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines) and systems that have fundamentally transformed (China and South Korea), and hypothesize about the reasons for this difference.

VL - 41 L2 - eng UR - http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cbpubs/36/ CP - 2 ER -