TY - JOUR T1 - Rewards of (Dis)Integration: Economic, Social, and Political Globalization and Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining Rights of Workers in Developing Countries JF - ILR Review Y1 - 2014 A1 - Krishna Chaitanya Vadlamannati KW - collective bargaining KW - developing countries KW - endogeneity KW - FACB rights KW - free association and collective bargaining rights KW - globalization KW - workers’ rights AB -

A much-debated issue regarding globalization is whether it translates into Free Association and Collective Bargaining (FACB) rights for workers. The author uses Dreher’s (2006) globalization index, which gauges globalization on economic, social, and political dimensions, and Mosley’s (2011) FACB rights index, which measures 37 aspects of both practices and laws violations of FACB rights, to examine the impact of globalization on FACB rights of workers. Using panel data for 142 developing countries during the 1985–2002 period, the author finds mixed evidence of the impact of globalization on FACB rights, controlling for a host of relevant factors, including endogeneity concerns using a System-GMM approach. While social globalization is associated with both strengthening laws and enforcing the laws to protect FACB rights, this is not the case for political globalization. In addition, the positive effect of economic globalization on FACB rights is sensitive to estimation specifications.

VL - Oct 24, 2014 L2 - eng ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Low-Wage Work: A Global Perspective JF - International Labour Review Y1 - 2012 A1 - Lee, Sangheon A1 - Kristen Sobeck KW - collective bargaining KW - developed countries KW - developing countries KW - low wages; KW - minimum wages KW - wage policy KW - wages AB -

This article provides a global overview of trends in low pay and policies for reducing its incidence. The special issue it introduces follows up on “Low-wage work in Europe and the United States” (Vol. 148 (2009), No. 4), the focus here being on Brazil, China, India, the Republic of Korea and South Africa. After examining the definition and estimation of low pay, the authors give particular attention to two policies accounting for variations in cross-country trends: collective bargaining and minimum wages. To address low pay effectively, they argue, minimum wages must be set within a certain range on account of threshold effects.

VL - 151 L2 - eng CP - 3 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Foreign Direct Investment, Regime Type, and Labor Protest in Developing Countries JF - American Journal of Political Science Y1 - 2011 A1 - Robertson, Graeme B. A1 - Emmanuel Teitelbaum KW - developing countries KW - foreign direct investment KW - industrial conflict KW - labor strikes AB -

We explore the relationship between FDI, regime type, and strikes in low- and middle-income countries. We argue that FDI produces social tensions and opportunities for protest that can result in higher levels of industrial conflict. However, the effect of FDI is moderated by regime type. While democracies tend to have higher levels of protest overall, they are better able than authoritarian regimes to cope with the strains arising from FDI. We cite two reasons. First, political competition forces regimes to incorporate workers, which shifts conflict from industrial relations to the political arena. Second, democracies provide workers with freedom of association rights, which facilitate institutionalized grievance resolution. We test the argument using a new dataset of labor protest in low- and middle-income countries for the period 1980–2005.

VL - 55 L2 - eng CP - 3 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 - Improving Work Conditions in a Global Supply Chain JF - MIT Sloan Management Review Y1 - 2007 A1 - Locke, Richard M. A1 - Monica Romis KW - child labor KW - developing countries KW - global brands KW - globalization KW - labor standards KW - Nike KW - supply chain KW - wages KW - workers’ rights KW - working conditions AB -

[Excerpt] Globalization and the diffusion of industry supply chains to developing countries have provoked a fierce debate over how best to improve labor standards in these emerging centers of production. Child labor, hazardous working conditions, excessive working hours and poor wages continue to be a problem at many factories in developing countries, creating scandal and embarrassment for the global brands that source from those factories. Given the limited capacity of many developing-country governments to enforce their own labor laws, multinational corporations have developed their own “codes of conduct” for suppliers, as well as a variety of monitoring mechanisms aimed at enforcing compliance with these codes. Monitoring for compliance with codes of conduct is currently the principal way that both global corporations and labor rights nongovernmental organizations address poor working conditions in global supply chain factories.Corporate codes of conduct and various efforts aimed at monitoring compliance with these codes have been around for decades. While initially these efforts focused primarily on corporate or supplier compliance with national regulations and laws, over time they have become increasingly concerned with compliance with private, voluntary codes of conduct, especially as they apply to labor and environmental standards. Information is central to this model of private, voluntary regulation. The underlying assumption is that information collected through factory audits will be used by labor rights NGOs to exert pressure on global brands to reform their sourcing practices and by the brands themselves, which rely on this information to police and pressure their suppliers to improve standards within their factories. Should these factories fail to remediate workplace problems, brands are expected to switch their orders to other producers. This model of workplace change has provoked debate over not only the particularities of the codes of conduct and compliance efforts but also their relation to other forms of regulation, especially government regulation. Critics of corporate codes of conduct argue that they displace more thorough government and union intervention and are not designed to protect labor rights or improve working conditions but to limit the legal liability of global brands and prevent damage to their reputations. Others, however, argue that private codes and monitoring are not attempts to undermine the state but rather are appropriately flexible responses to the reality of global production networks and the low capacity of developing-country governments to enforce labor laws and regulations fully. How well do corporate monitoring systems measure actual workplace conditions? And how effective is this system of private, voluntary regulation at improving labor standards? To gain more insights into these questions, we conducted a structured comparison of two factories in Mexico that supply the same global brand — NIKE Inc. (See “About the Research.”) Although these factories had very similar scores on one of Nike’s principal monitoring tools, the two factories in some ways had quite different working conditions. One plant paid higher wages, limited workers’ overtime and gave them greater discretion over their work on the shop floor, and the other plant paid workers less, worked them longer hours and employed more traditional, hierarchical work systems. Our findings suggest that interventions aimed at reorganizing work and empowering labor on the shop floor in global supply chain factories can lead to significant improvements in working conditions.

VL - 48 L2 - eng UR - http://iis-db.stanford.edu/docs/182/Locke,Romis.pdf CP - 2 ER -