Industrial Relations in Singapore — Practice and Perspective is a comprehensive account of the key developments in industrial relations in Singapore over the last five decades. It offers a holistic, one-stop information depository of relevant industrial relations frameworks, institutions, processes and practices, and issues from a practitioner's perspective.
This book examines industrial and employment relations in the emerging economies of Brazil, China, India, South Africa and Turkey, and assesses the contribution of industrial relations institutions to inclusive development. The book uses real-world examples to examine the evolution of industrial relations and of organised interest representation on labour issues. It reveals contested institutional pathways, despite a continuing demand for independent collective interest representation in labour relations.
The fast-food industry is one of the few industries that can be described as truly global, not least in terms of employment, which is estimated at around ten million people worldwide. This edited volume is the first of its kind, providing an analysis of labour relations in this significant industry focusing on multinational corporations and large national companies in ten countries: the USA, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Russia. The extent to which multinational enterprises impose or adapt their employment practices in differing national industrial relations systems is analysed, Results reveal that the global fast-food industry is typified by trade union exclusion, high labour turnover, unskilled work, paternalistic management regimes and work organization that allows little scope for developing workers' participation in decision-making, let alone advocating widely accepted concepts of social justice and workers' rights.
The distinguished contributors to this volume discuss the global marketplace; labor movements and industrial restructuring; international trends in work organization in the auto industry; linkages between economic development strategies, industrial relations policy and other related topics.
This collection of work by leading scholars investigates the impact of the globalization process on some selected Asian economies and societies. With particular focus on the role of institutional factors such as labour unions or workers' associations, case studies are presented on labour-management relations at the workplace that have evolved to cope with globalization. The cases describe labour institutions in the society as a social force that acts as a catalyst for societal democracy and for industrial democracy at the workplace. These cases provide descriptions of the changes in the management's stance and approaches towards labour unions in the selected countries as well as at the organizational level over the last three decades when much of the industrialization process has occurred in Asia.
This book analyses the role of employment relations in the context of economic development in some of the key Asian economies: China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, the Phillipines, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. In recent years, these Asian economies have become increasingly more open and export-driven, and there is strong interest all over the world in the Asian economic `miracle' among practitioners and scholars alike. Although much has been written on this region, few books have concentrated on the human resource aspects of this growth. The authors build on the basic premise that the initial success of these countries has lain in low wages and suppression of workers' rights. However, they point out that as employment relations evolve enterprises will either pull out due to rising wages, or stay and prosper by adapting to higher wages. Cases are provided to illustrate both of these features. The evidence in the book suggests that unless a synergy is created between firm-level and state-level human resource policies in areas such as skill formation and workers' need for voice, economic growth is unlikely to be sustainable.
This study discusses the emerging trends in industrial relations systems in the ASEAN countries, and inter-country variations in the systems practised in these countries
This book consists of articles written by twenty authors, including three eminent academicians from Australia and Britain. It provides first-hand information on the National Wages Council (NWC), and its contributions, which includes the promotion of tripartism, as an instrument of economic growth. The book is divided into six parts. Part I introduces the book. Part II provides details about the NWC, its operations and its structure. Part III covers the macroeconomic impact of the NWC, including the impact on productivity, competitiveness, investment and growth. Part IV covers the impact of the NWC on wages and the wage system in Singapore. Part V provides a theoretical perspective on the importance of the NWC to productivity growth and productive efficiency. Part VI takes a look at the incomes policy practice of another country in the region, Australia, which provides a good point of reference for the NWC.
