In the era of economic stress and industry restructuring this book discusses the paradigm shift in both ER and HRM. Emphasizing the changing role of the state and labor, the recent erosion of the tradition system and search for a new mode of employment, the book provides policy implications that can stimulate constructive debates regarding the ’mutual-gains’ strategies for policy makers, management, and employees.
The past several decades have seen widespread reform of labor markets across advanced industrial countries, but most of the existing research on job security, wage bargaining, and social protection is based on the experience of the United States and Western Europe. In Inequality in the Workplace, Jiyeoun Song focuses on South Korea and Japan, which have advanced labor market reform and confronted the rapid rise of a split in labor markets between protected regular workers and underprotected and underpaid nonregular workers. The two countries have implemented very different strategies in response to the pressure to increase labor market flexibility during economic downturns. Japanese policy makers, Song finds, have relaxed the rules and regulations governing employment and working conditions for part-time, temporary, and fixed-term contract employees while retaining extensive protections for full-time permanent workers. In Korea, by contrast, politicians have weakened employment protections for all categories of workers.In her comprehensive survey of the politics of labor market reform in East Asia, Song argues that institutional features of the labor market shape the national trajectory of reform. More specifically, she shows how the institutional characteristics of the employment protection system and industrial relations, including the size and strength of labor unions, determine the choice between liberalization for the nonregular workforce and liberalization for all as well as the degree of labor market inequality in the process of reform.
We are currently witnessing some of the greatest challenges to democratic regimes since the 1930s, with democratic institutions losing ground in numerous countries throughout the world. At the same time organized labor has been under assault worldwide, with steep declines in union density rates. In this timely handbook, scholars in law, political science, history, and sociology explore the role of organized labor and the working class in the historical construction of democracy. They analyze recent patterns of democratic erosion, examining its relationship to the political weakening of organized labor and, in several cases, the political alliances forged by workers in contexts of nationalist or populist political mobilization. The volume breaks new ground in providing cross-regional perspectives on labor and democracy in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Beyond academia, this volume is essential reading for policymakers and practitioners concerned with the relationship between labor and democracy.
The 2009 edition of the Korea yearbook contains concise overview articles covering domestic developments and the economy in both South and North Korea as well as inter-Korean relations and foreign relations of the two Koreas in 2008. A detailed chronology complements these articles. South Korea-related refereed articles in the 2009 edition deal with the internal politics of the Democratic Labour Party, the origins of the nuclear industry, industrial relations in the metals sector, Cheju island as a medical tourism hub, President Lee Myung-bak as seen through political cartoons, the comfort women movement's regionalisation process and perceptions of North Korean women. Additional refereed articles analyse the reliability of North Korean survey data, the migration experience of North Korean refugees, and sports-related cooperation between the two Koreas.
Contrary to the widely-held view that the East Asian "developmental state" is neutral in terms of the relationship between capital and labour – a benign co-operation between state officials and businessmen to organise economic development – this book argues that in fact the developmental state exists to promote the interests of capital over the interests of labour. Dae-oup Chang asserts that there has been a deliberate mystification concerning the reality of this process. This book presents a radical, Marxist critique of state development theory. It both explains the exploitative functions of the state, looking at the emergence of the particular form of capitalist state in the context of the formation and reproduction of capital relations in Korea; and also traces the origin and development of the process of mystification whereby the capitalist state has been characterised as the autonomous developmental state. In addition, the book provides a comprehensive analysis of labour relations in Korea both before and after the 1998 financial crisis, demonstrating continuing capital relations, state transition and class struggle.
Thoroughly updated and revised by a team of international experts, this fifth edition continues to be the most authoritative and accessible overview of industrial relations practices around the world.
Recent developments in the world economy, including deindustrialisation and the digital revolution, have led to an increasingly individualistic relationship between workers and employers, which in turn has weakened labour movements and worker representation. However, this process is not universal, including in some countries of Asia, where trade unions are closely aligned with the interests of the dominant political party and the state. This book considers the many challenges facing trade unions and worker representation in a wide range of Asian countries. For each country, full background is given on how trade unions and other forms of worker representation have arisen. Key questions then considered include the challenges facing trade unions and worker representation in each country, the extent to which these are a result of global or local developments and the actions being taken by trade unions and worker representative bodies to cope with the challenges. This book is dedicated to the memory of Professor Keith Thurley, London School of Economics.
Chinese Labor in a Korean Factorydraws on fieldwork in a multinational corporation (MNC) in Qingdao, China, and delves deep into the power dynamics at play between Korean management, Chinese migrant workers, local-level Chinese government officials, and Chinese local gangs. Anthropologist Jaesok Kim examines how governments, to attract MNCs, relinquish parts of their legal rights over these entities, while MNCs also give up portions of their rights as proxies of global capitalism by complying with local government guidelines to ensure infrastructure and cheap labor. This ethnography demonstrates how a particular MNC struggled with the pressure to be increasingly profitable while negotiating the clash of Korean and Chinese cultures, traditions, and classes on the factory floor of a garment corporation. Chinese Labor in a Korean Factory pays particular attention to common features of post-socialist countries. By analyzing the contentious collaboration between foreign management, factory workers, government officials, and gangs, this study contributes not only to the research on the politics of resistance but also to how global and local forces interact in concrete and surprising ways.
