Stephanie A. Limoncelli (2020) There’s an App for That?

Limoncelli, Stephanie A. 2020. “There’s an App for That? Ethical Consumption in the Fight against Trafficking for Labour Exploitation.” Anti-Trafficking Review 14: 33-46.

Abstract

Among the market-based strategies being used to fight trafficking for labour exploitation are apps aimed at encouraging ethical consumption. Such apps have surfaced in tandem with the increased involvement of businesses in anti-trafficking efforts and the promotion of social entrepreneurism. In this article, I describe and critically analyse three apps aimed at individual consumers, arguing that they do little to actually address labour exploitation. They rest on questionable assumptions about consumption, employ problematic assessment methodologies, and rely on business models that do more to provide opportunities for social entrepreneurs in the burgeoning anti-trafficking field than solutions for labour exploitation in the global economy.

Keywords: anti-trafficking strategies, consumer activism, ethical consumption, forced labour, labour exploitation, mobile apps

Andreas Bieler and Jokubas Salyga (2020) Baltic Labour in the Crucible of Capitalist Exploitation

 

Bieler, Andreas and Jokubas Salyga. 2020. “Baltic Labour in the Crucible of Capitalist Exploitation: Reassessing ‘Post-Communist’ Transformation.” The Economic and Labour Relations Review 31(2): 191–210.

 

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1035304620911122

Abstract Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this article re-assesses ‘post-communist’ transformation in the Baltic countries from the perspective of labour. The argument is based on a historical materialist approach focusing on the social relations of production as a starting point. It is contended that the uneven and combined unfolding of ‘post-communist’ transformation has subjected Baltic labour to doubly constituted exploitation processes. First, workers in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have suffered from extreme neoliberal restructuring of economic and employment relations at home. Second, migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe in general, trying to escape exploitation at home, have faced another set of exploitative dynamics in host countries in Western Europe such as the UK. Nevertheless, workers have continued to challenge exploitation in Central and Eastern Europe and also in Western Europe, and have been active in extending networks of transnational solidarity across the continent. JEL Codes: E11, E24, J61 Keywords Baltic states, capitalist expansion, Central and Eastern Europe, class struggle, exploitation, historical materialism, labour, migration, post-communist, transformation

Scipes 2020 Regional aspirations with a global perspective

Scipes, Kim. 2020. “Regional Aspirations with a Global Perspective: Developments in East Asian Labour Studies.” Educational Philosophy and Theory 52(11): 1214-24.

Abstract

Workers in East Asia have shown over the past 50 years that they are capable of challenging capital, despite facing vehement opposition by corporations, oftentimes joined by governments and their militaries, and sometimes even armed thugs. They have built some of the most dynamic labour organizations in the world. This article is designed to put these developments into a global and historical perspective. It identifies today’s movements of capital as the continuation of processes that developed to a new level in the 1700s, and which continue today. It also discusses struggles of workers under the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU-May First Movement) Labor Center of the Philippines, and shows how valuable research conducted to date has identified a number of lessons learned from these struggles, and how they have been communicated to workers worldwide.

Keywords: KMU labor center, labor organizations, global struggles, labor education, worker research, East Asia

Kim Scipes, Ph.D., is a Professor of Sociology at Purdue University Northwest in Westville, Indiana, USA. He has been working to build global labor solidarity since 1983, having published three books and over 230 articles and book reviews in the US and 10 other countries, and with another book currently in press. A list of Dr. Scipes’ publications, many with links to original articles, can be accessed at https://www.pnw.edu/faculty/kim-scipes-ph-d/publications/.

Kim Scipes (2020) book review

Scipes, Kim. 2020. Review of Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India: Popular Mobilization in the Long Depression, by Jörg Nowak (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Class, Race and Corporate Power 8(1). Online publication.

“Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India: Popular Mobilization in the Long Depression" by Jörg Novak, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) A Review Essay

Kim Scipes, Purdue University - North Central CampusFollow

Abstract

A review of Jörg Novak's “Mass Strikes and Social Movements in Brazil and India: Popular Mobilization in the Long Depression" published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Kim Scipes (2020) innovations in labor studies

Scipes, Kim. 2020. “Innovations in Labor Studies—Incorporating Global Perspectives: From Exhortation to Making It Real.” Class, Race and Corporate Power 8(1). Online publication.

Innovations in Labor Studies - Incorporating Global Perspectives: From Exhortation to Making It Real

Kim Scipes, Purdue University - North Central CampusFollow

Abstract

Ever since the mid-1840s, there has been an exhortation for workers of the world to unite globally. With the exception of a three-year period between 1946 and 1949 - with the founding and development of the World Federation of Trade Unions immediately after the end of World War II - this has been generally a call limited to rhetoric only. The growing understanding of a globalizing world today, however - affecting the world of work, workers and their organizations - suggests it time for workers to try to make it real. This paper examines two issues pertinent to this new understanding. First, we’ve got to come to terms with “globalization” and its complexity. And second, we need to recognize that there has been an explosion of globally-aware writings on labor that have emerged since the late 1970s.

Richard Hyman (2018) "What future for industrial relations in Europe?"

Hyman, Richard. 2018. “What Future for Industrial Relations in Europe?” Employee Relations 40(4): 569-79.

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to perform a systematic cross-country comparison of key features of industrial relations in Europe in a context where consolidated post-war institutions are under attack on many fronts. The author discusses a number of key similarities and differences across the countries of Europe, and end by considering whether progressive alternatives still exist.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper draws upon academic literature and compares the contributions to this special issue in the light of common problems and challenges.

Findings – The trend towards the erosion of nationally based employment protection and collective bargaining institutions is widely confirmed. In most of Central and Eastern Europe, where systems of organised industrial relations were at best only partially established after the collapse of the Soviet regime, the scope for unilateral dominance by (in particular foreign-owned) employers has been further enlarged. It is also clear that the European Union, far from acting as a force for harmonisation of regulatory standards and a strengthening of the “social dimension” of employment regulation, is encouraging the erosion of nationally based employment protections and provoking a growing divergence of outcomes. However, the trends are contradictory and uneven.

Originality/value – This paper contributes to an updated cross-country comparative analysis of the ongoing transformations in European industrial relations and discusses still existing progressive alternatives.

Keywords Europe, Trade unions, Industrial relations, Neoliberalism, Collective bargaining, Globalization, Austerity

Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick and Richard Hyman (2019) “Democracy in Trade Unions, Democracy through Trade Unions?”

Gumbrell-McCormick, Rebecca and Richard Hyman. 2019. “Democracy in Trade Unions, Democracy through Trade Unions?” Economic and Industrial Democracy 40(1); 91-110.

Abstract

Since the Webbs published Industrial Democracy at the end of the nineteenth century, the principle that workers have a legitimate voice in decision-making in the world of work – in some versions through trade unions, in others at least formally through separate representative structures – has become widely accepted in most West European countries. There is now a vast literature on the strengths and weaknesses of such mechanisms, and we review briefly some of the key interpretations of the rise (and fall) of policies and structures for workplace and board-level representation. We also discuss the mainly failed attempts to establish broader processes of economic democracy, which the eclipse of nationally specific mechanisms of class compromise makes again a salient demand. Economic globalization also highlights the need for transnational mechanisms to achieve worker voice (or more radically, control) in the dynamics of capital–labour relations. We therefore examine the role of trade unions in coordinating pressure for a countervailing force at European and global levels, and in the construction of (emergent?) supranational industrial relations. However, many would argue that unions cannot win legitimacy as a democratizing force unless manifestly democratic internally. Therefore we revisit debates on and dilemmas of democracy within trade unions, and examine recent initiatives to enhance democratization.

Keywords Capitalism, Europe, globalization, industrial democracy, trade unions