Made in China Journal (Sep-Dec 2021) Being Water: Streams of Hong Kong Futures

MADE IN CHINA JOURNAL

Made in China Journal. “Being Water: Streams of Hong Kong Futures.”

September–December 2021.

Online access: https://madeinchinajournal.com/2022/03/09/being-water/

Veronika Lemeire and Patrizia Zanoni (2022) European Journal of Industrial Relations

Lemeire, Veronika and Patrizia Zanoni. 2022. “Beyond methodological nationalism in explanations of gender equality: The impact of EU policies on gender provisions in national collective agreements in Belgium (1957–2020).” European Journal of Industrial Relations 28(1): 47–64. https://doi.org/10.1177/09596801211027400

Abstract

Based on an analysis of gender equality provisions in national collective agreements, this article investigates the influence of European Union (EU) gender and macro-economic policy on gender equality outcomes in Belgium since the signature of the Treaty of Rome in 1957. We show that, over time, EU gender equality policies have led to the adoption of provisions promoting formal gender equality and the integration of women in the labour market. At the same time, EU macro-economic policies have stimulated labour flexibility, promoting part-time work largely filled by women, and imposed wage moderation, which has fundamentally hampered the correction of historical indirect gender discrimination in wages. Overall, EU policies have stimulated the transformation of the conservative male breadwinner model of this coordinated market economy (CME) into a gendered ‘one-and-a-half earner’ model, a transformation partially enforced through the increased interference of the state transposing EU policies. Our study advances the current literature by pointing to the limitations of prevalent methodologically nationalist explanations of gender equality outcomes in CMEs. More specifically, it shows that the gender equality provisions of national collective bargaining agreements in CMEs cannot be understood independent of EU gender and macro-economic policies.

Keywords 

Belgium, European gender policy, European macro-economic policy, gender equality outcomes, methodological nationalism, national collective bargaining

Anand Parappadi Krishnan (2022) China Report

Krishnan, Anand Parappadi. 2022. “Vanguard to periphery: The CPC’s changing narrative on the labour question.” China Report 58(1): 60–74. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00094455221074247

Abstract

With the ideological undergirding of Marxism–Leninism, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has claimed representation of peasants and workers in its vanguard role in actualising the socialist revolution. However, as China has developed economically over the past four decades, there has been an erosion in the status of workers and peasants as legitimate stakeholders in governance and ruling practices. This article attempts to map how labour, once a critical component of the CPC’s political–ideological invocation, has become peripheral as China transitioned to a market economy with an emphasis on economic rationale for growth and reforms. It examines the changing contours of the CPC’s discourse and practice over the past 100 years on the labour question, sandwiched as it is between the need for continued economic growth as a legitimating tool and the continued reiteration of being representative of the working class.

Keywords 

Labour, workers, workplace relations, Party-state, trade unions, All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU)

Cioce, Gabriella, Ian Clark and James Hunter (2022) Industrial Relations Journal

Cioce, Gabriella, Ian Clark and James Hunter. 2022. “How does informalisation encourage or inhibit collective action by migrant workers? A comparative analysis of logistics warehouses in Italy and hand car washes in Britain.” Industrial Relations Journal 53(2): 126–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12359

Funding information: The Home Office; Arts and Humanities Research Council

Abstract

Cross-national research is key to understanding the global presence of informal and non-compliant workplaces. This article comparatively examines how informalisation encourages or inhibits collective action led by migrant workers employed in Italian logistics warehouses (LWs) and the British hand car washes (HCWs). The term collective action derives from mobilisation theory and refers to joint resistance initiatives developed by workers and labour organisations to improve work conditions. The article argues that migrant labour does not necessarily lead to informal practices and claims that labour market regulatory agencies and trade unions play an important but dialectical role in responding to labour market non-compliance and informality. Finally, it notes that sector-based specificities contribute to and potentially inhibit the emergence of collective dynamics in such workplaces.

Why Do some Labour Alliances Succeed in Politicizing Europe across Borders?

Szabó, I. G., Golden, D. and Erne, R. (2021) 'Why do some labour alliances succeed in politicizing Europe across borders? A comparison of the Right2Water and Fair Transport European Citizens' Initiatives'. Journal of Common Market Studies. DOI: 10.1111/jcms.13279. Full text.

Abstract

Under what conditions can organized labour successfully politicize the European integration process across borders? To answer this question, we compare the European Citizens' Initiatives (ECIs) of two European trade union federations: EPSU's successful Right2Water ECI and ETF's unsuccessful Fair Transport ECI. Our comparison reveals that actor-centred factors matter – namely, unions' ability to create broad coalitions. Successful transnational labour campaigns, however, also depend on structural conditions, namely, the prevailing mode of EU integration pressures faced by unions at a given time. Whereas the Right2Water ECI pre-emptively countered commodification attempts by the European Commission in water services, the Fair Transport ECI attempted to ensure fair working conditions after most of the transport sector had been liberalized. Vertical EU integration attempts that commodify public services are thus more likely to generate successful transnational counter-movements than the horizontal integration pressures on wages and working conditions that followed earlier successful EU liberalization drives.

Bringing EU citizens together or pulling them apart?

Stan, S., Erne, R. and Gannon, S. (2021) 'Bringing EU citizens together or pulling them apart? The European Health Insurance Card, east-west mobility and the failed promise of European social integration'. Journal of European Social Policy 31 (4): 409-423. Full text.

Abstract

Although the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) was meant to bring Europeans together, this study shows that it is amplifying social inequalities across regions and classes. First, we evaluate the effects of east–west EHIC mobility, and of Eastern Europeans’ participation in it, on the practice of EU social citizenship rights to access cross-border care along spatial (east–west) and social class divides. We then assess the impact of these mobilities on healthcare resources in Western and Eastern Europe. Our findings show that the EHIC reinforces rather than reduces the spatially and socially uneven access to social citizenship rights to cross-border care. Moreover, EHIC patient outflows from Eastern to Western Europe result in a much higher relative financial burden for the budgets of Eastern European states than outflows from Western to Eastern Europe do for Western European countries. As a result, east–west EHIC mobility is reproducing rather than reversing healthcare inequalities between the two regions. Hence, the EHIC does not fulfil its promise of European social integration – not, however, because it creates a burden on Western European welfare states as often argued in Eurosceptic tabloids, but because it increases social inequalities both inside and between richer and poorer EU member states.

Bringing society back into our understanding of European cross-border care

Stan, S. and Erne, R. (2021) 'Bringing society back into our understanding of European cross-border care'. Journal of European Social Policy 31 (4): 432-439. Full text.

Abstract

We are pleased to discuss our study on the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) and the redistributive effects of EHIC-related east–west patient and payment flows across regions and social classes. Our critics confirm our key finding: EHIC patient outflows from Eastern European (EE) to Western European (WE) countries result in a much higher relative burden for the budgets of EE states than outflows from WE to EE do for WE countries. Starting from what they see as the true mission of social security coordination, however, they also tell us that we should never have studied the redistributive impact of EHIC patient and payment flows in the first place. In this response, we therefore explicate the differences between our empirical sociological perspective and our critics’ normative legal approach. This is important, especially when social facts contradict normative legal assumptions as in our case. The EU laws that govern EHIC patient and payment flows are indeed based on the free movement provisions of the EU’s internal market project, but our empirical findings show that the promise of ‘economic, social and territorial cohesion, and solidarity among Member States’ contained in Article 3.3 of the Treaty of the European Union is not realized in practice in the case of east–west EHIC payment flows and patient mobility.