Capital-labor Relations Research Articles

Relações públicas no capitalismo cognitivo

O objetivo deste ensaio é apontar brevemente os principais aspectos teóricos sobre as mudanças paradigmáticas no capitalismo, além de aproximar a questão das relações públicas refletindo sobre a efetividade ou não de seus pressupostos quanto ao potencial de colaborar para aumentar a potenciação das forças produtivas. As mudanças engendradas pelo capitalismo cognitivo se revelam em múltiplas dimensões, entre elas o trabalho imaterial, as quais instituem novos paradigmas nas relações capital-trabalho, mas não extraem da atividade de relações públicas o seu poder de contribuir para estabelecer relações de cumplicidade entre a organização e os seus “colaboradores” e de angariar consensos na sociedade.

Behind the 'Spring': Egyptian Labor Law Reform and the Industrial Workers' Movement, 2003-2010

The eruption of Arab uprisings has certainly transformed the socio-political scene of contemporary Middle Eastern society. While the uprisings have created the space for political and legal contestation, through for example political party reform, constitutional amendments, and the institution of free and fair elections, they have, to a certain degree, left many of the socio-economic predicaments to a ‘post-transitional’ phase. The role of labor in fueling many of the uprisings seems to be an interesting site that does not only probe questions of ‘civics’ but also questions relating to social status and income disparities. This is reflected in initiatives on labor law reform, labor organizing, independent trade union movements, and the campaign for the institution of a fair minimum wage and its effective legal enforcement. Certainly, the significant contribution of labor movements in the uprisings are embedded within an historical and socio-economic context that created the necessary impetus for a wider movement that culminated in the main squares of Arab capitals. This paper will investigate the role of the Egyptian labor movement in resisting intolerable socio-economic conditions that were effectuated by existing labor legislation, which although problematic in and of itself, provided minimal protections to workers that were never effectively enforced. This was largely the result of a fundamental bias that geared the entire economic system towards privatization, austerity measures, and a more robust investment climate. The paper will specifically examine the most recent labor legislation and the corresponding dynamic in the Egyptian labor movement from 2003, when the Unified Labor Law was finally adopted by parliament after a decade of stalling, followed by the appointment of a neoliberal cabinet in 2004, until January 2011. I will first map out the central arguments on labor legislation, including its theoretical basis, and practical enforcement, proposed by the different actors and observers. Second, I will focus on the Unified Labor Law, adopted in 2003 and its implications combined with the repercussions of Ahmed Nazif’s 2004 neoliberal cabinet, which embarked upon an unrelenting program of privatization, austerity, and curtailment of workers’ rights. Third, I will argue that the extremity of neoliberal policies has reignited the workers’ movement after decades of low-profile activism. In doing that, I bring out the main legal problems facing Egyptian workers including minimum wage enforcement, the law on collective bargaining and trade unions, dismissals, fixed-term contracts, among other issues. Finally, I conclude with the prospects of re-imagining the Unified Labor Law, a step that requires a systemic approach to capital-labor relations, further increasing the role of government regulation and embedding the social component of labor economics and labor law within the macroeconomic national agenda as opposed to a mere philanthropic disposition to labor matters, or as part of corporate governance policy and corporate social responsibility propaganda. While the labor movement was to a great extent behind the eruption of the Egyptian “Spring”, it is pertinent to recognize that it should not be left behind in the post-uprising public agenda.

Legal Activism or Class Action?

This article aims to study an issue of “double absence” embedded in the rapidly changing construction industry and to explore how it induces serious collective action among construction workers in post-socialist China. The political economy of the construction industry has shaped a specific labour use system – a labour subcontracting system. The system generates a specific capital-labour relationship in which the legal labour identity and labour relationship are highly subsumed by an “absent” employer. It creates a double absence in legal terms: an “absent” boss and an “absent” labour relationship. This double absence has led to a perpetual process of wage arrears and struggles by construction workers to pursue delayed wages in various ways, usually involving legal action or non-legal collective action. The findings of this study are drawn from case studies conducted between 2008 and 2009 in seven Chinese cities. The labour struggle – the fight for delayed payment – was understood not as a form of legal labour activism, but as incipient class action in a specific context.

Beyond firm-centrism: re-integrating labour and capitalism into global commodity chain analysis

Since the mid-1990s, global commodity chain (GCC) analysis has contributed much to our understanding of processes of globalization and development. It has however, broadly failed to integrate class relations generally and labour in particular into its approach. This article suggests that we can understand this failure by revisiting and critically interrogating GCC's intellectual foundations—in World Systems Theory and Schumpeterian conceptions of capitalist innovation. It also argues that if carefully reformed, these foundations can provide a useful framework from which to conduct research into processes of contemporary development. A central argument of this paper is that evolving capital–labour relations co-determine processes of capitalist expansion and development, and that a commitment to understanding and investigating these relations should be placed more firmly at the centre of GCC analysis.

The Political Economy of Class Compromise: Trade Unions, Capital-Labour Relations and Development in North East Brazil1

This article investigates how capitallabour relations (encompassing processes of class formation, representation, struggle and compromise) impact on emerging regions developmental trajectories. It does so because much of development studies portray labour simply as an input (human capital) subordinate to more fundamental processes such as capital investment and accumulation. The paper draws on and extends insights gained from the new working class studies and global commodity chains literatures in order to examine evolving capitallabour relationsfrom relatively militant struggles to class compromisein an emerging sector of North East Brazilian export horticulture. It identifies sources of workers structural and associational power and uses these to explain significant gains achieved by the regions rural trade union during the formation of the export horticulture sector. It then asks, why, despite continuing structural power, the regions trade union has entered into a class compromise with the leading employers via (a) reducing its militancy and its strategy of striking against employers to win concessions, and (b) shifting its objectives in terms of concessions sought. It speculates on the impacts of these changing class relations on the regions developmental trajectory.

Globalisation, crisis and industrial relations in the Indian auto industry

This paper examines how the pattern of investment in the Indian auto industry has changed. The author argues that the industrial relations climate has been an important determinant of that pattern. Industrial relations climate is politically and institutionally determined hence any shift in the broader capital-labour relation in the wider global economy due to globalisation is argued to be tempered by India's particular national and local institutions governing industrial relations, unionisation, the specific trajectory of the Indian auto industry, and economic development strategies. When much of the global industry is reeling under the financial crisis, India's industry has been expanding. However, the power of workers has been declining in conflict-ridden states just as globalisation and deregulation have hastened capital flight to more pro-business regions. The paper draws some policy implications for employment security and lessons for other countries in these turbulent times.

A relação capital-trabalho na economia do conhecimento

The knowledge economy arises by the promotion of abstract and cooperative labor. This social labor is a product of intellectual and linguistic energy, which leads to mutations about capital accumulation and capital labor relations. JEL Classification: J24.

Labour conflict and the persistence of macro underemployment in South Africa

Something must be structurally wrong in a labour market when a well developed economy like that of South Africa is not able to absorb and allocate an accumulating surplus of labour over a period of 20 years or longer but has instead moved to the use of more capital-intensive technology. The objective of this paper is to analyse the role labour conflict plays in the persistence of macro underemployment in South Africa. For the analysis two models identified from the literature were used. In these models labour conflict originates from an over-regulated labour market where labour appropriates capital and bad or hostile labour relations. In both models the switch to technology leads to underemployment. It was found that bad labour relations contribute to the persistence of underemployment in South Africa.

The archaeology of American labor and working-class life

Shackel provides a compelling account of how an archaeology of working-class life can correct and enrich historical knowledge and improve public understanding of the American industrial experience.--Dean J. Saitta, University of DenverA thorough, well-written overview of the issues confronting an archaeology of labor and the contributions historical archaeologists have made in addressing those issues. I would strongly recommend this book for anyone teaching historical archaeology or labor history at the university level.--Stephen A. Mrozowski, University of MassachusettsThe winners write history. Thus, it is no surprise that the story of American industrialization is dominated by tales of unbridled technical and social progress. What happens, though, when we take a closer look at the archaeological record? That is the focus of Paul Shackel's new book, which examines labor and working-class life in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century industrial America.Shackel offers an overview of a number of ongoing archaeology projects that are focused on reconstructing the capital-labor relations of the past. He demonstrates that worker unrest has been a constant feature of industrialization, as the fight for fair wages and decent working conditions has been a continual one. He shows how workers resisted conditions through sabotage and how new immigrants dealt with daily life in company housing; he even reveals important information about conditions in strike camps.

Novas e velhas questões: revisando a historiografia sobre Volta Redonda (RJ)

This paper reviews the literature on the industrial city of Volta Redonda (RJ) and recovers the main topics discussed in over twenty years of academic production. The capital-labor relationship; the modernization ideology of Getúlio Vargas and the consequences of the Brazilian labor laws; the construction of the urban space; changes in Brazilian unionism; and the rise of “neoliberalism”, which, along with events like the strike of 1988, the privatization of Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN) and the demobilization of a labor union project, are dealt with by a literature that follows the trends and changes in Brazilian Social Sciences. This conclusion, along with what has been produced so far, open up a possibility to continue the research agenda and to explore periods of the city that have been little discussed, such as the aftermath of CSN’s privatization. Key words: city, politics, work, unionism, Volta Redonda.

The management of “quality”: class decomposition and racial formation in a Chicago factory

Workplace training offers a distinctly explicit and uniquely articulate site for the ethnography of the capital–labor relation as an ideological phenomenon, where the everyday work of hegemony is shown to be deeply grounded in the everyday hegemony of work. In this ethnographic account of a factory classroom devoted to introducing production workers to the precepts of Total Quality Management and training them in Statistical Process Control, the neoliberal reform of the labor process—which sought to accomplish a class decomposition of the company’s workforce in favor of an individualizing regime of workers’ personal responsibility and accountability for various quality control operations—repeatedly provoked the company’s Latino workers into angry and vociferous expressions of antagonism to management. Indeed, insofar as the management’s efforts to reform labor by decomposing the workforce as a class formation merely intensified the prevailing preconditions of their racial formation, they thereby only exacerbated anew the Latino workers’ antagonism as workers to the terms of their subordination. Thus, the generic (ostensibly race-neutral) reform of the labor process initiated under the aegis of “Total Quality Management” implicated the presumed management of “quality” in a concomitant reconfiguration of what was, effectively, a contemporary regime of racial management.

Disciplining Capital: export grape production, the state and class dynamics in northeast Brazil

The globalisation of food and agriculture over the past three decades has entailed the emergence of fresh fruit and vegetable production in new global regions, and the concentration and centralisation of retailer capital and its augmented power vis-à-vis suppliers. Much contemporary literature often assumes (or asserts) that globalisation reduces states' and labour's capacity to bargain with and win concessions from increasingly mobile capital. It is therefore important for empirical studies to investigate the nature of state–capital–labour relations under contemporary globalisation. This article does so by focusing on the emergence, expansion and integration into global retail chains of the São Francisco valley grape branch in northeast Brazil. It investigates the following interconnected processes: the state's role in facilitating and promoting the emergence of the grape branch and in regulating the new labour force; the changing nature of the labour process and workers' bargaining power; and firm strategies of recruiting and retaining workers.

Labour law and outsourcing

FOCUS □ PRECARIOUS,INFORMAL AND MIGRANT WORKERS Labour law and outsourcing Understanding how to respondto outsourcingand the growthof precariousforms ofemploymentis a challenge for Brazilianlabour law and forthe unions MAGDA BARROS BIAVASCHI isaformer labour court judge, doctor in social labour economy atthe University of Campinas, and researcher at the Centre for Studies in Trade Unionism and Labour Economics Labour unbridled foritsemergence Law capitalism. is an were obstacle The ripe material to back free in conditions transit the19th of Labour unbridled capitalism. Thematerial conditions foritsemergence wereripebackinthe19th Century inEuropewhencapitalism completed its formation cycleand capitalists rejected anyregulation .In a societyfoundedon a self-regulated market, capitalcelebrated itsorgies and 'freedom' reinvented inequality. In recent decades,severalsortsofinequalities areworsenedand redefined undertheactionof unrestricted capitalism. In ordertofulfill a tough programme offiscal adjustment and primary surplus , worsened by high interestrates, the Brazilianeconomy stagnated.Low economic growthin the 1980s and 1990s had negative impacts onpublicsocialpolicies, causing damage tothosewho mostneededthem. Undertherhythm ofpromises toreduceunemploymentand improve competitiveness, the result was fiercer competition, increasing asymmetry , and insecurity. Even thoughdata shows somegrowth intheeconomyand moreformalisationofworkers from 2005-9 there remain problemsthat havenotbeenovercome. Thejustice of markets, observedLuizGonzagaBelluzzo,is not distributive andtherights bornoutofcommercial relations acknowledge no fundamental principles other thanformal equality betweenproducers of goods: a situation wherethestrongest celebrate their orgies. Labour Law: a reactionagainst liberalorder The Industrial Revolution changedsubstantially thematerial conditions oflifein society. Homebasedworkshops gavewaytomills andfactories. On theone sideworkers weredeprived oftheir condition as producers and wereno longerable to own themeansofproduction: workers were forcedto become wage workers. On theother side,employers, as ownersofthemeansofproduction , would hirelabour,provideequipment, superviseits use, tradethe end product,pay wagesand makeprofits. The material conditions were ripe forthe birthof labour law, which wouldcomelater. A new modeofproduction brought new conflicts and undeniablesocial problems.A brutal inequality constituted capital-labour relations. But whilethosecircumstances increased exploitation, a homogeneous working classwas built. Workers andtheir organisations reacted. The liberalorderwas gradually undermined. Undera falseharmony, struggles and tensions endedup in twogreatworldwars.The first, an unprecedented violent warbetweenworldpowers ,started in 1914,followedby timesof high economic instabilityending in the Great Depression. Thecrises generated alloveran antiliberalresponse .Labourlaw is partofthiscomplexity . The historical, social,and politicalconditions for the birthof labour law were ready. Its autonomouscharacter was not acknowledged roughly untilthe end of FirstWorldWar.The International Labour Organisation, which emergedwiththe Treatyof Versailles in 1919, was a landmark asserting theroleofsociallaw. Withhumandignity as the starting pointand workers'humanconditionsat the core of its objectives, theILO stoodoutbybringing together thehuman,personalelementand thesocial, collective one,against thetideofa liberalism that did not accountforsocial issues. New labour laws introducedextra-market mechanisms for compensating inequalities, and consolidated the principle ofprotection. Perhapsno other branch oflawhassuchfeatures. Eventhough labourlaw has had sucha genesis,different countries have quite unique specificcircumstances thathave influenced thedevelopment oftheir own labour laws. In Brazil,the systematic construction of labourlaw tookplace after 1930. The Vargas Era Theabolition ofslavery bytheAureaActof1888 freed thecountry ofitsinconveniences, butblack peoplewereleft totheir ownfate. Manyformerslavesremained on theproperties. Others would wanderand work here and there.Othersyet were marginalised in cities.After abolition, the social needs forlabour protection intensified. Nevertheless, material conditions forthebirth of sociallawwouldonlybe ripeafter 1930as industrialisation process. Vargas tookpowerin 1930.He wouldstruggle to overcomethecharacteristics thatmarkedthe country's economic,social, and politicalstructure :the remainders of slavery, patriarchy and monoculture inherited fromcolonialtimes;an essentially agrarian society; an economy subordinatedto a primary exporting model;sparseand unorganised urbanworkers;and non-universal and non-secret suffrage, withno femaleparticipation .Theproject was toindustrialise thecountry and turn itintoa modern nation. Brazil was essentiallyagrarian.During the 1920s, agricultural productionrepresented an averageof58percent oftheGDP whilethemanufacturing industry was only 23 percent.A recently emerged urbanproletariat hada number ofdemandsbutnottheorganic strength to triggera processof effective actualisation ofsocial protection rules.Thematerial conditions for their politicalstruggles was not the same as thatin 19th-century England,hence the importance of theStatetofoster actualisation. From1930to 1943therewas a strong process of institutionalisation of workers'social rights. Brazilwas the4thcountry in theWestern hemisphere to guaranteethe femalevote. Women wereable toworkwithout permission from their husbands. Statemechanisms wereputinplaceto inspectand enforcethose rules(namely, Joint Committees, ConciliationCouncils,Inspection INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 18 Volume 16Issue 3 2009 Departments, and the industrial courtsof the Labour Justice) and norms on workers' organisationwereestablished . In 1946,theLabour Justice, whichhad been regulatedin 1939 and establishedin 1941,was integrated intotheJudiciary. Thisprocessculminated in 1988,withthenew FederalConstitution. Infact the20thCentury is marked bytheintroduction of several major Constitutions. The Constitutions of Mexico [1917]and of Weimar Germany [19191systematised the global frameworkof social rights, opposingliberalconceptionsabouttheroleoftheState . Theyinfluenced manylegalorders, including...

The Labour Process in the Bombay Handloom Industry, 1880–1940

AbstractAnalyses of capital-labour relations in Indian industry during the colonial period have generally been confined to studies of large-scale units. This essay turns to an examination of the organization of the workplace among handloom producers in the Bombay Presidency during the period between 1880 and 1940. While recognizing the importance of contradictions between weaving families and various kinds of capitalists, the essay eschews any straightforward model of “proletarianization” to characterize this relationship. Weavers possessed methods of resistance, particularly “everyday” actions, which thwarted efforts to impose tight regimes of labour discipline within the workshop. Seeking to contain these resistances, shahukars (putting-out merchants) and karkhandars (owners of establishments using wage labour) developed complex social relationships with their workers based upon patronage, debt, and caste. Consequently, collective protest in the industry was limited, and when it did emerge in Sholapur during the later 1930s, it was highly conditioned and constrained by the multiple lines of affiliation weavers had with karkhandars.

A Note on Argentina, Its Crisis, and the Theory of Exchange Rate Determination

Argentina’s crisis at the end of the twentieth century surprised economists. Argentina turned from a “Latin American miracle” to an unprecedented failure. This article looks into the crisis stressing the role of the exchange rate regime and emphasizes the overvaluation of the real exchange rate as a part of capital’s strategy to decompose labor and restructure capital-labor relations. Argentina’s crisis resulted from the combination of capital’s strategic success and the recomposition of labor in the late nineties.

Living Labor in Marx

The concept of living labor in Marx's Grundrisse represents the key notion that conceptually ties his early theory of alienation with the drafts of Capital of the 1860s. Through a critique of the formalism that opened space for Marx's economic writings, I explore living labor, not only as alienated within the capital-labor relation, but as an absolute, metahistorical exteriority. Furthermore the interpretive writings of Enrique Dussel on the Grundrisse are contrasted with the reading of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri to show how living labor can be understood as ethical excess within the framework of biopolitical production.

Rapprochement and Retribution: The Divergent Experiences of Workers in Two Large Paper and Print Companies in the 1926 General Strike

There is a vast literature on the General Strike which has covered most aspects of the conflict and assessed its aftermath.1 The best known discussions of its impact have estimated its effects on trade unionism in general terms.2 Yet, as one recent commentator on the events of 1926 observes, a ‘fertile route’ for research ‘would be to examine case studies at the level of individual enterprises to explore the impact of the dispute’.3 This chapter takes up that challenge. Its central concern is to present a study comparing the way the strike affected industrial relations in two large paper and print companies. Histories of trade unionism in that industry indicate that peaceful industrial relations prevailed in the interwar years and that, apart from the action of a few hostile companies which derecognized unions, the General Strike constituted little more than a minor breach in harmonious relationships.4 Thus little attention has been given to the events of 1926 in this industry, particularly at workplace level. Plant-level studies can broaden and deepen our understanding of the capital-labour relationship in this period and add to our knowledge of the consequences of the General Strike, which remains largely limited to ‘its effects on industrial disputes and on the actions of the central organizations of workers and employers’.5

Critically challenging some assumptions in HRD

This paper sets out to critically challenge five interrelated assumptions prominent in the (human resource development) HRD literature. These relate to: the exploitation of labour in enhancing shareholder value; the view that employees are co‐contributors to and co‐recipients of HRD benefits; the distinction between HRD and human resource management; the relationship between HRD and unitarism; and the relationship between HRD and organizational and learning cultures. From a critical modernist perspective, it is argued that these can only be adequately addressed by taking a point of departure from the particular state of the capital–labour relation in time, place and space. HRD, of its nature, exists in a continuous state of dialectical tension between capital and labour – and there is much that critical scholarship has yet to do in informing practitioners about how they might manage and cope with such tension.

On the 'Essential Condition' of Intellectual Capital: Labour!

This paper explicitly raises the issue of the ownership rights of labour to intellectual capital. Following Marx and Engels' identification of the 'essential condition of capital' - this paper begins an initial critical exploration of the essential condition of intellectual capital, particularly the ownership rights of labour. Adopting a critically modernist stance on unitarist HR and OB discourse, and contextualised within a background on the stock option phenomenon and recent accounting regulation, the paper argues that the fundamental nature of the capital-labour relation continues resiliently into the IC-labour relation. There is strong evidence that broad-based ESOPs have become institutionalised in certain firms and sectors - but the future of such schemes is very uncertain post 2005 accounting regulation. Overly unitarist HR/OB arguments are challenged here with empirical evidence on capital's more latently strategic purposes such as conserving cash, reducing reported accounting expense in order to boost reported earnings, deferring taxes, and attracting, retaining and exploiting key elements of labour. Research supports the positive benefits of broad-based employee stock ownership schemes; but further research on the benefits of such schemes and the reasons why they are or are not implemented is now required. From the perspective of labour, nothing appears to have really changed (yet) in terms of the essential condition of intellectual capital.

Critically Challenging some Assumptions in HRD

This paper sets out to critically challenge five inter-related assumptions prominent in the HRD literature. These relate to: the exploitation of labour in enhancing shareholder value; the view that employees are co-contributors to and co-recipients of HRD benefits; the distinction between HRD and HRM; the relationship between HRD and unitarism; and, the relationship between HRD and organisational and learning cultures. From a critical modernist perspective, it is argued that these can only be adequately addressed by taking a point of departure from the particular state of the capital-labour relation in time, place and space. HRD, of its nature, exists in a continuous state of dialectical tension between capital and labour - and there is much that critical scholarship has yet to do in informing practitioners about how they might manage and cope with such tension.