Labor Movement Research Articles

Analysis the Relationship between Direct Investment and Labor

The establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) makes the movement of labor in the ASEAN region more free and dynamic. This provides wider opportunities for Indonesian workers to get better jobs. On the other hand, the same opportunity is also owned by citizens of other ASEAN countries to enter the labor market in Indonesia. Based on several previous empirical studies, the entry of foreign workers into a country can significantly impact economic growth, both positively and negatively. The impact is greatly influenced by the skill level of a worker. High skilled labor tends to have a positive impact on economic growth. The increase in the number of foreign workers is also influenced by FDI and GDP. The amount of FDI received by a country tends to be positively correlated with the number of foreign workers. This is because the FDI provided has applied high technology so that the knowledge transfer process is needed by foreign experts. The tendency of foreign skilled workers who have higher wages than domestic workers makes wage inequality between workers. Increased employment of foreign workers could also widen the wage gap in Indonesia.

Employee-owned firms in France

Purpose France is the third country in Europe after Italy and Spain for the number of employee-owned firms, with some 2,600 worker cooperatives (SCOPs). The authors propose a comprehensive review of SCOPs and any barriers to their expansion.Design/methodology/approach The authors analyse relevant legislation; review the rich empirical economic literature on SCOPs; and offer new descriptive empirical evidence comparing SCOPs and other French firms.Findings SCOPs benefit from a consistent legal framework and a well-structured and supportive cooperative movement. Cooperative laws allow attracting external capital, provide barriers against degeneration and encourage profit allocations that favour investment and labour. SCOPs are distributed across a wide range of industries; are larger than conventional firms, as capital intensive, more productive and survive better. Despite this good performance their number remains modest, perhaps because of information barriers.Research limitations/implications An examination of the Italian and Spanish experiences and the relationship between SCOPs and the French labour movement might contribute to explaining the modest number of SCOPs.Originality/value The first comprehensive review of French worker cooperatives in four decades and the first with extensive comparative data on SCOPs and conventional French firms. With some of the best data on worker cooperatives in the world, findings have international relevance.

Labor Unions and the Problem of Monopoly: Collective Bargaining and Market Governance, 1890 to the Present

The labor movement has long had an ambivalent relationship to antitrust policy in the United States. Trade unionists have considered concentrated markets to be more favorable environments for union power than decentralized markets: oligopoly demands fewer union resources for organizing and contract bargaining campaigns, and oligopolists can tame cutthroat competition and share product market rents with workers. This article takes a different view. Looking to the strategies employed by unions in decentralized industries, where unions rather than corporations took on the role of taming and regulating competition, it explains how unions have leveraged power over market governance into bargaining power over wages and working conditions. In the current age of vertical disintegration and fissured workplaces, union power over market governance is more important to shop-floor power than ever. Antitrust policy is one tool that can help restrain the power of corporations and make them more accountable to workers’ collective power.

Does human capital spillover affect labor productivity?

As a developing country, in 2022 Indonesia is the 4th largest population in the world and predicted to experience a demographic bonus in 2020-2035. However, along with the increase in the population and workforce in Indonesia, it turns out that the productivity of the workforce in Indonesia is still low. This study aims to analyze and examine the effect human capital spillovers proxied by higher educated labor and lifetime in-migration on labor productivity in Indonesia along with other production factor variables. This study used panel data collected from 28 provinces in Indonesia in period of 2010 to 2019. Based on the results, the higher the level of education, the higher the productivity and the presence of higher educated labor can provide knowledge spillover for the environment. Meanwhile, human capital spillover from indicators in-migration has no impact on productivity. These results indicate that knowledge spillover support by quality of human capital, but the movement of labor has not provided positive externalities for the surrounding environment.JEL Classification E24; J24; O47

Great Wall Construction Algorithm: A novel meta-heuristic algorithm for engineer problems

In recent years, the optimization community has witnessed a surge in the popularity of population-based optimization methods. However, many of these methods suffer from various shortcomings, including unclear performance characteristics, incomplete validation, excessive reliance on metaphors, inadequate exploration and exploitation components, and compromised trade-offs between exploration and exploitation in real-world scenarios. As a result, users often find themselves needing to extensively modify and fine-tune these methods to achieve faster convergence, stable balance, and high-quality results. To shift the optimization community’s focus towards performance rather than metaphorical changes, we propose a general population-based optimization technique called the Great Wall Construction Algorithm (GWCA). This study presents GWCA as a simple yet robust method with competitive performance for efficiently solving constrained and unconstrained problems. GWCA draws inspiration from the competition and elimination mechanisms observed among workers during the construction of the ancient Great Wall. It introduces a mathematical model of the labor movement to simulate the algorithm’s dynamics. Unlike other methods that employ multiple models to generate new solutions, GWCA randomly assigns a single predefined motion model to each worker in every iteration. This unique approach showcases GWCA’s dynamic nature, simple structure, high convergence performance, and ability to deliver satisfactory solution quality, thus outperforming existing optimization methods in terms of efficiency. To validate GWCA, we conduct extensive comparisons with popular and advanced algorithms on the IEEE CEC 2017 benchmark suite across different dimensions (D = 10, 30, 50, 100). Additionally, GWCA is applied to solve 16 constrained engineering problems and 6 NP-Hard problems, demonstrating its applicability in handling constrained and complex nonlinear problems. Finally, we compare GWCA’s optimized solutions with those obtained from 33 advanced meta-heuristic algorithms, including the winner of CEC 2017. The results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed optimizer in solving a wide range of single-objective problems, surpassing popular base optimizers, advanced variants of existing methods, and several CEC winners. We present GWCA as an open-source population-based method that can serve as a standard optimization tool across various domains of artificial intelligence and machine learning. It exhibits a range of exploratory and exploitative features, offering high performance and optimization capabilities. The method is highly flexible, scalable, and can be further extended in terms of structure and application to accommodate diverse forms of optimization scenarios. https://github.com/guangian/Great-Wall-Construction-Algorithm-a-novel-meta-heuristic-algorithm-for-global-optimization.

“A phobia of numbers?” the labour movement and social surveys in the German Empire

ABSTRACT Historians have long studied how statistical offices and parliamentary bodies made use of surveys to explore the lives of workers, and, in so doing, how they produced new social categories and strategies for political intervention in the process. Less attention has been paid to the role that surveys played in the history of the early labour movement. Drawing on extensive discussions in socialist and trade-union periodicals, this article explores how the labour movement in the German Empire perceived, responded to, and used social surveys. The article is divided into three parts. The first part discusses labour’s critical response to the growing number of surveys on working-class life by middle-class reformers, social researchers, and the state. The second part studies what appeared to be the only logical consequence of their critique, namely the independent gathering and analysis of data. The third part finally analyses why, despite the large number of independent surveys launched by party functionaries and local trade unions, participation among ordinary workers remained strikingly low. In the conclusion, the article shows that this might have stemmed not only from disinterest and inertia but also from how the labour leadership conceived of and presented the benefits of social surveys.

Problems and possibilities for Swedish working-class literature in a neoliberal age

In recent decades, inequality has increased in Sweden. The increasing gaps are connected with policies that are often called neoliberal. How does working-class literature relate to these social problems and what literary possibilities does it open up? In this article I discuss these questions based on some literary examples from Swedish contemporary working-class literature. These literary examples have attracted much attention. My perspective is that I see working-class literature as literature with a distinct use value and a literature that has specific functions in the working-class literature context (Felski, 2008).
 Kristian Lundberg, Johan Jönson and Jenny Wrangborg all give personal accounts from workplaces. Such can be valuable. The problem with Lundberg and Jönson is that they tend to be introverted and egocentric. Especially Lundberg lacks the class perspective. Perhaps Lundberg’s Yarden (The Yard, 2009) should be described as confessional literature rather than working-class literature. With Susanna Alakoski the working-class is hidden behind the concept of poverty. The working-class as actor is absent. The labor movement as well. Instead, it is the middle class who appear as actor. Through the role of jester, Jönson makes class society visible. The role of jester could be seen as a specific rhetorical strategy and a literary device to create a distancing effect, or Verfremdungseffekt. Wrangborg connects to the legacy of early working-class literature with struggle poems. From within the workplace she describes work situations and experiences of class.
 Emil Boss takes a close look at language and concepts in a postpolitical age when old concepts have changed meaning. It is a crucial task for working-class literature to explain, interpret and examine old concepts that have changed meaning in a new political era, when the labor movement has lost contact with previous ideals and social democratic governments pursue rightwing politics, thus making it difficult to distinguish between left and right.

Labour mobility and international trade

Motivation: The academic debate on whether the relationship between factor mobility and international trade is one of complementarity or substitution is inconclusive. In general, the relationship between the two can vary depending on the specific research methodology and the object of study. Moreover, there are fewer empirical analyses with China and the European Union as subjects, so studying the relationship between labour mobility and trade in the case of China and Europe is worthwhile. Aim: The purpose of this paper is to determine, through empirical analysis, the relationship between labour mobility in the form of dispatched labour and bilateral trade between China and the European Union in the period of 2005-2021. Materials and methods: This paper utilises quantitative analysis to investigate the relationship between labour movements and trade (imports and exports) based on data from 2005 to 2021, primarily through co-integration analysis and Granger causality testing. Results: The study found that there is a substitution relationship between the number of dispatched labour from China and the trade in goods between China and the European Union in the research period. Additionally, Granger causality tests show that China's dispatched labour to the EU is the Granger cause of China-EU export trade, and vice versa. However, China's dispatched labour to the EU is not a Granger cause of China-EU import trade.

A Study on Understanding Placeness and Immigrant-related Social Issues in Rural Areas and Determining the Overarching Characteristics

Background and objective: The influx of foreign workers has also increased in South Korea over the past 20 years due to the global labour movement between countries and the labour shortage caused by the aging of South Korea. In the case of rural areas, the youth age group was insufficient, and the aging population was more serious, so the dependence on foreign manpower was inevitably higher. In rural areas through the influx of foreign workers, spaces reflecting their culture are emerging. The purpose of this study is to provide implications for resolving issues of overseas migrants by analysing recent Korean and foreign research trends and characteristics of overseas migrants in rural areas, with a focus on placeness.Methods: To address the aim this study utilised bibliometric analysis employing visualization of similarities (VOS) viewer program for overseas research collected from Scopus document search and Netminer program for South Korea research drawn from Korean Citation Index (KCI) database.Results: This study determined that first, since the 2000s, there has been an increase in related overseas research. However, there were only 382 studies covering all of ‘place,’ ‘immigrant,’ and ‘rural,’ and the number was even lower in South Korea. Second, in research on overseas immigrants in rural areas based on place, community and health were identified as major issues. Third, the difference in research issues between overseas and South Korea was analysed by the degree of community and the approach to health issues. As a result, this study concluded that social inclusion should be addressed first through community and health issues.Conclusion: Through research characteristics related to ‘place’, ‘immigrant’ and ‘rural’ at home and abroad, the placeness of overseas immigrants in rural areas has brought up issues of community and health. However, more importantly, concluding remark is that social consensus on social inclusion should be prioritised to contextualise these issues.

Marxism and Homosexual Liberation

Abstract The decriminalisation of homosexuality was a measure originally adopted by the bourgeois revolutions, which was abandoned by the bourgeois parties as the rise of the labour movement led the bourgeoisie to seek a compromise with landlords, clergy and monarchy in different countries. The demand to decriminalise homosexuality was therefore taken over by the Marxist workers’ parties, such as the Social-Democratic Party of Germany before the First World War and the Bolshevik Party in Russia after the Revolution of October 1917. This article outlines the cooperation between the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee led by Magnus Hirschfeld and Social Democracy to decriminalise homosexuality by removing Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code before the First World War. It also describes the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Russia under Lenin, with the adoption of the first Soviet Penal Code in June 1922, and Magnus Hirschfeld’s relations with prominent figures of the early Soviet government such as N.A. Semashko, the first People’s Commissar of Public Health, and Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first People’s Commissar for Education. Those ties ceased with the Nazis’ rise to power in January 1933, which resulted in the destruction of the institutions created by Hirschfeld, such as the Institute for Sexual Science and the World League for Sexual Reform, while in the Soviet Union itself Stalin recriminalised homosexuality in March 1934, shortly before Hirschfeld’s death, linking homosexuality and fascism.

Pembangunan dan Ekonomi Politik Turisme Massal di Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta

This research aimed to explore the transition from community-based tourism into mass tourism which has been initiated by the government. Data was collected through in depth interviews, observation, and secondary data analysis. This research found that the central government has been creating mass tourism since the ‘80s, because the state was interested in making tourism become one of the main incomes after the end of oil boom era. Mass tourism was booming until the end of the ‘90s. Nevertheless, the decrease in international tourist arrival was occurred because of forest fires, economic crises, Bali Bombing I and II, and SARS pandemic. Unfortunately, Yogyakarta’s earthquake in 2006 has hindered the recovery process. One decade after the earthquake, a mass tourism was booming again which was marked by the expansion of hotel construction. There were negative impacts such as lack of water access for public, repression of the labour movement, and policies that neglected public participation. The government continued to develop mass tourism through RPJMD DIY 2017-2022 as the nexus of central and local government interests. Projects from RPJMD DIY 2017-2022 were done by cultures and repressions mobilization, thus lead to another problems such as worsened public interests marginalization, land and labour privatization.

Legislative Regulation of the Grounds of Criminal Liability for Anti-Competitive Agreements in the Countries of the Eurasian Economic Union

From January 1, 2015, the Eurasian Economic Community, which existed since 2001, is being replaced by the Eurasian Economic Union, which currently includes the Russian Federation, the Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Republic of Armenia and the Kyrgyz Republic.When establishing an international organization for regional economic integration, the parties that signed the Treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union noted in the text of the agreement the desire to strengthen the economies of the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union and ensure their harmonious development and convergence, as well as guaranteeing sustainable growth in business activity, balanced trade and fair competition. Moreover, in part 1 of Article 1 of the Treaty it is noted that within the framework of the Union, the freedom of movement of goods, services, capital and labor, the conduct of a coordinated, agreed or unified policy in the sectors of the economy, is ensured.In view of the foregoing, it seems very promising to study in depth the system of measures of criminal liability for one of the most serious infringements on competition anti-competitive agreements in these countries.The article presents the results of a comparative analysis of the legislation of the EAEU member states in terms of the legislative regulation of the grounds for criminal liability for various agreements restricting competition.

Assessment of Impact of Trade and Economic Cooperation of Kazakhstan with Russia, EAEU Countries and Third Countries on Development of Integration Processes of EAEU

The countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) will strengthen cooperation despite external pressure. This is also confirmed by the issues discussed at the meeting of the Intergovernmental Council of the EAEU held in February 2022 in Nur-Sultan, where it was determined that the countries included in the Council will develop a common market for the freedom of movement of goods, services, capital and labor. All the EAEU member states continue to make necessary decisions for the development of trade, economic and humanitarian relations, improving the quality of life and wellbeing of citizens of their citizens. The article contains the results of scientific and applied research carried out using the methods of logical, systematic, comparative, economic and statistical analysis. The most important directions of trade and economic cooperation between Russia and Kazakhstan, the economies of the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and third countries are revealed, which have a significant impact on the development of integration processes of the EAEU, and to identify promising areas of cooperation in key sectors of the two largest economies. The dynamics of the openness of the economy of Kazakhstan over the past 20 years is considered. The contribution of Eurasian integration to the economic growth of Russia and Kazakhstan is assessed. The authors suggest possible promising areas of cooperation in key industries that contribute to strengthening economic relations between Russia and the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life

Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life

„Arbeit und Brot“ – die sozioökonomische NS-Propaganda vor 1933

Abstract The NSDAP not only copied the style of the labour movement from the start, but also shifted the focus of its propaganda from 1928 onward from nationalistic foreign policy to domestic and social issues. Until 1932, however, the new socio-economic focus was not underpinned by any concrete economic policy programme. This changed in the final phase of the Weimar Republic, when the NSDAP recognised the political importance of taking action against mass unemployment like no other party. Ideas for active economic policy using central bank-financed employment programmes, which the leading National Socialist Gregor Strasser adopted from early Keynesian and trade union circles, served as the programmatic basis. The topic was job creation, the slogan was “work and bread” and the explicit main opponent, the SPD, was blamed for unemployment, misery and bankruptcy. This socio-economic focus may have contributed significantly to the electoral success of the NSDAP in July 1932, when it replaced the SPD as the strongest party in the Reichstag. The Nazis were able to garner more than a quarter of the workers‘ votes and became the strongest party - even among the workers. With this, the NSDAP turned into a people‘s party, which was drawn from all milieus.

The war in Ukraine: Consequences for the economy, labour class and equitable development in Europe and beyond

AbstractThis article encourages critical discussion about the economic and social consequences of the war in Ukraine. This war has global effects in various dimensions of social life: energy policy, the environmental dimension, the economic sphere, and also the political atmosphere. In each of these dimensions, it poses a threat to sustainable development and the interests of the labour class in Europe. It attempts to change the balance of power in global geopolitics and also proves to be a useful cover for attempts to change the model of relations between employees and the state and business in many European countries. Due to the conflict in Ukraine and the ensuing calls for increased efforts to ‘ensure security’, Europe has turned towards a war economy in which the interests of the arms industry are more important than the interests of the working classes. The war in Ukraine has proved to be an excellent justification for governments to lower social standards and get rid of the remnants of the welfare state. From this perspective, the atmosphere of the New Cold War becomes a challenge for the labour movement, the global left and all progressive social circles.

Forms of Solidarity and the Self: A Postcolonial Reading of Yuli Riswati's Hong Kong Writing

Abstract: This article puts together the seemingly disparate topics of transnational domestic labor and the Hong Kong protests to discuss inter-ethnic and cross-class solidarity. It does so by examining the writing of Yuli Riswati, an Indonesian migrant worker and civic journalist who was deported from Hong Kong in 2019. City-wide civil disobedience in Hong Kong has historically been predicated upon the liberal ideal of suffrage (as in 2014) and an essentialized and Han-centric identity of Hongkonger (as in 2019), both of which have overlooked the needs of ethnic minorities, especially those who are ineligible for citizenship. Building on scholarship in decolonial and intersectional feminism, this essay focuses on Riswati's two short stories, namely "Violet Testimony" (2016) and " 那個傷口依然在我體內 " ("The Wound Is Still Inside Me" 2019) as well as her personal essay, "Some Notes about Hong Kong as My Second Home" (2020), which was featured by the exhibition afterbefore at the Chinatown Soup gallery in New York. This essay argues that Riswati's writing embodies what Gayatri Spivak would call an oppositional transformative: Riswati's stories about political involvement and gender-based domestic violence challenge the traditional history of the international labor movement that has a distinctive masculinist ethos and the typical narrative of Hong Kong protests focused exclusively on the citizenry, a rhetorical move underpinned by the homogenizing assumption that all Hongkongers are Han Chinese. As a former Hong Kong domestic worker, Riswati's textual performatives throw into relief the shared precarity which makes herself and her community relatable to a global audience; thereby, her writing brokers a type of intersubjectivity of the human or a postcolonial humanism that does not rely on a preconceived notion of humanity which shows up in the definition of a nation or a region's citizenry but rather on audience engagement that speaks to her publications' distinctive context and culture.

Industrial Action in South Africa (2000-2020): Reading Strike Statistics Qualitatively

This article analyses strike statistics over the last twenty years (2000–2020) in South Africa to have a concrete understanding of the state of labour (organised and unorganised). The article makes a new contribution by showing how one can use Lenin’s quantitative method as a framework which I develop to assist in reading the qualitative aspects of worker mobilisation, an aspect which is markedly absent from contemporary analyses of labour. By utilising the quantitative method, the article shows whether the labour movement as an agent of social change is withering away, and who the leading sections (per industrial sector) of the labour movement are; it also indicates the qualitative shifts over time. The trends over the last twenty years indicate that there have been demonstrable qualitative shifts in strike dynamics in South Africa. KEYWORDS: South Africa; strike statistics; industrial action; Lenin

The Role of Federalism and the Centrality of State Governments for Labor Unions, Employment, and Organizing

Abstract American states differ in their protection of workers, acceptance of organized labor, dominant industrial cultures, and regarding labor unions’ capacity and political power. In this article, I examine declining union membership in the states and analyze various laws that limit the political power of unions and assess the consequences of these developments. I also document and explain a recent resurgence of labor organizing, political resistance, and work stoppages. There is a seeming contradiction between a labor movement that is both declining as well as gaining strength. However, a common theme in each of these trends is the centrality of state governments and politics regarding labor policy and union influence.

Conditions for cross-professional union coalition-building: When enough is enough, but solidarity also has its limits!

Competition between unions whose membership has different skills and professionalization levels is a long-standing issue in the labour movement. This article investigates the conditions for why and how a unique cross-professional coalition of all Danish public-sector unions developed between 2017 and 2018. Operating in a favourable context, unions overcame professionalization differences when skilled brokers primed a common instrumental base as other unionists used a public interest frame to legitimate the coalition and its demands ideologically. However, once the common instrumental concern was met, the coalition collapsed. The article argues that union coalition-building depends on multiple factors comprising both contextual, and identity and relational conditions. The article further argues that adopting a framing that focuses on the public interest over professional self-interest helps to successfully overcome professional cleavages.