Workplace Restructuring Research Articles

Precarious Work and the Gendered Individualisation of Risk in the South African Manufacturing Sector, 2002–2017

Against the backdrop of workplace restructuring globally, post-apartheid South Africa is experiencing consistently high levels of unemployment, the deterioration of employment security and limited improvements in earnings. This article investigates the changing nature of labour-intensive production in the South African labour market and the gendered individualisation of risk associated with precarious or non-standard forms of employment. The article expands on the critical theoretical narrative about the challenges of labour under neo-liberalism by applying a gendered political economy analysis to the experiences of precariousness among workers in the South African manufacturing sector. By focusing on the interconnections between gender and political economy, this article delinks questions about the crisis of labour from a narrow focus on skills and refocuses our understanding in terms of the structural determinants of vulnerabilities in the labour market. The article argues that the gender composition of informal and precarious work in the post-apartheid labour market has significant implications for addressing the persistent racialised and gendered inequalities in the South African economy. KEYWORDS: labour market restructuring; informal employment; precarious work; gender JEL CLASSIFICATION: J21; J30; J71; J80

Academic Staff Mobility in Tanzania’s Higher Learning Institutions: Understanding the Push and Pull Factors

This study aimed to understand the push and pull factors for employees’ mobility in higher learning institutions. Specifically, the study anticipated to 1) determine the trend of employees’ mobility in higher learning institutions, 2) explore the factors for employees’ mobility in higher learning institutions and 3) recommend how higher learning institutions may devise motivation and retention strategies to minimise employee mobility. The study employed an exploratory case study design to allow the use of various qualitative data collection methods and tools. Purposive sampling was used to obtain respondents from four selected higher-learning institutions. Data collected from interviews were analysed using NVivo 12 Plus computer-based software. Findings indicate that the push and pull factors for academic staff mobility in the selected higher learning institutions in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, are multiple, including workplace restructuring, institutional politics, failure to meet the required academician’s needs and demands, healthrelated factors, good salary pay, need to join their families after a long period of staying away, work motivation, friendly welfare policies and good working climate. The study recommends having different employee retention strategies ranging from good governance/leadership, friendly human resource-related policies that are objectively implemented, flexible management that are open for discussion, and views to fair motivational packages.

Factors influencing sustainable employment of persons with acquired brain injury (ABI) or spinal cord injury (SCI): A qualitative study evaluating the perspective of health and work professionals.

The number of persons with acquired brain injury (ABI) or spinal cord injury (SCI) who leave the labor market early despite successfully return to work post-injury, demonstrates the challenge for them to remain employed. Evidence on how enabling and hindering factors influence daily work across the lifespan and how they affect employment-related services is scarce. Professionals directly involved in work integration can add to this evidence through their experiential knowledge. To identify and explore the factors that enable or hinder sustainable employment for persons with ABI or SCI from the perspective of health and work professionals. We conducted 23 semi-structured interviews with professionals in Switzerland, directly involved in work reintegration and retention of persons with ABI or SCI. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and thematically analyzed. Participants identified three main themes related to the concept of "sustainable employment". First, the value and impact of initial work integration; an early, multidisciplinary, person-centered work integration, with the early involvement of employers is ideal. A good match between the worker and the workplace is sought. Second, critical factors for long-term sustainable work: the main risks for persons with ABI are changing supervisors, workplace restructuring and the introduction of new technologies, while deteriorating health and the occurrence of secondary health problems are the greatest risk for persons with SCI. Third, the relevance of knowledge, experience and attitudes of professionals; Knowledge of the consequences of an ABI or SCI, the legal basis and the social security process, and the attitude of professionals towards the injured worker were considered important. From the professional's perspective, enabling and hindering factors for sustainable employment in the long-term are fundamentally very similar for persons with ABI and SCI. But different physical, mental and neuropsychological effects call for individually adapted measures. While persons with SCI primarily require ongoing medical care, conscious management of changes in the workplace is critical for persons with ABI. For both groups, an easily accessible counseling and support service should be established for work-threatening problems in the long-term. Furthermore, diagnosis-specific training programs for professionals of employment-related services and disability management should be developed.

Special Section on Productive Hierarchies in Global Perspectives: Gendered Skill, Labor Control and Workplace Politics

From the nineteenth century, when the new social question of women's factory labor came to preoccupy the (middle-class) public imagination, to the present times of globalized labor chains, discourses on gendered labor have been at once fluid and constitutive of labor hierarchies. These discourses and social relations affirm their centrality within processes of industrialization and workplace restructuring as well as in development policy, urban formation, and indeed, nation building. Depending on the political economy of the labor market, the images of laboring women accordingly oscillated between, for instance, helpless and exploited victims to national heroines in the service of developmental projects. At the same time, since the early nineteenth-century, the steadily accumulating social reform, labor inspection, or social scientific accounts of women's paid and unpaid labor testified to states’ and employers’ growing comfort with hiring what was and is still, in many ways, a cheap, easily exploitable category of workers, one whose profitability increased the more precarious their employment became. Such discourses and labor control practices were deeply racialized and classed. On the other side of the public imagination and employer's surveillance, women who engaged in paid work sometimes appropriated the discourses and reshaped the practices that were used to characterize their labor and judge their choices.

Workplace Restructuring and its Discontents

This article analyses the role of fetish—unspoken attachments—within and against the 2020 proposal to restructure the College of Sciences at Massey University.I look at the roles played by three forms of fetish: the commodity fetish, the fetishisation of intellectual labour, and the fetish of knowledge-without-consequences. I analyse the restructuring and its opposition by mapping these fetishes and the deadlocks to which they lead. In addition to highlighting insights that the concept of fetish generates into the politics of the restructuring, I speculate on the role of fetish as a political factor in the contemporary moment.

Job insecurity and technology acceptance: an asymmetric dependence

PurposeExisting research suggests that the competitive advantage provided by technological development depends to a large extent on the speed and coordination of the technology’s implementation, and on how adoptable the technological applications are considered. While accepting this argument, the authors consider the explanatory model to be inadequate. This study aims to contribute to the theoretical discussion by analysing institutionalised industrial relations and other organisation-level factors, which are important for workplace restructuring and societal change.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is based on a representative nation-wide work and working conditions survey (N = 4,100) from Finland, which includes a variety of themes, including practices, changes and well-being at work. Changes are understood as organisational changes, focusing on modern technologies such as robotisation and digitalisation.FindingsThe results indicate that occupational division at workplace (low-skilled vs high-skilled occupations) affects job insecurity and acceptance of technologies at work. The characteristics of workplaces, such as the employees’ participation and involvement in the development of the organisation, play a significant part in both the acceptance and the implementation and outcomes of the technological transformations in the workplace.Practical implicationsThe research provides new and interesting insights into working life practices. Furthermore, it reveals how technology acceptance and employment perspectives relate to working conditions and lessons learned from past reforms.Originality/valueThe authors consider current theories such as technology acceptance model at the micro level and that way rationalise the need for this study. This study shows the importance of individual, organisational and wider contextual factors in technology acceptance.

Trade Union and Job Changes in Volatile Times: A Systematic Literature Review & Future Research Agenda

This article attempts to systematically evaluate and synthesise the existing literature in some factors of job changes, how the trade union response to the problem of job changes during uncertain times and outline future research agenda within the domains. This study could demonstrate how the trade union responses to job rearrangement based on diverse combinations of actions and philosophical bearings in these issues from different perspectives. This study also conducted a systematic literature review by relevant criteria from the resource of studies such as Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). It consists of five subsections including search strategy, inclusion and exclusion criteria, eligibility, data abstraction and analysis. Therefore, a systematic search strategy implemented two academic databases, namely Google Scholar and ScienceDirect. The keywords in the titles and abstracts were used in the search process including "job change", "job re-engineering", "job redesign", "workplace restructuring", "workplace reorganisation", "job reshuffle” and “trade union”. In this study, the results show that there are dimensions of job changes among employees were relevant because the need for improving organisational and some responses trade union towards job changes among employees. The final inclusion was including the selection of sample involving the respond of trade union about job changes during the uncertainties. The present evidence is limited, and numerous research is required on trade union response on changes in job-related domains during uncertain and volatile times.

Workplace restructuring and institutional change: GM Oshawa from 1994 to 2019

This paper examines the evolution of three key institutional systems—CAW/UNIFOR unions, General Motors Canada, and the Canadian federal State—and their impact on workplace relations in Oshawa over a 25-year period. It places particular focus on union policies and shows that important opportunities for workplace transition were lost as local and national leaders avoided critical economic issues and failed to seriously contend with changing objective conditions.

‘Selective Amnesia’ and trade union exclusionary strategies in contemporary South Africa

In this article, I examine union responses and attitudes towards vulnerable migrant and precarious workers in post-apartheid South Africa. Furthermore, the paper provides an analysis of contemporary politics of union exclusionary organising strategies and attitude towards migrant workers within the historical context of the regulated and contract migrant labour system and the unregulated post-migrant labour regime. Historically, South Africa’s industrial relations was developed on a bedrock of apartheid labour practices of exclusion in which African workers (both from homelands and other countries in the region) were regarded as migrants and thus, excluded from joining unions. Migrants played a very fundamental role in introducing trade unionism in the country particularly the British miners (see Nel and van Rooney (1993)) while the first trade union for Black workers was led by a Malawian, Clement Kadalie. Yet, it seems there is somewhat erasure of this history of trade unionism in the country or could this be as a result of selective amnesia? This is because the contemporary trade union movement is somehow detached from this reality as unions are still very ambivalent to organise and embrace migrants into their rank and file (Munakamwe, 2018). I argue here that union responses to migrant labour today are a manifestation of amnesia in which the fundamental role played by migrants in the democratisation of South Africa has been forgotten. Moreover, migrants equally fought alongside their local counterparts to ensure Black workers could organise and form trade unions, a fundamental right that they were deprived on racial grounds. What we witness today is not a racial but nationalist-class struggle in which local and migrant workers are in constant conflict jostling for jobs with xenophobic violence as the ultimate outcome. Essentially, unions lack a clear position and polices in place to respond to specific issues related to migrant workers such as xenophobia. Unlike during apartheid, today we witness fragmented solidarity among the working class and this to some extent shapes union responses. Unions are caught up within the contradictions and at times conflicting views of how to respond to migrant labour and this is further compounded by workplace restructuring, labour market flexibility and deregulation. On the one hand is the desire to preserve jobs for natives and to enforce immigration laws that are crafted by proponents of neoliberalism while on the other hand, the aim is to seek legitimacy by responding to the dictates and principles of international solidarity (see Fine, 2014). Labour flexibility has escalated and employers rely on labour brokers and out-sourcing while recruitment of migrants to the mines has dwindled over the years. Yet, this is the time in which union protection is required more than before to advance the rights of all workers. Restrictive migration laws are in constant conflict with labour laws and thus, preclude full enjoyment of labour rights. State-crafted migration laws and policies in relation to union responses Organised labour has existed for a long time in South Africa, stretching back to the industrialisation period (Parsley and Everatt, 2009: 4) although Black workers were denied the right to organise. Despite political challenges, Black workers were militant and defied some of these restrictive and oppressive laws against unionisation. The first Black union linked to the hospitality sector, the Industrial and Commercial Union (ICU) which later became the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) was established in 1919 under the leadership of a Malawian national, Clement Kadalie (Allan, 1992). In 1930, the first black union for mine workers was formed under the leadership of T.W. Thibedi who was also the secretary1. According to Nel and Rooyen, (1993: 49), during the apartheid era, industrial relations with trade unions involved, “worker representation from outside the enterprise, through trade unions and committee/ works council representation (that is, worker representation within the enterprise)”. Despite the recognition of unions by workers of Black origin, White unions dominated the body of the collective bargaining. Only in 1979, based on findings from the Wieham Commission is when Black workers except cross-border migrants were allowed to form their own unions. Subsequently, on 5 December 1982, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was established under the leadership of Cyril Ramaphosa as the first General...

Labour Geographies of Workplace Restructuring: An Intra‐Labour Analysis

AbstractInformed by labour geography's thrust to situate workers as active subjects of analysis, this article examines lived experiences of restructuring at Australia's single largest industrial workplace. Drawing on extended ethnographic research, the article traverses three restructuring outcomes faced by workers and their families: (1) job retention; (2) redundancy; and (3) re‐employment. Amid the turbulence and uncertainty of a major workplace restructuring episode, workers' different lived experiences illuminate uneven intra‐labour power relations. As capitalist workplaces are re‐organised and labour processes redefined, more conflictual and divisive relationships often develop among groups of workers differentially positioned within the hierarchical labour markets of large firms. Emphasising restructuring episodes as generative contexts for grounded labour geographies research, the article develops intra‐labour agency as a critical analytical frame to explore more deeply the agency implications of workplace structures, co‐worker relationships, and social life matters that shape workers' capacities for action inside and beyond workplaces.

Mother-Ready Jobs: Employment That Works for Mothers of Children With Disabilities

Feminist researchers focus on work–family conflict and the impact on maternal employment. They find jobs are not structured to allow for work–family fit. Using qualitative data, I examine those unusual circumstances in which work does work in the challenging case of mothers of children with disabilities. Their experiences make clear the problem for all caregivers when employment is based on a male model, and the importance of workplace norms that diminish work–family conflict. I find that with flexibility, paid leave, job security, and health insurance, that is, with jobs that policy analysts refer to as “good jobs,” and Randy Albelda calls “mother-ready” jobs, caregivers can manage work and family. I argue that through a combination of mandatory workplace restructuring and social supports, the state could facilitate the reorganization of jobs so that they are mother-ready and therefore make possible the performance of daily required tasks as care givers and employees.

Quality Work and the Moral Economy of European Employment Policy

AbstractFollowing a decade of radical economic and workplace restructuring, it is important to understand how state employment policies support or deny human flourishing. This article utilizes a realist document analysis approach and reviews European employment policy through a moral economy lens. It fuses different moral economy approaches, drawing together the work of Karl Polanyi and Andrew Sayer a multi‐layered conceptual lens is offered that explores the tensions between a commodification of labour and human needs. A dominant market ideology is revealed, highlighting how quality work has been subsumed by the flexicurity agenda in the EU.

Lean Production “with Chinese Characteristics”: A Case Study of China’s Automobile Industry

The concept of “lean production” has attracted much attention and sparked considerable debate among social scientists on work and workplace restructuring. This study seeks to engage with the lean production debate through a case study of China’s automobile industry. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in seven large auto-assembly plants in China, the article explores how lean production is implemented in the Chinese context, how it has affected workplace and workers, and what successes and problems have arisen. It finds that intensified competition and China’s specific conditions have driven automakers to adopt mixed strategies by combining certain lean techniques with the existing Fordist–Taylorist mass production system, while utilizing some effective socialist organizational practices. Despite the general move toward a lean-flexible workplace, there are notable variations in employment practices at the factory level that influence outcomes of lean production. The Chinese case provides new evidence that supports the “diversity” perspective and an integrated approach, which underline substantial national and subnational variations in the implementation and outcomes of lean production. The evidence shows that in the absence of independent trade unions, lean production leads to an intensification of work and greater managerial control. The findings suggest the need to bring analysis of capitalist labor process and shop-floor control, resistance, and accommodation back in to understand lean production.

How do Restructuring Processes Influence Low- and Unskilled Immigrant and Nonimmigrant Workers and their Managers in a Norwegian Hospital?

It is a well-known fact that workplace restructuring has undesirable effects on the psychosocial work environment, health, and sick leave, but no attention has been given to the health effects of work environments characterized by restructuring, a multicultural staff, and a strong socioeconomic occupational hierarchy. In this casestudy, we examine a large Norwegian hospital in which all of these features are present. Through in-depth interviews with employees and their managers we investigate the healthiness of the restructuring process, and the consequences of the restructuring process on the work environment, subjective health, and sick leave. Results show that immigrant workers received less information, had higher level of frustration and less control over work, and experienced a decrease in well-being, autonomy, and social support. Immigrant worker vulnerability, that is, the handicap of poor understanding of the Norwegian language and a lack of understanding of general and local organizational norms and practices in the Norwegian workplace, is an important explanation. Immigrant workers with a poor Norwegian language understanding are even worse off. We conclude that a strong occupational hierarchy within the hospital exerts an overall influence on the position of low/unskilled employees in the restructuring process as well as their perception of and involvement in it.

Reforming and restructuring the Australian workplace: a study of the Williamstown Naval Dockyard 1983–1993

As a consequence of the global economic crises of the 1970s, in Australia, micro-economic reform of the economy, and in particular the labour market, was seen as a key catalyst in providing a more competitive industrial base for the country. Underpinning this was a fundamental change in the conflictual industrial relations structure that had framed work patterns and practices since Federation. The Williamstown Naval Dockyard in Melbourne was the Australian Federal Government's premier dockyard. It had a long-standing reputation for poor productivity, inefficient work practices and industrial unrest and had been described as Australia's worst worksite. After several failed attempts to reform the dockyard, the Federal Government privatised this utility as a catalyst to reform the work culture. On 1 January 1988, the dockyard was transferred to the highly competitive private shipbuilding sector. As the first public utility sold by an Australian Federal Government and the first workplace to adopt micro-economic labour reforms, including enterprise bargaining, the dockyard provides an opportunity to examine the nature of workplace restructuring in the most radical time of change for labour and trade unions in Australia's history. The dockyard was seen at the time as at the vanguard of this change. This paper explores the reforms undertaken in the dockyard.

Confronting the employment standards enforcement gap: Exploring the potential for union engagement with employment law in Ontario, Canada

Employment standards (ES) are legislated standards that set minimum terms and conditions of employment in areas such as wages, working time, vacations and leaves, and termination and severance. In Canada, the majority of workers rely on ES for basic regulatory protection; however, a significant ‘enforcement gap’ exists. In the province of Ontario, this enforcement gap has been exacerbated in recent years due to the deregulation of ES through inadequate funding, workplace restructuring, legislative reforms that place greater emphasis on individualized complaints processes and voluntary compliance, and a formal separation of unions from ES enforcement. The implications of these developments are that, increasingly, those in precarious jobs, many of whom lack union representation, are left with insufficient regulatory protection from employer non-compliance, further heightening their insecurity. Taking the province of Ontario as our focus, in this article we critically examine alternative proposals for ES enforcement, placing our attention on those that enhance the involvement of unions in addressing ES violations. Through this analysis, we suggest that augmenting unions’ supportive roles in ES enforcement holds the potential to enhance unions’ regulatory function and offers a possible means to support the ongoing efforts of other workers’ organizations to improve employer compliance with ES.

Workplace Restructuring in Nigerian Manufacturing Industries: Some Unanticipated Consequences and Employee Adaptation Strategies

Workplace Restructuring in Nigerian Manufacturing Industries: Some Unanticipated Consequences and Employee Adaptation Strategies

High performance work organizations and job rewards in manufacturing and service economies

High performance work organizations (HPWOs) and their consequences in the workplace have gained a notable status in sociology and psychology of the workplace during the last three decades in the US and in the other industrialized nations. One area in which the ongoing debates and evidence are inconclusive is the job rewards associated with HPWOs in the manufacturing and service economies. Analysing functional and numerical flexibilities (the ‘internalization’ and ‘externalization’ strategies) adopted in the manufacturing and service sectors, this study intends to extend our understanding of associations between workplace restructuring (HPWOs) and job rewards. The findings reveal that ‘internalized’ or standard employees have gained from internalization strategy with no significant differences between the two economic sectors. However, significant differences are disclosed when the consequences of externalization are contrasted between the sectors. The externalization strategy has significantly undermined job rewards for non-standard workers, except for independent contractors, especially in the manufacturing sector. The article ends with a short discussion on the theoretical significance of the findings and their policy implications in human sources management.

Workplace Restructuring and Urban Form: The Changing National Settlement Patterns of the Canadian Workforce

ABSTRACT:This article examines the relationship between emerging work arrangements and national settlement patterns. While growth is centralized in large cities, social commentators continue to suggest that workplace restructuring—facilitated by technological progress—encourages more dispersed settlement patterns, evoking concern about the environmental sustainability of the trend. Multivariate analysis using Canadian census data shows that with the exception of self-employed professionals, the home workers, and self-employed in nonmanual occupations have a lower tendency to reside in large cities than otherwise similar wage and salary earning commuters. However, household mobility and temporal trends suggest that workplace restructuring is not dispersing workers away from large cities by inducing mobility, but that take-up is higher in more remote areas. It is argued that workplace restructuring permits more dispersed national settlement patterns than if workers needed to move to large cities for proximity to employment growth. The article reflects on the implications of the findings for urban sustainability policies that promote compact urban forms and the policies that emphasize consumption amenities of cities to attract mobile workers.

Job Satisfaction and/or Job Stress

The rapid diffusion of high performance work organizations (HPWO) has attracted the attention of many scholars in sociology and psychology over the last three decades. One area in which ongoing debates and evidence are inconclusive is the linkage between HPWO and the ‘psychological functioning’ of employees, specifically the issues of job satisfaction and job stress. This study examines, and thereby extends our understanding of, associations between workplace restructuring — adopting an ‘internalization strategy’ within HPWO — with job satisfaction and job stress. The findings reveal that the implementation of an internalization strategy has raised job satisfaction both directly and indirectly, through affecting job characteristics — while indirectly increasing job stress as well. The latter occurred because an internalization strategy speeds up work pace, develops conflicting demands and intensifies conflicts between work and family. The article concludes with a short discussion on the theoretical significance of the findings and their policy implications for human resource management.