World's Labor Force Research Articles

New Points of Production: Homework and Shoemaking in Asia

Globalization--and the manner in which it has been governed during the last decade--has harmed various public policy infrastructures of developing nations, but especially those in health, social, and environmental sectors. The poorest population suffers the most severe consequences, as production takes place in the "informal" economy and in homes. Work safety and health in the informal economy has not gained the attention it warrants and requires, considering that this "sector" constitutes the majority of the world's labor force. The purpose of this article is twofold: (i) to describe the working environment in home-based shoemaking--based on Indonesian and Philippines experience by Markkanen [1]; and (ii) to examine the research framework proposed by Levenstein and Tuminaro in The Political Economy of Occupational Disease [2] and further developed in Wooding and Levenstein, The Point of Production, 1999 [3]. The field investigation by Markkanen employed this approach to explore how hazardous working conditions and inadequate health protection are the product of complex, converging relationships among diverse "actors" or agents at international, national, community, and shoe industry levels.

Policy responses to unauthorized or irregular workers

Managing migration is one of the key challenges facing nation states in a 21st century marked by closer connections and rising inequality between countries. In a world in which travel and tourism are becoming a major industry, and in which wages across borders can be 20 or 30 times higher, there are increasing incentives to cross national borders for employment. The industrial countries, which have about 12 percent of the world's labor force but 60 percent of the world's migrants, are struggling with the best ways to respond to rising numbers of irregular workers. Most responses are some combination of prevention, interior enforcement, and legalization: the challenge is how to include the fourth element, cooperation with migrant countries of origin.

The world economy, development, and women

Women are important participants in the world economy. They represent more than 40% of the world's labor force and are now being drawn into the global economy in large numbers. It is particularly women from developing countries who are increasingly being targeted by the global economy. These include the young women of the electronic industries in South East Asia, the miracle makers of the newly industrialized economies (NIEs) of East Asia, the artefact makers of indigenous groups, the women of the maquiladoras of Mexico, and the workers of the export processing zones of the world where 75% of labor is composed of women. The history of the world economy reveals the crucial role played by Third World women in various stages of its development. This essay explores the notion of development in the world economy and its effects on the status of women in such an economy.

The New Untouchables: Immigration and the New World Worker, by Nigel Harris

Capitalism and migration: capitalism historically considered the socialized state the resumption of economic growth international migration a new world economy? social crisis. The sweated trades in the developed countries: women workes and paid employment part-time work the low paid home-working child workers illegal migration conclusion. The sweated trades in the developing countries: the oil-producing Middle East an cosmopolitan labour force internationalization fighting the labour market the domestic helots a world labour market. Immigration and the state: population control immigration control in the developed countries nationality refugees. Social networks and migration: recruitment, destinations occupations politics the homelands the new rich. The reproduction of the labour force: substitutions the shortage of labour reproduction costs too many workers or too few? the roles of immigrants the future social security immigrants. Arguments and evidence: does poverty push out the poor? immigrants and the employment of the native-born the pursuit of national homogeneity an inferior people do immigrants live on welfare? do immigrants damage the host society? do immigrants damage the sending society? conclusions. The freedom to move: the structure of the world's labour force morality and migration the future.

Stabilisation and Structural Reforms for Sustained Growth

First, an overview of the world economy to provide us with the stark evidence of the deep economic and social crisis which the world still faces despite the process of far reaching economic reforms and adjustments which many countries have undertaken over the past decade and a half, Global unemployment today, as a proportion of potential employment, is higher than at any time since the Great Depression. Of a world labour force estimated at 2.8 billion people, an estimated 30 per cent are not productively employed. More than 120 million people are registered as unemployed throughout the world, in that they seek and are available for work but cannot find it. An estimated 700 million people are underemployed, the ‘working poor’, and they form the bulk of the estimated 1.1 billion absolute poor in the world. With new entrants joining the labour force at an increasing rate, the pressures on the employment situation and poverty problem will further intensify in the coming years.

Unemployment: Capitalism's Achilles Heel

Early this year a short item appeared on the first page of The Wall Street Journal which read: Unemployment rises around the world, and the outlook remains dim. More people are out of work than ever before, according to the International Labor Organization. Some 30 percent of the world's labor force is unemployed or underemployed: 120 million people are registered as unemployed and another 700 million are underemployed, says Ali Taqi, the ILO's chief of staff. (Wall Street Journal, 8 February 1994)This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Technology and Social Organisation in the Contemporary World: A Search for the Historical Causality

Ever since the second world war has left the world in a state of continuous political rivalry and economic hegemony in disguise, technology has turned out to be the newest channel of exploitation of the poorer nations by the industrialised ones on a global scale. While the developed nations are in an entrenched position in invention and implementation of industrial technology, the developing countries are desperately running after the latest computers and automatic systems to be acquired from the former. The decades-old aspiration for transfer of technology to the developing nations however has remained a mirage. The multinationals are out to globalise their activities through subsidiaries started in the highly profit-yielding third world countries.1 This costs them only a small portion of the required capital stock in their own currency, ultimately leading to exploitation of the third world labour force without effective transfer of relevant technology to the receiving country. While the conventional form of high technology aids the exploitative motives of the richer nations, it also contributes to the unjustifiable victimisation of the poorer nations to the environmental hazards caused by technology consumption by the affluent ones. Even scientists and academicians of the guardian nations in industry have come round to admit that the world should no longer allow the undirected race for higher productivity with greater indirect cost. Yet the inescapable fact remains that investment and coherent planning in the search for alternative technology is still not sufficiently forthcoming. Meanwhile the cry for small technology in the industrialising countries has almost died down in the face of the competition from high technology marketed by the corporate economies, and the governments of these countries are reduced to helpless onlookers. The hard facts of the world economy are however irreversibly tilted in favour of the technology-rich countries. Even in the search for the alternative technology these countries are already well ahead of the developing world. This forebodes repetition of the, same imbalance of achievements afflicting the poorer nations even

Unemployment and health—new approaches in research and social action

Unemployment and health—new approaches in research and social action

Fertility Reduction Policies and Poverty in Third World Countries: Ethical Issues

This article begins with a discussion of the motivation for fertility reduction and related population policies. Next, it identifies the two major approaches to evaluating these policies in the population ethics literature: the individualistic approach and the international approach. Each approach is then characterized according to the kinds of policies evaluated, the ethical principles that are most prominent, and the major conclusions drawn. Major empirical gaps in the population ethics literature are identified, and pertinent social science issues concerning the effectiveness of family planning programs, the socioeconomic determinants of fertility, and the interpersonal or community determinants of fertility are discussed. Finally, these issues are linked with the United Nations World Population Plan of Action to identify ethical questions that warrant detailed scrutiny.

Integrating Third World Women into the Women's Studies Curriculum

From 1980 to 1982, Old Dominion University had a faculty development grant, awarded by the United States Department of Education, to help integrate Third World materials and perspectives into the curriculum. ODU, located in Norfolk, Virginia, is a state university serving over 15,000 students. I was one of ten faculty members, each from a different field, selected to participate. At weekly seminars, we discussed books about the Third World by such scholars as Paul Harrison, Robert P. Clark, Paul Bairoch, Pierre Jolke, and Peter Worsley. For eleven years now, I have been aware of how invisible women are in most books and courses, yet I was still shocked to discover the extent to which women did not exist in the minds of these authors. I was even more disturbed to find that, when occasionally women were mentioned, they were discussed only as breeders of children. When I started my research, which was to focus on Third World women, I found that the feminist movement had had some impact, especially upon female scholars, and that books such as Women in Africa, edited by Nancy J. Hafkin and Edna G. Bay, and Women and National Development, edited by the Wellesley Editorial Committee, did exist.1 Generally, however, I found that in scholarly research, as in economic development projects, the contributions of women were ignored. Since female labor is usually unpaid and therefore does not show up in the gross national product, it is seldom acknowledged; similarly, and with still less justification, books and journals about African literature rarely mention African women writers. Yet the women's movement that resurfaced in 1968 is having some influence upon global research. The United Nations, for example, has begun to devote some of its resources to women. A U.N. report noted that women make up one-third of the world's labor force and put in nearly two-thirds of the work hours, yet these women receive only one-tenth of the world's income. International Labour Office studies show that although females make up half of the world's population, they own less than one-hundredth of the world's property. 2 Just as we now know that three-fourths of the poor in the United States are female, we now recognize that the vast majority of the poor, the anemic, and the illiterate in the developing world are female. One-half of the world's people are illiterate, and of those, two-thirds are female. Four-fifths of the women in Africa and Asia cannot read or write. So forgotten and invisible are these women that Elise Boulding has labeled them the As the poorest of the poor, these women are even more neglected than the men of the and fourth worlds (categories suggested by Boulding to distinguish between the poor and the extremely poor developing countries).3 Ironically, however, until recently most women's studies teachers were as guilty as most teachers of Third World studies of ignoring this fifth world. This may be explained, in part, by Rosemary Ruether's description in New Woman, New Earth of the process of women's awakening. First a woman focuses upon her individual experience. Then she focuses upon what she has in common with other females. Not until the third stage in

Keynote address: “Impact of computer utilization upon the world's labor force” by K. Nygaard

Euromicro Keynote session “Impact of computer utilization upon the worlds labour force” as presented by Prof. K. Nygaard of the Norwegian Computing Centre. During the planning of EUROMICRO 78 it was agreed that the keynote sessions were an essential part of the conference and some efforts should be made to provide a more permanent record of the interesting items presented by the invited speakers. The present paper is based on the speach held by Prof. K. Nygaard at the Münich conference. During private discussions on how to present the material it was agreed to include the complete text on one of the cited references: Appendix, General Agreement between the Norwegian Federation of Trade Unions and the Norwegian Employers' Confederation (N.A.F.) on COMPUTER BASED SYSTEMS.