skip to main |
skip to sidebar
 |
| Guillermo Zuccotti |
As the International Labour Organisation (ILO) prepares to celebrate its 100th anniversary, the debate is underway as to the future of work.
When we, the workers, are called on to discuss this issue in light of the current global context, our minds turn to the social value of a return to work as a driver of upward social mobility, something that must be advocated on the world stage.
The crisis of the Welfare State
The crisis in social welfare of the 1970s, which was marked by changes in production patterns, gave rise to explanations of the crisis in work – and in particular waged work (Gorz 1982, Fitoussi and Rosanvallon 1997) – that at the extreme predicted the end of work (Rifkin 1996), arguments that guided the thinking of international organisations such as the IMF and World Bank on this subject.
And so the world continued its relentless march towards a second best in terms of the quality of human work and the associated labour rights standards. Evidence of this can be found in the institutionalisation of informal labour as a form of production and source of labour. This informality was also responsible for the phenomenal increase and concentration of profits in the hands of a few, oligopolising the structure of the markets in our countries.
 |
| Patrick Belser |
In recent years the share of labour compensation in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declined in many countries around the world. At the same time wage inequality reached levels considered by many to be both socially and economically unsustainable. Too much inequality not only erodes social cohesion, it also reduces opportunities for social mobility, hurts consumption by lower income groups, weakens the middle class, and creates societies in which elites live in a separate world.
Reducing inequality has thus become more central for policy makers in many parts of the world, as is reflected not only in the International Labour Organisation (ILO) decent work agenda, but also in the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, which calls for decent work for all as well as fiscal, wage and social protection policies to progressively achieve greater equality.
The latest ILO Global Wage Report focuses on wage inequality, taking as the starting point that overall wage inequality results from a combination of differences in average wages between enterprises and wage inequality within enterprises.
This enterprise perspective differs from the more traditional focus on skills as the major source of inequality. Many studies have documented how technology, globalisation, pressures from financial markets, labour market deregulation and trade unions’ weaker bargaining power have contributed to increased wage inequality between highly skilled workers and workers with lower levels of education. But individual characteristics alone (including age, educational attainment, and years of tenure) do a relatively poor job of explaining the variation in workers’ wages.
The simple human capital model used in the Global Wage Report shows that there are sometimes enormous differences between people's actual wages and the wages predicted for these individual characteristics. The discrepancy is large anywhere in the distribution, but particularly large at the top, where workers are hugely ‘overpaid’ for their characteristics, and at the bottom, where they are grossly ‘underpaid’.
 |
| Pham Thi Thu Lan |
Since the reform from a command economy to a market economy in the early 1990s, labour relations in Vietnam have also changed, with more widespread disputes and strikes. Since 1995, when the Labour Code of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam first took effect, there were more than 6000 strikes[1], but what is remarkable is none of these were legal (The Labour Newspaper, 2017). A legal strike has to fulfill two criteria,: firstly, it can only take place after a procedure stipulated by the law which rules out rights-based strikes; and secondly, it has to be led by a trade union. However, all strike incidents in Vietnam appear to be sponteneous and unorganised, and thus are illegal and refered to as wildcat strikes.
Legal constraints on the right to strike
The procedure in Article 209 of the Labour Code of Vietnam provides for ‘interest-based’ strikes, that is strikes about labour disputes on matters not regulated by the law or in an existing collective bargaining agreement. Rights-based strikes are considered illegal and any dispute over rights is subject to settlement at court, which is often costly and time consuming. Court rules are unenforcable in a number of cases. Futhermore, the law concerning the right to strike provides for difficult and lengthly formal procedures (Articles 212 and 213 of the Labour Code). A collective labour dispute must first go through compulsory mediation and arbitration, where it is also decided whether the dispute is right-based or interest-based. These mechanisms often give trade unions and workers a hard time before any possiblity of going on strike. On top of that unions must fulfil heavily bureacratic requirements such as getting signatures of at least 50% of workers, specifying in writing the time, venue, scope and demands of the strike, providing names and addresses of contact persons from the trade union committee, and sending a copy of the strike decision to employers, the upper-level trade union and the state labour management agency in advance. It might take three weeks from the declaration of a labour dispute until a legal strike can take place.
 |
| Giulio Iocco |
 |
| Karin Astrid Siegmann |
SOS Rosarno, an association of farmworkers, farmers and activists in Calabria, Italy, represents an innovative response from below to the extreme exploitation and precarity of migrant farmworkers in the Mediterranean region, as well as to the retailer-driven crisis of small-scale farming.
The crisis of farmwork
Agriculture is a major employer in Rosarno, an enclave of intensive citrus fruit production in southwestern Calabria. Here, each year, growers employ about 5 000 farmworkers. Since the late 1980s, foreign migrant labourers gradually became essential within this workforce, now totalling approximately 2 500 migrants. While indispensable to value addition in the regional citrus fruit sector, they endure extremely harsh conditions.
Migrant farmworkers receive only about two thirds of the minimum wages established by local labour contracts, while commonly working longer than the stipulated limit. For specific tasks, piece-rate payment further increases the incidence of overtime. Farmworkers also experience extreme precarity in employment relations: discontinuous daily employment, informal contracts without social security entitlements, and indirect hiring through intermediaries. The latter’s fees further reduce already meagre wages. Appalling working conditions are compounded by extremely precarious living conditions. Within a highly stratified workforce, West African workers - the reserve army of seasonal farm labour – experience the worst conditions. The vast majority live either in an over-crowded tent town or in abandoned buildings where they have no or very limited access to electricity, hygienic services like clean water. Their legal precarity prevents them from exercising basic civic and human rights. Owing to the lack of adequate action by unions, this isolation further increases their vulnerability vis-Ã -vis labour intermediaries and employers (Garrapa 2016, MEDU 2017).
 |
| Lorenza Monaco |
After more than three years of struggle, casual teaching staff from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London, organised in the Fractionals for Fair Play (FFFP) campaign, won an impressive victory against precarious working conditions and indecently low pay. The recently signed deal, which represents a significant improvement not only in terms of remuneration but also in the way it promises to overcome an identified mechanism of exploitation, marks a crucial step in the struggle against casualisation in British higher education. The campaign’s latest outcome and the way it was organised may indeed provide inspiration for worldwide campaigns against the marketisation of universities and the deterioration of jobs which comes with it. Overall, this case shows how solidarity, collective action, and a consistent focus on struggle demands, even when challenged during dire times, can eventually win.
