Wage Labor

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Franco Barchiesi - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • Wage Labor, Precarious Employment, and Social Inclusion in the Making of South Africa's Postapartheid Transition
    African Studies Review, 2008
    Co-Authors: Franco Barchiesi
    Abstract:

    Abstract: During South Africa's first decade of democracy, policies of social inclusion and social citizenship have emphasized productive employment and the work ethic in a context of fiscal discipline and public spending thrift. The government's institutional discourse contrasts, however, with a social reality in which most black workers have confronted growing economic precariousness and the inability of Waged occupations to provide stable livelihoods above poverty levels. The article discusses workers' responses to these conditions with case studies of private and public employment. It finds that official rhetoric about the centrality of productive employment does not reflect the diversity of practices and discourses with which workers address the crisis facing Wage Labor. Introduction During South Africa's first postapartheid decade, persistently high unemployment rates, combined with the proliferation of low-Wage and casual occupations, have profoundly affected the material conditions of the largely black working class, undermining the meaning of Wage Labor as a vehicle of social advancement for the country's formerly oppressed majority. The apartheid regime had incorporated blacks, particularly Africans, within Wage Labor in a subordinate status marked by managerial authoritarianism, employment instability, coercive forms of migration, political repression, and racial segregation in workplaces and neighborhoods (Von Holdt 2003). The resumption of black independent trade unionism in the 1970s, and its convergence around community and political struggles in the 1980s, led to the dynamics of mobilization and solidarity that contributed decisively to postapartheid democratization and the rise to power of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1994. The expression "social movement unionism" (see Seidman 1994; Von Holdt 2002) designated struggles that linked demands for workplace changes, political democracy, resource redistribution, and a better quality of life. Under the democratic government, however, Labor has faced an often uncomfortable reality characterized by lasting social inequality and conservative policies of economic liberalization - chiefly the 1996 Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy (see Bond 2005; Cassim 2006). As South Africa's economy emerged from apartheid-age isolation and protectionism to embrace globalization, the black working class has remained in a condition of social vulnerability. With the new democracy organized Labor has indeed enjoyed fresh rights, safeguards, and institutional visibility, as enshrined in legislation like the 1995 Labour Relations Act or in trade unions' representation within corporatist-style policymaking institutions like the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC). These developments, however, have only partially counterbalanced the adverse socioeconomic trends linked tojoblessness and the casualization of employment (Theron 2004). If, for many black South African workers, these changes did not represent an entirely unfamiliar reality of exploitation and marginalization, they nonetheless delivered a powerful blow to hopes of social change woven in late apartheid experiences of Labor mobilization and trade union organizing. This article argues that the postapartheid combination of political and economic liberalization challenges the promise of social emancipation that Wage Labor had come to embody throughout past black working-class struggles. I look at the relations between changing forms of workers' vulnerability and their impact on social practices and discourse, focusing on representations and narratives of employment change as they highlight a broad set of research questions: Is an emancipatory politics centered on Wage Labor still possible in South Africa? How do workers' identities relate to employment trends under the new political dispensation? What is the role played by workplace-based organizations in changing workers' responses? …

  • Wage Labor and Social Citizenship in the Making of Post-Apartheid South Africa
    Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2007
    Co-Authors: Franco Barchiesi
    Abstract:

    The scholarly literature on the South African democratic transition generally recognizes the decisive role of organized Labor and black trade union organizations in the collapse of the apartheid regime. Labor's contribution in this regard was premised on a view of liberation that was not limited to the achievement of political rights and civil liberties, but crucially included a discourse of social citizenship enabled by expectations for employment creation, redistribution and decommodification of social provisions. Labor's social citizenship discourse was largely translated into the massive electoral support that the government of the African National Congress (ANC) has enjoyed since 1994. Conservative macroeconomic policies, and the deepening crisis of stable employment that have characterized the South African transition radically challenge, however, Wage Labor as an effective vehicle of social inclusion and the repository of collective identities and solidarity. The downgraded material conditions and ...

  • Schooling Bodies to Hard Work’: Wage Labor, Citizenship, and Social Discipline in the Policy Discourse of the South African State
    2007
    Co-Authors: Franco Barchiesi
    Abstract:

    This paper is an investigation of the social policy discourse of South Africa’s postapartheid state with specific regard to its conceptualization of the relationships between Wage Labor and social inclusion within interventions aimed at addressing poverty and social inequality. The underlying assumption is that discourse and ideology are constitutive aspects of the state’s normativity in relation to social actors and conflicts. The epistemological and ideational authoritativeness of governmental policy discourse depends on its ability to assert ethical and moral constructs aimed at disciplining social agency and expectations. At the same time, social agency is autonomously capable to appropriate categories of rights and entitlements underpinning state policies in order to strengthen popular claims to citizenship rights and social provisions. In South Africa, the post-1994 ANC-led government has tried to combine institutional interventions aimed at overcoming racialized social inequality with a fundamental acceptance of the need to make the economy competitive within the scenarios of neoliberal globalization. The resulting social policy discourse placed a priority emphasis on Waged employment and Labor market participation, to the detriment of universal, non-work related redistributive programs. The concept of “developmental social welfare” has combined a positive appreciation of individual self-activation with the stigmatization of “dependency” on state assistance. The state’s promotion of a form of social disciplining centered on Wage Labor has, however, clashed with a material reality in which Waged employment faces an enduring crisis evident in both spiraling unemployment and the proliferation of precarious and unprotected occupations. The policy discourse’s growing inability to reflect material realities of poverty in relation to the crisis of Waged employment raises important questions concerning the capacity of the new institutional dispensation to govern South Africa’s long transition.

  • Labour and Social Citizenship in Colonial and Postcolonial Modernity: South African Perspectives in a Continental Context
    2006
    Co-Authors: Franco Barchiesi
    Abstract:

    A major topic of interest in African studies is the role of Wage Labor in relation to shifting state policies from colonialism to independence. Early colonial policies, which were aimed at avoiding the formation of an urbanized African proletariat, were replaced in the late colonial and postcolonial state with strategies of Labor stabilization and co-option. Wage Labor underpinned, in particular, developmental ideologies and forms of discipline that perpetuated the lack of democracy and political rights. Using Anibal Quijano’s notion of “coloniality of power” this paper situates South Africa’s transition from Apartheid to democracy in the long duration of the continental trajectory from colonial to postcolonial modernity. It reveals that the social policies of the post-1994 South African democracy reflected a hierarchical view of social citizenship, with Waged employment at its center, which resemble colonial patterns of governance that influenced Africa’s independent nationstates. The centrality of Wage Labor in post-Apartheid policy discourse is also expressed in a moral vocabulary opposed to welfare “dependency,” which obscures the material decline of Waged work in a context of deepening unemployment and casualization. In the final analysis, the work-centered

Samir Bellal - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • Wage-Labor nexus and the economic regulation in Algeria
    2014
    Co-Authors: Samir Bellal
    Abstract:

    In this article, it is question of the characterization of the Wage-Labor nexus established in favor of industrialization project engaged by Algeria in the 70s, and the changes which occurred in the configuration of the Wage-Labor relationships as a result of the liberal reforms introduced since the early 90s. Finally, we end the analysis with questioning on the status currently given to the Wage-Labor nexus as constituent element of the mode of regulation of the economy as a whole.

  • Wage-Labor nexus and the economic regulation in Algeria [Rapport Salarial Et Régulation Économique En Algérie]
    2014
    Co-Authors: Samir Bellal
    Abstract:

    In this article, it is question of the characterization of the Wage-Labor nexus established in favor of industrialization project engaged by Algeria in the 70s, and the changes which occurred in the configuration of the Wage-Labor relationships as a result of the liberal reforms introduced since the early 90s. Finally, we end the analysis with questioning on the status currently given to the Wage-Labor nexus as constituent element of the mode of regulation of the economy as a whole.

  • Rapport salarial et régulation économique en Algérie
    Tiers-monde, 2014
    Co-Authors: Samir Bellal
    Abstract:

    This article looks at the characterization of the Wage-Labor nexus established in favor of the industrialization project engaged by Algeria in the 70s, and the changes which occurred in the configuration of Wage-Labor relationships as a result of the liberal reforms introduced since the early 90s. Finally, we end the analysis by questioning the status currently given to the Wage-Labor nexus as a constituent element of the mode of regulation of the economy as a whole.

Wallace E Huffman - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

Nik Theodore - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • migrant worker centers contending with downgrading in the low Wage Labor market
    GeoJournal, 2007
    Co-Authors: Nina Martin, Sandra Morales, Nik Theodore
    Abstract:

    Mass migration to major USA cities is reworking patterns of ethnic jobholding and Labor market segmentation. Employers in a variety of industries have turned to recent migrants, many of whom are not authorized to work in the USA, as a stable Labor supply for low-Wage jobs. As a result, many migrant workers enter urban economies through precarious jobs in low-Wage industries and the informal economy where they often endure routine violations of Labor and employment laws. This paper examines the activities of a “migrant worker center” in improving Wages and working conditions in migrant Labor markets. Through a case study of a worker center located in a port-of-entry immigrant neighborhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side, we examine the geographies of the low-Wage Labor market and the problems that have arisen for workers who hold jobs that effectively exist beyond the reach of government regulation. We argue that migrant worker centers will likely emerge as a key resource for workers who are drawn to global cities by the promise of economic opportunity yet confront harsh conditions in the local Labor markets in which they are employed.

  • Migrant worker centers: Contending with downgrading in the low-Wage Labor market
    GeoJournal, 2007
    Co-Authors: Nina Martin, Sandra Morales, Nik Theodore
    Abstract:

    Mass migration to major USA cities is reworking patterns of ethnic jobholding and Labor market segmentation. Employers in a variety of industries have turned to recent migrants, many of whom are not authorized to work in the USA, as a stable Labor supply for low-Wage jobs. As a result, many migrant workers enter urban economies through precarious jobs in low-Wage industries and the informal economy where they often endure routine violations of Labor and employment laws. This paper examines the activities of a "migrant worker center" in improving Wages and working conditions in migrant Labor markets. Through a case study of a worker center located in a port-of-entry immigrant neighborhood on Chicago's Southwest Side, we examine the geographies of the low-Wage Labor market and the problems that have arisen for workers who hold jobs that effectively exist beyond the reach of government regulation. We argue that migrant worker centers will likely emerge as a key resource for workers who are drawn to global cities by the promise of economic opportunity yet confront harsh conditions in the local Labor markets in which they are employed. © 2007 Springer Science + Business Media B.V.

Robert Boyer - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • The contemporary Japanese crisis and the transformations of the Wage Labor nexus
    1998
    Co-Authors: Robert Boyer, Michel Juillard
    Abstract:

    The paper surveys the main findings of research about the specificity of the Japanese "regulation" mode and growth pattern, with a special emphasis upon the Wage Labor nexus, compares the recession which began in 1991 with the previous ones and finally analyses the institutional transformations taking place during the 90's. Even if mass production and consumption do characterize the Japanese economy, the Wage Labor nexus is built upon an implicit compromise about employment stability, at odds with a typical Fordist one. The contemporary stagnation and uncertainty do not originate from this Wage Labor nexus being different from the American one, but from the de-synchronization the whole institutional architecture built after WW II and reformed after the first oil shock, under the pressures of a changing international environment and financial liberalization. The Japanese Wage Labor nexus allows a lot of flexibility and has been adapting all over the 90's and is far from being the weakest institutional form. Clearly, the growth pattern itself is challenged by its very success in catching up and is destabilized by a partial financial liberalization. Until now no alternative domestic led pattern has been found and political leadership and "vision" are severely lacking.

  • Contemporary transformations of the japanese Wage Labor nexus in historical retrospect and some international comparisons
    1995
    Co-Authors: Robert Boyer
    Abstract:

    This paper challenges both the culturalist interpretation which emphasizes the permanence of typically Japanese features, and the conventional neoclassical theory which considers the end of the Japanese exceptionalism, under the impact of globalization. The contemporary nexus between job stability, Wage career, continuous up grading of skill within the large firms, allied with a significant but steady inequality within smaller firms, is not a long term datum of the Japanese society. The second world war has triggered very important reforms in Labor laws, end the first oil shock has induced another important feature in the emergence of companyism i.e. the acceptance of slower real Wage increases in order to preserve competitiveness. A systematic comparison of the various components of the Wage Labor nexus (Germany, Japan, France, Great Britain, US, Sweden) suggests that the American or British configurations are only one among a significant. And that Japan is close to Germany or even Sweden : the division of Labor is built upon competence and not at all a precise task delimitation, whereas incentives and commitment are more important than pure coercion. This configuration turns out to be quite efficient when world competition is built upon quality, flexibility and innovation, along with price reductions. The basic features of a skill Labor nexus can be embedded into a growth model, with endogenous technical change. After the first oil shock, the general slow-down in world trade has induced the most significant decline in growth rate for Japan, but this country has then benefited from a Toyotist Wage Labor nexus, since it has allowed product differentiation and quick responses to changing demand patterns and volumes. LES TRANSFORMATIONS ACTUELLES DU RAPPORT SALARIAL JAPONAIS : UNE MISE EN PERSPECTIVE HISTORIQUE, UNE COMPARAISON INTERNATIONALE ET UN MODELE DE CROISSANCE. Robert BOYER

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