International Labour Review最新文献

The authors question the validity of Okun's law in Latin America in this paper. Based on several econometric models, they show that fluctuations in economic activity have a lesser impact on unemployment rates in Latin American countries than in other, more advanced economies. Instead of stimulus policies focused on reducing unemployment in general, these countries need targeted policies that encourage job creation in specific sectors. That being said, the unemployment—output ratio differs from one Latin American country to another. Where the ratio is weak or non-existent, cyclical variations adversely affect the quality of employment – another aspect that must also be addressed by economic policy.

When heterosexism and cisgenderism leads to social exclusion at work, it negatively affects the well-being of LGBTQ+ people. To measure this phenomenon, the authors constructed a specific job quality index based on a sample of 1,761 LGBTQ+ Quebec workers recruited as part of the UNIE-LGBTQ survey (2019–2020). The index was created using factor scores; it comprises 16 indicators and covers five dimensions. It has acceptable internal consistency and is moderately associated with LGBTQ+ job satisfaction. Its conceptual validity is bolstered by the fact that it reflects anticipated differences between groups.

This article examines the impact of job reservations on the performance of public sector enterprises (PSEs) in India. Drawing on data for all central government-owned manufacturing PSEs from 2014 to 2017 and employing instrumental variable techniques, the authors test the hypothesis that reservations benefit firm performance if implemented across all levels of the employment hierarchy. While the findings validate this hypothesis, they also indicate that the reserved categories are disproportionately represented in the lower end of the organizational hierarchy. This imbalance is primarily driven by systematic limitations in vacancy notifications and discriminatory practices within organizations.

In a context of population ageing, this article analyses the “lump of labour” theory using empirical evidence from Latin America. Instead of finding a crowding-out effect, estimations using a fixed effects model on a panel of annual data drawn from household surveys in 11 countries between 2002 and 2019 suggest a positive correlation between the employment rates of older adults and young people. Additionally, results show a positive association between the labour incomes of older and young workers. These findings could indicate that an expansion in the employment of older adults maintains economic growth and, therefore, a greater demand for labour, which could be supplied by young people.

Little attention has been given to examples of innovative structural designs in the private labour regulation of garment global production networks (GPNs). This article addresses this gap by examining the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, analysing its contested structural features, namely: (1) a legally binding basis, (2) a labour-balanced executive board, (3) corporate critical mass and (4) transparency of functions. The authors’ findings contribute to the understanding of emerging hybrid governance mechanisms, combining multi-organizational cooperative action with traditional capital-labour dynamics to influence labour regulation in GPNs in new and contradictory ways.

The author discusses the capacity of labour NGOs to strengthen the associational power of Chinese workers in globalized production networks by using their leverage to pressure multinationals into launching programmes to elect workers’ committees in factories. Based on an empirical survey conducted between 2012 and 2019 in southern China, he shows that such programmes helped to raise workers’ awareness of collective action and strengthen their agency, but that they ground to a halt in the face of the structural inequality of the production system, the lack of institutional protection for elected representatives and a hardening regime.