(ECN 4169) LABOUR ISSUES IN DEVELOPMENT

1. (ECN 4169)LABOUR ISSUES IN DEVELOPMENT GROUP MEMBERS • FARAH HANNA BINTI ROSLI 137378 • HEMALATHA JAYARAMAN 137898 • LEKHNESWARY SIVARATANAM 137887 • FARHANA NASUTION BINTI ISMAIL 137425 • RAJASVARAN ARASAPPAN 135374 • RUGES MAHAENDRAN 137794

2. INTRODUCTION • Labor is defined as the voluntary efforts of human being to produce objects of desire.  • The term of labor movement is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and political governments, in particular through the implementation of specific laws governing labor relations.

3. Historically, labor markets have often been constrained by national borders that have restricted movement of workers. Labor laws are also primarily determined by individual nations or states within those nations. • While there have been some efforts to adopt a set of international labor standards through the International Labor Organization (ILO), international sanctions for failing to meet such standards are very limited. In many countries labor movements have developed independently and reflect those national boundaries.

4. Labor Market Policies • Labor market policies (LMPs) are government policies aimed at improving the ability of people within the labor market of the country involved to meet the demands put upon them. • The nature of such policies varies according to particular conditions within countries and their various developmental goals.

5. The ability of individuals within the overall labour market to respond to this kind of change varies and such variation is likely to follow demographic details such as age, education and income. • LMPs may be divided between the active and the passive.

6. Active LMPs include such measures as: technical and vocational training, skills training and re-education, active matching of existing supply and demand for work or brokerage and intermediary services aimed at improving that matching process and its efficiency and direct employment generation within state-owned enterprises or through providing incentives to private sector organizations.

7. Passive LMPs include the provision of unemployment insurance schemes and other welfare provisions, as well as maintaining a legal regime that protects workers from exploitation and provides some basic rights in terms of discrimination and predatory employment practices.

8. ASEAN Labour Market Policies • ASEAN labour markets vary considerably from the transition economies of Vietnam and Laos, where the main issues surround the movement of people from the command economy to a variant of the market economy, to the advanced education and lifelong learning found in Singapore, which aims to provide intellectual capital to overcome lack of necessary input such as land and natural resources.

9. However, perhaps the most common model of the labour market is that found to some extent in Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, which is based on providing reasonably diligent and skilled labour for the export-oriented manufacturing sectors. • This has been generally successful but has led to diminishing returns over time.

10. Occupational Safety and Health • Reports of accidents and fatalities are rife and it is not hard to believe that a significant proportion of the 2.2 million workplace deaths that the International Labour Organization (ILO) has reported take place annually happened in construction works. • It would be expected that more accidents would take place as more people are brought into an industrial and mechanized workplace because of the changes to the world of work caused by industrialization.

11. Accountable governments are required to take action to reduce workplace accidents, to punish anyone who may be found to be guilty of carelessness and to increase healthcare such that any accidents which do take place are ameliorated by rapid and efficient response, as well as subsequently making available workers’ compensation schemes. • This process has already begun in Thailand and Malaysia, although Indonesia and Vietnam are still on the upwards slope of the process (and less developed ASEAN nations will still by slogging up the road for the foreseeable future).

12. Working Hours • Seventy years ago, the economist John Maynard Keynes declared his belief that his grandchildren would be enjoying three hour working days. • That of course has not happened, despite the enormous improvements in workplace technology and employee productivity. • Instead, people around the world seem to be working harder and longer than ever before.

13. Confined in internal factories and offices, people become decoupled from the natural rhythms of the world, perhaps even unaware of the weather or what time it might be. This has clear implications for mental and physical health as workers suffer increasing stress, leading to cardiovascular diseases and family life suffers. • New generations of children grow up with absentee parents and suffer in turn from lack of positive role models and poorer socialization skills. • New research from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has provided evidence that working weeks are not decreasing almost anywhere in the world.

14. In the ASEAN region, Indonesia has a weekly limit of 40 working hours; Singapore permits 41-46 hours; Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam allow 48 hour working weeks. • These limits have been reduced very slightly over the past two decades.

15. Many ASEAN governments are making some slow and uneven progress towards less improper regulation of labour markets. Examples of this are court cases in which employers are found to have abused domestic help, uncovering abuses in the treatment of migrant workers and the very occasional fine of companies exposing their employees to environmental hazards.

16. Private and Public Sector Involvement in Training • There is an increasing role being taken by the private sector in providing skills and vocational training in the ASEAN region. • The lack of skilled workers in countries such as Thailand has stimulated private sector bodies to establish their own training establishments.

17. The Japan-Thailand Economic Partnership Agreement (JTEPA), meanwhile, contains a provision that four Japanese companies will offer training and apprenticeship places to Thai workers who will then be contracted to work at those companies for a set period. • Interviewing in Thailand has indicated that the predilection of workers, skilled and otherwise, to job-hop as better short-term opportunities emerge is contrary to the philosophy of most Japanese companies to promote long-term in-house training.

18. It seems certain that the private sector will increasingly intervene to ensure the narrowing of skills gaps and to minimize the risks of lack of appropriate human resources for long-term use.

19. FEMALE LABOR • Over the last century, the issue of women in the workplace has been a tumultuous one - early in the 20th century, few women participated in the labor force. • A woman's place was at home, taking care of the family and managing the domestic world. It was seen as unfit for women to be in certain professions, and most women did not work, other than going about their daily chores around the house. • World War II brought a complete reversal to this trend. As women employment in the labor force grew steadily in the four decades after World War II.

20. Why this has happened, as well as examining different sectors of the economy and comparing women employment and men employment. • Just after World War II, the civilian labor force participation for women was a paltry 32%. • Today, however, some six decades later that rate has climbed in excess of 70%.

21. For four solid decades after the war, this rate increased at an astounding rate. • Early in the 1990s, however, this rate leveled off. This brought about much speculation as to whether or not women were thus starting to leave the labor force and, if so, what the causes of that might be.

22. Labor Force Participation Rates for Men andWomen, 1970 to 2006 • March 2007 - The increase in women's participation in labor force is one of the most important social, economic, and cultural trends of the past century. • Since 1970, the proportion of all women in the labor force has increased from 43% to nearly 60%, while the proportion of men in the labor force decreased slightly, from 80% to 74%

23. Women’s Employment in the Intermediate Fertility Countries • The trend in labor force participation since 1980 has generally been one of rising rates for women and reduced rates for men, so that the sex differential has narrowed. • Women have been entering the labor force increasingly to contribute to family survival. Structural adjustment processes, financial crises, prolonged economic downturns, the “feminization of poverty” have all forced more and more women to take up economic activities outside the home.

24. In the past and particularly in developed countries, a “double peak” pattern was prevalent – most women entered the labor force in their twenties, left after a few years to bear and raise children and re-entered the labor force towards the end of their childbearing years. • The competition for jobs is becoming so intense and the costs of interrupted participation are so high that women do not dare withdraw from the labor force even when they have children & especially if they’ve large families to support.

25. Role incompatibility is likely to be greater for women in wage employment, less so for those in self-employment and least so for contributing family workers who are unpaid. • Related to increasing self-employment of women is the growth of the informal economy, and it is likely to have important implications for the trend in fertility decline. • They indicate that the informal economy has been growing not only in developing but also in transition and developed countries.

26. Most women (& men) have been going into the informal economy because they cannot find jobs or are unable to start businesses in the formal economy and cannot afford to be openly unemployed. • But work in the informal economy, being outside legal and regulatory frameworks, is normally characterized by a high degree of vulnerability. Workers have little or no legal or social protection and they are excluded from or have limited access to public infrastructure and benefits.

27. Informal economy workers are rarely organized for effective representation and have little or no voice either at the workplace or in the socio-political arena. • Informal employment is normally unstable and insecure – consisting of very long hours and peak pressure to finish contract orders by a short deadline, followed by “inactive” periods waiting for orders and therefore providing only unstable and insecure incomes. • A much higher percentage of people working in the informal, relative to the formal economy, are poor and women working in the informal economy are more likely than men to be poor.

28. What Indicators of Women’s Employment May be Important Predictors • (a) Status in employment • (b) Open unemployment rates • (c) Work in the formal or informal economy • (d) Sector of employment • (e) Location of employment • (f) Occupational segregation • (g) Size of enterprise • (h) Migration for employment

29. Female Discrimination in the Labor Force • Throughout the entire 20th century, women's wages have constantly lagged behind men's wages. If a woman and man were both hired to do the same task, the man would be paid more than the women. • One explanation has always been that the men are not only more qualified at the jobs but more efficient. Thus, the argument goes, they should be paid at a higher premium. • Today, however, the wage gap is still existent, and very few would find that argument valid. The only reasonable explanation that can be found for this wage gap is discrimination.

30. Women in the workplace have always been discriminated against. Ever since the first women started to work, they got paid less in the same positions that men held before them. • 1995, the top level managerial and professional specialty jobs were held by 7million men and 5 million women. Those women made a weekly salary of 570 dollars while those men made 833 dollars. This is also true in many other occupations such as sales and technical operations. Some would say that this is the case because men are better qualified and more competent in their jobs.

31. 1980, Women had 465, 000 graduates while men had 470 000. This gap would be closed and eclipsed by women in 1981. That year 480 000 women earned a bachelors' degree while men only had 473 000. The gap in the number of college graduates is increasing in favor of women. • So, it would seem that there are more highly qualified women out there than there are men. • Then why is it that men are still being paid more?

32. Discrimination seems the only viable answer to the earnings gap. • When women first entered the labor force they were hassled by the males because they were traditionally supposed to only work in the house and take care of the family. • Another reason for the earnings gap between men and women may be because of the types of jobs women typically hold.

33. Of the 57 million female workers employed in1994, a majority worked in technical, sales, and clerical occupations. • These jobs are typically low paying jobs that have been traditionally filled by female workers. However, in the past few years, substantial progress has been made by women in obtaining jobs in the managerial and professional specialties. • Even with the increases, women are still employed mostly for technical, sales, and administrative support positions. Even with these reasons, women are still being paid less than men in the same jobs. In almost every occupational category, women are paid less than men.

34. Trends in Female Labor Force Participation and Fertility

36. CHILD LABOR

37. Child slave labor-employment of children below 18 years of age in hazardous occupations. considered exploitative by many countries and international organizations. being forced to manual labor to help their families mainly due to poverty.

38. can be factory work, prostitution, agriculture, helping in the parents' business, having one's own small business or doing odd jobs, guides for tourists, combined with bringing in business for shops and restaurants (waiters), assembling boxes, polishing shoes, stocking a store's products, cleaning, crop plantations, mining caves, and rock quarries. • According to UNICEF, there are an estimated 158 million children aged 5 to 14 in child labour worldwide, excluding child domestic labour.

39. Effects of child labor • Supposed to be in the environment of a classroom rather than roaming the streets and risking every chance, time and time again, to earn money. • get the privilege of education than up being dropouts and repeaters because they are not able to focus on their studies. • Suffer from malnutrition, hampered growth, and improper biological development.

40. Children's rights • United Nations and the International Labor Organization consider child labour exploitative, with the UN stipulating, in article 32 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child that:- ...States Parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development…

41. Factory Acts, were passed in Britain in the first half of the 19th century. Children younger than nine were not allowed to work and the work day of youth under the age of 18 was limited to twelve hours. • In many developed countries, it is considered inappropriate or exploitative if a child below a certain age works, excluding household chores or schoolwork. • Child labor laws in the United States set the minimum age to work in an establishment without parents' consent and restrictions at age 16.

42. Child labour is still widely used today in many countries, including India and Bangladesh. • Schemes suggested by the International Labor Organization (ILO), at a meeting in Mexico City in 1999, who also pointed out that child labor affects over 250 million children, 30 percent of which are in Latin America.

43. Campaigns against child labor • Boycotting products manufactured through child labor may force these children to turn to more dangerous or strenuous professions, such as prostitution or agriculture. • UNICEF study found that 5,000 to 7,000 Nepalese children turned to prostitution after the United States banned that country's carpet exports in the 1990s. • Child Labor Deterrence Act was introduced in the US, an estimated 50,000 children were dismissed from their garment industry jobs in Bangladesh, leaving many to resort to jobs such as "stone-crushing, street hustling, and prostitution.

44. United States Deputy under Secretary for International Labor Affairs Thomas B. Moorehead, Philippines Secretary of Labor Patricia Santo Tomas, and Philippines Secretary of Education Raul Roco signed a collaborative agreement on a Timebound Program to eliminate the worst forms of child labor in the Philippines on June 28, 2002. • both countries to work together on a number of initiatives to remove children from work, provide them access to quality and relevant education and offer families viable economic alternatives to child labor.

45. U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) will provide $10 million for child labor action programs and education initiatives. $5 million of this will go through the International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor (ILO/IPEC) and $5 million will be competitively bid and funded by the USDOL to be a nongovernmental organization.

46. Defense of child labor • According to Friedman's theory, before the Industrial Revolution virtually all children worked in agriculture. • During the Industrial Revolution many of these children moved from farm work to factory work. • Murray Rothbard also defended child labor, stating that British and American children of the pre- and post-Industrial Revolution went "voluntarily and gladly" to work in factories.

47. British historian and socialist E.P. Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class draws a qualitative distinction between child domestic work and participation in the wider (waged) labor market. • Big Bill Haywood, a leading labor organizer and leader of the Western Federation of Miners and a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World famously claimed "the worst thief is he who steals the playtime of children!“.

48. Migrated Labor The United Nations Population Division defines international migrants as persons outside their country of birth or citizenship for 12 months or more. Global economic integration is not only about the increased movement of goods, services and capital across international borders, but also involves the greater mobility of people. More than 13.5 million people work overseas from sending countries in ASEAN – and perhaps more than that if all unregistered or unofficial migrants were taken into account.

49. In the 21st Century estimated that some 180 million people – 3 percent of the world’s population – are living in countries in which they were not born. • Since 1960, the share of the world’s migrants in more developed countries has risen, largely because of immigration and slow population growth in more developed countries, not because significant numbers of developing countries were relabeled developed.

50. Table 1. International Migrants and Global Population, 1960-2000