Between the street and Aso Rock*: the role of Nigerian trade unions in popular protests

The trade unions’ instrumental role in four decades of successful popular resistance against subsidy removals is widely recognised, but insufficiently understood due to inadequate consideration of the particularities of labour. The subsidy contestations are considered a barometer of Nigerian politics, and the 2012 subsidy protests – often referred as Occupy Nigeria – was one of the largest popular mobilisations in Nigerian history. Whereas unionists described the outcome as a successful demonstration of popular sovereignty, other protesters blamed the unions for unfulfilled democratic opportunities and for succumbing to bribery. With labour theoretical perspectives, this article critically examines the trade unions’ positions, actions and relations during those protests. The article demonstrates, in practice, not only how the unions’ capacities to mobilise, strike and negotiate, were instrumental to the reinstatement of the subsidy, but also how trade unions’ agency is both enabled and constrained by labour's multiple embeddedness in state, civil society and the market.     

Conductive Activism: Anti-Sweatshop Campaigns across Hong Kong and Mainland China

This study looks at trans-border, anti-sweatshop campaigns and the transformation of cross-border activism between Hong Kong and mainland China. Examining two cases, it demonstrates the mechanism and processes of trans-border, anti-sweatshop campaigns and networks involving non-governmental agencies, student groups and workers. The study suggests that anti-sweatshop activism has been conductive and transferrable from Hong Kong to China in a way that has mobilised local civil society power, cultivated mainland activists and nurtured localised pro-labour activism. With Hong Kong activists acting as movement conveyers and mainland activists acting as adapters, anti-sweatshop activism has evolved. Once centred on marketplaces and consumers, it is now centred on production sites, and has moved domestic actors (including workers, students, scholars, media and consumers) from the margins to the centre. Anti-sweatshop activism has moulded itself to local contexts by rebuilding its strategies and tactics while coalescing with overseas networks to integrate strengths across the Hong Kong-Chinese border. Although the anti-sweatshop movement in China has its weaknesses, its evolution has the potential to gradually alter the power asymmetries between domestic and overseas activists.     

A Theoretical Note on Commodification of Labour Power in China and the Global Putting-Out System

This article captures China’s role in global manufacturing through the prism of conceptualisation of the commodification of labour power in Marxist theory. It argues that modalities of China’s labour force co-optation in assembly and lower value added production for export of consumer goods to advanced economies carries more of a family resemblance with putting-out systems of the pre-capitalist era than with the commodification of labour power sensu stricto marking the capitalist era from the mid-nineteenth century.     

Workplace regimes in Sino-Mozambican construction projects: resentment and tension in a divided workplace

Based on a qualitative study of Chinese-led construction projects in Mozambique, this article explores how Chinese engagement in the construction sector affects workplace regimes. The study addresses the following set of questions: What characterises these workplace regimes, and why do the workplace regimes give rise to resentment and tension amongst Mozambican workers? Furthermore, how is labour agency constrained or enabled within these workplace regimes? The data reveals that Chinese companies in Mozambique are granted great freedom to develop workplace regimes as they see fit, characterised by functional flexibility, low pay and few benefits. Furthermore, the creation of a divided workplace, with separate workplace regimes for Chinese and Mozambican workers, exacerbates resentment amongst Mozambican workers. The Mozambican workers employ multiple strategies to express their discontent, but labour agency is constrained by weak national institutional support, and lack of alternative employment opportunities in the local labour market.     

Neo-Liberalism,Mining and Labour in the Indian State of Odisha: Outlining a Political Economy Analysis

In a context of mining privatisation and a drive towards labour informalisation in India, this article investigates the implications for labour of the neo-liberal agenda in the mining sector of the Indian state of Odisha. This is part of a broader research project investigating the social dynamics underlying the neo-liberal project in Odisha. The article initially summarises previous analysis of the political economy of mining privatisation policies in order to provide the background for understanding the implications of neo-liberal mining policies for labour. Acknowledging the complexity of labour’s situation and future, the article focuses first on mining labour relations and labour conditions in private iron ore mines; and second, the article seeks to detail the implications of the expansion of opencast mining in forest areas on the livelihoods of that part of the population – mainly consisting of Scheduled Tribes or Adivasis and partially of Scheduled Castes or Dalits – who in some measure depend on forest resources and/or agricultural land in mining areas. In sum, the article attempts to raise the issue of the dynamic interaction between the reproduction of a specific, local, socially and politically dominant class, and the reproduction of labour fragmentation within the neo-liberal turn of capitalism.     

Socialism and the American labor movement: Some new reflections

The outbreak of the 15M or indignado movement in Spain in 2011 was the biggest episode of social unrest since the end of the Transition in the 1970s. Its emergence caught the political parties, media, trade unions and the most important community-based organisations and pre-existing social movements off guard. It targeted those who were identified as responsible for the recession and how it was handled – politicians and bankers –, and represented a global criticism of the existing political system and institutional framework. The 15M was not a youth movement, but a general movement criticising the current economic model, though it did have a large youth component in its initial stages. It was plural and diverse, and a wide broad spectrum of criticism and degrees of radicality and political awareness coexisted in the squares and camps. In general terms, the links between the indignados and the labour movement were weak and marked by mutual mistrust. The 15M movement was a milestone in the political trajectory of Spain and opened up a regime crisis that would deepen thereafter.     

论劳动合同中劳动者单方预告解除

劳动合同的解除制度作为劳动合同的重要组成部分,对劳动者与用人单位双方当事人的利益影响重大。本文试从劳动法的基本原则、劳动关系的性质特征,借鉴国外劳动立法的成功经验,结合我国司法实践和劳动力市场状况,对我国《劳动法》第31条的法律性质、劳动者单方解除劳动合同与违约责任问题、用人单位的利益保护及预告期长短进行一些粗浅分析。     

我国劳动力市场政府干预的变迁路径与发展趋势

放任劳动力市场的自由发展有其缺陷,因而各国政府皆对劳动力市场进行干预。考察我国劳动力市场的政府干预可知,其历经了从严格规制到相对干预,从分割规制到统一规制,从具体规制为主到宏观调控为主的过程,反映了我国政府几十年来对市场干预的一般轨迹。因应这种变迁路径,我国劳动力市场政府干预应当是相对干预、统一规制,以宏观调控为主,并应以促进就业,保持劳动力市场供需平衡为其基本宗旨。     

Labor History Bibliography, 1999

This article analyses the ways in and the extent to which indentured labourers in Trinidad expressed discontentment with their situation. It looks at the ways in which dominance and oppression was contested in their everyday life and the levels of organization, which were visible in the plantation societies. It discusses the forms of opposition that occurred. Throughout the indentureship period, the Indian indentured labourers were engaged in deliberate acts to undermine authority. They refused to conform to certain demands made by the colonial authorities and were prepared to wrestle with aspects of the system that they perceived as threatening or iniquitous. They were also engaged in activities that defied the planters, masters or colonial authorities in one way or the other.     

效率工资理论与我国企业行为选择

随着我国经济发展与环境的改变，中国企业面，临劳动力短缺与利润率提升的压力。效率工资理论为企业的工资决定与企业发展提供新的思路。企业要改变过去依靠廉价劳动力获取发展的旧模式，通过高工资提高工人的劳动生产率，从而提高企业的利润，促进企业的发展。