Temporary Agency Work and Globalisation

Temporary Agency Work and Globalisation PDF

Author: Huiyan Fu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1317046277

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Despite its geographic and industry expansion as part of the ongoing globalisation of service activity, temporary agency work (TAW) is relatively understudied. TAW is characterised by a distinct triangular structure where workers are typically hired by staffing or employment agencies while being ’dispatched’ to firms that use them as a type of temporary or non-regular labour. This agency-mediated labour dispatching, as a newly institutionalised industry, has registered rapid growth rates over recent decades across vast swathes of the globe. To a great degree, TAW is part of a wider structural transformation of work and employment under neoliberalism. Arguably, controversy over the expanding non-regular workforce is at its most acute when it comes to unsavoury labour-selling practices. In this connection, TAW is an exemplary field in which to examine today’s ’flexible’ capitalism and its concomitant phenomenon, i.e. ’inequality’. Featuring holistic and interdisciplinary perspectives, this edited collection provides a comprehensive overview of TAW, in an international context. It reveals how the TAW industry is intertwined with the changing relationship between the state, corporations and labour unions at the institutional-structural level, and also the perceptions and experiences of ordinary workers in everyday practice. By combining global and local forces, macro and micro levels of analysis, and theoretical and empirical investigations, the book offers fresh insights into recurring issues of labour flexibility and inequality, contributes to practical applications and facilitates fruitful cross-national collaborations.

Temporary Agency Work and Globalisation Beyond Flexibility and Inequality

Temporary Agency Work and Globalisation Beyond Flexibility and Inequality PDF

Author: Huiyan Fu

Publisher: Lund Humphries Publishers

Published: 2015-04-01

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 9781472447869

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Despite its geographic and industry expansion as part of the ongoing globalisation of service activity, temporary agency work (TAW) is relatively understudied. This edited collection provides a comprehensive overview of TAW, in an international context, revealing how the TAW industry is intertwined with the changing relationship between the state, corporations and labour unions at the institutional-structural level, and also the perceptions and experiences of ordinary workers in everyday practice. By combining global and local forces, macro and micro levels of analysis, and theoretical and empirical investigations, the book offers fresh insights into recurring issues of labour flexibility and inequality, making practical suggestions and facilitating fruitful cross-national collaborations.

Temporary Agency Work and Globalisation

Temporary Agency Work and Globalisation PDF

Author: Huiyan Fu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1317046269

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Despite its geographic and industry expansion as part of the ongoing globalisation of service activity, temporary agency work (TAW) is relatively understudied. TAW is characterised by a distinct triangular structure where workers are typically hired by staffing or employment agencies while being ’dispatched’ to firms that use them as a type of temporary or non-regular labour. This agency-mediated labour dispatching, as a newly institutionalised industry, has registered rapid growth rates over recent decades across vast swathes of the globe. To a great degree, TAW is part of a wider structural transformation of work and employment under neoliberalism. Arguably, controversy over the expanding non-regular workforce is at its most acute when it comes to unsavoury labour-selling practices. In this connection, TAW is an exemplary field in which to examine today’s ’flexible’ capitalism and its concomitant phenomenon, i.e. ’inequality’. Featuring holistic and interdisciplinary perspectives, this edited collection provides a comprehensive overview of TAW, in an international context. It reveals how the TAW industry is intertwined with the changing relationship between the state, corporations and labour unions at the institutional-structural level, and also the perceptions and experiences of ordinary workers in everyday practice. By combining global and local forces, macro and micro levels of analysis, and theoretical and empirical investigations, the book offers fresh insights into recurring issues of labour flexibility and inequality, contributes to practical applications and facilitates fruitful cross-national collaborations.

International Perspectives on Temporary Agency Work

International Perspectives on Temporary Agency Work PDF

Author: John Burgess

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 9780415316941

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The number of workers employed on a temporary basis has grown hugely over the past few decades. This new book provides the first serious analysis of temporary work and its effect on the economy as well as its ramifications for workers. Both editors from University of Newcastle, NSW.

Decent Flexibility

Decent Flexibility PDF

Author: Dr Fred C. A. van Haasteren

Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.

Published: 2017-07-30

Total Pages: 554

ISBN-13: 9041192719

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Within the context of social law, temporary agency work has always been subject of debate. The pursuit of more flexible forms of labour is at odds with maintaining decent labour relations. For that reason, ever since it was established, the UN organisation for labour issues, ILO, has focused on private work placement. In its early years it tended to prohibit or severely restrict private work placement, but gradually it came to acknowledge that, for instance, temporary agency work had positive aspects, and that a total ban was pointless. In 1997, this culminated in ILO convention 181, which was widely supported. This did not end the debate on non-standards forms of paid work. Which forms of work can be considered decent? How do they relate to human rights? What are the effects of globalisation? In the European context, too, (cross-border) temporary agency work has attracted extensive attention. Lastly, the Netherlands has its own, unique form of public-private regulation. The guiding principle in this book is whether Convention 181 still has value in this day and age. What are the developments in temporary agency work in the social domain? How do they relate to the wide range of flexible work forms that are increasingly catching up with temporary agency work? Decent flexibility is the challenge. Dr Fred van Haasteren (1949) started his career as a scientific associate at the Society and Enterprise Foundation (SMO). From 1978 onward, he worked in the Dutch temporary agency sector. In 1982 he became a board member of Randstad Nederland; in 1991 he became Vice-President of Randstad Holding. Among other things, he was also President of the platform of European temporary agency employers and of the global temporary agency employer umbrella organisation CIETT. He is still a board member of the Dutch Labour Standards Foundation (SNA) and an independent member of the NCP OECD. The social policy pursued by temporary employment agencies has always been at the centre of his activities.

Decent Flexibility

Decent Flexibility PDF

Author: Fred C. A. Van Haasteren

Publisher: Studies in Employment and Soci

Published: 2017-08-15

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 9789041192363

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Studies in Employment and Social Policy Series Volume 49 Decent Flexibility: The Impact of ILO Convention 181 and the Regulation on Temporary Agency Work aims to create awareness that flexibility in the labour market is allowed if decently regulated. Within the context of social law, temporary agency work has always been a subject of debate. The pursuit of more flexible forms of labour is at odds with maintaining decent labour relations. For that reason, ever since it was established, the UN organization for labour issues, International Labour Organization (ILO), has focused on private work placement. In its early years, it tended to prohibit or severely restrict private work placement, but gradually it came to acknowledge that, for instance, temporary agency work had positive aspects, and that a total ban was pointless. In 1997, this culminated in ILO convention 181, which was widely supported. This book, which was defended successfully at Leiden University as a doctoral Ph.D. thesis, reviews the impact of the convention during the past two decades and explores whether Convention 181 still has value. What is in this book? This book debates on non-standard forms of paid work and extends its scope in other directions, posing several highly relevant questions relating to the future of the labour market and its regulation: Which forms of work can be considered decent? How do they relate to human rights? What are the effects of globalisation? What are the developments in temporary agency work in the social domain? How do these developments relate to the wide range of flexible work forms that are increasingly catching up with temporary agency work? What are the challenges posed by decent flexibility? This book also discusses temporary agency work in the European Union. Due to its own, unique form of public-private regulation, Dutch regulation on agency work has been chosen as a good example of implementing ILO convention 181. How this will help you The fact that Convention 181 features among the most ratified ILO conventions that have been effected since 1990 makes clear that it is increasingly gaining attention. In the light of these ongoing global changes, this book gives a good view of the development of the regulation on agency work and creates an understanding of why agency work is controversial and what could be done to regulate agency work decently. Thus, this book serves as a resource for labour lawyers and other legal professionals, economists, sociologists, and business experts, to further the development on policy-making on decent work in connection with flexible labour and its regulation, both internationally and nationally.

Temporary and Gig Economy Workers in China and Japan

Temporary and Gig Economy Workers in China and Japan PDF

Author: Huiyan Fu

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-06-07

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0192666487

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While a large number of studies exist on political-economic institutional explanations for the prevalence of precarious work, few have delved into the elusive yet critical domain of culture. This is highly pertinent to China and Japan whose shared tradition of Confucianism (broadly defined) continues to inform many aspects of society. In particular, core values such as hierarchy, harmony, and the subordination of individual interests to collective requirements impinge importantly on the iniquitous patterns of precarious work and its surrounding institutions ranging from state policy and legislation to industrial relations and social welfare. The pervasiveness and entrenched nature of culture has been especially evidenced by Japan's distinctly gendered and China's rural-urban citizenship-based labour market stratifications. By bridging culture and institutions, Temporary and Gig Economy Workers in China and Japan brings a more integrated and nuanced understanding of unequal work, casting fresh light on social change in China, Japan, and beyond. Emphasis is placed not only on macro-level structural scrutiny but also on micro-agency empiricism, i.e. real people's experiences in everyday life. This holistic and comparative approach, as demonstrated by the book, will go a long way towards tackling the negative consequences of precarious work in a wider post-pandemic world.

Contingent Work, Health, and Citizenship

Contingent Work, Health, and Citizenship PDF

Author: Marcia Elaine Facey

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780494396216

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This study examines how contingent workers hired through temporary help agencies conceive of and experience their work. Contingent employment---short-or fixed-term contracts, part-time, casual/on-call, self-employment, seasonal, and temporary agency work---has re-emerged in the context of the globalisation of trade, investment, production, and intensified competition. Its expansion has raised concerns about the health effects for workers. Efforts to assess these effects have however been hampered by conceptual and definitional disagreements and by methodological challenges. While researchers in the area of contingent work and health have examined the experience of workers, much of this research has (i) tended to adopt a particular perspective with the result that alternative aspects of workers' experience are not considered; (ii) employed an objective or quantitative approach, which cannot adequately capture the complexities of differences in work arrangements and worker experiences. As a result, research findings have been largely inconsistent and/or inconclusive and the relationship between contingent work and health remains unclear. I propose that examining contingent work via workers' experience and by means of a qualitative methodology might cast light on, or further our understanding of this relationship. Using a combination of social constructionist theoretical perspective and an interpretive, qualitative, analytic approach, this interview based study of the experiences of 23 day labourers and clerical workers employed through temporary help agencies (i) describes the dual discourses that these workers use to portray their experience of contingent work; (ii) accounts for these discourses in terms of general perceptions of contingent work as inferior or stigmatising work and in terms of the broader socio-political and economic contexts in which they are located; and (iii) considers the health implications of these discourses. The study found that workers conceive their work in terms of discourses of advantage and disadvantage and it argues that these individual-level discourses are shaped by and mirror neoliberal rationalities. The study also argues that workers, who are conceived as active agents, use these discourses to resist, counter, and reconstruct the social, structural, symbolic conditions of stigmatised work and to (re)present themselves as active neoliberal citizens. The implications of this discursive management of contingent work are discussed.

Offshoring and the Internationalization of Employment

Offshoring and the Internationalization of Employment PDF

Author: Peter Auer

Publisher: International Labour Organization

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9789290147831

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This collection of papers examines key trends in the internationalisation of employment, drawing on the proceedings of an ILO conference held in Annecy, France in April 2005. The papers focus on three related issues: the impacts of trade and investment abroad, including the offshoring of production of goods and services, and effects on the winners and losers in terms of employment; adjustment methods for coping with the short and medium term problems related to the globalisation of employment; and the importance of international instruments to help ensure a level playing field in trade and promote development, drawing on established rights and international labour standards.

Globalisation, State and Labour

Globalisation, State and Labour PDF

Author: Peter Fairbrother

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-05-07

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1134186444

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Globalisation, State and Labour combines a new theoretical approach with comparative analysis – ensuring that it will be of vital interest to anyone concerned with the globalization debate, the future of the state, and organized labour. It shows how although the world is undergoing enormous changes involving politics, the economy and society, the position and place of the state, and the significance of state policy in this process, is heavily contested. Presenting a timely opportunity to review and re-assess the modern state with regards to labour, the essays included in this text, written by leading researchers in the area, develop a new theoretical framework that puts work, workers and their organizations at the heart of analyzing state restructuring. Using major studies from four countries (UK, Denmark, Australia and New Zealand), the contributors challenge many preconceptions regarding globalization and labour organization - including the notions that the state is being marginalized by the processes of globalization, and that the trade unions are becoming irrelevant.