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Do Labour Standards Improve Employment Relationships in Global Production Networks? A Cross-sector Study in Brazil
Get PDFResearch on private regulation of labour standards in global production networks often highlights their continuing failure despite the fact that lead firms no longer consider them as mere window dressing. Fewer analyses delve into their on-the-ground effectiveness to benefit workers. This article joins a context-specific approach with quantitative analysis to examine whether labour standards used in private regulation improve employment relationships in suppliers of global production networks. Based on a single-country case study of Brazil, we look at the extent of their adoption by suppliers across sectors, their complementarity with national labour institutions, and whether the adoption of labour standards at supplier site level is likely to support labour agency. Our findings show little effectiveness of labour standards against those dimensions. The presence of labour standards at supplier level alone has no significant impact and varies greatly across sectors. It is only if workers are aware of the presence of such standards that it might support their agency when union membership is taken as proxy. Yet, the correlation could also be the other way round: awareness of labour standards depend on being a member of a union in the first place.
KEYWORDS: private regulation; certification; labour standards; corporate social responsibility (CSR); global production network
A Short History of the Informal Economy
Get PDFWhen coined about half a century ago, employment in the informal economy was discussed by what it was not: formal. Addressed as a sector of the urban workforce, its definition was a summing up of descriptive traits which made manifest how people in the Global South, deprived of most or all means of production, earned their livelihood by selling their labour power. Investigating their predicament zoomed in on the restructuring of peasant economies and societies to post-peasant ones. The anticipated upward mobility, which was supposed to be boosted by the bargaining power of collective action, did not materialise. Rather than expanding formalisation of labour relations, the reverse took place. The small segment which had been promoted to and protected by regular and regulated employment was subjected to informalisation. In the onslaught of neo-liberal capitalism from the last quarter of the twentieth century onwards, labour flexibilisation and casualisation not only intensified in the Global South but also spread to the Global North. The new policies ended the brokerage which the nation–state once developed to mediate between the interests of capital and labour, leading to a worldwide shrinking of public institutions, space and representation. While the debate with regard to informality has remained firmly focused on labour and employment, I argue that corporate capital in collusion with étatist authority has not only effectuated the deregulation of paid work but also abandoned the legal code of formality ending in a state of lawlessness for the people at the bottom of the pile. In the reconfiguration, both politics and governance are next to big business as stakeholders in a regime of informality erosive of equality, democracy, civil rights, solidarity and shared well-being for humankind at large.
KEYWORDS: Capitalism; trade unionism; public sector; welfarism; footloose; self-relianc
Review of Eli Friedman (2022) The Urbanization of People: The Politics of Development, Labor Markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City.
No full textEarly English Drama Records and Other Manuscripts from Coventry Destroyed Before and During the Second World War
No full textWhen Coventry’s central library was destroyed in 1940, valuable early guild records were lost. No consensus has emerged regarding which records were lost during the war and which records had been lost earlier. Identifying these losses is important, because Coventry’s records hold value for the city’s history and — since Coventry was a key site for early theatre — for Britain’s literary history. As this article shows, fewer historical manuscripts were destroyed in 1940 than was once feared. Moreover, the loss of one of these manuscripts is mitigated somewhat by new evidence presented here, which suggests that some of the manuscript’s source material survives
Two of a Kind: Setting the Record Straight on Russell’s Exchange with Ladd-Franklin on Solipsism
Get PDFOn 21 August 1912 Christine Ladd-Franklin, by then an established logician, wrote a letter to Bertrand Russell. He replied on 27 September 1912, followed by another letter on 16 November of that year. After a hiatus on his side in 1913–14, they exchanged letters again in 1915. The main topic of their conversations is solipsism: a theme that was important for Russell throughout his writings. In fact, in some of his works he famously mentions his encounters with Ladd-Franklin, hinting at a difference of opinions and her inability to see the inconsistency in what she claimed. After analysing the correspondence, with some letters resurfacing only recently, one sees a completely different picture: Russell not only does not object to what she claims, he even agrees with her! This article aims to show what really transpired as evidenced by the letters, of which seven of the extant eleven are reproduced in full with annotations
Two Arguments for Emotivism and a Methodological Moral
Get PDFIn 1913 Russell gave up on the Moorean good. But since naturalism was not an option, that left two alternatives: the error theory and non-cognitivism. Despite a brief flirtation with the error theory Russell preferred the non-cognitivist option, developing a form of emotivism according to which to say that something is good is to express the desire that everyone should desire it. But why emotivism rather than the error theory? Because emotivism sorts better with Russell’s Fundamental Principle that the “sentences we can understand must be composed of words with whose meaning we are acquainted.” I construct an argument for emotivism featuring the Fundamental Principle that closely parallels Ayer’s verificationist argument in Language, Truth, and Logic. I contend that Russell’s argument, like Ayer’s, is vulnerable to a Moorean critique. This suggests an important moral: revisionist theories of meaning such as verificationism and the Fundamental Principle are prima facie false. Any modus ponens from such a principle to a surprising semantic conclusion (such as emotivism) is trumped by a Moorean modus tollens from the negation of the surprising semantics to the negation of the revisionist principle
Notes on McTaggart\u27s Lectures on Lotze
No full textRussell preserved notes he took on McTaggart’s course on Lotze’s major works in 1898. They are published here for the first time. Russell’s abbreviations are expanded and deletions noted. N. Milkov introduces the notes and provides Russell’s biographical and philosophical background. The course on Lotze, on whose philosophy of geometry Russell had already written, was influential in his development away from monism
Heuristics in medicine:: How cognitive biases influence decision making and diagnosis
Get PDFHeuristics, or mental shortcuts, are used by everyone to make decision making easier and quicker in daily life. In jobs such as medicine, however, using heuristics can lead to biased decision making and, in turn, misdiagnosis of patients. Doctors are not immune to being biased, or stereotyping. In fact, many healthcare professions have implicit bias training to try and minimize this. Knowledge about one’s own bias can make a difference short term, but the person will be thinking more about whether they are being biased and less on how they can solve the problem in front of them. Bias is, unfortunately, something that must be acknowledged in all corners of society. So, how do we accommodate our biases to get the best results — knowing that we will fall back on heuristics and stereotyping?L’heuristique (aussi appelée « raccourci mental ») est utilisée par tout le monde pour faciliter et accélérer la prise de décision dans la vie quotidienne. Toutefois, dans des professions telles que la médecine, l’utilisation de l’heuristique peut conduire à une prise de décision partiale et, par conséquent, à un diagnostic erroné des patients. Les médecins ne sont pas à l’abri des préjugés ou des stéréotypes. En fait, de nombreuses professions du domaine de la santé ont mis en place des formations sur les préjugés implicites afin d’essayer de minimiser ce phénomène. Le fait de connaître ses propres préjugés peut faire une différence à court terme, mais il existe un risque que la personne passe plus de temps à se demander si elle a des préjugés qu’à tenter de résoudre le problème qui se présente à elle. Les préjugés sont malheureusement une réalité qu’il faut reconnaître dans tous les domaines de la société. Alors, comment est-il possible de tenir compte de nos préjugés pour obtenir les meilleurs résultats possibles, tout en sachant que nous risquons de retomber dans le piège de l’heuristique et des stéréotypes
Frege, Thomae, and Formalism: Shifting Perspectives
Get PDFMathematical formalism is the the view that numbers are “signs” and that arithmetic is like a game played with such signs. Frege’s colleague Thomae defended formalism using an analogy with chess, and Frege’s critique of this analogy has had a major influence on discussions in analytic philosophy about signs, rules, meaning, and mathematics. Here I offer a new interpretation of formalism as defended by Thomae and his predecessors, paying close attention to the mathematical details and historical context. I argue that for Thomae, the formal standpoint is an algebraic perspective on a domain of objects, and a “sign” is not a linguistic expression or mark, but a representation of an object within that perspective. Thomae exploits a shift into this perspective to give a purely algebraic construction of the real numbers from the rational numbers. I suggest that Thomae’s chess analogy is intended to provide a model for such shifts in perspective