The content of this book is upon of the discussion in the Fourth Asian Roundtable on Social Security meeting which was co-organised by AMRC and the University of Philippines in Manila. The book includes country reports on social protection in Asia, overview on the road to social protection in Asia, outcome of the conference, among others. The book serves to provide comprehensive information on social protection for all from the labour perspective in Asia.
This book describes the struggles of workers fighting for their basic rights in the electronics industry with a focus on the operations of Samsung Electronics and its Asian suppliers, including those in South Korea, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan. It also discusses the overall situation of the electrical appliance and electronics industries in Japan where workers have been hit hard by factories relocations.
Social security has been playing an important role in the socio-economic development plans of Vietnam as well as in the public awareness. It became an important measure for dealing with the price storm and impact of the economic downturn that started from 2008. This article tries to give an overview of the current social security system of Vietnam from the policy perspective and its development trend with a review of the government’s reaction toward the economic downturn.
‘HIV/AIDS is not popularly connected with labour issues’. This statement was the heading for the Asian Labour Update invitation for contributions to this edition of the magazine – an invitation I gladly accepted.
There are many issues within the topic ‘HIV/AIDS in the workplace’ which are relevant to Vietnam today. This paper deals with the need for HIV/AIDS programming for mobile women in factories in Vietnam, because this need is mainly unrecognised even where HIV/AIDS programmes are available.
This book is more than a review of labour law, it is the only comprehensive review available of labour law in the Asia Pacific region. It investigates the impact of labour law on workers in 30 countries. It analyses trade union and labour activists’ responses to changes in labour law, and examines what labour law means for workers’ daily lives. Each chapter representing a country can be downloaded country wise for download below.
Every year, according to the International Labour Organisation’s [ILO] estimates. over 220,000 workers die in workplace accidents. This trend is being exacerbated by the globalisation of the world’s economy. The ILO recently concluded that the “acceleration of globalisation and liberalisation in Asia had positive repercussions on the volume of jobs but not the quality.”
There was a lot of press hype and UN-generated publicity about the Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW) in Beijing and the NGO parallel meeting held in Huairou, one hour from Beijing. The women’s Conference was not the last large UN event in a seemingly endless string of UN conferences, but it just as well could have been. Why such a fuss for a UN event that would probably turn out to be another pointless extravaganza?
EPZs are viewed as union-free zones where workers are exploited and their rights to organise are brutally trampled. But the situation for EPZ workers cannot be truly understood if analysed in isolation of family, society, and the global marketplace. Conditions in the EPZs are a reflection and magnification of universal class and gender problems. Even though women are undervalued in the labour force, their families, governments, and employers benefit from and depend on their low cost (and often free) labour inside and outside the home.
Since the “green revolution," structural adjustment schemes have been prioritised by institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as suitable measures to provide advantageous solutions to Third World economic and growth management obstacles. The effects of structural adjustment are by no means uniformly beneficial.
Is the ICFTU theory back-to-front? Is the so-called New World Order (NWO) in danger of being ‘killed off at birth by casino capitalism’, as the ICFTU maintains? Yes and no.
For the last six months, columnists and editors for many publications around the world have been trumpeting the break in the Cold War as a historic victory for capitalism, and, they say, democracy. The euphoria has at times reached almost juvenile heights, but more disturbing than that is the fact that it seems blind to reality.