Labour Market Effects of International Fragmentation of Production: Evidence From a Survey and Case Studies in the Dutch Industry

The labour market effects in Southeast Asia of the COVID-19 pandemic have attracted considerable analysis from both scholars and practitioners. However, much less attention has been paid to the pandemic’s impact on legal protections for workers’ and unions’ rights, or to what might account for divergent outcomes in this respect in economies that share many characteristics, including a strong export orientation in labour-intensive industries and weak industrial relations institutions. Having described the public health measures taken to control the spread of COVID-19 in Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam, this article analyses governments’ employment-related responses and their impact on workers and unions in the first year of the pandemic. Based on this analysis, we conclude that the disruption caused to these countries’ economies, and societies, served to reproduce existing patterns of state–labour relations rather than overturning them.

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From work sharing to temporal flexibility : working time policy in Belgium 1975-1990

Res Publica ◽

10.21825/rp.v34i1.20342 ◽

1970 ◽

Vol 34 (1) ◽

pp. 35-51

Author(s):

Jens Bastian

Keyword(s):

Economic System ◽

Labour Market ◽

Working Hours ◽

Structural Features ◽

Working Time ◽

Market Effects ◽

Work Sharing ◽

Temporal Flexibility

The article focuses on working time policies introduced in Belgium during the period 1975-1990. As a country with early mass-unemployment, the magnitude of the unfolding Labour market problems fostered a specific set of responsive strategies. The initial trajectory of Belgian working time policies was centered around cutting standard weekly working hours in order to enhance Labour market effects. In the course of a marked issue transformation, work sharing objectives were substituted by the notion of temporal flexibility which focused primarily on concerns for and changes in the economie performance of individual firms. The author outlines various structural features of the Belgian socio-economic system and argues that these profoundly affected the goals identified with working time policies as much as the actor constellations endorsing the respective measures.

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