Trade Unions In Asia

Offering a comprehensive account of the role of trade unions in Asia today, this book, put together by two editors who have published extensively in the areas of business and economics in Asia, covers all the important Asian economies: both developed and developing.Making a vital contribution to the very small amount of literature that has been pub

Recent developments in the world economy, including deindustrialisation and the digital revolution, have led to an increasingly individualistic relationship between workers and employers, which in turn has weakened labour movements and worker representation. However, this process is not universal, including in some countries of Asia, where trade unions are closely aligned with the interests of the dominant political party and the state. This book considers the many challenges facing trade unions and worker representation in a wide range of Asian countries. For each country, full background is given on how trade unions and other forms of worker representation have arisen. Key questions then considered include the challenges facing trade unions and worker representation in each country, the extent to which these are a result of global or local developments and the actions being taken by trade unions and worker representative bodies to cope with the challenges. This book is dedicated to the memory of Professor Keith Thurley, London School of Economics.

Globalization and labour market deregulation have had an impact on employment and workers, and brought pressure to bear on trade unions. This study looks at the challenges of globalization and deregulation in the Asia Pacific, and possible responses to them in a variety of ways.

This Element analyzes the economic and political forces behind the political marginalization of working-class organizations in the region. It traces the roots of labor exclusion to the geopolitics of the early postwar period when many governments rolled back the left and established labor control regimes that prevented the reemergence of working-class movements. This Element also examines the economic and political dynamics that perpetuated labor's containment in some countries and that produced a resurgence of labor mobilization in others in the 21st century. It also explains why democratization has had mixed effects on organized labor in the region and analyzes three distinctive “anatomies of contention” of Southeast Asia's feistiest labor movements in Cambodia, Indonesia, and Vietnam.