Transforming Labour

`This is a beautifully conceived and revealing book. Joan Sangster lucidly explores and explains an astonishing array of complex material to reveal how women in the post-war period became full-fledged members of the labour force. Transforming labour offers such a rich variety of ancedotal evidence that it will benefit students of women's work from all over the world.' Alice Kessler-Harris, author of in Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America

Through a series of studies, the overarching aim of this book is to investigate if and how the digitalization/digital transformation process causes (or may cause) the autonomy of various labor functions, and its impact in creating (or stymieing) various job opportunities on the labor market. This book also seeks to illuminate what actors/groups are mostly benefited by the digitalization/digital transformation and which actors/groups that are put at risk by it. This book takes its point of departure from a 2016 OECD report that contends that the impact digitalization has on the future of labor is ambiguous, as on the one hand it is suggested that technological change is labor-saving, but on the other hand, it is suggested that digital technologies have not created new jobs on a scale that it replaces old jobs. Another 2018 OECD report indicated that digitalization and automation as such does not pose a real risk of destroying any significant number of jobs for the foreseeable future, although tasks would by and large change significantly. This would affects welfare, as most of its revenue stems from taxation, and particularly so from the taxation on labor (directly or indirectly). For this reason, this book will set out to explore how the future technological and societal advancements impact labor conditions. The book seeks to provide an innovative, enriching and controversial take on how various aspects of the labor market can be (and are) affected the ongoing digitalization trend in a way that is not covered by extant literature. As such, this book intends to cater to a wider readership, from a general audience and students, to specialized professionals and academics wanting to gain a deeper understanding of the possible future developments of the labor market in light of an accelerating digitalization/digital transformation of society at large.

This book revisits the debate over the new international division of labour (NIDL) that dominated discussions in international political economy and development studies until the early 1990s. It submits that a revised NIDL thesis can shed light on the specificities of capitalist development in various parts of the world today. Taken together, the contributions amount to a novel value-theoretical approach to understanding the NIDL. This rests upon the distinction between the global economic content that determines the constitution and dynamics of the NIDL and the evolving national political forms that mediate its development. More specifically, the authors argue that uneven development is an expression of the underlying essential unity of the production of relative surplus-value on a world scale. They substantiate and illustrate this argument through several international case studies, including Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Ireland, South Korea, Spain and Venezuela.

The increased participation of women in the labour force was one of the most significant changes to Canadian social life during the quarter century after the close of the Second World War. Transforming Labour offers one of the first critical assessments of women's paid labour in this era, a period when more and more women, particularly those with families, were going 'out to work'. Using case studies from across Canada, Joan Sangster explores a range of themes, including women's experiences within unions, Aboriginal women's changing patterns of work, and the challenges faced by immigrant women. By charting women's own efforts to ameliorate their work lives as well as factors that re-shaped the labour force, Sangster challenges the commonplace perception of this era as one of conformity, domesticity for women, and feminist inactivity. Working women's collective grievances fuelled their desire for change, culminating in challenges to the status quo in the 1960s, when they voiced their discontent, calling for a new world of work and better opportunities for themselves and their daughters.

This edited collection is a vibrant, modern history of women-only labour education events.

Over a quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall and 10 years after their accession to the European Union (EU), Central and Eastern Europe Countries (CEECs) still show marked differences with the rest of Europe in the fields of labour, work and industrial relations. This book presents a detailed and original analysis of labour and social transformations in the CEECs. By examining a wide range of countries in Central Europe, Labour and Social Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe offers a comprehensive and contrasting view of labour developments in Central and Eastern Europe. Chapters explore three related issues. The first deals with the understanding of the complex process of Europeanization applied in the sphere of labour, employment and industrial relations. The second issue refers to the attempt to link the Europeanization approach with an analysis mobilizing the theoretical concept of "dependent capitalism(s)". The third issue refers to the cumulative trends of labour weakening and labour awakening that has emerged, in particular in the aftermath of the crisis beginning in 2007-2008. This book will be of interest to academics, policy makers and stakeholders at European and national level in the EU member states.

Amarjit Kaur examines wage labour's role in economic growth and change in Southeast Asia since 1840. Her study focuses on globalization; the international division of labour and how transnational economic processes shaped and continue to shape labour systems. There are five main themes - labour processes, migration and labour systems; labour circulation or mobility; the gendered nature of labour relations; and, class consciousness, worker organization and labour standards. A wide-ranging study which will be of great interest to historians, economists and Asia specialists.

Important and broadening study of the way Africans engaged with missions, not as beneficiaries of humanitarian philanthropy, but as workers.