This paper examines the experience of the Hyundai Motor Company (HMC) managing its employees in a new plant established in Chennai, India. The establishment of the Indian plant in 1998 marked an important attempt by HMC to ‘relaunch’ its globalisation strategy after an earlier failure to manufacture in Canada. The ability of HMC to adopt an appropriate employment relations strategy in India will be an important factor determining its success as a global manufacturer. A key issue facing the Hyundai Motor Company of India (HMI) is the role to be accorded to unions and employee representation in the plant.

One of the major factors in building a successful system of employee participation is the involvement of unions and government. In this article, the limitations of system of employee participation in Taiwan are examined. The article begins with a brief overview of Taiwanese industrial relations. It then focuses on the development of Employee Participation in Taiwan, before exploring the impacts of privatisation on the state-owned enterprises in Taiwan, with reference to Chunghwa Telecom Company.

As early as the 1890s women in a diverse range of countries organised their own unions, some of which continue to the present. Almost a century later, women-only unions have been (re)-created in Japan and South Korea. Was this coincidence or a union organising strategy development in North Asia? What does the existence, and the contemporary formation, of women-only unions in Japan and South Korea mean? This preliminary study seeks to explore women-only unions and highlights women actively creating their own organisations in order to improve working conditions and provide women with a voice separate from the existing ‘malestream’ union movement which has largely ignored their concerns.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the challenges of organising women workers in Asia, and to discuss how trade unions can facilitate their more effective participation in these movements. The paper is primarily informed by research undertaken with Southern Initiative on Globalization and Trade Union Rights (SIGTUR). Formed in Perth, Western Australia in 1991 and made up of delegates from India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, the Philippines, Hong Kong, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil, the aim of SIGTUR is to promote collaborative activity by independent trade unions in the ‘South’ or rather countries within the Asia-Pacific. The paper highlights the effects of neo-liberalism on workers and develop appropriate international responses.

With the launch of export-oriented industrialisation policies in 1977, trade unions in Sri Lanka entered a new set of challenges. The state promotion of labour market deregulation and privatisation has directly undermined union strategies based on bureaucratic modes of organising worker solidarity. Nevertheless, among the gamut of union strategies are tendencies characterising what is described as social movement unionism (SMU). The SMU approach focuses on strategies of independent unions combining participatory democracy internally with structured alliances externally. This paper looks at the case of a union in the tea plantations and its potential towards developing a SMU strategic orientation. In particular, the discussion focuses on the deepening of democratic tendencies within the unions which may be capable of reinforcing the movement dimension of unions.

Women workers employed in the export-oriented manufacturing sector in Malaysia have traditionally had poor access to representation by trade unions for two reasons. Firstly, government rules and regulations have prevented sectoral trade unions from representing large sections of the workforce, and secondly, unions themselves have not considered women their primary constituency. As a result, non-governmental organisations (NGO), rather than trade unions, have played an important role in educating women workers about their rights since the 1980s. In the garment industry in recent years, NGO activism has precipitated a change in the trade unions’ focus towards women workers in general, and towards female overseas migrant workers in particular. Where once unions viewed migrant workers as undermining the wages and conditions of Malaysian workers, they now assert their right to equality in the workplace. This paper explores the context in which NGOs became involved in union-like activities and unions’ responses to that involvement.

Labour non-governmental organisations’ (NGOs) role in the reconstruction of Indonesia’s organised labour movement has been widely acknowledged. They are not, however, generally recognised as a legitimate part of that movement. This paper uses the Indonesian case to demonstrate how the existing scholarly literature has failed to consider labour NGOs as a form of labour organisation in their own right because they do not fit within practitioners’ and scholars’ definitions of what is, and is not, a legitimate industrial relations actor.

This paper looks at the effects of changes in the age composition of the labour force on aggregate male and female unemployment rates. While it has been common to look at aggregate participation rate changes in terms of a weighted average over age groups this seems not to be the case for unemployment. We show in this paper that changes in the age composition of the labour force (driven mainly by changes in the age distribution of the population) has affected the aggregate unemployment rates in a systematic and, with hindsight, predictable manner. Amongst other things, we show that in the past decade or so, policy makers have benefited from a not inconsequential “free lunch” in that changes in the age composition of the labour force have been pulling the aggregate unemployment rates down below what it would otherwise be by around one percent of the labour force. We also show that this free lunch is now coming to an end.

Since the data necessary to make a formal quantitative analysis of Work for the Dole employment outcomes is not available to researchers who are independent of Commonwealth Government Departments, this article examines the (then) Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business (DEWRSB) net impact report, finding in it a number of weaknesses. The combined effect of these is to inflate the estimated value for net impact but a corrected estimate is still higher than many consider likely. Any figure for the net impact estimate of an Australian labour market program can only be a broad indicator. This article argues that in the case of Work for the Dole the net impact is definitely positive and by more than a trivial amount.

We use data from the ABS National Health Surveys for 1989/95 and 1995 to examine differences in health care expenditures and health outcomes by family structure. We find that, on average, female single parents tend to experience poorer health outcomes, and exhibit more ‘risky’ health behaviours (particularly smoking), compared to adults in ‘two-parent’ families. Children in female single parent families tend to have more chronic health conditions than children in two-parent families. We also find that single parent families tend to spend a lower proportion of their income on health care, while receiving fewer indirect health care resources through government. Policies that may help reduce the economic and health disadvantages facing single parent families are considered.