Influence of globalisation on employment relationship: an African perspective (original) (raw)

The impact of globalisation on employment relations in Kenya

2017

While there is widespread agreement that changes in the international economy associated with globalisation have important consequences for employment relations, there is less consensus about their nature and significance. One view is that globalisation has created pressures for convergence between different countries in regard to employment relations. Another is that national level institutions playa mediating role in maintaining cross-national differences, leading to divergence. A third school rejects the convergenceldivergence dichotomy and argues that complex interactions between global and national (or local) forces shape employment relations outcomes. Results outlined in this paper of a preliminary study of employment relations in the auto and banking industries in Australia and Korea reveal evidence of both similarities and differences on a range of dimensions. This implies that the relationship between globalisation and employment relations is best explained by an interaction approach.

AMERIORATING ADVERSE EFFECTS OF GLOBALISATION ON EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS IN ZIMBABWE

Globalisation has been associated with accelerated deregulation and withdrawal of government from the workstation, (Sweeney, 2004). The advent of globalisation has forced organisations in Zimbabwe to deal with implications such as loss of market, response to competition, technological and legislative changes. A conundrum that have witnessed a change in human resources policy, employee compensation, business strategies among others. These changes have also resulted in massive shift in employment relations between employers and t employees and relations between employees and their unions. Subsiquent to this background, this article's objectives are to identify challenges occasioned by globalisation on employment relations in Zimbabwe and proffer mechanisms to ameliorating the adverse effects of globalisation. A qualitative phenomenological research was adopted making use of interviews, researcher field notes and memoirs to gather data on participants' experiences. Results were analysed using Nvivo 10 and manual coding. Results identified six main challenges namely (1) strife between employers and employees (2) dwindling employee democracy (3) employee marginalisation (4) increased disputes (5) general dissatisfaction of all parties and (6) disunity among unions and workers. The study recommended four mitigating strategies namely contextualising globalisation; making use of training and education; increased employee involvement; and use of dialogue and communication. If these factors are considered a fair globalisation can be achieved.

GLOBALISATION AND ITS IMPACT ON LABOUR RELATIONS IN ZIMBABWE

International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation, 2021

Globalisation created some form of standardised global labour market epitomised by flexible labour legislation and friendly employment policies and these developments have affected labour relations globally. USAID (2014) notes that Zimbabwe needed to embrace globalisation as a solution to its troubled economic and labour market challenges advising that globalisation is unavoidable, and resisting it through unfriendly labour laws and internal policieswould only lead to firms moving their business to other countries with better policies.The Zimbabwean labour relations environment is characterised by liberalised employment laws that provides for employee democracy, industry and workplace level labour relations councils namely national employment councils and works councils respectively. Inspite this, both employers and emplyees are unhappy with the current labour relations environment. The objective of this article is to understand the impact of globalisation on labour relations in Zimbabwe. It therefore adopted a qualitative research paradigm. A purposive sample of fourteen participants took part in the study wherein twelve participated in interviews and two wrote memoirs detailing their experiences. Findings showed that globalisation has impact on labour legislation. The nature of Zimbabwe's labour relations showed two composites namely of employee participation and inherent antagonism between emloyers and employees. The article recommended that to ameliorate the negative impact of globalisation on labour relations in Zimbabwe, employees and their employers require to work together in establishing a desired labour relations culture. An integrated labour relations theoretical framework is proposed as a holistic model that can help employers and employees to understand globalisation and labour relations in its totality from internal and external factors of national and global magnitude. If globalisation is understood from its broad perspective, it will be easy to deal with the challenges it occasion.

Perspectives on Nigerian Labour Market and the Global Economy

2015

Globalisation and its far reaching consequences are clearly reshaping and defining a new social, political and economic world order. In organic terms, this is reflected in monumental structural changes occurring in the processes of production and distribution in the global economy-primarily due to the integration of sophisticated technology into core enterprise operations. For the world of work, this has led to profound outcomes including changes in the organisation of work, labour and employment relations, and other labour characteristics. The impact of the pervasive global economic regime on labour market and employment relations has been particularly profound. For instance, employment generation is increasingly skewed in favour of the informal sector. Also, we are witnessing the emergence of new forms of employment and work relationships. A good indicator of this is the growth in number of part-time workers and workers with fixed term contracts, as well as on-call and self employed workers. There are of course deeper social dimensions to this development. With the atomization and near-elimination of the middle (working) class in the classical sense of the usage, there is evidently an alteration in the balance of power among the industrial relations' interests. The challenge for workers and their organisations is considerable. The main concern here is the adverse effect of these developments on extant industrial relations practice.

WP 116 - Comparative study of labour relations in African countries

In this paper we present a generic analytical picture of the development of national labour relations in Africa. We outline common features of industrial relations` actors and institutions, and, analyze the general conditions of labour markets in which these actors and institutions operate. We show that organized industrial relations in Africa face serious challenges but there are also new opportunities and strategies that might enable collective actors to cope with these challenges, and, contribute to the solution of Africa’s structural problems.

Globalisation, Working Conditions, Cheap Labour and Employment Relations in Kenya

Journal of Reviews on Global Economics, 2018

People perceive globalisation differently. Some consider it to be the internationalisation of local economies in terms of trade, foreign direct investments, agriculture, technology transfer and dominant culture, amongst others. However, globalisation, with its liberalisation and deregulation policies, seem to have created additional turmoil in the workplace as far as employment relations is concerned. The main objective of this paper was to investigate how globalisation has influenced employment regulations/deregulations in Kenya. The study adopted an explanatory mixed method approach. About 500 closed ended questionnaires were distributed to employees of the sampled companies, and of these, 483 were satisfactorily completed, which culminated in a 97% response rate. In addition, 10 key employment relations stakeholders were interviewed for the qualitative phase of the research study. The study revealed that the conditions of workers, in terms of health, have improved in Kenya since globalisation. It also reflected that working conditions, particularly regarding safety, have improved since globalisation. The study further showed that organisations in Kenya are exploiting children, who are part of their unskilled workforce, by paying them low wages, which reflects a recent, rising trend in the use of child labour in Kenya, particularly in manufacturing sectors. Thus, the study's findings show that there has been an increase in the use of cheap labour amongst Kenyan organisations. In addition, the study indicates that Kenyan companies favour foreign employees compared to local ones in terms of salaries and wages.

The impact of globalisation on employment statute related to employers in Zimbabwe

Journal of Economic Development Environment and People, 2021

Globalisation led to reduction of barriers between countries and intensified international interdependency such that developments unfolding in a far away country now affect the rest of the world in economic, political and social aspects (Giddens, 1990). The Zimbabwean labour market and its national labour legislation has not been spared from the impact of globalisation. Zimbabwean labour legislation had had

THE IMPACT OF GLOBALISATION ON LABOUR LEGISLATION RELATED TO EMPLOYEES IN ZIMBABWE

International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation, 2021

While there is widespread agreement that globalisation has affected developments across the globe and that it brought with it foreign direct investment and employment creation, there is no consensus on the nature and significance of its impact on labour legislation relating to employees. With specific reference to Zimbabwe, one view is that globalisation brought about employee rights. Another is that the advent of globalisation led to high liberalisation of the labour market through labour legislation deregulation to the disadvantage of employees. It is against this backdrop that the objective of this article is buttressed on the need to understand the impact of globalisation on labour legislation relating to employees in Zimbabwe. To achieve this objective, the study adopted a qualitative research approach based on the interpretivist research paradigm entrenched within a phenomenological research strategy. Being a qualitative study, the article relied on interviews and participants memoirs, which were thematically analysed. It was shown that globalisation has both positive and negative impact on legislation relating to employees. The positives are provision of workplace democracy; employees' rights; protection against unfair labour practices; and promulgation of anti-discrimination laws. The identified negatives included the increase of casual and temporal employment contracts; rising retrenchments; non-compliance with labour laws, particularly in the special economic zones (SEZ); use of cheap labour through outsourcing and labour brokering; and breach of minimum wages regulations. Findings showed that the negative effects outweigh the positives. This article therefore recommends that employee involvement, training and education on globalisation dynamics is necessary for employees to appreciate emerging issues in the world of work and be equipped to meaningfully engage employers in collective bargaining to improve their plight at workplace and industry level.

Globalisation and Trade Union Challenges: Nigerian Manufacturing Sector Experience

Today, the globalization of the world market has brought about several competitions on local companies which invariably have an adverse effect on trade union density due to unfavourable macro-economic policies used for the promulgation of globalization. The movement from Social regulation to Labour Market Control, created this competition all in the name of productivity enhancement and efficiency creation. The study examines the challenges brought by globalization and all what accompany the concept while the role of Trade Unions was also measured to overcome the flexibility brought by globalization. The study uses secondary information with discourse analysis of existing literatures on the subject matter to have a position. It was revealed that globalization created more vacuums than integration among Workers of the North and South due to competition postulated by globalization. Study of this nature becomes significant to the Nigeria government to rethink and have a second thought on globalization before its continual adoption while trade union leaders have to revitalize their strategies in order to swim alone with globalization thus membership density will keep declining.