Stuart Rosewarne

Globalisation and the Commodification of Labour: Temporary Labour Migration:

There has been a qualitative shift in the character of international labour migration with increased temporary labour migration. With circumscribed employment rights, the increased significance of temporary migrant workers underscores arguments that globalisation has engendered a more profound commodification of labour. The instrumentalist approach, especially of international financial institutions in promoting temporary labour migration as a panacea for development, reinforces this impression. Encapsulated in migration-development discourse, labour migration, like other commodities, is presented as a means of generating export revenue for the South. Karl Polanyis critique of this market-defined construct of labour as a commodity, when labour can only ever be a fictitious commodity, provides a basis for contesting the representation of labour in the migration-development discourse. However, recourse to a Marxist method is held to be essential if we are to move beyond an appreciation of the process in order to interrogate the rationale that is driving the transformation of labour.

Organizational change in Australian building and construction: rethinking a unilinear ‘leaning’ discourse

Over the past few decades there has been extensive reorganization of the construction industry in many developed countries including removal of head contractor companies from direct operational construction, elongation of the subcontracting chain, rising self‐employment, casualization of work and reduced investment in training. These trends are the subject of a prescriptive, industry literature directed at industry ‘improvement’ and an important British‐based critique of the underlying drivers of ‘leanness’ and organizational ‘re‐engineering’. Drawing primarily upon interviews with organizations across the breadth of the industry, this paper provides evidence concerning such key changes in the Australian context, revealing both ‘leaning’/‘re‐engineering’ tendencies but also counter‐tendencies necessitated by the goal of sustaining enduring enterprise and a viable labour force. A more reflexive approach by major companies to competitive pressures and risk shifting is revealed. Further, this evidence provides grounds for challenging the re‐engineering/lean construction critique which is discerned as succumbing to the unitarist and unilinear discourse which it seeks to challenge.

From One Skill Shortage to the Next: The Australian Construction Industry and Geographies of a Global Labour Market:

The initial prosperity of the 21st century’s first decade was accompanied in Australia by a skills shortage. Despite a relatively brief hiatus created by the ‘global financial crisis’, significant skills shortages have re-emerged. Drawing on multi-scalar insights into the construction industry in Australia and worldwide, and qualitative research in Australia, this article highlights the geographically constituted nature of the construction industry and the contradictory interplay of local labour force formation with increased recourse to the global labour market to meet workforce needs. More broadly, the article demonstrates how an appreciation of the geographical nature of an industry can yield new insights into work and employment.

Globalization, Migration, and Labor Market Formation — Labor's Challenge?

The renewed determination of metropolitan nation-states to check the international movement of people, and especially the admission of refugees into advanced industrial economies, has drawn attention to the relevance of migration in debates on the globalization of capitalism. The movement of people has to be considered an ingredient in the process of globalization alongside global trade liberalization, transnational investment and the international circulation of money capital. Likewise, state efforts to regulate international migration have to be considered as another important institutional ingredient, alongside the reinvigorated global institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, in the making of the global political economy. These developments warrant some critical reflection if only to better understand the placing of people and, more particularly, labor in the process of globalization.

The internationalisation of construction capital and labour force formation: Union responses in the transnational enterprise

Throughout much of the advanced industrial world the building and construction industry has been extremely reliant upon migrant workers to meet industry labour force needs. However, changes to work organisation in this sector, such as extended subcontracting chains and the increased significance of ‘phoenix’ operators, have reinforced greater recourse to migrant workers, especially temporary and undocumented workers. Considered in the broader context of the widespread embrace of labour market flexibility and state engagement with neoliberal-oriented labour market policies that include less-restrictive labour migration programs, organised labour has been confronted by new and quite different industrial challenges in responding to migrant workers. This article evaluates the significance of this shifting terrain in the construction sector for unions at the national, international and transnational level in engaging and organising migrant labour.

The Kyoto Protocol and the Australian State's Commitment to Capital Accumulation

The Australian conservative Governments continuing opposition to ratifying the Kyoto Protocol represents one of the most striking setbacks in recent efforts to progress international agreement on global targeting of greenhouse gas emissions. The only advanced industrial country to remain loyal to the US in opposing the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, Australias position is in one respect more significant than the Bush administrations decision. Formerly among the most enthusiastic of the advanced industrial economies to support an international convention to restrict greenhouse gas emissions, Australia is now the most stridently vocal opponent of efforts to secure agreement on national emission targets.

Globalization and the recovery of the migrant as subject: “transnationalism from below”

The radical-left critique of globalization has focused on the deleterious consequences of capital’s inexorable march and its facilitation by international economic institutions. But there is a human side of this story, as well, and it is told by the millions of migrants displaced by these forces. Here the traditional assumption, especially by socialists, has been to see the migrants as victims of faceless structural transformations wrought by the internationalization of capital. Two recurring themes within this tradition, displacement and dislocation, have defined the terms by which the migrant has been incorporated into the globalization story. As displaced peoples, migrants are transformed into disembodied subjects alienated from their familial, cultural and ethnic and territorial roots. Resettlement continues the process of dislocation for the immigrant in the shape of marginalization and social exclusion in the host nation. The implication of these narratives has been that the human agency of the migrants has no effective purchase. In socialist accounts, the globalization leviathan is held to overwhelm all who stand in its path. As the agency of the displaced people vanishes, they cease to be subjects.

EDUCATION, SKILL AND UNIONS IN THE AUSTRALIAN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

The building and construction industry is vital to all economies, yet across an increasing number of countries, the industrys future is vulnerable to uncertainties in the supply of suitably skilled labour and the maintenance of skill formation. Training and skill development b an area in which unions may play a key role in Australia, and the issue of skilled labour shortages has gained political prominence in recent times. This paper explores influences that are reshaping training and employment and that have led to a construction labour market characterised by skill fragmentation, low apprentice pay and retention rates, and curtailment of crucial managerial pathways. The paper identifies flaws in the present construction training infrastructure, suggests strategies to address the training dilemmas of the industry and concludes by posing questions that warrant consideration by unions in mapping out a future role in construction industry training and education.

Environmental amenities and regional economic development [Book Review]

Review(s) of: Environmental amenities and regional economic development, by Todd L. Cherry and Dan S. Rickman (eds) (2010), Routledge, London. Routledge Exploration in Environmental Economics series pp. 336. Paperback: ISBN 978 0 415 51687 7 RRP AUD 33 Hardback: ISBN 978 0 415 48607 1 RRP AUD 198.

Socialist Ecology's Necessary Engagement with Ecofeminism

James O’Connor’s formulation of ‘‘the second contradiction’’ of capital invites consideration of the problems that capitalism presents to social actors other than the working class. It provides inspiration for understanding the complexity and breadth of capitalism’s inherent contradictions beyond the sphere of waged work. This broadening of the subject of Marxian analysis to reflect on the deleterious impact of capital accumulation on other spheres of our material existence invites consideration of theoretical interventions that are not specifically preoccupied with capital and class. It prompts reflection on social struggles that are not formed in terms of class, and this opens the way for socialist discourse to engage more directly with theorists of struggles like ‘‘new social movements.’’ The conceptual concerns that these address, in turn, lead to more serious reflection on the making of a socialist ecological politics.