Vicki D Crinis

Industrialization and labour in Malaysia

Although increasing globalizations spurred rapid industrialization in Malaysia, this article shows that the lack of significant technological upgrading and structural change has caused the premature plateauing of manufacturing, stemming from failures to coordinate policies, enforce standards, sustain high productivity growth and stimulate transition to higher value-added activities. Manufacturing as a whole has registered slow wage growth since the late 1990s, with labour markets characterized by heavy presence of low-skilled foreign workers, increased contract labour and outsourcing and declining worker organization. The focus on perspiration-based low-skilled foreign labour rather than on expanding professional and skilled labour has driven Malaysia down the low industrialization road. The Malaysian experience reflects a case of manufacturings importance and direct contribution to the economy contracting before recording high levels of value added and sustained productivity growth, and with labour market practices constraining instead of facilitating positive change.

Vietnamese Migrant Clothing Workers in Malaysia: global Production, Transnational Labour Migration and Social Reproduction

The household in Southeast Asia is a site that provides the labour necessary for global production. And yet, under conditions of global restructuring many households have become worse off because of the way in which new employment opportunities for women have frequently been concentrated in labour-intensive, low-paid, feminized sectors of the economy. For transnational labour migrants, especially women from poor households, globalization has been experienced in terms of reconfigured household survival strategies. Globalization does not appear to offer much in the way of ‘empowerment’. This chapter discusses unskilled Vietnamese migrant workers in the Malaysian clothing industry. The chapter points to how social relations of reproduction are being transformed through capital accumulation, neoliberal trade policies and transnational labour migration.

Employment relations and the state in Malaysia

The post-colonial state in Malaysia has been driven primarily by the logic of pacification and accumulation, as reflected in its sustained reliance on export-oriented industrialisation and high levels of political control. These fundamental characteristics of the Malaysian state are reproduced in the realm of employment relations, which are dominated by managerial unilateralism as a consequence of a long history of union repression. Malaysias adherence to a minimalist version of the tripartite framework promoted by the International Labour Organization and its long-standing status as a middle-income country have meant the kinds of international pressure and support for change evident in some other Southeast Asian countries is largely absent. Internally, pressure for change has been minimal because of the heavy hand of the state, which has made it clear that any challenge will be dealt with severely both at the individual and the organisational level. The situation has been exacerbated by the fact that many traditionally unionised export-oriented industries have shifted to contract workers and regulatory adjustments have allowed for enhanced employment flexibility.