Employmentweb_low

EmploymEnT, woRk, and hEalTh inEqualiTiEs - a global perspective
in many instances. These are the three major setbacks to poor countries
pursuing a neo-liberal economic framework.
These impediments are further exacerbated by a series of
exogenous factors, multiplying the scale of the problem. elaborate
supply chains obfuscate the ultimate producer of goods and services in
ways that help perpetuate work arrangements that often parallel the
exploitation of vulnerable workers (women, children, and foreign-born
workers) in wealthy countries over 100 years ago
(Quinlan, Bohle, & Mayhew, 2001). furthermore,
corporate interests, predominantly neo-liberal policy
instruments such as the World Bank, World Trade
organisation (WTo), and the international Monetary
fund (iMf), and the governments of some wealthy
countries providing aid have in general not been
sympathetic to the expansion or upgrading of social
protection frameworks within poor countries. it cannot
be presumed that most poor countries will follow the
“dignified work for everyone, everywhere”. may 1st path of wealthy countries over the past century in
demonstration in Barcelona (spain).
terms of labour market intervention and social
source: antonio rosa (2008)
protection. While a scaled-back welfare state persists
in wealthy countries (Taylor-Gooby, 2008), these policy interventions are
diminishing with the fading of labour union influence.
The organised labour movement that played a critical role in
encouraging this social protection in the first place (in conjunction
with the political crises and depressions of the 1890s and 1930s) has
been in decline and/or suppressed completely in some poor
countries (Betcherman, luinstra, & ogawa, 2001), further
facilitating the changes of the neo-liberal regime. The international
wave of resistance to neo-liberalism has led, however, to significant
mass strikes and protests in many countries. an analysis of
workers' movements and struggle on a world scale, over the course
of a century and within the totality of global capitalism, shows that
workers in different places are linked by the global division of labour
and the international state system. When capital organises a
profitable strategy, it produces resistance, generating new
strategies of accumulation, and hence new forms of resistance
(silver, 2003) (see case study 69).
case study 69. trade unionism, working conditions and social inequalities in health. - laurent vogel
From its very start, trade unionism has faced the need to work out a policy addressing workers’ health, as this was
affected by job-site physical activities. at the dawn of the industrial revolution, since workers were building the
consciousness of being a class with specific interests within capitalist society, the physical aspect of that separate existence
was beyond any doubt. the earliest systematic descriptions of the working world emphasise the many changes wrought
upon the body by employment conditions. observers from hygienists like villermé to radical campaigners like engels, with
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