Search results for: labour market transition

Authors: Anna Lytvynova

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This essay presents labour as a performatively national phenomenon from a cultural perspective. Considering Engels’ proposition of labour as the epicentre of development of social structures and communities, it theorizes the formation and sustainment of group identities through labour identities. Taking labour in the cultural sector as the starting point case study, the essay further enunciates such labour and labour identity as a form of engaged citizenship. In doing so, this piece hopes to arrive at a potential contemporary understanding of labour as having a central and dynamic role in cultural organization and citizenship. A parallel goal is to de-link sociological models of cultural labor from narratives of art and culture as something that stands separate from the 'real world' and the economy and exists in precarity. Combining discourse from cultural sociology, performance studies, and economics and grounding it in historical archive, the essay makes a primarily discursive theoretical contribution. Taking North American theatre organizations as the exemplifying starting point, this project positions cultural workers not solely as workers in a professional industry but as active citizen-subjects who are deeply involved in their society’s democratic processes. The resulting discourse can be used to shape more effective labour policies, as well as help art and cultural organizations find more effective organizational structures to engage the arts in the economic, political, and social spheres.

Keywords: arts labour, cultural sociology, national identity, performativity

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Authors: Muhammad Ilham Agus Salim, Muhammad Ikbal

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The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) was set up in 2003 with the objectives of creating a single market and production base, enhancing equitable economic development as well as facilitating the integration into the global economy. The AEC involves liberalization and facilitation of trade in goods, skilled labour, services, and investment, as well as protection and promotion of investment. The thesis outlines the AEC Blueprint actions in scope of globalization of investment and capital market. Free flows of investment and freer flows of capital market urge countries in South East Asia to coordinate and to collaborate in securing the interest of public, and this leads to the importance of financial services authorities in ASEAN to prepare the mechanism of guarding the flows of investment. There is no exception, especially for Indonesian Financial Services Authority (OJK) as one of the authorized body in capital market supervision, to enforce its authorities as supervisory body.

Keywords: AEC blueprint, OJK, capital market, integration

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Authors: Aboulkacem El Mehdi

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We develop a theoretical model at the crossroads of labour and urban economics, used for explaining the mechanism through which the duration of home-workplace trips and their monetary costs impact the labour demand and supply in a spatially scattered labour market and how they are impacted by a change in passenger transport infrastructures and services. The spatial disconnection between home and job opportunities is referred to as the spatial mismatch hypothesis (SMH). Its harmful impact on employment has been subject to numerous theoretical propositions. However, all the theoretical models proposed so far are patterned around the American context, which is particular as it is marked by racial discrimination against blacks in the housing and the labour markets. Therefore, it is only natural that most of these models are developed in order to reproduce a steady state characterized by agents carrying out their economic activities in a mono-centric city in which most unskilled jobs being created in the suburbs, far from the Blacks who dwell in the city-centre, generating a high unemployment rates for blacks, while the White population resides in the suburbs and has a low unemployment rate. Our model doesn't rely on any racial discrimination and doesn't aim at reproducing a steady state in which these stylized facts are replicated; it takes the main principle of the SMH -the spatial disconnection between homes and workplaces- as a starting point. One of the innovative aspects of the model consists in dealing with a SMH related issue at an aggregate level. We link the parameters of the passengers transport system to employment in the whole area of a city. We consider here a city that consists of four areas: two of them are residential areas with unemployed workers, the other two host firms looking for labour force. The workers compare the indirect utility of working in each area with the utility of unemployment and choose between submitting an application for the job that generate the highest indirect utility or not submitting. This arbitration takes account of the monetary and the time expenditures generated by the trips between the residency areas and the working areas. Each of these expenditures is clearly and explicitly formulated so that the impact of each of them can be studied separately than the impact of the other. The first findings show that the unemployed workers living in an area benefiting from good transport infrastructures and services have a better chance to prefer activity to unemployment and are more likely to supply a higher 'quantity' of labour than those who live in an area where the transport infrastructures and services are poorer. We also show that the firms located in the most accessible area receive much more applications and are more likely to hire the workers who provide the highest quantity of labour than the firms located in the less accessible area. Currently, we are working on the matching process between firms and job seekers and on how the equilibrium between the labour demand and supply occurs.

Keywords: labour market, passenger transport infrastructure, spatial mismatch hypothesis, urban economics

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Authors: Kristine Joy Simpao

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Improving labour productivity is one of the most enthralling and challenging aspects of managing hotels and restaurant business. The demand to secure countless productivity became an increasingly pivotal role of managers to survive and sustain the business. Besides making business profitable, they are in the doom to make every resource to become productive and effective towards achieving company goal while maximizing the value of organization. This paper examines what productivity means to the services industry, in particular, to the hotel industry. This is underpinned by an investigation of the extent of practice of respondent hotels to the labour productivity aspect in the areas of materials management, human resource management and leadership management and in a way, computing the labour productivity ratios using the hotel simple ratios of productivity in order to find a suitable measurement and control standards for hotels with SBMA, Olongapo City as the locale of the study. The finding shows that hotels labour productivity ratings are not perfect with some practices that are far below particularly on strategic and operational decisions in improving performance and productivity of its human resources. It further proves of the no significant difference ratings among the respondent’s type in all areas which indicated that they are having similar perception of the weak implementation of some of the indicators in the labour productivity practices. Furthermore, the results in the computation of labour productivity efficiency ratios resulted relationship of employees versus labour productivity practices are inversely proportional. This study provides a potential measurement and control standards for the enhancement of hotels labour productivity. These standards should also contain labour productivity customized for standard hotels in Subic Bay Freeport Zone to assist hotel owners in increasing the labour productivity while meeting company goals and objectives effectively.

Keywords: labour productivity, hotel, measurement and control, standards, efficiency ratios, practices

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Authors: Emily Gould, Walter Wehremeyer, David Greaves, Rodney Turtle

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This paper considers current thinking on the pathway for electric vehicles, identifying the development blocks of alternative innovation within the market and analyse technological lock-in. The relationship between transition pathways and technological lock-in is largely under-researched particularly in the field of e-mobility. This paper is based on a study with three commercial-urban fleets that examines strategic decisions in new technology adaption alongside vehicle procurement and driver perspective. The paper will analyse the fleet’s decision matrix upon electric vehicles and seek to understand the influence of company culture, strategy and technology applicability, within the context of transition pathways.

Keywords: electric vehicles, fleets, path dependencies, transition pathways

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Authors: Gift Salawa, Perkins Erhijakpor, Henry Ukwu

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This study will explore child labour issues in Nigeria because it is capable of affecting the physical and general well-being of children who perform hazardous work. This feat will be achieved through qualitative research methodology. Data collection shall be elicited by oral interviews and documental content analysis to delve on the application of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), International Labour Organization ILO and Geneva Convention relating to child labour practices in Nigeria. This will include the relevance of present domestic laws relating to child labour as implemented in Nigeria, together with factors that contribute to the practice of child labour in the country. The oral interview data analysis will be performed by breaking the interview data into significant statements and themes. This shall be done by comparing and determining the commonalities that are prevalent in the participants’ views regarding child labour menace in Nigeria. Presumably, findings from this study shall unveil that a poor educational policy, a widespread poverty level which is mostly prevalent amongst families in the rural areas of the country, a lack of employment for adults, have led to the ineffectiveness of the local child labour laws in Nigeria. These has in turn culminated into a somewhat non-implementation of the international laws of the CRC, ILO and Geneva Declaration on child labour to which the Nigerian government is a signatory. Based on the finding, this study will calls on the government of Nigeria to extend its free educational policy from the elementary, secondary to tertiary educations. The government also has to ensure that offenders of children’s rights should face a severe punishment.

Keywords: child labour, educational policy, human right, protection right

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Authors: Rusmawati Said, N. Kar Yee, Asmaddy Haris

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This study employs a panel data set of ASEAN member states, 17 European Union (EU) countries, 7 American countries and 11 other Asia Pacific countries (China Mainland and Hong Kong SAR are treated as two separated countries) to investigate the role of labour standards in explaining the pattern of bilateral migration flows in ASEAN. Using pooled Ordinary Least Square (OLS) this study found mixed results. The result varies on how indicators were used to measure the level of labour standards in the empirical analysis. In one side, better labour standards (represented by number of strikes and weekly average working hours) promote bilateral migration among the selected countries. On the other side, increase in cases of occupational injuries lead to an increase in bilateral migration, reflecting that worsen in working conditions do not influence the workers’ decision from moving. The finding from this study become important to policy maker as the issues of massive low skilled workers have a significant impact to the role of labour standard in shaping the migration flows.

Keywords: labour standard, migration, ASEAN, economics and financial engineering

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Authors: Siziwe Monica Zuma

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The Expanded Public Works Program (EPWP) is an instrument that the South African Government uses to reduce unemployment and poverty and also stimulate economic growth. However, due to the limited budget and programs in the EPWP, the program has had challenges in reducing unemployment, poverty and stimulating economic growth. The EPWP Vuk’uphile program had positive outcomes in developing Black emerging contractors, in order for them to participate in the main stream economy far better than when the EPWP program was not introduced. The Skills component of the program particularly the EPWP Infrastructure, which is the most funded program under EPWP has had limited success in transferring appropriate skills to ensure labour participants can penetrate the labour market after participating in the EPWP. Education and skills are important attributes that can contribute to labour absorption, however, the EPWP particularly the infrastructure program needs to strengthen skills development over a longer period of time suggested a year with multi skills relevant to the labour market. Longer and more sustained employment provides a safety net and reduces poverty better that short term employment. The EPWP program can be expanded in the infrastructure sector, focusing on rural infrastructure, agricultural infrastructure, infrastructure related components like property, ownership, management, and other services. These can stimulate the Economic sector Infrastructure of EPWP, offer longer term and more sustained employment and rural enterprise development and further employment. The Expanded Public Works Program (EPWP) is an instrument that the South African Government uses to reduce unemployment and poverty and also stimulate economic growth. However, due to the limited budget and programs in the EPWP, the program has had challenges in reducing unemployment, poverty and stimulating economic growth. The EPWP Vuk’uphile program has had positive outcomes in developing Black emerging contractors, in order for them to participate in the main stream economy far better than when the EPWP program was not introduced. The Skills component of the program particularly the EPWP Infrastructure, which is the most funded program under EPWP has had limited success in transferring appropriate skills to ensure labour participants are able to penetrate the labour market after participating in the EPWP. Education and skills are important attributes that can contribute to labour absorption, however, the EPWP particularly the infrastructure program needs to strengthen skills development over a longer period of time suggested a year with multi skills relevant to the labour market. Longer and more sustained employment provides a safety net and reduces poverty better that short term employment. The EPWP program can be expanded in the infrastructure sector, focusing on rural infrastructure, agricultural infrastructure, infrastructure related components like property, ownership, management, and other services. These can stimulate the Economic sector Infrastructure of EPWP, offer longer term and more sustained employment and rural enterprise development and further employment.

Keywords: Expanded Public Works Program (EPWP), VUKÚPHILE, youth, Public Works Programs (PWP), Infrastructure Sector of EPWP (EPWP Infrastructure)

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Authors: Katarzyna Czarnota, Inga Hajdarowicz

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Political mechanisms of legal, social and economic segregation of refugees and migrants have reproduced and deepened existing hierarchies and inequalities in global labour relations. The consequences of these processes strengthened by current, so called, ‘refugee crisis’, tightening of border regimes, militarisation and closing of Balkan Route, will have a significant impact on future integration policies. One of the fields that require further research is limited access to labour rights of migrants and refugees. Although this phenomenon is experienced by a significant proportion of migrant population, these are the poorest who are also exposed to economic racism. The presentation will tackle the influence of current migration policies on increasing social and class inequalities between migrants, refugees, on the example of Syrian labours in Turkish textile factories. The authors will critically analyse examples of integration policies, especially planned changes in labour law as well as examples of violation of labour rights and exploitation of refugees and migrants in textile factories and industry. The presentation will be based on interviews with Syrian workers, conducted in Turkey and Greece in 2016.

Keywords: refugee crisis, economic racism, global labour relations, exploatation

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Authors: G. Salavwa, P. Erhijakpor Jr., H. Ukwu

Abstract:

This study will explore child labour issues in Nigeria because it is capable of affecting the physical and general well-being of children who perform hazardous work. This feat will be achieved through qualitative research methodology. Data collection shall be elicited by oral interviews and documental content analysis to delve on the application of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), International Labour Organization ILO and Geneva Convention relating to child labour practices in Nigeria. This will include the relevance of present domestic laws relating to child labour as implemented in Nigeria, together with factors that contribute to the practice of child labour in the country. The oral interview data analysis will be performed by breaking the interview data into significant statements and themes. This shall be done by comparing and determining the commonalities that are prevalent in the participants’ views regarding child labour menace in Nigeria. Presumably, findings from this study shall unveil that a poor educational policy, a widespread poverty level which is mostly prevalent amongst families in the rural areas of the country, a lack of employment for adults, have led to the ineffectiveness of the local child labour laws in Nigeria. These has in turn culminated into a somewhat non-implementation of the international laws of the CRC, ILO and Geneva Declaration on child labour to which the Nigerian government is a signatory. Based on the finding, this study will calls on the government of Nigeria to extend its free educational policy from the elementary, secondary to tertiary educations. The government also has to ensure that offenders of children’s rights should face a severe punishment.

Keywords: commonalities, tertiary, constitution, qualitative

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Authors: Huilan Yao, Huaixin Zhang

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Simulations of the transition flow of model propellers are important for predicting hydrodynamic performance and studying scale effects. In this paper, the transition flow of a model propeller under different loadings are simulated using a transition model provided by STAR-CCM+, and the influence of turbulence intensity (TI) on the transition, especially friction and pressure components of propeller performance, was studied. Before that, the transition model was applied to simulate the transition flow of a flat plate and an airfoil. Predicted transitions agree well with experimental results. Then, the transition model was applied for propeller simulations in open water, and the influence of TI was studied. Under the heavy and moderate loadings, thrust and torque of the propeller predicted by the transition model (different TI) and two turbulence models are very close and agree well with measurements. However, under the light loading, only the transition model with low TI predicts the most accurate results. Above all, the friction components of propeller performance predicted by the transition model with different TI have obvious difference.

Keywords: transition flow, model propellers, hydrodynamic performance, numerical simulation

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Authors: A. Onur Kutlu, H. Tolga Bolukbasi

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Since the 1990s, governments, international organizations and scholars have drawn increasing attention to the significance of women in the labour force. While advanced industrial countries in North Western Europe and North America have managed to increase female labour force participation (FLFP) in the early post world war two period, emerging economies of the 1970s have only been able to increase FLFP only a decade later. Among these areas, Southern Europe features a wave of remarkable bounce backs in FLFP. However, despite striking similarities between the features in Southern Europe and those in Turkey, Turkey has not been able to pull women into the labour force. Despite a host of institutional similarities, Turkey has failed to reach to the level of her Southern European neighbours. This paper addresses the puzzle why Turkey lag behind in FLFP in comparison to her Southern European neighbours. There are signs showing that FLFP is currently reaching a critical threshold at a time when structural factors may allow a trend. It is not known, however, the constellation of conditions which may bring rising FLFP in Turkey. In order to gain analytical leverage from similar transitions in countries that share similar labour market and welfare state regime characteristics, this paper identifies the conditions in Southern Europe that brought rising FLFP to be able to explore the prospects for Turkey. Second, this paper takes these variables in the fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) as conditions which can potentially explain the outcome of rising FLFP in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey. The purpose here is to identify any causal pathway there may exist that lead to rising FLFP in Southern Europe. In order to do so, this study analyses two time periods in all cases, which represent different periods for different countries. The first period is identified on the basis of low FLFP and the second period on the basis of the transition to significantly higher FLFP. Third, the conditions are treated following the standard procedures in fsQCA, which provide equifinal: two distinct paths to higher levels of FLFP in Southern Europe, each of which may potentially increase FLFP in Turkey. Based on this analysis, this paper proposes that there exist two distinct paths leading to higher levels of FLFP in Southern Europe. Among these paths, salience of left parties emerges as a sufficient condition. In cases where this condition was not present, a second path combining enlarging service sector employment, increased tertiary education among women and increased childcare enrolment rates led to increasing FLFP.

Keywords: female labour force participation, fsQCA, Southern Europe, Turkey

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Authors: Bikash Kumar Malick

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Labour reform is a most celebrated theme for policy makers, at the same time it is also a most misunderstood and skeptical concept even for the educated masses in India. One of the widely focused and discussed topics which needs an in-depth examination is India’s labour laws. It may actually help to reach points to understand the exact requirements in labour reforms by making the labour laws more simple and concise in form and its implementation. It is also a requirement to guide states in India in terms of making laws on it as Indian Constitution itself is federal in form and unitary in spirit. Recently, Codes of Wages Bill has been introduced in Indian Parliament while other three codes are waiting to come in the same line and those codes actually highlight the simplified features of labour laws to enable labour reform in a succinct manner. However, it still brings more confusion in minds of people. To wipe out the confusion and to bring a note and to put it for correlation among the labour reforms of both centre and states which both generates employment and make growth sustainable in India providing clear public understanding. This time is also ripe minimizing the apprehension about all the coming labour laws simplified in different codes in India. This article attempts to highlight the need of labour reform and its possible impact. It also examines the higher rates of minimum wages and its links with its coverage agriculture and nonagricultural sectors (including mines) over the period time. It also takes into consideration of central sphere and in states sphere minimum wage which are linked with Consumer Price Index to bring into account the living standard of workers and to examine the cause and effect between minimum wage and output in both agriculture and non agricultural sector with regression analysis. Increase in minimum wage has actually strengthened the sustainable output.

Keywords: codes of wages, indian constitution, minimum wage, labour laws, labour reforms

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Authors: Munmunlisa Mohanty, K. D. Raju

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Rail industry is one of the model employers in India has separate national legislation (Railways Act 1989) to regulate its vast employment structure, functioning across the country. Indian Railway is not only the premier transport industry of the country; indeed, it is Asia’s most extensive rail network organisation and the world’s second-largest industry functioning under one management. With the growth of globalization of industrial products, the scope of anti-employment discrimination is no more confined to gender aspect only; instead, it extended to the unregularized classification of labour force applicable in the various industrial establishments in India. And the Indian Rail Industry inadvertently enhanced such discriminatory employment trends by engaging contractual labour in an unprecedented manner. The engagement of contractual labour by rail industry vanished the core “Employer-Employee” relationship between rail management and contractual labour who employed through the contractor. This employment trend reduces the cost of production and supervision, discourages the contractual labour from forming unions, and reduces its collective bargaining capacity. So, the primary intention of this paper is to highlight the increasing discriminatory employment scope for contractual labour engaged by Indian Railways. This paper critically analyses the diminishing perspective of anti-employment opportunity practiced by Indian Railways towards contractual labour and demands an urgent outlook on the probable scope of anti-employment discrimination against contractual labour engaged by Indian Railways. The researcher used doctrinal methodology where primary materials (Railways Act, Contract Labour Act and Occupational, health and Safety Code, 2020) and secondary data (CAG Report 2018, Railways Employment Regulation Rules, ILO Report etc.) are used for the paper.

Keywords: anti-employment, CAG Report, contractual labour, discrimination, Indian Railway, principal employer

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Authors: Naeem Ahmed

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Social work is a professional activity based on the approach of “helping people to help themselves” (Stroup). Social work education and practice both are based on humanitarian philosophy in which social workers try to increase the happiness of the society and to reduce the problems of society. Labour welfare is a specialised field of social work which especially focuses on welfare of organised and unorganised labour. In India labour is facing numerous problems in both organised and unorganised sectors because of ignorance, illiteracy, high rate of unemployment etc. In most of the Indian social work institutions we have this specialization with different names like Human Resource Management or Industrial Relation and Personnel Management or Industrial Relations and Labour Welfare or Industrial Social Work etc. Field work practice is integrated part of social work education curriculum in all specialised field. In India we have different field work practice models being followed in different institutions. The main objective of this paper is to prepare a universal field work practicum model in the field of labour welfare. This paper is exploratory in nature, researcher used personal experience and secondary data (model of field work practice in different institutions like Aligarh Muslim University, Pondicherry University, Central University of Karnataka, University of Lucknow, MJP Rohilkhand University Bareilly etc.) Researcher found that there is an immediate need to upgrade the curriculum or field work practice in this particular field, as more than 40 percent of total population engaged in either unorganised or organised sector (NSSO 2011-12) and they are not aware about their rights. In this way a social worker can play an important role in existing labour welfare facilities by making them aware.

Keywords: field work, labour welfare, organised labour, social work practice, unorganised labour

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Authors: Ana Lambelho

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In an economic crisis such as the one that shook (and still shake) Europe, one does not question the importance of the measures that encourage the hiring and integration of young people into the labour market. In the mentioned context, enterprises tend to reduce the cost of labour and to seek flexible contracting instruments. The professional internships allow innovation and creativity at low cost, because, as they are not labour contracts, the enterprises do not have to respect the minimum standards related to wages, working time duration and so on. In Portugal, we observe a widespread existence of training contracts in which the trainee worked several hours without salary or was paid below the legally prescribed for the function and the work period. For this reason, under the tripartite agreement for a new system of regulation of labour relations, employment policies and social protection, between the Government and the social partners, in June 2008, foresaw a prohibition of professional internships unpaid and the legal regulation of the mandatory internships for access to an activity. The first Act about private internship contracts, i.e., internships without public funding was embodied in the Decree-Law N. 66/2011, of 1^st June. This work is dedicated to the study of the legal regime of the internship contract in Portugal, by analysing the problems brought by the new set of rules and especially those which remains unresolved. In fact, we can conclude that the number of situations covered by the Act is much lower than what was expected, because of the exclusion of the mandatory internship for access to a profession when the activity is developed autonomously. Since the majority of the activities can be developed both autonomously or subordinated, it is quite easy to out of the Act requirements and, so, out of the protection that it confers to the intern. In order to complete this study, we considered not only the mentioned legal Act, but also the few doctrine and jurisprudence about the theme.

Keywords: intern, internship contact, labour law, Portugal

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Authors: Koboro J. Selala

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Whilst the system of collective bargaining is well-researched in South Africa, recent studies reveal that this is an area of law and practice that is poorly understood. Despite the growing attention being paid by most scholars to the role of collective bargaining in the labour relations system, only a handful of the studies have considered collective bargaining as a mechanism of dispute resolution. The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of the current understanding of the right to engage in collective bargaining in South Africa to assess the extent to which collective bargaining is used to resolve labour disputes. The overall objective is to offer a deeper understanding of the role of collective bargaining in dispute resolution process within the South African constitutional labour law context. To this end, the paper examines the applicable legal framework of collective bargaining to address two fundamental questions that are critical to the proper understanding of the functioning of the South African collective labour dispute resolution system. The first concerns the extent to which the current South African legislative framework supports the fundamental labour rights entrenched in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. The second addresses the role of trade unions in collective dispute resolution processes and the extent to which they can best utilize collective bargaining to resolve labour disputes. Finally, the paper discusses the general implications of the findings to stimulate further research and to enhance the constitutional development of collective labour rights in South Africa.

Keywords: collective bargaining, constitution, freedom of association, labour relations act

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Authors: F. Saleh, F. Lyall, A. Abdulsid, L. Marks

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Background: Labour in human is a complex biological process that involves interactions of neurological, hormonal and inflammatory pathways, with the placenta being a key regulator of these pathways. It is known that uterine contractions and labour pain cause physiological changes in gene expression in maternal and fetal blood, and in placenta during labour. Oxidative and inflammatory stress pathways are implicated in labour and they may cause alteration of placental gene expression. Additionally, in placental tissues, labour increases the expression of genes involved in placental oxidative stress, inflammatory cytokines, angiogenic regulators and apoptosis. Recently, Hydrogen Sulphide (H2S) has been considered as an endogenous gaseous mediator which promotes vasodilation and exhibits cytoprotective anti-inflammatory properties. The endogenous H2S is synthesised predominantly by two enzymes: cystathionine β-synthase (CBS) and cystathionine γ-lyase (CSE). As the H2S pathway has anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory characteristics thus, we hypothesised that the expression of CBS and CSE in placental tissues would alter during labour. Methods: CBS and CSE expressions were examined in placentas using western blotting and RT-PCR in inner, middle and outer placental zones in placentas obtained from healthy non labouring women who delivered by caesarian section. These were compared with the equivalent zone of placentas obtained from women who had uncomplicated labour and delivered vaginally. Results: No differences in CBS and CSE mRNA or protein levels were found between the different sites within placentas in either the labour or non-labour group. There were no significant differences in either CBS or CSE expression between the two groups at the inner site and middle site. However, at the outer site there was a highly significant decrease in CBS protein expression in the labour group when compared to the non-labour group (p = 0.002). Conclusion: To the best of author’s knowledge, this is the first report to suggest that, CBS is expressed in a spatial manner within the human placenta. Further work is needed to clarify the precise function and mechanism of this spatial regulation although it is likely that inflammatory pathways regulation is a complex process in which this plays a role.

Keywords: anti-inflammatory, hydrogen sulphide, labour, oxidative stress

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Authors: Han Bai, Tong Zhang, Lemei Yu, Doudou Xie, Liang Zhao

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Road transition design on freeway tunnel entrance and exit is one vital factor in realizing smooth transition and improving traveling safety for vehicles. The goal of this research is to develop a horizontal road transition design tool that considers the transition technology of traffic capacity consistency to explore its accommodation mechanism. The influencing factors of capacity are synthesized and a modified capacity calculation model focusing on the influence of road width and lateral clearance is developed based on the VISSIM simulation to calculate the width of road transition sections. To keep the traffic capacity consistency, the right side of the transition section of the tunnel entrance and exit is divided into three parts: front arc, an intermediate transition section, and end arc; an optimization design on each transition part is conducted to improve the capacity stability and horizontal alignment transition. A case study on the Panlong Tunnel in Ji-Qing freeway illustrates the application of the tool.

Keywords: traffic safety, road transition, freeway tunnel, traffic capacity

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Authors: Bedilu Tafesse

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Conservation of crop genetic resources presents a challenge of identifying specific determinants driving maintenance of diversity at farm and agroecosystems. The objectives of this study were to identify socioeconomic, market and agroecological determinants of farmers’ maintenance of wheat diversity at the household level and derive implications for policies in designing on-farm conservation programs. We assess wheat diversity at farm level using household survey data. A household decision making model is conceptualized using microeconomic theory to assess and identify factors influencing on-farm rice diversity. The model is then tested econometrically by using various factors affecting farmers’ variety choice and diversity decisions. The findings show that household-specific socioeconomic, agroecological and market factors are important in determining on-farm wheat diversity. The significant variables in explaining richness and evenness of wheat diversity include distance to the nearest market, subsistence ratio, modern variety sold, land types and adult labour working in agriculture. The statistical signs of the factors determining wheat diversity are consistent in explaining the richness, dominance and evenness among rice varieties. Finally, the study implies that the cost-effective means of promoting and sustaining on-farm conservation programmes is to target them in market isolated geographic locations of high crop diversity where farm households have more heterogeneity of agroecological conditions and more active family adult labour working on-farm.

Keywords: diversity indices, dominance, evenness, on-farm conservation, wheat diversity, richness

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Authors: Anyaogu Paul

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The study examines the problem of child labour in respect to National security in Nigeria. The current situation reflects a chronic urban poverty, which can compel parents and guardians to send their children and wards of school age to engage in income yielding activities to augment family income. The study sought to explain the basis of child labour, its causes and its effects on its victim and society at large. A social survey research design was employed to select the respondents. A sample size of 250 respondents was selected from targeted population of children below the age of 18 years. A questionnaire instrument was employed to collect data. An accidental sampling technique was employed to select the respondents. The findings revealed that child labour is on the increase and a serious threat to national security and social cohesion. The study recommends that the Nigerian government should enforce the laws on child labour and provide opportunities for job creation for urban dwellers. More so, government should also provide free and compulsory education at primary and secondary school levels of education.

Keywords: child labour, family income, national security, survey research

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Authors: Han Guan Chew, Keith Yong Ngee Ng, Shan-Wei Fan

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In Singapore, talent retention is one of the most persistent and real issue companies have to grapple with due to the tight labour market. Being resource-scarce, Singapore depends solely on its talented pool of high quality human resource to sustain its competitive advantage in the global economy. But the complex and multifaceted nature of turnover phenomenon makes the prescription of effective talent retention strategies in such a competitive labour market very challenging, especially when it comes to monetary incentives, companies struggle to answer the question of “How much is enough?” By examining the interactive effects of perceived alternative employment opportunities, annual salary and satisfaction with compensation on the turnover intention of 102 Singapore Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians (PMET) through correlation analyses and multiple regressions, important insights into the psyche of the Singapore talent pool can be drawn. It is found that annual salary influence turnover intention indirectly through mediation and moderation effects on PMET’s satisfaction on compensation. PMET are also found to be heavily swayed by better external opportunities. This implies that talent retention strategies should not adopt a purely monetary based blanket approach but rather a comprehensive and holistic one that considers the dynamics of prevailing market conditions.

Keywords: employee turnover, high performers, knowledge workers, perceived alternative employment opportunities salary, satisfaction on compensation, Singapore PMET, talent retention

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Authors: Jonalee Das Bajpai, Sandeep Shastri

Abstract:

The Indian Textile and Garment Industry is one of the major contributors to the country’s economy. This industry is also one of the largest labour intensive industries after agriculture and livestock. This Indian garment industry caters to both the domestic and international market. Although this industry comes under the purview of Indian Labour Laws and other voluntary work place standards yet, this industry is often criticized for the undue exploitation of the workers. This paper explored the status of forced labour and discrimination at work place in the garment manufacturing units in Bengaluru. This study is conducted from the perspective of women sewing operators as majority of operators in Bengaluru are women. The research also explored to study the impact of social compliance certification in abolishing forced labour and discrimination at work place. Objectives of the Research: 1. To study the impact of 'Social Compliance Certification' on abolition of forced labour among the women workforce. 2. To study the impact of 'Social Compliance Certification' on abolition of discrimination at workplace among the women workforce. Sample Size and Data Collection Techniques: The main backbone of the data which is the primary data was collected through a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire attempted to explore the extent of prevalence of forced labour and discrimination against women workers from the perspective of women workers themselves. The sample size for the same was 600 (n) women sewing operators from the garment industry with minimum one year of work experience. Three hundred samples were selected from units with Social Compliance Certification like SA8000, WRAP, BSCI, ETI and so on. Other three hundred samples were selected from units without Social Compliance Certification. Out of these three hundred samples, one hundred and fifty samples were selected from units with Buyer’s Code of Conduct and another one hundred and fifty were from domestic units that do not come under the purview of any such certification. The responses of the survey were further authenticated through on sight visit and personal interactions. Comparative analysis of the workplace environment between units with Social Compliance certification, units with Buyer’s Code of Conduct and domestic units that do not come under the purview of any such voluntary workplace environment enabled to analyze the impact of Social Compliance certification on abolition of workplace environment and discrimination at workplace. Correlation analysis has been conducted to measure the relationship between impact of forced labour and discrimination at workplace on the level of job satisfaction. The result displayed that abolition of forced labour and abolition of discrimination at workplace have a higher level of job satisfaction among the women workers.

Keywords: discrimination, garment industry, forced labour, social compliance certification

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Authors: Fabian Saptouw

Abstract:

In the past decade there was a resurgence of interest in the value of ‘process’ and ‘craft’ within the social and artistic community. Theorist like Barbara Bolt and Paul Carter have eloquently argued for the importance of ‘theorizing out of practice’ and ‘material thinking’ in response to this trend. Time and labour intensive artistic production processes are however not generally included in this bracket and often labelled as either obsessive or absurd. Neither of these terms adequately conveys the conceptual importance of labour in relation to ‘process’ as manifested through this production method. This issue will be addressed by critically assessing the work of eight South African artists through the lens of contemporary process-based production. This will result in a more integrated view of the art-object, its art-historical trajectory, its materialisation as well as its production process. This paper will conclude by tying the characteristics of these artworks to international trends and provide a platform for the overall reconsideration of unalienated artistic labour.

Keywords: materiality, process art, practice-led research, unalienated labour

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Authors: Zaw Min Tun

Abstract:

The paper focuses on the spacecraft’s trajectory transition from interplanetary hyperbolic orbit to the planet’s orbit using the aerobraking in the atmosphere of the planet. A considerable mass of fuel is consumed during the spacecraft transition from the planet’s gravitation assist trajectory into the planet’s satellite orbit. To reduce the fuel consumption in this transition need to slow down the spacecraft’s velocity in the planet’s atmosphere and reduce its orbital transition time. The paper is devoted to the use of the planet’s atmosphere for slowing down the spacecraft during its transition into the satellite orbit with uncertain atmospheric parameters. To reduce the orbital transition time of the spacecraft is controlled by the change of attack angles’ values at the aerodynamic deceleration path and adjusting the minimum flight altitude of the spacecraft at the pericenter of the planet’s upper atmosphere.

Keywords: aerobraking, atmosphere of the planet, orbital transition time, Spacecraft’s trajectory

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Authors: Musa Shu'aibu

Abstract:

This paper centered on the abuse of secretarial profession by employers of labour. The paper further explains vividly the meaning of secretarial profession and that of a secretary. The paper also makes an attempt to explain the training of a secretary, duties and business attributes of a secretary. It further highlighted the personal attributes of a secretary, prospects of secretaries/secretarial profession and some abuses of the secretarial profession were discussed. It concluded that the rapid advancement in technology has changed today's offices which resulted in changing in the requirement of today's secretarial posts. Finally, recommendations were provided.

Keywords: abuse, employers, labour, profession

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Authors: T. O. Adeoye

Abstract:

In Nigeria prior to the arrival of the colonial masters, there used to be good family relationship, things were done through cooperation and community effort, even training and upbringing of a child was the responsibility of every member of the community. The advent of western education and civilization brought about movement of youths from rural to urban areas. Hence the tie that binds the village life is broken, community as a whole is no more responsible for the upbringing or home training of her children any more. The study investigates adoption of home nursing as a remedy for child labour in Nigeria, considered challenges like poverty, broken homes and illiteracy among others. For the purpose of verification, a survey in form of an opinion poll was conducted by means of interview using questionnaires for about 3000 respondents. However, out of the respondents that were interviewed as regard parental poverty and its resultant effect on a child only 14.2% of the respondent strongly disagreed that children work on the street because their parents are poor. The study shows that possible solutions of effective ways of controlling child labour is home nursing and also promoting and advocating for the policies against child labour in Nigeria.

Keywords: child abuse, child labour, psychological problem, Street children

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Authors: Arup Pramanik

Abstract:

Most of the cities in the developing countries like Siliguri Municipal Corporation Area (SMCA) and Raiganj Municipality (RM) in West Bengal, India are changing typically in terms of demographic, economic and social relationship due to rapid pace of urbanization. The mushrooming growth of slums in SMCA and RM is the direct consequence of urbanization and migration due to regional imbalance, unbalanced growth process which is posing a serious threat to sustainable development of the country. Almost all the slums happen to be a breeding ground for poverty, negligence, and disease. Unpredictable growth of slums and poverty alleviation has now become a serious challenge to the global and national policy makers for the development of the slum dwellers. The ethical dimension of the poor in the cities like SMCA and RM stands on equal opportunities, inclusive and harmonious living without discrimination of any kind. But, the migrant slum dwellers in SMCA and RM do not possess high skill or education to enable them to find well paid employment in the formal sector and the surplus urban labour force is compelled to generate its own means of employment and survival in the informal sector. The survey data of the households has been analysedin terms of percentage, descriptive statistics which includes mean, Standard Deviation (SD), ANOVA (Mean Difference) etc., to analyse the socio economic variables of the households. The study shows that the migrant labour forces living in the slums are derived from the social security measures in both the municipal areas of SMCA and RM. The urban poor in the cities of SMCA and RM rely heavily on social capital amongst all the capital assets to help them ‘get by’ and ‘get ahead’. Despite, the slum dwellers in the study areas are vulnerable with respect to other determinants of capital assets. It is noteworthy that Indian plans of anti-poverty programmes was in a proper place even after the neo-liberal regime, where the basic idea behind the massive shift of various welfare and service oriented strategy to poverty reduction strategy for the benefit of the urban poor with the trickle down effects. But, the overall impact of the trickledown effect was unsatisfactory. The objective of the Paper is to assess the magnitude of migration and absorption in the urban labour market. Issues relating to capital formation, social security measures and the support of the Welfare State in order to meet 'Sustainable Development Goals'. This study also highlights the quality of life of urban poor migrants in terms of capital formation and livelihoods.

Keywords: migration, slums, labour market, capital formation, social security

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Authors: Arun Perumbilavil Anand

Abstract:

In the recent years, Kerala is witnessing a large inflow of migrants from different parts of the country. Though initially, the migrants were largely from the districts of Tamil Nadu and mostly of seasonal nature, but at a later period, the state started getting migrants from the far-off states like UP, Assam, Bengal, etc. Higher wages for unskilled labour, large opportunities for employment, the reluctance on the part of Kerala workers to do menial and hard physical work, and the shortage of local labour, paradoxically despite the high unemployment rate in the state, led to the massive influx of migrant labourers. This study takes a multi-dimensional overview of migrant labour in Kerala by encompassing factors such as channels of migration, nature of employment contracts entered into and the corresponding wages and benefits obtained by them. The study also analysed the circumstances that led to the large influx of migrants from different states of India. It further makes an attempt to examine the varying dimensions of living and working environment, and also the health conditions of migrants. The study is based on the empirical findings obtained as a result of the primary interviews conducted with migrants in the districts of Palakkad, Malappuram, and Ernakulam. The study concludes by noting that Kerala will inevitably have to depend on migrant labour and is likely to experience heavy in-migration of labour in future, provided that if the existing socioeconomic and demographic situations persist. Since, this is inevitable, the best way before the state is to prepare well in advance to receive and accommodate such migrant labour to lead a comfortable life in a hassle free environment, so that it would definitely play a vital role in further strengthening and sustaining the growth trajectory of not only Kerala’s economy but also the states of origin.

Keywords: Kerala, labour, migration, migrant workers

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Authors: Edina Koch, Péter Hudacsek

Abstract:

In railways transition zone is present at the boundaries of zones with different stiffness. When a train rides from an embankment onto a stiff structure, such as a bridge, tunnel or culvert, an abrupt change in the support stiffness occurs possibly inducing differential settlements. This in long term can yield to the degradation of the tracks and foundations in the transition zones. A number of techniques have been proposed or implemented to provide gradual stiffness transition at the problem zones, such as methods to ensure gradually changing pad stiffness, application of long sleepers or installation of auxiliary rails in the transition zone. Aim of the research presented in this paper is to analyze the 3D and the dynamic effects induced by the passing train over an area where significant difference in the support stiffness exists. The effects were analyzed for different arrangements associated with certain differential settlement mitigation strategies of the transition zones.

Keywords: culvert, dynamic load, HS small model, railway transition zone

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