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Labour Organization (labour + organization)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences75%

Selected Abstracts

The ratification of ILO Conventions and the provision of unemployment benefits: An empirical analysis

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY REVIEW, Issue 1 2010
Wonik Kim
Abstract This article tests the relationship between the ratification of International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions and the provision of unemployment benefits. Statistical tests focus on two related issues: why countries ratify ILO Conventions on unemployment benefits, and whether ratification influences government spending on unemployment benefits. The main findings are that democracy, region, income, and globalization are the main factors influencing why countries ratify ILO Conventions on unemployment benefits. In turn, the ratification of ILO Conventions is systematically associated with higher spending if countries have ratified more than two Conventions. [source]

Productive Restructuring and ,Standardization' in Mexican Horticulture: Consequences for Labour

JOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 2 2010
HUBERT CARTON DE GRAMMONT
In this paper we discuss how the establishment of strict quality and food safety norms for horticulture to satisfy the current consumer demands has forced enterprises to invest in modifying their productive processes. In the light of the unavoidable trend in favour of consumers, we analyze the precarious situation of farm workers, a situation that is not in tune with the concept of decent work promoted by the International Labour Organization or with the Social Accountability Standard promoted by the United Nations. We conclude that the enterprises have achieved major progress in productive restructuring to comply with quality standards, but at the expense of their workers' salaries and living and working conditions. This contradiction between the well-being of the consumer and the misery of the worker is a fundamental characteristic explaining the current success of globalized agro-food systems. [source]

PUTTING THE CIVIL SOCIETY SECTOR ON THE ECONOMIC MAP OF THE WORLD

ANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2010
Lester M. Salamon
ABSTRACT,:,The past twenty-five years have witnessed a spectacular expansion of philanthropy, volunteering, and civil society organizations throughout the world. Indeed, we seem to be in the midst of a ,global associational revolution,' a worldwide upsurge of organized private voluntary activity. Despite the promise that this development holds, however, the nonprofit or civil society sector remains the invisible subcontinent on the social landscape of most countries, poorly understood by policymakers and the public at large, often encumbered by legal limitations, and inadequately utilized as a mechanism for addressing public problems. One reason for this is the lack of basic information on its scope, structure, financing, and contributions in most parts of the world. This lack of information is due in part to the fact that significant components of the nonprofit sector fall within the non-observed, or informal, economy, and in part to the way even the observed parts of this sector have historically been treated in the prevailing System of National Accounts (SNA). This paper provides an overview of a series of steps that have been taken over the past 20 years by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University in cooperation with colleagues around the world and, more recently, with officials in the United Nations Statistics Division and the International Labour Organization to remedy this situation, culminating in the issuance and initial implementation of a new United Nations Handbook on Nonprofit Institutions in the System of National Accounts and the forthcoming publication of a new International Labour Organization Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work. Taken together, these efforts point the way toward putting the civil society sector on the economic map of the world for the first time in a systematically comparative way. [source]

Economic performance of ,weak' governments and their interaction with central banks and labour: Deficits, economic growth, unemployment and inflation, 1961,1998

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 6 2005
TAKAYUKI SAKAMOTO
Comparative political economists have conventionally claimed that the strength and stability of governments affect policy making and performance, and that what they call ,weak governments', multiparty, minority and short-lived governments , show poorer economic performance. This article tests this and related hypotheses on deficits, economic growth, unemployment and inflation by examining data from 17 OECD countries. I find that there is generally little evidence to indicate that so-called ,weak governments', when considered independently, produce poorer performance than strong ones. However, the effects of different government types are partly contingent on central bank independence and labour organization. When central banks are independent, coalition governments exhibit better inflation and economic growth performance than one-party governments, but the opposite happens when central banks are dependent. I attempt an explanation for these relationships. I also find that independent central banks, under certain conditions, lead to lower growth and higher inflation. Thus, some of the benefits of central bank independence are context-specific, depending on other political-economic factors. [source]