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In this book, Andrew Herod offers an original and wide-ranging analysis of labor as a multi-faceted and truly global resource. Opening with a rich overview of the migration streams and demographic trends that have shaped the planetary distribution of labor, he goes on to explore how globalization and the growth of precarious work are impacting working people's lives. He concludes by surveying some of the ways in which working people are taking action to improve their lives, including forming trade unions and other labor organizations, occupying factories in places like Argentina and Greece, and establishing anti-sweatshop campaigns.
This book is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the state of labor in today's global economy.
Acknowledgement
Introduction
Chapter 1 – A Resource Unlike Any Other
Labor as Object
Labor as Subject
Summary
Chapter 2 – Labor in Global Context
Moving On
Rural to urban migration
Intra-continental migration
Inter-continental migration
Growing in Place
Summary
Chapter 3 – Globalization and Labor
FDI’s Implications for Labor
GPNs and Labor as Object and Subject
Waste, Global Destruction Networks, and Labor
Summary
Chapter 4 – Neoliberalism and Working Precariously
Neoliberalism and Precarious Work
Forms of Precarity and Their Present Dynamics
Summary
Chapter 5 – From Drudge Work to Emancipated Workers?
Laboring in the Old Economy
On the Swing to the Cancer in the Bush – Iron Ore Mining in Western Australia
Sweet Work? – Cocoa Plantation Workers in West Africa
Fishy Business – Forced Labor in the Seafood Industry
Summary
Chapter 6 – Meet the New Economy – Same as the Old Economy?
Laboring in the New Economy
Chips off the Old (Economy) Block?
Call Centers – Dark Satanic Mills of the New Economy?
Ghost Workers of the New Economy
Summary
Chapter 7 – Workers Fight Back
Workers Coming Together
Organizing in the Age of Precarity
Summary
Chapter 8 – Concluding Thoughts
Bibliography
Description
In this book, Andrew Herod offers an original and wide-ranging analysis of labor as a multi-faceted and truly global resource. Opening with a rich overview of the migration streams and demographic trends that have shaped the planetary distribution of labor, he goes on to explore how globalization and the growth of precarious work are impacting working people's lives. He concludes by surveying some of the ways in which working people are taking action to improve their lives, including forming trade unions and other labor organizations, occupying factories in places like Argentina and Greece, and establishing anti-sweatshop campaigns.
This book is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the state of labor in today's global economy.
