Labor Quality and Quantity

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Labor Quality and Quantity

• Quality, quantity, and composition of labor force
  are of great importance to an employer
• Labor Quality
• The skills, education, and attitudes of available
  employees
• Labor Quantity
• The number of available employees with the skills
  required to meet an employers business needs

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Worldwide Labor Conditions and Trends

• Overall size and sector of the work force
• International labor trends
• Aging of populations
• Rural to urban shift
• Unemployment
• Immigrant labor
• Child labor
• Forced labor
• Brain drain
• Guest workers

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Percentage of the Population aged 65 or More
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Unemployment

• 3.1 billion workers in 2008 (per UN, ILO)
• 200 million overall are unemployed
• Middle East and North Africa (13.2)
• Sub-Saharan Africa (9.7)
• Central and Eastern Europe (9.7)
• Latin America and Caribbean (7.7)
• Developed economies (6.7)
• Southeast Asia and the Pacific (6.1)
• South Asia (4.7)
• East Asia (3.8)
• 45 of unemployed are between age 15 and 24

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Labor Mobility

• Labor Mobility refers to the movement of people
  from country to country or area to area to get
  jobs
• Immigration refers to the process of leaving
  ones home country to reside in another country
• Foreign-born
• Population comprises those immigrants whose move
  is permanent and may include taking citizenship
• Foreign
• Population who are guest workers

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Nations With the Highest Number of International
Migrants
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Labor

• Child labor
• The labor of children below 16 years of age who
  are forced to work in production and usually
  receive little or no formal education
• Primarily found in developing nations
• Existent in developed countries
• 70 are in agriculture
• Forced labor (27 million today) mostly in
• South and East Asia
• Northern and western Africa
• parts of Latin America

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Brain Drain

• Brain drain refers to the loss by a country of
  its most intelligent and best-educated people
• Record numbers of immigrants are moving to OECD
  countries in search of jobs
• When skilled workers migrate from developing
  countries they do so for professional
  opportunities and economic reasons
• Reverse brain drain refers to the growth of
  outsourcing and the movement of highly educated,
  technologically skilled employees and research
  scientists to other countries

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Brain Drain
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Foreign-Born Individuals with Science or
Engineering Ph.D.
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Guest Workers

• Guest workers are people who go to a foreign
  country legally to perform certain types of jobs
• Guest workers provide the labor host countries
  need
• Guest workers are desirable as long as the
  economies are growing
• When economies slow, fewer workers are needed and
  problems appear

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Considerations in Employment Policies

• Social Status
• Important with respect to labor force, especially
  in some cultures
• Caste the group to which people belong in a
  system under which peoples place or level in a
  multilevel society is established at birth as
  being the same level as that of their parents
• Sexism refers to the acceptability of women as
  full and equal participants in the work force
  ranges widely
• Worldwide, 59 of all businesses include women in
  senior management positions

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Womens Education

• Studies show a direct correlation between womens
  education and
• birthrates
• child survival rates
• family health
• a nations overall prosperity

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Female Illiteracy
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Women in Parliament
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Maternity Leave
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Ratio of Wages, Woman versus Men, Selected OECD
Countries
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Racism

• Black and White conflict
• U.S., South Africa, Great Britain and elsewhere
• Arab-, Indian-, or Pakistani and Black conflict
• Africa
• Tamils and Sinhalese Conflict
• Sri Lanka

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Minorities

• Traditional Societies
• Tribal peoples before they turn to organized
  agriculture or industry traditional customs may
  linger after the economy changes
• Minorities
• A relatively smaller number of people identified
  by race, religion, or national origin who live
  among a larger majority

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Employer-Employee Relationships

• The labor market refers to the pool of available
  potential employees with the necessary skills
  within commuting distance from an employer
• A company must study the labor market when
  considering whether to invest in a country
• Sources include
• Foreign Labor Trends
• Handbook of Labor Statistics
• Yearbook of Labor Statistics

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Country Strike RatesSelected OECD Nations
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Labor Unions

• European labor
• Identified with political parties and socialist
  ideology
• United States labor
• Laborers already have many civil rights
• Collective bargaining
• A union represents the interests of a bargaining
  unit (sometimes includes both union members and
  nonmembers) in negotiations with management

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Labor Unions

• Japanese unions are enterprise-based rather than
  industry wide
• Unions tend to identify strongly with company
  interests
• Research shows that of all developed country
  workers, Japanese workers are the least satisfied
  with their jobs

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Labor Union Membership Trends

• Employers have made efforts to keep their
  businesses union-free
• More women and teenagers have joined the work
  force, low loyalty to unions
• The unions have been successful in raising wages,
  which leads to offshoring
• In the knowledge economy, industrial jobs that
  have formed the core of union membership are
  declining

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Multinational Labor Activities

• Internationalization of companies creates
  opportunities for them to escape the reach of
  unions
• In response, unions have begun to
• collect and disseminate information about
  companies
• consult with unions in other countries
• coordinate with those unions policies and
  tactics
• encourage international companies codes of
  conduct
• Multinational unionism is developing

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Multinational Labor Activities

• The International Labor Organization (ILO)
  promotes social justice and recognizes human and
  labor rights worldwide
• The Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD
  consults on trade union issues in global markets

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Union Membership Across Countries
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