The Recognition of Wifely Labour by Welfare States

This article is concerned with questions about the amount of support given by welfare states towards the maintenance of a wife engaged in housework and child care. It compares the value of the support supplied by the tax/benefit packages of 15 countries. The article defines support for wifely labour as the difference between the net disposable income of a single person and a couple with the same earnings. In analysing the data, three models are used: the “traditional” model where the wife is economically dependent on her husband; the “modern” model where the wife remains outside the labour market while she has young children; and the “dual breadwinner” model where the mother of young children is in full- or part-time employment. Much of the analysis is concerned with patterns of social policy in which support for wives is associated with support for children. While the evidence shows that welfare states do provide support to wives, both with and without young children and engaged in paid as well as unpaid work, the levels of support vary greatly between welfare states. The variations are not associated with the generally discussed categorizations of welfare state types.     

论创造性劳动

当代科学技术的迅猛发展和知识经济的逐步来临 ,不仅使人类经济生活发生了全方位的变化 ,而且也使人类劳动的内涵与外延发生了重大变化 ,创造性劳动在经济发展中的作用越来越重要 ,使创造性劳动与非创造性劳动的区分更加明显。因此 ,界定创造性劳动的内涵 ,分析创造性劳动的特征 ,区别创造性劳动与非创造性劳动 ,对寻找经济持续增长的途径、从分配关系上调动创造性劳动者的积极性、提高创造性劳动在社会总劳动中的比重、进一步拓宽我国经济增长的空间有重要意义     

产业升级视角下的劳动力转移模型——对刘-拉-费劳动力转移模型的改进

刘—拉—费模型忽视传统部门劳动力生产效率的刚性对两部门产业升级的制约作用;忽视劳动力转移过程中的人员流动性带来的就业机会成本方面的差异。笔者对该模型作了相应改进。改进的政策含义是:只有提高农村劳动力素质,促进农业产业升级,走“内生性”增长道路,才是同时解决劳动力转移和产业升级问题的根本之策。这要求增加农村的公共教育投入,为摆脱传统部门和现代部门的低水平增长提供优质的人力资源。     

WTO与我国劳动力的国际转移

我国是一个人口大国,就业压力是关系到社会稳定发展的重大问题。中国加入WTO后,我国劳动力的国际转移面临着巨大的机遇和挑战。针对我国劳动力在国际流动中存在的渠道窄、规模小、层次低和转移可逆性以及缺乏有效管理等特点和问题,我国应在加快人才的国际流动、推动和加大合法移民的力度和规模以及进一步开拓国际劳务合作等方面做出努力,才能有效地缓解国内的就业压力。     

The development and Reform of Social Security Pensions:The Approach of the International Labour Office

The reform and the development of pension schemes are affected by the values society places on the provision of income security in old age and the resources it is prepared to allocate for the purpose. This paper examines those values and the issues arising from them. The objective is to propose reforms which will simultaneously provide full coverage with good governance, prevent poverty in old age, and result in indexed, guaranteed and reliable pensions for those onaverage incomes, all with minimum economic distortion or adverse economic effects. The question of the most appropriate design has to be weighed against these other factors, which will determine not only what is feasible and what is not, but also where the most desirable balance lies. The optimum structure would seem to involve a mix of defined benefit and defined contribution schemes.     

论劳工标准与世界贸易

社会条款问题一直是发达与发展中国家在世贸组织内争议的焦点之一。美国等发达国家屡次提出要在世贸组织协议中写进"社会条款",以实现其通过贸易制裁来强制推行"核心劳工标准"的目的。中国应尽早采取各种对策并根据相关的国际公约要求,尽快完善现行劳动立法,以维护国家和民族利益。     

农村劳动力流动及其对土地利用的影响

本文全面分析了浙江农村劳动力流动七个方面的特点,并且以详实的资料论证了其流动规模扩大的六方面原因。在上述厚实论证的基础上,作者指出农村劳动力流动会对土地利用产生深刻而广泛的影响。因此,要发展农村社会经济,就应该顺应农村劳动力流动的特点和趋势,改革现行农村土地制度、户籍制度,搞好村镇建设规划,控制城市外延规模,提高农民住房效益,促进农地市场化流转,减少耕地的流失。     

Importing Workfare: Policy Transfer of Social and Labour Market Policies from the USA to Britain under New Labour

Britain's New Labour government has put welfare reform at the top of its political agenda. It has followed a radical “workfare” agenda in relation to labour and social market policies and no longer aims to secure full employment mainly through direct job creation or Keynesian demand management. Instead, it promotes equal opportunity for all based on a contract between benefits claimants and the employment service. The New Deal is at the heart of British activation programmes for the unemployed. American policy paradigms have influenced the design of the New Deal. Policy transfer in activation policies from the USA to Britain is due to institutional similarities in British and American welfare states on the one hand, and to the comparable structure of their labour markets on the other hand. The influence of the European social model on British labour market policies thus remains limited.     

Scientific Management, Bureau-Professionalism, New Managerialism: The Labour Process of State Social Work

Correspondence to John Harris, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK. E-mail: J.Harris{at}warwick.ac.uk Summary An outline is provided of radical social work writers' use ofBraverman's labour process thesis on scientific management toaccount for developments in state social work in the late 197Os/early1980s. The advocacy of a scientific management model in radicalsocial work texts is tested against the existence of a bureau-professionalsocial work labour process in the 1970s/early 1980s. The natureof this bureau-professional labour process is explored and thenused as a baseline from which to chart developments in statesocial work in the late 1980s/1990s towards a new managerialistlabour process.     

Discourse, Learning and Welfare State Change: The Case of German Labour Market Reforms

In this article we argue that Germany has significantly changed its approach to labour market policies (LMPs) during the past decade; in many instances Britain has served as a model to learn from. In a first step, we identify the core institutional arrangements of the conservative approach to LMP in Germany and contrast them with the liberal approach, using the UK as an example. Secondly, we trace the development and nature of changes in German LMP since the 1990s. We show that the policy has increasingly incorporated elements of, and to a considerable extent shifted towards, a liberal approach. Thirdly, we review competing theoretical approaches that might explain this turn in LMP and conclude that changed interpretative patterns have been crucial to understand the overall shift. Fourthly, utilizing the policy transfer framework, we show that in regards to the specific policy instruments German policy‐makers have learnt from the experiences in the UK.     

New Labour, Work and the Family

New Labour has put support for the family at the core of its notion of the “strong community”. Across a range of policy areas the Labour government can be seen to be developing a direct and explicit family policy. But what kind of community is the government trying to shape by these policies? On the one hand, Labour appears to support the family as the basis of a more moral, dutiful and cohesive community. On the other hand, the government has given weight to policies that support social inclusion in the community through paid work. This paper examines whether there is a tension in Labour’s social policies between its emphasis on the importance of stable family life and the primacy given to paid work. Are critics like Ruth Levitas right when they argue that the government’s emphasis on paid work devalues, and is unsupportive of, unpaid work, especially caring for children and other family members? Alternatively, can this combination of communitarianisms—community as “stable family” and community as “paid work”—be seen to be marking out some “third way” on the family? We shall show that different aspects of the government’s family policies reflect different perspectives and policy agendas within New Labour and third‐way thinking more broadly. And while recognizing the tensions between work and the family, we shall suggest that they are often overstated and fail to give sufficient weight to the complementary aspects of Labour’s welfare reforms.     

农民流动、城市化、劳工权益与西部开发——当代中国的市场经济与公民权问题

“下苦人”的悲歌———从摄影集《麦客》谈起这些年来各种渲染“民俗文化”的产品可谓铺天盖地了。为了经济 (旅游业 )利益、政治动机 (反对“全盘西化”)以及精英阶层高雅的审美需求 ,“开发民俗文化资源”在一些地方已经成了口号。从纯粹商业化的各种“民俗村”、“民俗文化风情旅游”和“民俗文化节” ,到具有浓厚政治色彩的曲阜祭孔大典和黄陵祭祖仪式 ,从文人雅客的民俗采风 ,到文化人类学家的民俗研究 ,各种现存的、已死亡的乃至纯粹是今人“创作”(如“大红灯笼高高挂”)出来的“民俗”让人眼花缭乱。所以当友人推荐一本“民俗摄影…     

Disciplining Disability under Danish Active Labour Market Policy

This article explores how caseworkers are re‐constructing disability in the Danish welfare system and disciplining themselves and clients according to the active labour policy paradigm. Combining Foucault's ideas about discipline with Maynard‐Moody and Musheno's method of interpreting street‐level bureaucrats' stories ( Foucault 1977 ; Maynard‐Moody and Musheno 2003 ), we analyze caseworkers' stories about their clients, fellow caseworkers and themselves to understand how they practice the ideology behind active labour policy. Our analysis uses Møller's (2009 ) interviews with 24 Danish caseworkers who administer social welfare and sick leave benefits based on disability as the primary eligibility criterion. We selected stories told by caseworkers that exemplify archetypes of good and bad citizens, good and bad clients, and good and bad caseworkers. Through interpretative analysis, we elucidate how caseworkers make sense of active labour policy and internalize the pressures of managerial reforms to discipline both citizens and each other.     

After Retrenchment: Labour Market Experiences of Women and Men

Job loss in manufacturing industry has been a marked feature of the Australian economy over the last decade but little is known about the prospects for re-employment of workers who have been retrenched. This paper reports the results of a survey of the subsequent labour market experiences of 271 workers made redundant when a whitegoods plant was closed in December 1982 at Bankstown in Sydney's western suburbs. The retrenched workers were contacted twice, ten to twelve months apart and a response rate of 80 per cent was achieved. The paper compares the labour market experiences of retrenched women and men. Does the lower labour force participation rate of women in the population at large apply to women who have previously shown a strong commitment to the labour force through their stable employment history? The paper discusses the factors which might affect retrenched women's response to unemployment, including institutional arrangements, a gender-based domestic division of labour and the nature of the jobs available to unskilled blue collar workers.