Flexible labour markets, workers' protection and active labour market policies in the Caribbean

Includes bibliography

Latin America and the Caribbean. International migration and the global market: background to the decent work agenda

Includes bibliography

Education and the labor market in Latin America: confronting globalization

Includes bibliography

Regional integration and the labour market: the Brazilian case

Includes bibliography

Urbanization and the labour market

Includes bibliography

Progress report on inter-Latin American trade and the regional market, covering the period June 1957 to April 1958

Includes bibliography

Latin American supply and major world market demand for the principal metals, 1970-1990: aluminium, copper, iron, nickel, lead, zinc, tin

Includes bibliography

Critical evaluation of the performance of the ECCM countries under the Agricultural Marketing Protocol (AMP) and the Guaranteed Market Scheme (GMS)

Includes bibliography

The employment situation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Crisis and the labour market

Since the financial and economic crisis began to affect the real economy and spread throughout the world, the region’s economies have been faced with a situation where data on employment and labour reflect the real stories of millions of women and men for whom the future has become uncertain. When these problems began to appear, the International Labour Organization (ILO) warned that the world faced a global employment crisis whose consequences could lead to a social recession. As the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has pointed out, the outbreak of the crisis put an end to a five-year period of sustained growth and falling unemployment. As early as the second half of 2008, the figures began to reflect slowing economic growth, while a downward slide began in the labour market. This initial bulletin, produced jointly by ECLAC and ILO, seeks to review the ways in which the crisis is affecting the region’s labour markets. Amidst a situation characterized by shocks and uncertainty, governments and social partners must have the inputs needed for designing public policies to increase the population’s levels of employment and well-being. It is planned to produce two further bulletins by January 2010, in order to measure the impact of the crisis on employment and provide an input to the process of defining the best public policies to reverse its consequences. The bulletin reviews the most recent available indicators and analyses them in order to establish trends and detect variations. It provides statistics for the first quarter, estimates for the rest of 2009, and a review of policies announced by the Governments. In 2008, the last year of the growth cycle, the region’s urban unemployment stood at 7.5%. According to economic growth forecasts for 2009, the average annual urban unemployment rate for the region will increase to between 8.7% and 9.1%; in other words, between 2.8 million and 3.9 million additional people will swell the ranks of the unemployed. Data for the first quarter of 2009 already confirm that the crisis is hitting employment in the region. Compared with the first quarter of 2008, the urban unemployment rate was up by 0.6 percentage points, representing over a million people.Work will continue until September 2009 on the preparation of a new report on the employment situation, using data updated to the first half of 2009. This will provide a picture of the region’s employment situation, so that growth and employment projections can be adjusted for 2009 as a whole. Strategies for dealing with the crisis must have jobs and income protection as their central goals. Policies are moving in that direction in Latin America and the Caribbean and, if they are effective, an even greater worsening of the situation may be avoided. Labour produces wealth, generates consumption, keeps economies functioning and is a key factor in seeking out the way to more sustainable and equitable growth once the crisis is past.

Confidence and the Stock Market: An Agent-Based Approach

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Archival Classification and Knowledge Organization: Theoretical Possibilities for the Archival Field

The main goal of this study is to outline a possible relation between archival classification and knowledge organization theory. In this sense, we seek to contribute to the conceptual classification in Archival Science, since there is a lack of systematization about archival classification; not just classification, but even the study of historical and conceptual aspects of the discipline. In the context of knowledge organization there is a considerable amount of research on how to build classification schemes and indexing systems that can help contribute to and expand archival classification theory. In order to comprehend this vast field of theories and methodologies we construct a parallel comparing the classification concepts in both areas and analyzing these concepts.

The Young Mother and the Labor Market

Introduction - The Centro de Orientacao ao Adolescente of Campinas (Southeastern Brazil) maintains a program to qualify economically disadvantaged adolescent students aged 15 to 18 years to enter the labor market. Objective - To understand life projects of teenagers who became mothers while participating in the program, in the period from 2003 to 2008, aiming to find the place of professional life in their life trajectory before and after motherhood. Method - Eight young mothers were interviewed, and a qualitative methodology was applied to the analysis of the interviews. Results - The trajectories of study and work were discontinued or adapted due to motherhood. Four young mothers completed high school and none had entered university. Three did not return to work and the rest had diverse work experiences. The reported difficulties to enter the labor market were: inadequate instruments to support the children's care, low income, lack of work experience, presence of small children and little educational background. Final Considerations - Teenage motherhood did not indicate the exclusion of educational or work projects but indicated adjustments and the need for a family and social support network. It was noted the need for public policies targeted at the inclusion of youths in the labor market and at support services such as nurseries. Also, the need for a change in gender relations was demonstrated, with greater equality of rights as a precondition for the inclusion of women, especially those who are mothers, in the labor market.

Facets of Gender : Analyses of the Family and the Labour Market

This thesis contains four different studies on the dynamics of gender in households and workplaces. The relationship between family life and work life is in focus, particularly in the paper on labour market outcomes after divorce. In the introductory chapter, the Swedish context is briefly described. The description focuses on gender differences in the labour market and in the home. Theories concerning the division of work in the household are discussed, as are two theories on labour market discrimination, viz. taste discrimination and statistical discrimination. The theory part is concluded with a discussion of social closure processes and gendered organizational structures. The Reproduction of Gender. Housework and Attitudes Towards Gender Equality in the Home Among Swedish Boys and Girls. The housework boys and girls age 10 to 18 do, and their attitudes towards gender equality in the home are studied. One aim is to see whether the work children do is gendered and if so, whether they follow their parents’, often gendered, pattern in housework. A second aim is to see whether parents’ division of work is related to the children’s attitude towards gender equality in the home. The data used are taken from the Swedish Child Level of Living Survey (Child-LNU) 2000. Results indicate that girls and boys in two-parent families are more prone to engage in gender-atypical work the more their parent of the same sex engages in this kind of work. The fact that girls still do more housework than boys indicates that housework is gendered work also among children. No relation between parents’ division of work and the child’s attitude towards gender equality in the home was found. Dependence within Families and the Household Division of Labor – A Comparison between Sweden and the United States. This paper assesses the relative explanatory value of the resource-bargaining perspective and the doing-gender approach in analysing the division of housework in the United States and Sweden from the mid-1970s to 2000. Data from the Swedish Level of Living Survey (LNU) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) were used. Overall results indicate that housework is truly gendered work in both countries during the entire period. Even so, the results also indicate that gender deviance neutralization is more pronounced in the United States than in Sweden. Unlike Swedish women, American women seem to increase their time spent in housework when their husbands are to some extent economically dependent on them, as if to neutralize the presumed gender deviance. Divorce and Labour Market Outcomes. Do Women Suffer or Gain? In this paper, the interconnected nature of work and family is studied by looking at labour market outcomes after divorce. The data used are retrospective work and family histories collected in LNU 1991. A hazard regression model with competing risks reveals that women’s chances of improving their occupational prestige appear to be better after divorce compared to before. Increased working hours and perhaps also increased energy invested in the job may pay off in better occupational opportunities. Worth noting, however, is that the outcome among women with a less firm labour market attachment is more often to a job of lower prestige than one of higher prestige. Hence, the labour market outcome for women after divorce is to some extent conditioned by their labour market attachment at the time of divorce. Men, on the other hand, in most cases seem to suffer occupationally from divorce. For separated men the risk of negative changes in occupational prestige is greater than for cohabiting men. Formal On-the-job Training. A Gender-Typed Experience and Wage- Related Advantage? Formal on-the-job training (FOJT) can have a positive impact on wages and on promotion opportunities. According to theory and earlier research, a two-step model of gender inequality in FOJT is predicted: First, women are less likely than men to take part in FOJT and, second, once women do get the more remunerative training, they are not rewarded for their new skills to the same extent as men are. Pooled cross-sectional data from the Swedish Survey of Living Conditions (ULF) in the mid-nineties were used. Results show that women are significantly less likely than men to take part in FOJT. Among those who do receive training, women are more likely to take part in industry-specific training, whereas men are more likely to participate in general training and training that increases promotion opportunities. The two latter forms of training significantly raise a man’s annual earnings but not a woman’s. Hence, the theoretical model is supported and it is argued that this gender inequality is partly due to employers’ discriminatory practices.