Situation of unpaid work and gender in the Caribbean: The measurement of unpaid work through time-use studies

Includes bibliography.

The employment situation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Advances and challenges in measuring decent work

At 6.4%, the unemployment rate for the Latin American and Caribbean region overall was the lowest for the past few decades, down from 6.7% in 2011. This is significant, in view of the difficult employment situation prevailing in other world regions. Labour market indicators improved despite modest growth of just 3.0% in the region’s economy. Even with sharply rising labour market participation, the number of urban unemployed fell by around 400,000, on the back of relatively strong job creation. Nevertheless, around 15 million are still jobless in the region. Other highlights of 2012 labour market performance were that the gender gaps in labour market participation, unemployment and employment narrowed, albeit slightly; formal employment increased; the hourly underemployment rate declined; and average wages rose. This rendering was obviously not homogenous across the region. Labour market indicators worsened again in the Caribbean countries, for example, reflecting the sluggish performance of their economies. The sustainability of recent labour market progress is also a cause for concern. Most of the new jobs in the region were created as part of a self-perpetuating cycle in which new jobs and higher real wages (and greater access to credit) have boosted household purchasing power and so pushed up domestic demand. Much of this demand is for non-tradable goods and services (and imports), which has stimulated expansion of the tertiary sector and hence its demand for labour, and many of the new jobs have therefore arisen in these sectors of the economy. This dynamic certainly has positive implications in terms of labour and distribution, but the concern is whether it is sustainable in a context of still relatively low investment (even after some recent gains) which is, moreover, not structured in a manner conducive to diversifying production. Doubt hangs over the future growth of production capacity in the region, given the enormous challenges facing the region in terms of innovation, education quality, infrastructure and productivity. As vigorous job creation has driven progress in reducing unemployment, attention has turned once again to the characteristics of that employment. Awareness exists in the region that economic growth is essential, but not in itself sufficient to generate more and better jobs. For some time, ILO has been drawing attention to the fact that it is not enough to create any sort of employment. The concept of decent work, as proposed by ILO, emphasized the need for quality jobs which enshrine respect for fundamental rights at work. The United Nations General Assembly endorsed this notion and incorporated it into the targets set in the framework of the Millennium Development Goals. This eighth issue of the ECLAC/ILO publication “The employment situation in Latin America and the Caribbean” examines how the concept of decent work has evolved in the region, progress in measuring it and the challenges involved in building a system of decent work indicators, 14 years after the concept was first proposed. Although the concept of decent work has been accompanied since the outset by the challenge of measurement, its first objective was to generate a discussion on the best achievable labour practices in each country. Accordingly, rather than defining a universal threshold of what could be considered decent work —regarding which developed countries might have almost reached the target before starting, while poor countries could be left hopelessly behind— ILO called upon the countries to define their own criteria and measurements for promoting decent work policies. As a result, there is no shared set of variables for measuring decent work applicable to all countries. The suggestion is, instead, that countries move forward with measuring decent work on the basis of their own priorities, using the information they have available now and in the future. However, this strategy of progressing according to the data available in each country tends to complicate statistical comparison between them. So, once the countries have developed their respective systems of decent work indicators, it will be also be important to work towards harmonizing them. ECLAC and ILO are available to provide technical support to this end. With respect to 2013, there is cautious optimism regarding the performance of the region’s labour markets. If projections of a slight uptick —to 3.5%— in the region’s economic growth in 2013 are borne out, labour indicators should continue to gradually improve. This will bring new increases in real wages and a slight drop of up to 0.2 percentage points in the region’s unemployment rate, reflecting a fresh rise in the regional employment rate and slower growth in labour market participation.

The American flower garden directory: containing practical directions for the culture of plants in the flower garden, hot-house, green-house, rooms, or parlour windows, for every month in the year. With a description of the plants most desirable in each, the nature of the soil, and situation best adapted to their growth, the proper season for transplanting, &c. Instructions for erecting a hot-house, green-house, and laying out a flower garden. Also, table of soils most congenial to the plants contained in the work. The whole adapted to either large or small gardens, with instructions for preparing the soil, propagating, planting, pruning, training, and fruiting the grape vine. With descriptions of the best sorts for cultivating in the open air.

Mode of access: Internet.

Relationships between employees and their nomadic, non-territorial work environment

Recent and current socio-cultural trends are significant factors impacting on how business is conduced and correspondingly, on how work environments are designed. New communication technology is helping to break physical boundaries and change the way and speed of conducting business. One of the main characteristics of these new workplaces is non-permanency wherein the individual employee has no dedicated personally assigned office, work station, or desk. In this non-territorial, nomadic situation, employees undertake their work tasks in a wide variety of work settings inside and outside the office building. Such environments are understood to be must suitable where there is the need for high interaction with others as well as a high level of concentrated, independent work. This thesis reports on a project designed to develop a deeper understanding of the relationships between people (P) and their built environment (E) in the context of everyday work practice in a nomadic and non-territorial work environment. To achieve this, the study focuses on the experiences of employees as they understand them in relation to their work and the designed/ physical work environment. In this sense, the study is qualitative and grounded in nature. It does not assume any previously established theory nor test any presenting hypothesis. Instead it interviews the participants about their situations at work in their workplace, interprets natural interaction and creates a foundation for the development of theory informing workplace design, particularly theory that recognises the human nature of work and the need, as highlighted by several seminal researchers, for a greater understanding of how people manage and adapt in dynamic work environments.

The Student Success Project : Helping students at-risk of failing or leaving a unit - a work in progress

In Semester 1 2007, a Monitoring Student Engagement study, conducted as part of the Enhancing Transition at Queensland University of Technology (ET@QUT) Project and extending earlier work in the Project by Arora (2006), aimed at mapping the processes and resources used at that time to identify, monitor and manage students in their first year who were at risk of leaving QUT (Shaw, 2007). This identified a lack of documentation of the processes and resources used and revealed an ad-hoc rather than holistic and systematic approach to monitoring student engagement. One of Shaw’s recommendations was to: “To introduce a centralised case management approach to student engagement” (p. 14). That provided the genesis for the Student Success Project that is being reported on here. The aim of the Student Success Project is to trial, evaluate and ultimately establish holistic and systematic ways of helping students who appear to be at-risk of failing or withdrawing from a unit to persist and succeed. Students are profiled as being at-risk if they are absent from more than 2 tutorials in a row without contacting their tutor or if they fail to submit their first assignment. A Project Officer makes personal contact with these students to suggest ways they can get further assistance depending on their situation.

Gender influences on the work-related stress-coping process

The increasing incidence of occupational stress is recognized as a global phenomenon that is having a detrimental impact on both individuals and organizations. This study aims to identify whether men and women adopt different stress and coping processes when subjected to stress in a work context. A total of 258 workers of various professions (males = 106, females = 152) participated in the study. Results indicated that men and women differ in their stress and coping processes, forming two very distinct groups and adopting specific process models when encountering a stressful situation at work. Limitations and implications from this study are discussed.

Driving for work : a series of organisational audit results

Previous research has indicated that road crashes are the most common form of work related fatalities (Haworth et al., 2000). Historically, industry has often taken a “silver bullet” approach developing and implementing a single countermeasure to address all their work related road safety issues, despite legislative requirements to discharge obligations through minimising risk and enhancing safety. This paper describes the results and implications from a series of work related road safety audits that were undertaken across five organisations to determine deficiencies in each organisation‟s safe driving management and practice. Researchers conducted a series of structured interviews, reviewed documentation relating to work related driving, and analysed vehicle related crash and incident records to determine each organisation‟s current situation in the management of work related road safety and driver behaviour. A number of consistent themes and issues across each organisation were identified relating to managing driver behaviour, organisational policies, incident recording and reporting, communication and education, and formalisation of key work related road safety strategies. Although organisations are required to undertake risk reduction strategies for all work related driving, the results of the research suggest that many organisations fail to systematically manage driver behaviour and mitigate work related road safety risk. Future improvements in work related road safety will require organisations to firstly acknowledge the high risk associated with drivers driving for work and secondly adopt comprehensive risk mitigation strategies in a similar manner to managing other workplace hazards.

Construction of Francophone families’ health literacy in a linguistic minority situation

With the increase in international mobility, healthcare systems should no longer be ignoring language barriers. In addition to the benefit of reducing long‐term costs, immigrant‐friendly organizations should be concerned with mitigating the way language barriers increase individuals’ social vulnerabilities and inequities in health care and health status. This paper reports the findings of a qualitative, exploratory study of the health literacy of 28 Francophone families living in a linguistic‐minority situation in Canada. Analysis of interviews revealed that participants’ social vulnerability, mainly due to their limited social and informational networks, influenced the construction of family health literacy. Disparities in access to healthcare services could be decreased by having health professionals’ work in alliance with Francophone community groups and by hiring bilingual health professionals. Linguistic isolation and lack of knowledge about local cultural organizations among Francophone immigrants were two important findings of this study

Nerves of steel? Stress, work performance and elite athletes

There is a notable shortage of empirical research directed at measuring the magnitude and direction of stress effects on performance in a controlled environment. One reason for this is the inherent difficulties in identifying and isolating direct performance measures for individuals. Additionally, most traditional work environments contain a multitude of exogenous factors impacting individual performance, but controlling for all such factors is generally unfeasible (omitted variable bias). Moreover, instead of asking individuals about their self-reported stress levels, we observe workers’ behaviour in situations that can be classified as stressful. For this reason, we have stepped outside the traditional workplace in an attempt to gain greater controllability of these factors using the sports environment as our experimental space. We empirically investigate the relationship between stress and performance, in an extreme pressure situation (football penalty kicks) in a winner take all sporting environment (FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Cup competitions). Specifically, we examine all the penalty shootouts between 1976 and 2008 covering in total 16 events. The results indicate that extreme stressors can have a positive or negative impact on individuals’ performance. On the other hand, more commonly experienced stressors do not affect professionals’ performances.

Teaching journalism students how to tell Indigenous stories in an informed way : a work integrated learning approach

Australian journalism schools are full of students who have never met an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island person and who do not know their history. Journalism educators are ill-equipped to redress this imbalance as a large majority are themselves non-Indigenous and many have had little or no experience with the coverage of Indigenous issues or knowledge of Indigenous affairs. Such a situation calls for educational approaches that can overcome these disadvantages and empower journalism graduates to move beyond the stereotypes that characterize the representation of Indigenous people in the mainstream media. This article will explore three different courses in three Australian tertiary journalism education institutions, which use Work-Integrated Learning Approaches to instil the cultural competencies necessary to encourage a more informed reporting of Indigenous issues. The findings from the three projects illustrate the importance of adopting a collaborative approach by industry, the Indigenous community and educators to encourage students’ commitment to quality journalism practices when covering Indigenous issues.

College, shared house, or home? The impact of living situation on university students’ drinking

University students are recognised as a heavy drinking group who are at risk of both short and long term harms from their alcohol consumption. This paper explores the social dynamics of drinking and the key differences between three core groups of university students – those who live at home, those living in college and those who live independently. We draw on a large scale survey of Australian university students on alcohol consumption and harm minimisation and extensive qualitative individual and focus group interviews with university students in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Our data suggests that living at home supports safer drinking in comparison to the less regulated college context or living independently in shared households.

Legal regulation of 'decent work' : evidence from two big industries in Bangladesh

In most developing countries, the overall quality of the livelihood of labourers, work place environment and implementation of labour rights do not progress at the same rate as their industrial development. To address this situation, the ILO has initiated the concept of 'decent work' to assist regulators articulate labour-related social policy goals. Against this backdrop, this article assesses the Bangladesh Labour Law 2006 by reference to the four social principles developed by the ILO for ensuring 'decent work'. It explains the impact of the absence of these principles in this Law on the labour administration in the ready-made garment and ship-breaking industries. It finds that an appropriate legislative framework needs to be based on the principles of 'decent work' to establish a solid platform for a sound labour regulation in Bangladesh.

How does homework 'work' for young children? Children's accounts of homework in their everyday lives

Homework is an increasing yet under-researched part of young children’s everyday lives. Framed by the international agendas of starting strong and school accountability, homework in the lives of young children has been either overlooked or considered from the perspective of adults rather than from the perspective of children themselves. This paper redresses this situation by reporting on an Australian study of 120 young children, aged four to eight years, where homework emerges as a key part of their everyday lives. Children’s own accounts of their everyday decision-making, using audio-taped conversations and concurrent paper-based timeline activities, show homework as accomplishing the institutional purposes of the school, while affording the children opportunities to demonstrate their competence in operating in an adult-generated education regime.

Surveillance Town: Social inclusion-exclusion through surveillance, ‘the dignity of work’ and income management

This paper discusses the situation of welfare claimants, constructed as faulty citizens and flawed welfare subjects at the receiving end of complex and multi-layered, private and public, forms of monitoring and surveillance aimed at securing socially responsible, consuming and compliant behaviours. In Australia as in many other western countries, the rise of neoliberal economic regimes with their harsh and often repressive treatment of welfare claimants operates in tandem with a growing arsenal of CCTV and assorted urban governance measures (Monahan 2008, Maki 2011). The capacity for all forms of surveillance to intensify social inequalities through the lens of CCTV and other modes and methods of electronic monitoring is amply demonstrated in the surveillance studies literature, raising fundamental questions around issues of social justice, equity and the expenditure of societal resources (Norris and Armstrong 1999, Lyon 1994, 2001, Loader 1996).