Labour Market Regulation and Deregulation in Asia (review)

The edited volume of three parts comprising nine chapters on the nature of labour market regulation and deregulation process is an augmented outcome of a 2004 National University of Singapore conference. The Asian coverage includes Japan, India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia in general with some comparisons of Taiwan and Australia to Singapore and Vietnam in specific gender areas. It aims to link economic growth and distribution for productivity and social welfare gains with regulated labour regimes with the government as arbiter to manage conflicts with profitability and flexibility for capital owners. Dividing Part II's economics in three chapters and Part III's social aspect in four chapters is thus not easy.

Two chapters in Part I, respectively, set the theme and comparative perspective to endorse multi-stakeholder regulation and self-regulation. A better balance of theory and practice than broad platitudes of "better implementation" (p. 51), development of sophisticated enforcement strategies, trade union engagement and non-government organizations (NGOs) or compliance by self-regulation seem as remiss as some concluding chapter of editorial remarks. Most of Asia examined as former colonies borrow legislations and regulations, but adapting them for enforcement is complex. Underscoring some Asian success with institutional capability- and capacity-building by the editors would be illuminating.

In Part II, both India and Vietnam in Chapters 3 and 4, respectively, vouch for the role of the state as beneficial for social security, welfare, poverty and gender issues in both the public and private sectors. Similarly, Indonesia in Chapter 5 generally supports export-led industrialization in Java-Bali with deregulation versus land-abundant provinces burdened with deregulated labour influxes. Curiously, throughout the volume, human rights seem conspicuously unmentioned, or unmentionable in Asian settings. Chapter 5 offers more palatable synonyms such as what constitute labour rights or basic rights without any editorial adventurism into a sensitive matter.

Both India's regulated period (1950–80) and gradual deregulation since 1980 only realized low employment potential and "labour-unfriendliness" (p. 77). The stigma seemed fatalistically accepted rather than rigorously explained. All three populous country cases in Part II seem to show that they managed to muddle through regulatory gaps which labour-deficit countries would not have tolerated. Managing huge population size seems an implicit excuse to tolerate resource wastages and abuses aided and abetted by implementation difficulties more than economic development charged primarily to harness all resources including labour for prosperity.

The state's social role in labour regulation is found favourable and imperative in Part III. Chapter 6 argues for inward-looking India and Sri Lanka to adopt outward- and growth-oriented labour laws which in turn foster both efficiency and global integration. However, an interesting but sad observation is that neither the government nor organized labour applies economic reasoning and statistics, with more politics at work (p. 161). The role of women compared in Chapter 7 for Australia, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam calls for both gender-neutral legislation as in Singapore and simultaneously improving the legal standing of women to mitigate specific hazards, especially for mothers. Whereas Australia and Singapore learnt comparatively well from British laws and norms, any colonial legacy has been less gratifying for Vietnam, also for Taiwan with adopted European laws (p. 176). Again, it may be that enforcement is the real culprit, due to under-resourced inspectorates or subconscious relegating of serious regulation where population size and low-wage development seem to go conveniently hand-in-hand.

These social issues are more intense for Southeast Asia's informal sector. Chapter 8 is more explicit on the role of the state for credit, technology and market accessibility. A stronger emphasis of women's economic contribution at the expense of their social contribution in family-raising and social culturization bears some emphasis. While labour regulation is more domestic than crossing jurisdictions, neither the authors nor editors stressed cross-border collaboration for an important aspect of Asian labour abroad, inside and outside Asia...