Thesis (Ph.D. (Industrial Psychology)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

The Fourth National Conference of the APDUSA, held in Ezibeleni, Queenstown on 15/16 April 1995, must be marked as one of the most significant events in the history of the organisation. Taking place one year after the establishment of a new political order in South Africa, it was a pertinent time to assess its import in the face of the critical problems that still beset the nation. The achievement of the universal franchise, after long years of bitter struggle, has indeed been a signal victory for the labouring masses of South Africa. But it is a victory that has brought no improvement in the socio-economic conditions of their existence. Still suffering on the anvil of oppression and exploitation, the millions of workers and land-starved peasants are fast losing faith in the ability of the new Government of National Unity to solve their problems. The struggle for liberation has thus entered a new phase. But the oppressed are also faced with a crisis of leadership. Their organisations of struggle are in disarray, with many of those who formerly occupied leading positions, having departed to take up positions in the institutions of government. In this situation, the task of mapping out the programmatic basis of the future course of their struggle, is one of utmost importance. These are the questions that commanded the attention of the APDUSA conference. Against the background, it is fitting that the large majority of those participating in the conference were members of the new generation. Theirs was a major contribution. After a thorough assessment of the new needs of the struggle, conference resolved to redefine and sharpen the political programme of the APDUSA. In so doing, it remains governed by its commitment to the interests of the workers and the landless peasantry in both its short term and long term objectives.

À l’orée du XXe siècle, les femmes italiennes subissent une double injustice juridique. En tant que femmes, elles sont reléguées par le Droit dans une condition d’infériorité : la loi leur nie le droit de vote et d’éligibilité. En tant que travailleuses, elles sont soumises à la toute-puissance patronale, car à l’aube de la législation sociale, la faiblesse contractuelle de l’ouvrier face à l’employeur n’est pas reconnue. Dans le canton de Verceil, les mondariso, travailleuses saisonnières employées au sarclage des rizières, luttent pour obtenir du travail, des augmentations salariales et des diminutions de leur temps de travail. Ces femmes arrivent à imposer le principe de la journée travaillée de huit heures dans les rizières du vercellese en 1906. En 1907, une loi sectorielle concédera à tous les travailleurs rizicoles d’importantes protections. En revendiquant leur droit à la justice sociale, ces travailleuses acquièrent une visibilité et un rôle politique. Elles savent choisir leurs priorités dans l’apprentissage du maniement de l’instrument juridique et législatif et participent à la construction d’un nouveau Droit émancipateur et égalitaire. Le parti et les syndicats socialistes sont très présents dans cette bataille. Mais quelles accointances lient ces femmes à ces forces politiques émergentes ? Jusqu’à quel point le parti socialiste éduque-t-il ces paysannes ? Et si ces femmes avaient un espace de pouvoir plus grand que ce que la condition féminine de l’époque nous laisserait imaginer ? Dans ce cas, nous pourrions les supposer dépositaires d’une mission éducative vis-à-vis d’un jeune parti qui cherche à s’imposer à elles comme au sein du prolétariat italien. / At the beginning of the twentieth century, Italian women underwent a double legal injustice. As women, they were relegated by law to an inferior status: legislation denied them the right to vote and eligibility. As workers, they were submitted to omnipotent employers because, in the early times of social legislation, the contractual weakness of workers compared to employers had not been acknowledged. In the Verceil canton, the mondariso, seasonal women workers who were employed to hoe the vast Piedmontese rice fields, struggled to obtain work, pay rises, and a decrease in their work time. These women succeeded in imposing the principle of an eight-hour workday in the Vercellese rice fields in 1906. In 1907, a sectoral law granted all paddy field workers significant protections. By demanding their right to social justice, these women workers acquired visibility and a political role. They knew how to select their priorities in learning how to handle the legal and legislative apparatus, and participated in the construction of a new, egalitarian, and empowering legislation. The socialist party and Labour Unions were very present in that struggle. But how were these women acquainted with those emerging political forces? To what extent did the socialist party educate these peasants? What if these women had a vaster arena of power than what the status of women at the time could let us imagine? Should this be the case, they could be assumed to have been bestowed with an educational mission towards a young party trying to impress itself upon them as well as within the Italian proletariat.

Collective bargaining is one of the methods of reciprocal communication between employers and relevant trade union, which solve wage or salary and other rights in labour-law relations. Collective agreement is the purpose of collective bargaining. Its content and observance is significant part of relationship between employers and employees. Process of collective bargaining, closing collective contracts, solving collective disputes, process during strikes and lock-outs is described in the Act No. 2/1991 Coll. The aim of my master thesis is to analyze legal regulations of social dialogue, content of collective agreements and show some real examples. I also describe all feasible solutions of collective disputes, which are results of disagreements between contracting parties by closing or default of collective agreement.

(in English): During adolescence, a person's value orientations towards society, employment, and the economy are being shaped significantly. The educational system plays an important role in this maturing of a person's values in that it provides key social orientation in the form of knowledge, consciousness, or opinions. The theory of cultural and social reproduction was among the first analyses of critical education that drew attention to the fact that this mediation of orientation serves for the maintaining (reproduction) of social inequalities in society. The basic question of education according to these analyses of critical education thus is not what knowledge we get at school, but rather whose knowledge. In the Czech Republic, ca. 73% of pupils go through secondary vocational training. After graduation, most of these pupils are the first to enter the world of paid labor at a relatively early age. Between 2004 and 2012, intermediate vocational training underwent a change of system in the form of the implementation of curriculum reform in connection with the adoption of Act No. 561 / 2004 Coll. on Preschool, Elementary, Secondary, Tertiary Vocational, and Other Education. Curriculum reform enabled various social agents to influence the goals and content of education at the national level...

No / This article examines why employer opposition is stimulated by the introduction of statutory union recognition provisions in Britain, Ireland and the US. It examines the impact of the provisions for encouraging union organizing, which in turn stimulates employer anti-unionism, which then negates the intention of the provisions.

The purpose of this study was to examine the feasibility of unionising the employees of the LIS sector in South Africa in the context of the new South African labour dispensation. The study examined the factors that have been identified as having an influence on the growth of trade unionism. The review of the literature revealed that the factors that have influenced unionism were, inter alia, collective bargaining, legislation and employee concentration. The unionism versus professionalism debate also influenced the growth of trade unionism. The factors that were identified as influencing the growth of white collar unionism, at the national and international level, were applied to LIS sector employees to determine their influence on the growth of unionism in this sector. The findings from the survey of employees confirm the findings in the literature with regard to the factors that have influenced trade unionism. While trade unionism has continued to grow and fulfils the industrial needs of the LIS employees in South Africa, professional associations here fulfilled the professional needs of those employed in the LIS tertiary education sector. This study also examined the roles and characteristics of professional library associations in the international arena with particular reference to two African countries. The factors that have influenced the continuance of professional associations amidst pressure from trade unions for the same membership, were also investigated. Self-administered questionnaires were used to survey the views of LIS employees regarding factors that have influenced their affiliation to the different employee representative bodies. Selfadministered questionnaires were also used to survey trade union officials of the three national unions that service the tertiary sector in South Africa, regarding their views on the infra-structural capacity of unions to incorporate a sector specific union. Percentages and frequency distributions as well as content analysis were used to analyse the data collected. The findings from the survey of the LIS employees reveal that the factors that have influenced the growth of trade unionism at the national and international levels are evident in the LIS sector in South Africa. The findings also reveal that factors that have negated the growth of trade unionism in this sector. Further, the employee population expressed preference for a single representative body to represent the industrial and professional interests of the LIS sector. The findings from the survey of the LIS employees revealed a need which could not be accommodated by the current trade union structures. In suggesting a way forward, the researcher proposes a model. The aim of the model is to stimulate discussion about how change can be achieved. The researcher draws conclusions based on the analysis of data and in the context of related literature and proposes a way forward for the tertiary LIS sector in South Africa. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.

In theorising globalisation, capital is represented as all-powerful and proactive in its mobility and ability to transcend national boundaries in search of new labour markets. It is this mobility of capital. which is argued to be instrumental in shaping the processes of globalisation (Ohmae: 1989, Allen: 1995: Thompson et al: 1998. Dicken: 1998). Labour in contrast is portrayed as fixed within territorial boundaries unable to shape or influence its own destiny or the processes of globalisation. These opposing discourses of capital as the prime agent of globalisaton and labour as a passive participant in the process have predominantly informed the debates about globalisation, and have remained mostly unchallenged in the literature. This dissertation interrogates claims of capital being all-powerful via its mobility and labour being 'agentless' in influencing the processes of globalisation. In order to achieve this I use the global shipping industry' as an example to explores these arguments. This is achieved by investigating the complex ways that relationships between shipping capital and seafaring labour have changed and how these changed relationships are articulated. Specifically I examine the strategies used by South African Transport and Allied Workers to service a transnational and flexible membership. My findings suggest that the 'agentless' nature of labour in shaping the processes of globalisatlon is exaggerated by proponents of the transnational neo-liberal discourse of globalisation. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2001.

Le gouvernement du Québec a adopté en novembre 1999 le projet de loi 47, relatif à la Loi concernant les conditions de travail dans certains secteurs de l’industrie du vêtement et modifiant la Loi sur les normes du travail (1999, c. 57). Son entrée en vigueur eut pour effet d’abroger au 30 juin 2000 les quatre (4) décrets sectoriels de convention collective qui régissaient les conditions d’emploi d’approximativement 23 000 travailleurs affectés à la production de vêtements (gant de cuir, chemise pour hommes et garçons, confection pour hommes et pour dames). Cette recherche démontre que bien qu’inscrit dans une logique étatique de dérégulation du travail visant à favoriser la compétitivité, le maintien de normes de substitution aux décrets dans le cas du vêtement québécois ne dérive pas pour autant d’une déréglementation strictement néolibérale. Au plan plus théorique, l’émergence et le sort du régime de conditions d’emploi étudié dévoilent la nature politique du processus d’élaboration des règles salariales, qu’il soit d’origine législative ou contractuelle. Cette dynamique repose sur le caractère mouvant des relations de pouvoir et d’influence des agents engagés dans la régulation institutionnelle, où l’État est appelé à jouer un rôle de catalyseur ─ et non de tiers arbitre indépendant ─ à l’endroit des tensions qui procèdent du rapport salarial et du mode de production au sein duquel il s’inscrit. / In November 1999, the Government of Quebec has adopted the bill 47 related to the Act respecting conditions of employment in certain sectors of the clothing industry which amended the Act respecting labour standards (1999, c. 57). On June 30 2000, after the bill came into force, the four (4) sectoral decrees regulating the terms of employment of approximately 23,000 workers in apparel production were repealed (leather glove, men’s and boy’s shirt, men’s wear and ladies’s garment). This research demonstrates that even if in line with the deregulation logical of the government aiming to foster competitiveness, the continuation of replacement standards for the decrees in the Quebec’s clothing industry does not stem for all that from a fully neo-liberal deregulation. In a more academic view, the surveyed labour standards plan’s emergence and fate reveal the political nature of the wage rule determination process, legislative or contractual. This dynamics is based on the changeable characteristic of the power relationship and influence of the institutionnal actors involved in the legislative regulation where the State is destined to play an enabler role – and not as an independent referee – in regard of the pressures resulting of the wage labour relationship and the production mode in which this one is embedded.

O acesso à justiça corresponde a um dos direitos humanos fundamentais. Somente com o pleno acesso à justiça é que se garante, através da prestação jurisdicional efetiva, a observância da relevante parcela de direitos que não são observados espontaneamente pela sociedade. A sociedade e economia de massas trouxeram juntamente com seus benefícios uma série de novos conflitos, em especial os envolvendo coletividades, para os quais são insuficientes os meios processuais tradicionais, concebidos para a solução de conflitos individuais. A substituição processual é um instituto jurídico onde um sujeito diverso do titular do direito material é legitimado a ingressar em juízo, em nome próprio, pleiteando direito alheio. Apesar da conceituação básica semelhante e da mesma nomenclatura, a substituição processual civil apresenta grandes diferenças em relação à trabalhista. A substituição processual trabalhista tornaria possível que o trabalhador tenha seus interesses defendidos em juízo sem que sofra represálias por parte do empregador, permitindo o questionamento judicial ainda no curso do contrato de trabalho. Contribuiria para a redução do número de conflitos e evitaria a prolação de decisões díspares em casos semelhantes. O Supremo Tribunal Federal sinaliza pela aceitação da substituição processual trabalhista de forma irrestrita. A falta de regulamentação legal e a deficiência do modelo sindical pátrio, no entanto, impedem a aplicação ampla e segura do instituto. Dotada de um arcabouço jurídico específico e conferida somente a entidades com a devida representatividade, a substituição processual trabalhista pode constituir poderoso elemento na busca pelo incremento do acesso e efetividade da Justiça do Trabalho. / Access to justice is a fundamental human right. As a matter of fact, full access to justice is essential to guarantee, by means of effective judicial decision, the observance of rights which society as a whole does not spontaneously respect. The development of a mass economy and mass society, besides their benefits, generated a series of new conflicts, specially those emerging from collectivities, for which traditional procedural devices do not suffice, inasmuch as they were conceived for individual disputes resolution. SUBSTITUIÇÃO PROCESSUAL is a procedural device by which a party to the lawsuit is permitted to represent, by his legitimate litigation, the interests of someone who will be affected by the action´s final outcome. Despite the similarity in terminology and conceptualization with the SUBSTITUIÇÃO PROCESSUAL of civil procedural law, in labour procedural law the same device has many differences. SUBSTITUIÇÃO PROCESSUAL in labour procedural law makes possible for an employee, inclusively during the validity of the employment contract, to have his interests defended in thelawsuit without retaliation from his employer. That procedural device not only contributes to the reduction of judicial conflicts, but also prevents similar cases to be decided in opposite ways. Brazilian Supreme Court seems to widely accept SUBSTITUIÇÃO PROCESSUAL in labour procedural law. However, the lack of legal regulation and the deficiency of Brazil´s Labor Union system severely hinder the wide and reliable use of that procedural device. Provided with particular procedural framework, as well as conferred on parties with adequacy of representation, SUBSTITUIÇÃO PROCESSUAL in labour procedural law may represent a powerful way of improving the access and effectiveness of Labour Justice in Brazil.