The 10 chapters of this important and scholarly book in the Oxford Labour Law series fall into three parts. The first (chapters 1–3, pp. 1–50) establishes the case for comprehensive and effective regulation of informal work, and sets out the general principles that would allow this to be attained. The second (chapters 4–7, pp. 51–121) provides four detailed single-country case studies of the exploitation of precarious workers in India, Australia, Bulgaria and Cambodia. The third (chapters 8–10, pp. 122–192) provides a precise and detailed discussion of the models of institutional change that the author proposes in order to overcome informality in employment and greatly improve the economic conditions of the precarious workers who are damaged by it. There is a very useful 18-page bibliography.
Shelley Marshall has undergraduate degrees in Arts (specialising in Social Theory and Political Science) and Law, and a Masters in Development Economics (with a focus on economic policy). Not surprisingly, her approach is quite explicitly a multidisciplinary one. This is dictated by the nature of the problem, which ‘has multiple causes at different levels – global, regional, national, local and individual’, so that ‘the regulatory techniques should also be multiple and dynamic, working at different levels’ (p. 18). Marshall employs what she describes as ‘a historical institutionalist approach’, which dictates the use of different methods drawn from several academic disciplines, including political economy and ethnography (pp. 42–49).
She employs this approach to very good effect in her Australian chapter, based on extensive interviews with home-based outworkers of Vietnamese origin to establish ‘why they began working at home in the apparel industry, and why they became stranded in this low paying work rather than finding pathways out of it’ (p. 96). Coming as they did from Vietnam, they distrusted the state and all its regulatory agencies, possessed limited productive skills and were unfamiliar with the Australian labour market, but used close community networks to find work as homeworkers. Marshall does not use the term, but she is describing a classic example of a monopsonistic labour market, in which the purchasers of human labour power have much more information than the sellers and the assumption of perfect competition is absurd. Even a neoclassical economist would have to use the term exploitation in this context, since ‘their bargaining position was weak, and they had been unable to either demand their legal entitlements, voice complaints, or find work in other occupations’ (p. 96). The few who tried to do so ‘found work as fruit and vegetable pickers’, moving straight out of the frying pan into the fire, if I may be excused a mixed metaphor. Matters are no better (and not very much worse) in India (ch. 4), Bulgaria (ch. 6) or Cambodia (ch. 7).
Marshall’s positive proposals begin with the establishment of an orchestrating role for the International Labour Organisation, giving it ‘the power to steer and coordinate regulation’, which must be multi-level in nature. ‘Approaches to reducing informality and protecting vulnerable workers against abuses of core labour standards tend to be either international or domestic’ (p. 153; original stress), she complains, when they need to be both. She proposes a system that is mutually reinforcing at the national and international levels and will attempt to apportion responsibility between the various players who determine the wages and working conditions of outworkers. Among the penalties that she suggests are ‘the staying of export or import licences, as well as the suspension of intellectual property rights where appropriate, as a targeted penalty’ (pp. 154–155). In the first stage of implementation, the aim should be to raise minimum wages in all countries to a living wage rate, while the second stage would ‘move countries towards a global average minimum wage, based on purchasing power parity’ (p. 159; stress removed). Non-complying nations would be named and shamed, and there would be ‘a positive duty of due diligence for buyers, parent companies, and financiers’ (p. 167).
In her Preface, Marshall reports that as the book went to print, in late-2018, she was in Thailand advising the Thai Ministry of Labour about how to implement laws protecting home-based workers:
In interviews in various towns across Thailand with workers who sew clothes in their homes for local and international supply chains and those who make fishing nets for sale in neighbouring countries, workers have told me how hard the work is. They are desperate for change, but despondent. Though the laws have been on the books for seven years, they are yet to be implemented … It is my wish that the findings of this book provide cause for hope. It shows that there are effective regulatory pathways out of poverty and informality. (p. xiii)
Amen to that! I would add just one suggestion for a further enforcement mechanism in Australia. This would be to invoke the support of industry superannuation funds, which are often substantial shareholders in the global manufacturing and retailing companies that Marshall is pursuing, and which have recently brought significant pressure to bear for the rapid elimination of fossil fuel production on both financial and environmental grounds. It would be good to see them doing something similar on behalf of the global precariat.
This book is not an easy read (and the very small font does not help). But it is meticulously researched, well-written and to my mind entirely convincing, both in its denunciation of the current situation and its detailed proposals for change. The status quo is a disgrace. The day in early October 2020 on which I started to write this review began for me with a 5-minute news report on ABC Radio National concerning the death in road accidents of two fast food delivery drivers in suburban Sydney, one working for Uber and one for Panda Foods. Both left widows and orphaned children, in China and Kazakhstan, respectively. Neither driver was properly insured by their employer, as is supposedly required by labour law in New South Wales, and it seems that their dependants will receive either no payment at all (Panda) or very much less than their legal entitlement (Uber). We should all be ashamed.
