Workers and Workplaces in a Neoliberal Global Economy

Abstract

In this commentary I suggest that three sets of processes—a dramatic shrinking of distance between places, a growing global interconnection of economies, and the increasing importance for many corporations of an ‘international strategy’—are having fundamental impacts on workers and workplaces. Although these processes are playing out in geographically uneven ways, differentially affecting various parts of the globe, there are three sets of general implications associated with them. First, the speed with which the consequences of economic and political events are transmitted through markets has increased dramatically during the past decades. Second, the rhetoric of neoliberal globalization is being used in an attempt to shift the balance of power to global capital. Third, the international migration of both work and people is likely to increase, the former fueled by Internet technologies effectively allowing global telecommuting, the latter fueled by falling birth rates in the industrial economies of the global North. I conclude with some observations about how workers and their organizations may respond to these developments.