Decent work and competitiveness: Labour dimensions of accession to the European Union

Philippe EGGER

For the enlargement of the European Union to be successful, candidate countries must coherently and simultaneously pursue both real convergence with EU income and welfare levels and "nominal convergence" (sustained non-inflationary growth conforming with Maastricht criteria, in order ultimately to join the European Monetary Union). Using 1995-2000 data, the author explores the respective employment and labour dimensions of both real and nominal convergence. He then discusses the labour market policies needed to enable candidate countries to retain some hold over macroeconomic policy and, thus, to ensure the requisite coherence between the two.

Challenges facing nurses' associations and unions: A global perpective

Paul F. CLARK and Darlene A. CLARK

Nurses are at the heart of every country's health care system. What sort of problems do they face at work? What are the coping strategies that they and their organizations pursue? Drawing on the findings of a unique global survey of nurses' associations and unions, the authors provide clear answers to these and related questions at a time when population ageing, epidemics, privatization and understaffing are putting heightened pressures on health care systems around the world. Interestingly, the priority concerns of nurses' organizations the world over have much in common despite the widely differing national contexts in which they operate.

Trade and investment effects of forced labour: An empirical assessment

Matthias BUSSE and Sebastian BRAUN

This article explores the international economic effects of forced labour. Specifically, it presents the results of empirical tests of the linkages between eight forms of forced labour and both comparative advantage and foreign direct investment flows. Although the regression results are sensitive to the exact specification of the estimated equation, they show that forced labour is positively associated with a comparative advantage in unskilled-labour-intensive goods, i.e. those goods whose production is most likely to involve forced labour. In contrast, foreign direct investment displays a strong negative association with forced labour. This result also holds for relatively poor developing countries.

Perspectives

The ILO's Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour

Forced labour, in both its traditional and contemporary forms, has long concerned the ILO, and a positive, problem-solving approach to its elimination, combining both technical assistance and promotional means, was instituted with the establishment of the Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour, in November 2001. The Programme's activities are outlined here, ranging from awareness raising of the many forms forced labour takes in all cultural contexts, the links between trafficking of persons and modern forms of forced labour, the research programmes and action undertaken in varying contexts, and the particular difficulties of collecting data on forced labour.