Reforming Asian Labor Systems

Frederic C. Deyo examines the implications of post-1980s market-oriented economic reform for labor systems in China, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand.

Frederic C. Deyo is Professor of Sociology at SUNY Binghamton. He is the editor of The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism, also from Cornell, and the author of Dependent Development and Industrial Order and Beneath the Miracle: Labor Subordination in the New Asian Industrialism.

The conclusion of this book that 'Asian labour (is) playing a somewhat more forceful role in national policymaking than is usually acknowledged' (p. 233) is a useful contribution to the public record. It is a good counterweight to some of the crude argument that Asian industrialisation is just 'sweated labor' where coercion and low wages undercut the supposed fair wages and democracy of North American and Oceanic manufacturing.