Precarious AND INFORMAL Work

 
Child labourer works at sandstone in a South India quarry.

Child labourer works at sandstone in a South India quarry.

Worldwide there is a growing incidence of precarious work producing heightened vulnerability for populations in both richer, industrialised nations as well as poorer ones.  Efforts to reduce the absolute numbers of working poor have stalled, with an estimated 327 million people continuing to live in extreme poverty, and 967 more in moderate and near poverty (International Labor Office 2016: 19). Most of the working poor toil outside legal regulation.  They are what is known as ‘informal workers’. Problematically, any reduction in poverty rates has not been accompanied by a decrease in the rate of informal work. According to the International Labour Organisation’s estimates, employment, as a percentage of non-agricultural employment, continues to account for over 50 per cent of all employment in half of the countries with comparable data. In one-third of countries, it affects over 65 per cent of workers (International Labor Office 2016: 19).

For the working poor, it’s hard to get a break.  They are constantly churning from one job to another, living hand to mouth.  They struggle to provide for their children, often having to call on their children to get jobs done and meet deadlines, pulling them away from the studies that would put them in a better position than their parents in the future. They feel forced to accept dangerous and unhealthy workplaces. They often cannot afford healthcare, with long term intergenerational impact on well-being.

The increase in the numerical incidence of precarious and informal work is one of the most significant causes of the growing wage gap which is drawing increasing attention from policy makers and commentators. 

See also my blog posts under the keyword 'Precarious Work.'

 
 
 
 
Shelley at an ILO workshop in Thailand

Shelley at an ILO workshop in Thailand

Publications

Books

Shelley Marshall, Living Wage: Regulatory Solutions to Informal and Precarious Work in Global Supply Chains, Oxford University Press, Oxford Monographs on Labour Law, 2019.

Annie Delaney, Rosaria Burcielli, Jane Tate and Shelley Marshall, Homeworking Women: informal workers recognition, representation and rights, Greenleaf/Routledge, 2018.

Marshall S. & Fenwick, C. (eds.), Labour Regulation and Development, Edward Elgar/ILO, 2016.

 

Journal articles (refereed)

Sara Tödt, Carla Chan Unger, Ema Moolchand & Shelley Marshall (2022) Socio-ecological value chain resilience and cleaning workers, Labour and Industry, DOI: 10.1080/10301763.2022.2158435.

Shelley Marshall, Kate Taylor, Sara Tödt, Gendered Distributive Injustice in Production Networks: Implications for the Regulation of Precarious Work, Industrial Law Journal, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1093/indlaw/dwab039 (Ranked ABDC: A; Scimago: Q2).

Luo, Y., Marshall, S., Cuthbert, D. (2022). The Human Rights Implications of Not-for-Profit Surrogacy Organizations in Cross-Border Commercial Surrogacy: An Australian Case Study Business and Human Rights Journal, 7, 163 – 167 (Scimago Q1, ABDC: C).

Marshall S, Taylor K, Connor T, Haines F, Tödt S. Will Business and Human Rights regulation help Rajasthan’s bonded labourers who mine sandstone? Journal of Industrial Relations. 2022; 64(2):248-271. doi:10.1177/00221856211052073 (Ranked ABDC: A; Scimago: 1).

Olivia Dean and Shelley Marshall, ‘A Race to the Middle of the Pack: An Analysis of Slavery and Human Trafficking Statements Submitted by Australian Banks under the UK Modern Slavery Act’, (2020) Australian Journal of Human Rights, https://doi.org/10.1080/1323238X.2020.1712515 (Ranked ERA 2010: A, Scimago: 2; ABDC not ranked).

Shelley Marshall, A comparison of four experiments in extending labour regulation to non-standard and informal workers, Special Issue on Informal Work (2018) 34 (3) International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations (Ranked ABDC: B; ERA 2010: B; Scimago: 2).

Ingrid Landau and Shelley Marshall, Should Australia be embracing the Modern Slavery Model of regulation? (2018)  46 Federal Law Review 313-339, https://flr.law.anu.edu.au/flr/article/should-australia-be-embracing-modern-slavery-model-regulation (Ranked ABDC: A*; ERA 2010: A*).

Shelley Marshall, Using mixed methods to study labour market institutions: The case of Better Factories Cambodia, (2018) 27 (4) Social & Legal Studies 475–492, https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663917749288 (Ranked ERA 2010: A; ABDC and Scimago not ranked).

Sarah Rennie, Tim Connor, Annie Delaney, and Shelley Marshall, Orchestration from below?  Trade Unions in the Global South, Transnational business and efforts to Orchestrate Continuous Improvements in Non-State Regulatory Initiatives, (2017) 40(3) University of New South Wales Law Journal 1275, (Ranked ERA 2010: A*; ABDC and Scimago: Not Ranked) (1867 words).  Marshall, S., How Does Institutional Change Occur? Two Strategies for Reforming the Scope of Labour Law, (2014) 43(3) Industrial Law Journal, 286.

Anderson, K., Marshall, S., Mitchell, R. & Ramsay, I., Union Shareholder Activism in the Context of Declining Labour Law Protection: Four Australian Case Studies (2007) 15 Corporate Governance: An International Review 45.

Marshall, S. & Mitchell, R., Enterprise Bargaining, Managerial Prerogative and the Protection of Workers' Rights: An Argument on the Role of Law and Regulatory Strategy in Australia under the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Cth) (2006) 22(3) International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations, 299.

 

book chapters

Shelley Marshall, Labour Law and Development, in Oxford Handbook of the Law of Work, Guy Davidov, Brian Langille and Gillian Lester eds, Oxford University Press, accepted and forthcoming.

Shelley Marshall, Kate Macdonald and Tim Connor, Corporate social responsibility and voluntary market driven mechanisms, in Madelaine Moore, Marcel van der Linden, Christoph Scherrer (eds), The Elgar Companion to Decent Work and the Sustainable Development Goals, Edward Elgar, accepted and forthcoming.

Shelley Marshall and Justine Nolan, The promise of sectoral human rights due diligence, in Claire Methven, O’Brien and Larry Catá Backer eds, New Legal Norms on Human Rights Due Diligence, Routledge, accepted and forthcoming, https://www.thecpe.org/projects/research-projects/volume-1-new-legal-norms-on-human-rights-due-diligence-larry-cata-backer-and-claire-methven-obrien-eds/.

Ema Moolchand and Shelley Marshall, Participatory action research methods for labour law research and reform, in Handbook on Research Methods in Labour Law, Sean Cooney and Alysia Blackham eds, in the Methods in Law Series, edited by Jan Smits and Nuno Garoupa, Edward Elgar, accepted and forthcoming.

Esmira Hackenberg, Olivia Dean and Shelley Marshall, Human Rights Due Diligence – a global perspective, in A Guide to Human Rights Due Diligence, American Bar Association Publication, accepted and forthcoming.

Olivia Dean and Shelley Marshall, Business and Human Rights Law in Australia, in Contemporary Perspectives on Human Rights Law in Australia, Edition 2, eds Paula Gerber, Melissa Castan, Thomson Reuters, Sydney, 2022.

Shelley Marshall and Ian Ramsay, Corporate Purpose: Legal Interpretations and Empirical Evidence, Chapter 7, The Oxford Handbook of the Corporation, Thomas Clarke, Justin O'Brien, and Charles O'Kelley eds. Oxford University Press, UK, 2019.

Shelley Marshall and Delphine Weil-Accardo, The future of the ILO: a renewed purpose in promoting a global living wage in Understanding Globalisation, Labour and Development in India, Shyam Sundar ed., Palgrave, 2019.

Simon Deakin, Shelley Marshall and Sanjay Pinto, Labour Laws, Informality, and Development: Comparing India and China, in Re-Imagining Labour Law for Development: Informal Work in the Global North and South, Diamond Ashiagbor ed., Hart Publishing, United Kingdom, 2019, isbn: 9781509913152, https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/re-imagining-labour-law-for-development-9781509913152

Marshall, S., Using a Historical Institutionalist Approach to Assess the Cambodian Better Factories Project, in The Evolving Project of Labour Law, Howe, J. & Ingrid Landau, I. (eds.) Federation Press, (accepted for publication).

Marshall S. & Fenwick, C.,, Labour Law and Development: Characteristics and Challenges, in Labour Regulation and Development, Marshall S. & Fenwick, C. (eds.), Edward Elgar/ILO, 2016.

 Marshall, S., Revitalising Labour Market Regulation for the Economic South: New Forms and Tools, in Labour Regulation and Development, Marshall S. & Fenwick, C. (eds.), Edward Elgar/ILO, 2016..

Marshall, S., ‘Australian Textile Clothing and Footwear Supply Chain Regulation’, in Legal Protection of Workers’ Human Rights: Regulatory Change and Challenge, Fenwick, C. & Novitz, T. (eds.), Hart, 2010, pp.555-584..

Marshall, S., ‘An Exploration of Control in the Context of Vertical Disintegration, and Regulatory Responses’, in Labour Law and Labour Market Regulation: Essays in the Construction, Constitution, and Regulation of Labour Markets and Work Relationships, Arup, C. et al. (ed.), Federation Press, 2006, pp.542-560.

 

monographs/research reports/other

Marshall, Hila Shamir, Anjali Sharma and Chinmayi Naik, Key Findings on the Transferability of Mathadi Boards, February 2023 in English and Marathi.

Freya Dinshaw, Professor Justine Nolan, Christina Hill, Amy Sinclair, Shelley Marshall, Fiona McGaughey, Martijn Boersma, Vikram Bhakoo, Jasper Goss, Peter Keegan, Broken Promises: Two years of corporate reporting under Australia’s Modern Slavery Act, November 2022, https://www.hrlc.org.au/reports/broken-promises.

Carla Chan Unger, Ema Moolchand and Shelley Marshall, Evaluating the Quality of Modern Slavery Reporting in the Australian University Sector July 2022, RMIT Business and Human Rights Centre: https://www.rmit.edu.au/content/dam/rmit/au/en/research/networks-centres-groups/bhright/evaluation-modern-slavery-report.pdf

Shelley Marshall and Jeenat Jabbar Evaluating University Efforts to Combat Modern Slavery and Labour Abuses in Supply Chains, July 2022, RMIT Business and Human Rights Centre: https://www.rmit.edu.au/content/dam/rmit/au/en/research/networks-centres-groups/bhright/evaluating-university-efforts-to-combat-modern-slavery-and-labour-abuses-in-supply-chains.pdf

Marshall, S. and Mcdonald, F. (2021). REPORT ON VULNERABLE WORKERS IN VICTORIA In: RMIT Business and Human Rights Centre Melbourne, Australia

Marshall, S. (2021). First Peoples and Land Justice Issues in Australia: Addressing Deficits in Corporate Accountability  RMIT Business and Human Rights Centre Melbourne, Australia

Simon Deakin, Shelley Marshall and Sanjay Pinto, Labour Laws, Informality and Development: Comparing India and China, University of Cambridge Working Paper No. 518, WP 518 March 2020, ISSN 2632 -9611, 2020.

Ingrid Landau, Dr Shelley Marshall and Dr Annie Delaney, Leveraging Technology to Improve Working Conditions in Global Supply Chains: Hype or Help? AIRAANZ Conference, February 2019, RMIT University, 2019, http://corporateaccountabilityresearch.net/leveraging-technologies.Fenwick, C., Howe, J., Marshall, S. & Landau, I., Labour and Labour Related Laws in Small and Micro Enterprises: Innovative Regulatory Responses, SEED Working Paper 81, International Labour Organisation, Geneva, 2008, 159 pp. [download this article]

Bertone, S., Marshall, S., Zuhair, S., Babacan, H. & Fenwick, C., WorkChoices The Victorian Experience, JobWatch Inc, Melbourne, 2007, 57pp.