Globalisation and Labour Market Transformation: Implications for Women's Human Resource Development in Jamaica

• Author: Barbara Bailey and Leith L. Dunn
• Pages: 86-102

86 HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

Globalisation and Labour Market

Transformation: Implications

for Women’s Human

Resource Development in Jamaica

Globalisation is now a dominant force shaping a new era of interaction

and integration among nations, economies and peoples and increasing

contacts between people across national boundaries in economy, in technology,

in culture and in governance (UNDP, 1999). Grant-Wisdom (1995) describes

globalisation as a process marked by the intensification of political, economic

and social interconnectedness between states and people, thus blurring

geographical boundaries. The factors driving this global integration are

identified as trade expansion, technological change and the internationalisation

of production, all of which have created shifts from an emphasis on mass

production and agriculture to high value production requiring specialised

knowledge and skills (Mehra and Gammage, 1999).

Associated with these changes has been the creation of a New International

Division of Labour (NIDL) in which global factories take advantage of the

decentralisation of production and marketing. The commodity chain for a

single product, including raw materials, production, export and marketing is

therefore increasingly spread across several countries rather than concentrated

in one country. Countries participate in this chain according to their

comparative advantage, e.g. cheap labour, raw materials, technological know-

how, proximity to major markets. As a result, elements in the chain such as

routine labour and assembly, styling and design strategies, data processing,

advertising and marketing and financial decision making are likely to be spread

across several countries. Global competitiveness in providing all of these

functions has resulted in mergers, alliances and acquisitions becoming a

survival strategy for groups of companies. The resulting matrix of interrelations

also crosses several borders.

In this last decade, changes in technology and telecommunications have

also helped to create new products, new production techniques and new

opportunities for employment. The new technologies have also transformed

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87

CARIBBEAN HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

international financial markets to create a “24-hour marketplace” and have

enabled banks, stock markets and other financial institutions in remote parts

of the global village to communicate instantaneously and transact business,

thereby eliminating distance as an impediment to trade. The result is that

international financial flows have outpaced trade in goods. At the same time,

changes in transport technology have also improved, shortening travel distances

between countries and transforming the global trading environment.

As a result, there have been significant changes in global and regional

trading blocks, so that traditional alliances between Europe and its colonies,

which protected markets for goods such as bananas from the Caribbean, are

now threatened. Other trade agreements such as the North American Free

Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)

are also changing how Jamaica and other Caribbean countries trade with the

rest of the world.

This chapter will be limited to a discussion of the impact of globalisation

on labour organisation and on the flexibilisation and informalisation of work.

An analysis of the extent to which global trends are apparent in the Jamaican

labour market and the position of women in relation to these trends will be

presented. Also, implications for women’s human resource development to

ensure access to new and emerging opportunities will be explored.

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The single most important factor driving globalisation has been the

exponential growth of new information and communications technologies

(ICTs) and the ways in which these technologies have facilitated the emergence

of what is described as the “knowledge economy.” It is claimed that the use of

these technologies and the quest for global knowledge sets this period of our

history apart from all others. In the 1999 Human Development Report it is

posited that: “The fusion of computing and communications – especially

through the Internet – has broken bounds of cost, time and distance, launching

an era of global information networking” (UNDP, 1999: 57). The Report

goes on to say that knowledge is therefore the new asset and that globalisation

has set off a race to lay claim to this knowledge and to knowledge-based

growth.

These ICTs have also facilitated the creation of a global economy

characterised by a high level of competitiveness where a major emphasis has

been on introducing a number of measures aimed at cutting costs and

maximising profit in both public and private enterprises. These include

downsizing companies and replacing core workers with higher skilled or lower