Vol. 10 No. 11 (November 2000) pp. 590-591.

GLOBALISATION, HUMAN RIGHTS AND LABOUR LAW IN PACIFIC ASIA by Anthony Woodiwiss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 316 pp. Cloth $64.95.Paper $24.95.

Reviewed by Lawrence E. Rothstein, Department of Political Science and Charles T. Schmidt, Jr. Labor Research Center, University of Rhode Island.


Anthony Woodiwiss argues that the patriarchalism often thought to be central to Asian values is compatible with a human rights discourse supportive of labor rights. It will be helpful to first define some of Woodiwiss's terms. By "patriarchalism" Woodiwiss means "a familialist discourse that ... both assumes the naturalness of inequalities in the social relations between people and justifies these by reference to the respect due to a benevolent father or father-figure who exercises a 'joint right'" (p. 2). The labor rights to which he refers are freedom of association, rights to work under "'just and favourable conditions'", to form and join trade
unions, to bargain collectively and to receive a living wage (p. 9). He focuses his analysis on four Asian-Pacific countries: the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore with plentiful references to Japan and the import of the Japanese Economic System (JES).

Woodiwiss undertakes a sociology of law informed by neo-Marxist and post-structuralist theories to show that in place of individualist claims of
limitations to concentrated governmental or private power prevalent in the West (particularly the U.S. and U.K.), labor rights may be based on familialist claims to benevolent consideration from capital or government who, as powerful father-figures, must exercise their power for the good of their national "family." Since industrialization and participation in a global economy have broken down kinship relations while increasing the need for the voluntary cooperation of labor, the claims to benevolence must now be given legal enforceability and anchored in the rule of law. He argues that this is what distinguishes the Japanese case from the more recently developed Asian economies and that is why the simple import of aspects of the Japanese Economic System does not bring with it the Japanese level of respect for human rights.

In the Philippines the weakness of human and labor rights is attributed to "mendicant patriarchalism." This is characterized by pork barrel patronage and corrupt client relations both between capital and the government and between the Philippines and external actors, particularly the U. S. Although the legal system, originally based on a U.S. model, seems to protect labor rights and stresses the rule of law, frequent resorts to martial law, judicial dependence and corruption, capitulation to multi-national corporations and agricultural landlords have made workers claims to benevolence unenforceable. Woodiwiss sees this as stemming from the relative
low level of industrialization and the continued dependence on the U. S.


Next in the weakness of its recognition of labor rights is Malaysia.

Page 591 begins here

According to Woodiwiss, the cynical manipulation by government of the special legal position of Malays, the undermining of judicial independence and the government domination of the labor movement have been reluctantly accepted in exchange for higher levels of economic development. Although Malaysia is nominally democratic, it is essentially a one-party system and exhibits what Woodiwiss terms "authoritarian patriarchalism."

In Hong Kong, Woodiwiss recognizes that labor law has been informed by the British legal system's concern for immunities and rights and its emphasis
on the rule of law. The "patriarchalist individualism" he finds in Hong Kong results from the overweening power of capital that makes individualist labor and employment law a relatively poor instrument for the assertion of claims against employers. Employers have transferred their patriarchal duties to government, whether colonial or Chinese, whose dependence on capital makes it reluctant to expand or enforce workers' or trade union rights.

For Woodiwiss Singapore's "active patriarchalism" offers the best hope of enforceable benevolence. Singapore is actually delivering the
benevolence, but it is discretionary rather than based on legally enforceable claims. The one-party government dominates trade unions and the judiciary.

Unfortunately, Woodiwiss's analysis of these labor law systems adds little to existing theory or detail. Much of his data is historic and anecdotal. His theory is incoherent and contradictory or at least beyond my ability to comprehend. Levels of economic development or degrees of labor shortage can as easily explain his hierarchy of benevolence. Patriarchalism is found variously in government, in employers and in external economic or political forces, even when those forces are supposedly characterized by Western individualism. Furthermore, in talking of Western individualism, Woodiwiss concentrates on Anglo-American labor law and legal values and ignores the corporatist continental European systems, which seem to embody what he sees both as enforceable benevolence and as patriarchalism better than the Japanese or other Asian systems.

Finally, Woodiwiss avoids uncomfortable Asian cases by ignoring the socialist models and important periods of union militancy in the trade union
movements in South Korea and Japan. I would maintain, for example, that trade union docility in a patriarchalist structure is of relatively recent origin in Japan, coming with attempts to first crush and then co-opt highly militant unions that had erupted in major labor actions in the period 1964-1974.


Copyright 2000 by the author.