Labour disputes in Southeast Asia
Summary
This project examines the ‘Formal and Informal Regulation of Collective Labour Disputes in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam’. It is funded by a three-year ARC Discovery Grant.
Researchers
- Professor Carolyn Sutherland
- Professor Richard Mitchell
- Dr Petra Mahy
- Ingrid Landau
- Professor John Howe (University of Melbourne School of Government)
- Dr Wayne Palmer
- Trang Thi Kieu TRAN (PhD candidate)
- Amanda Darshini Selvarajah (Research Assistant)
Project Background and Aims
This project is funded by a three-year Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (2019-2021) (#DP190100821).
The project will investigate the formal and informal mechanisms of collective labour dispute resolution in three Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. The project is based on the important observation that formal (state-based) labour laws and institutions often play only a limited role in these countries. That is to say, Southeast Asian legal systems, and state-based labour law and industrial relations systems more specifically, are generally characterised by limited effectiveness, while non-state regulation and the activities of unofficial actors may complement, substitute or conflict with the law.
The project will address three sets of questions regarding collective dispute resolution in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam:
- How are collective labour disputes defined and regulated under the formal legal systems of each country?
- How effectively do these systems operate in practice and what are the major conditions contributing to the relative success or failure of such systems?
- What role is played by informal institutions and actors in dispute resolution and settlement in each country; how does such informal regulation interact with formal labour law; and what are the effects of such alternative mechanisms in practice?
Methodology
This project will use a combination of doctrinal legal analysis and empirical qualitative research methods. The project is also comparative and examines three country contexts in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, and will focus on the manufacturing sector in each country. The project will involve a systematic and sustained study of the laws and formal institutions that regulate collective labour disputes in conjunction with empirical interview-based research on actual dispute resolution and the identification of informal norms and processes also used by actors and institutions (i.e., how law interacts with other forms of regulation or normative ordering).
Publications Related to this Project
- Petra Mahy (2022), ‘Indonesia’s Omnibus Law on Job Creation: Legal Hierarchy and Responses to Judicial Review in the Labour Cluster of Amendments,’ Asian Journal of Comparative Law, 17(1)
- Petra Mahy (2021) 'Indonesia's Omnibus Law on Job Creation: Reducing Labour Protections in a Time of COVID-19', Labour Equality and Human Rights (LEAH) Research Group, Working Paper no. 23, Monash University.
- Petra Mahy (2020) 'COVID-19 and Labour Law: Indonesia', Italian Labour Law E-Journal, v. 13(1S)
- Petra Mahy, Richard Mitchell, John Howe and Maria Azzurra Tranfaglia, (2019) ‘What is Actually Regulating Work? A Study of Restaurants in Australia and Indonesia’ in Re-Imagining Labour Law for Development: Informal Work in the Global North and South, edited by Diamond Ashiagbor (Hart Publishing).
- Ingrid Landau and Fang Lee Cooke (2018) ‘Employment Regulation and Industrial Relations in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam’ in Routledge Handbook of Human Resource Management in Asia, edited by Fang Lee Cooke and Sunghoon Kim (Routledge).
- Petra Mahy, Richard Mitchell, Sean Cooney and John Howe (2017) The Plural Regulation of Work: A Pilot Study of Restaurant Workers in Yogyakarta Indonesia(Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law, University of Melbourne).
- Petra Mahy (2016) ‘The Functional Approach in Comparative Socio-Legal Research: Reflections Based on a Study of Plural Work Regulation in Australia and Indonesia’, International Journal of Law in Context 12(4): 47-67.
- Ingrid Landau, Petra Mahy and Richard Mitchell (2015) ‘The Regulation of Non-Standard Forms of Employment in India, Indonesia and Viet Nam’ (ILO INWORK Working Paper no. 63).