Dr Paul Smit from the Department of Human Resource Management visited the Republic of Armenia from 7 to 11 April 2016 on invitation of Dr Ruben Elamiryan of the Public Administration Academy of Armenia.
Dr Smit delivered a paper the 34th International Labour Process Conference in Berlin, Germany, from 4 to 6 April 2016, after which he presented a lecture to the master's degree students of the Public Administration Academy of Armenia on 8 April. His lecture, entitled 'The impact of globalisation and transnationalism on labour', was very well received and led to a lively question and answer session after the lecture.
During this lecture, Dr Smit argued that business and employers move over national borders due to economic globalisation and that this has altered the balance of power between employers/capital and employees to the disadvantage of labour.
'If employers can circulate and operate freely across national borders by means of multi-national companies, trade unions can no longer just operate or function within their own national jurisdiction. There must be a new collective interest to create a transnational role for trade unions,' he said.
The students of the Academy was especially interested in the role of the trade union movement in South Africa.
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