New actors in employment relations

The growing inadequacy of the traditional institutional actors in defending workers’ rights has created both the space and the need for ‘new’ actors (international coalitions, grassroots organizations and activists, etc.). Some of the actors are not necessarily new but are playing a stronger or taking on new role in (re)shaping employment relations a tthe workplace level and beyond; in some contexts, these actors interact and permeate each other’s sites and spatial boundaries in recognition of and to complement each other’s resource/capacity constraints. Empirical evidence suggests there is indeed increasing scope for the emergence of new actors, the presence of which is generally, though not always, beneficial to those whom they seek to organize and represent, against a universal trend of deteriorating employment security and workforce well-being.