Jon C. Messenger - Offshoring and Working Conditions in Remote Work

The International Labour Organization was founded in 1919 to promote social justice and, thereby, to contribute to universal and lasting peace. Its tripartite structure is unique among agencies affiliated to the United Nations; the ILOs Governing Body includes representatives of government, and of employers and workers organizations. These three constituencies are active participants in regional and other meetings sponsored by the ILO, as well as in the International Labour Conference a world forum which meets annually to discuss social and labour questions.

Over the years the ILO has issued for adoption by member States a widely respected code of international labour Conventions and Recommendations on freedom of association, employment, social policy, conditions of work, social security, industrial relations and labour administration, among others.

The ILO provides expert advice and technical assistance to member States through a network of offices and multidisciplinary teams in over 40 countries. This assistance takes the form of labour rights and industrial relations counselling, employment promotion, training in small business development, project management, advice on social security, workplace safety and working conditions, the compiling and dissemination of labour statistics, and workers education.

Other recent publications by ILO and Palgrave Macmillan:

BLUNTING NEOLIBERALISM: TRIPARTISM AND ECONOMIC REFORMS IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD (edited by Lydia Fraile)

BUILDING DECENT SOCIETIES: RETHINKING THE ROLE OF SOCIAL SECURITY IN DEVELOPMENT (edited by Peter Townsend)

INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LABOUR LAW (by Arturo Bronstein) IN DEFENCE OF LABOUR MARKET INSTITUTIONS: CULTIVATING JUSTICE IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD (edited by Janine Berg and David Kucera)

MICROFINANCE AND PUBLIC POLICY: OUTREACH, PERFORMANCE AND EFFICIENCY (edited by Bernd Balkenhol)

GLOBALIZATION, EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES (edited by Eddy Lee and Marco Vivarelli)

UNDERSTANDING GLOBALIZATION, EMPLOYMENT AND POVERTY REDUCTION (edited by Eddy Lee and Marco Vivarelli)

Edited by

Jon C. Messenger

Senior Research Officer, International Labour Office

and

Naj Ghosheh

Research Officer, International Labour Office

International Labour Organization 2010

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First published 2010 by
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Changes in the nature of work that have been sweeping the globe offer both new opportunities and new challenges and risks for countries, employers, workers and governments. Just as the temporal patterns of paid work have been diversifying, so too have its spatial patterns. The globalization of markets, allied with dramatic advances in information and telecommunications technologies (ICTs) such as broad-banding, now make it increasingly possible to disaggregate a whole range of services into multiple, successive upstreamdownstream stages. The rise of ICTs during the last decade has made it possible for businesses to implement a broad transformation in the geographic distribution of a wide variety of work activities and functions across the world, and, for the first time, to locate the processing of services not requiring direct physical customer interface at a distance from their consumption. Entire services, functions and tasks can now be distributed and carried out concurrently or sequentially in separate locations in different countries where the requisite skills and expertise are available, either through the companys own subsidiaries or purchased from independent (third-party) service providers. These business services can then be delivered electronically from remote locations, where they are processed through the client company or by the third-party service provider and sent directly to the ultimate consumer.

This global sourcing phenomenon can broadly be defined in terms of two components: (1) remote working and (2) the use of ICTs as the essential enabler. Information technology-enabled services (ITES), whether intermediate or entire service processes, can now be sourced remotely from a wide range of locations around the world for delivery to corporate clients or consumers in other parts of the world. This definition not only covers offshoring and outsourcing but also extends to the entire range of choices for sourcing services on a global basis, whether internally or from independent third-party service providers. This trend includes the relocation of service work from higher-cost developed countries to lower-cost developing ones.