The Routledge Companion to Employment Relations

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Globalisation and workProcesses, practices and consequences

Stephen Frenkel^*

Introduction

Globalisation continued to transform societies between 2000 and 2015, the period with which we are concerned. However, anti-globalisation forces have been growing, encouraged by the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis, the failure of the Doha round of trade negotiations in 2008, and the 2008–2009 global financial crisis (GFC). Project Washington Consensus, with its emphasis on market deregulation, privatisation and fiscal restraint, has been a major casualty, particularly in the light of China’s sustained growth, which demonstrated the effectiveness of a state-guided market strategy. Meanwhile, sluggish economic growth and rising unemployment in developed ...