英文摘要 |
The author discusses capital-labor relations within Taiwanese businesses operating in Malaysia. Both the transnational relocation of capital and the employment of workers with multi-ethnic backgrounds are new experiences for Taiwanese business operators. Complexities associated with the current business environment were not anticipated by Taiwanese businessmen interested in making overseas investments in the 1980s. However, most Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) governments worked hard to attract foreign capital, going so far as to encourage labor importation. As a result, Taiwanese firms in Malaysia rely heavily on Malaysian Chinese managers for their local expertise, but employ foreign workers from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan and India for production. Indigenous Malays are low on the list of preferred workers, and therefore have to accept factory positions in which they can be easily replaced. This unusual capital-tabor relation is explained in terms of workplace labor regime theory-specifically, that labor control mechanisms were used by Taiwanese firms to create a profitable labor regime in Malaysia. To survive and expand, the Taiwanese entrepreneurs exploited conflicts in social ties among multi-ethnic workers. The argument is made that ethnic division according to factory labor processes is central to this tabor regime. |