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Trade Unions and the State in Peninsular Malaysia. By JOMO K. S. and PATRICIA TODD. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1994. xiii, 194 Pp. $39.95.
The globalization of dynamic high growth economies, like that of Malaysia, has attracted numerous studies of the various dimensions of their development-economic, social, and political. However, one issue area that has suffered neglect, despite its significance for both economic and social development, concerns labor practices and trade unionism. Although the year 1994 marked the centenary of the establishment of the first legal, independent labor organization in (what was then) British Malaya, over the past thirty years there has been a paucity of studies of labor relations, organizations, and policies in Malaysia, notwithstanding some landmark historical contributions by Charles Gamba, J. Norman Parmer, Alex Josey, and Michael Stenson, among others. This small but important book by Jomo K. S. of the University of Malaya, and Patricia Todd of the University of Western Australia, represents an ambitious and valuable effort at rectifying this deficiency.
Trade Unions and the State in Peninsular Malaysia treats labor issues in the overall context of the evolving national economy. The pages of this book cover a broad sweep of Malaysian...