Modern strategies of labour sourcing of transnational corporations and employment exclusion

Abstract

At the current stage MNC integrate a large proportion of the world’s labour resources into value chains and exert a growing influence on labour mobility within the global economic sphere. This highlights the relevance of theoretical and applied research into MNCs’ labour sourcing strategies and their role in ensuring that workers from different countries have access to decent working conditions and remuneration.

Current theoretical and applied research into the activities of MNCs overlooks an analysis of the exclusionary constraints on global employment, the formation of which is directly linked to MNClabour sourcing. The aim of this article is to reveal the interconnection between MNC labour sourcing and employment exclusion in the global labour market, based on the identification and comparative analysis of its main types and their contemporary transformations.

Labour sourcing is a system for supplying global value chains with a workforce that meets the quantitative, qualitative, professional and socio-cultural criteria and requirements of MNC and is aimed at minimising personnel costs.

In accordance with the characteristics of modern MNC sourcing models, the main types of labour resource provision for MNCs are direct and reverse internal sourcing – onshore and reshoring of the workforce; remote and close (neighbouring, friendly) global labour sourcing – offshoring and nearshoring of labour resources. At present, MNCs rely on ‘dual sourcing’, utilising the advantages of both global and internal sourcing.

All forms of labour sourcing are characterised by long-term structural risks to global employment and act as factors contributing to its exclusion, as they help to create barriers and restrictions on access for workers from host and home countries to jobs within MNC subsidiaries. Ethical labour sourcing by MNCs helps to overcome exclusion and foster inclusive employment.