Article Analysis Essay on the Impact of Employment of Foreign Workers

Introduction

The article under review in this paper is entitled 'The impact of employment of foreign workers: Local employability and Trade Union roles in Malaysia' and is authored by Mohamed and Yacob. It was published in 2012 in the International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences. The general topic of this article is the employment of foreign workers in relation to economic development. According to Mohamed and Yacob (2012), although foreign workers contribute significantly to Malaysia's economic development especially by lessening labor shortage, their presence is disadvantageous in that they hinder the effectiveness of trade union movements' roles and reduce the employment opportunities for the locals.

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After the introduction, the authors of the article go on to the literature review. In this section, they divide the paper into subsections so as to deal with each issue at a time. They begin by defining a foreign worker, then a trade union and a local worker. They then analyze the impact of foreign workers on local employability and trade union activities. This approach is straightforward and brings out the appropriate argument based on the research topic. However, the resources used are a bit inadequate. The authors should have added more especially concerning trade union roles. Trade unions are the backbone of worker welfare in any country, regardless of the presence of foreign workers (Crinis & Parasuraman, 2016). Therefore, the literature review should have more information on the role trade unions have played in worker welfare and, by extension, the economy Malaysia instead of dwelling too much on the challenges.

The methodology that the authors of this article used was mainly analysis-based other than quantitative research. They only picked information from secondary sources and analyzed it as opposed to going for primary data from the field. For more objective information and conclusions, primary data ought to be blended with secondary data (Walliman, 2017; Sekaran & Bougie, 2016). Nevertheless, the authors of the article under review use the information ranging from 2005 to 2011 to conclude that the locals have little or no room to join trade unions and participate in their activities since most of the industries are flooded with foreign workers who have no right to join the unions, thus further weakening them. There is a clear imbalance of the membership thus an ineffectiveness in the activities of these trade unions.

The authors argue that the presence of foreign workers in Malaysia has both merits and demerits. In view of the information they provide and the available research on the issue, I agree with their arguments. They argue that foreign workers have helped alleviate labor shortage but, at the same time, hindered the smooth running of trade unions. These sentiments are echoed by Brand (2018) who argues that the influx of expatriates in any country is the beginning of the death of trade unions since the weak and imbalanced membership has a negative impact on the activities of these trade unions. However, foreign workers help in speeding up economic growth as there is the availability of affordable labor (Ahrens et al., 2018). Therefore, the authors of this article have a strong point that can be explored further.

My suggestions to improve this research is, first, to consider the inclusion of more research articles on both the advantages and disadvantages of foreign workers so that the information does not become subjective. The authors should also consider primary research data so as to exhaust all the necessary avenues for information gathering. Finally, there are several grammatical errors in the article. The authors need to consider thoroughly proofreading the article before publishing it.

References

Ahrens, C., Oehmichen, J., & Wolff, M. (2018). Expatriates as influencers in global work arrangements: Their impact on foreign-subsidiary employees' ESOP participation. Journal of World Business, 53(4), 452-462.

Brand, L. A. (2018). Expatriates and home state political development. Mashriq&Mahjar, 5(1), 11-35.

Crinis, V., & Parasuraman, B. (2016). Employment relations and the state in Malaysia. Journal of Industrial Relations, 58(2), 215-228.

Mohamed, R. K. M. H., SPR, C. R., & Yacob, P. (2012). The impact of employment of foreign workers: Local employability and trade union roles in Malaysia. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 2(10), 530.

Sekaran, U., & Bougie, R. (2016). Research methods for business: A skill building approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Walliman, N. (2017). Research methods: The basics. Routledge.