South Korea's automotive labour regime, Hyundai Motors’ global production network and trade‐based integration with the European Union

This article explores the interrelationship between global production networks(GPNs) and free trade agreements (FTAs) in the South Korean auto industry and its employment relations. It focuses on the production network of the Hyundai Motor Group (HMG) — the third biggest automobile manufacturer in the world — and the FTA between the EU and South Korea. This was the first of the EU’s ‘new generation’ FTAs, which among other things contained provisions designed to protect and promote labour standards. The article’s argument is twofold. First, that HMG’s production network and Korea’s political economy (of which HMG is a crucial part) limited the possibilities for the FTA’s labour provisions to take effect. Second, that the commercial provisions in this same FTA simultaneously eroded HMG’s domestic market and corporate profitability, leading to adverse consequences for auto workers in the more insecure and low-paid jobs. In making this argument, the article advances a multiscalar conceptualization of the labour regime as an analytical intermediary between GPNs and FTAs. It also provides one of the first empirical studies of the EU–South Korea FTA in terms of employment relations, drawing on 105 interviews with trade unions, employer associations, automobile companies and state officials across both parties

Design and implementation of high-power- factor dimmable fluorescent lamp ballast circuit

Lighting is an essential element of home and work environment that affects lives of people in many different ways. In Sri Lanka, people spend significant amount of their electric hills on lighting. As one of the widely used lighting solutions hath in industrial and household applications, improving the quality and reliability of fluorescent lamps are certainly of great importance Enabling of dimming with the improvement of the power factor not only makes the fluorescein lamps more economical and reliable, it also adds the benefit of more user satisfaction over existing designs The proposed implementation of the design is commercially viable since it has man) commercial benefits over similar products available in the marker Although die initial installation costs of the product is quite high compared to conventional ballast, the payback time is considerably less especially when die product is used with multiple lamps at the same tim