With
precarious forms of work increasingly also emerging within the core of
industrialised countries in the global economy, the issue of how to organise
migrant workers has become an ever more pressing concern. In his talk at
Nottingham University on Tuesday, 17 October, Aziz Choudry reported on related
challenges, drawing on two of his recently co-edited books, Unfree
Labour? Struggles of Migrant and Immigrant Workers in Canada (Oakland,
CA: PM Press, 2016), together with Adrian Smith, and Just
Work? Migrant Workers’ Struggles Today (London: Pluto Press, 2015),
together with Mondli Hlatshwayo. In this blog post, I will draw out a couple of
key insights resulting from Choudry’s analysis of a large range of different
forms of migrant labour organising.
The Southern Initiative on Globalisation and Trade Union Rights
(SIGTUR) launched its Futures Commission in
Johannesburg, South Africa, in June 2013 with the assistance of the Chris Hani Institute and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s regional
office for Southern Africa. This Commission, a group of left-wing intellectuals
and trade union representatives, was entrusted with the task of undertaking first
steps towards developing concrete alternatives to neo-liberal globalisation.
As a first step, the Futures Commission has
now published the booklet Challenging Corporate Capital: Creating an Alternative to Neo-liberalism. It includes
proposals for labour and tax justice, a fair trade regime, a democracy-driven,
public sector transformation as well as a response to the climate crisis. In
this blog post, I will provide brief overviews of the contributions as well as
links to the larger versions of the papers, freely available on the website of
the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Johannesburg/South Africa.
Inequality
in Britain is on the rise. Deteriorating employment conditions and low wages
are one of the main reasons. In this post, I will report on the LivingWage/Anti-casualisation campaign at Nottingham University, demanding a
living wage and secure employment for all employees at the university. The campaign group consists of a broad
alliance of the three trade unions on campus, Unison, Unite and UCU, together
with Nottingham Citizens as well as the Labour Students society, UoN Feminists,
Socialist Students, the Young Greens, the Left Society and the Palestinian
Society.
