Employability is a powerful and increasingly dominant word within
the universities. Nottingham University is proud to be “ranked in the world top 100 Universities for employability”. This
is because students are now the main funder of universities. And
employability provides the answer to why the £9.250 tuition fees per year are
worth it – even if one needs to in-debt oneself for this investment.
Consequently, employability services
are not only spreading like wildfire but also academic staff is increasingly
pressurised to demonstrate in what ways their course facilitates students'
employability. For these employability educators the Precarious Workers
Brigade just published a book
called “Training for Exploitation? Politicising
Employability and Reclaiming Education” (a free pdf is available online). The book offers a
“critical resource pack to assist teachers and students in deconstructing dominant narratives around work, employability
and careers, and explores alternative ways of engaging with work and the
economy”. In this guest post Vera
Weghmann introduces the book by explaining what employability is and why it
needs to be politicised.
Showing posts with label exploitation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exploitation. Show all posts
Thursday, 9 February 2017
Sunday, 13 November 2016
Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century
Despite the ongoing ramifications of the
global economic crisis of 2007/2008, capitalism continues to reap super
profits. In his fascinating book Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century:
Globalization, Super-Exploitation and Capitalism’s Final Crisis (Monthly Review
Press, 2016) John Smith unravels the underlying dynamics of global capitalism. By
tracing the production of the T-shirt, the cup
of coffee, and the iPhone, he demonstrates how these generate the transfer of
enormous surplus value from countries in the Global South to transnational
corporations in the North. In this blog post, I will outline several of
the key contributions of this book and offer a number of critical reflections.
Monday, 29 August 2016
Chinese labour in the global economy: capitalist exploitation and strategies of resistance.
China is generally regarded as the new economic
powerhouse in the global political economy. Some even talk of an emerging
power, which may in time replace the US as the global economy’s hegemon. And
yet, there is a dark underside to this ‘miracle’ in the form of workers’ long
hours, low pay and lack of welfare benefits. Increasing levels of inequality
have gone hand in hand with widespread working conditions characterised by
super-exploitation. Nevertheless, Chinese workers have not simply accepted
these conditions of exploitation. They have started to fight back. In a new
special issue of the journal Globalizations, co-edited by Chun-Yi Lee
and myself, the contributors have analysed these various forms of resistance by
Chinese workers and the way they are organised. In this blog post, I will
provide a brief overview of the contents of this special issue.
Tuesday, 16 August 2016
Super-exploitation and resistance: different forms of workers protests in China.
China is
frequently considered to be an example of successful developmental catch-up.
And yet, the country’s impressive growth rates are to a large extent based on
the super-exploitation of its workforce expressed in long working hours, low
wages, and a general lack of basic welfare benefits such as medical insurance
and work-injury insurance (Chan
and Selden, 2014, p. 606). In our recently published
article ‘Exploitation and resistance: a comparative analysis of the Chinese
cheap labour electronics and high-value added IT sectors’, published in the journal Globalizations and freely accessible online,
Chun-Yi Lee and I compare the electronics sector in the area of Shenzhen, based
on cheap labour assembling goods for export, with the IT
sector in the area of Shanghai, relying
on a more skilled workforce manufacturing high-value added goods. It is asked in what way these rather different
locations within the global political economy condition the form and contents
of resistance in these two sectors.
Saturday, 9 July 2016
The Hidden Cost of Everyday Low Prices
Monday, 4 July 2016
Neoliberalism’s Exploitation of Women Workers: the true price of our clothing.
Neoliberalism
has faced intense scrutiny over the years from Trade Unionists and Marxists
alike for its exploitation of workers and insistence of an economic ‘trickle
down’ effect that has yet to materialise. When you look closer, however,
another troubling aspect of this industry emerges. Again and again, it seems to
be women who are left behind by this system. In many countries in the global
South, women are drawn into employment in the lowest paid and most undervalued
work in the global economy at the end of Global Commodity Chains in the
manufacturing, fresh produce and garment industries. In this guest post, Zoe Kemp analyses the plight of female
workers in the Bangladeshi textile sector.
Monday, 27 June 2016
What a victory for the ‘internationalist’ pro-Brexit left!
All
European citizens have just been stripped of their European citizenship rights
in Northern Ireland and Britain. Hence, no right to vote in local
elections, no European social rights (e.g. no European Health Insurance Card), and
no right to be treated equally anymore. What a ‘success’ for the
‘internationalist’ pro-Brexit left of Britain and Ireland! As a result,
European migration to the UK will be reduced significantly. But note, I mean
student migration not labour migration. In this guest post, Roland Erne
assesses some of the implications of Brexit for EU nationals working in the UK.
Thursday, 12 November 2015
Why has the European labor movement largely failed to politicize the EU’s new economic governance regime?
The
creation of the new European governance regime requires an explanation. In
contrast to the European
Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), the EU’s business and political leaders
rejected until very recently the need for any coordination in the field of
industrial relations at EU level (Leonard et al., 2007);
arguably because self-regulating market forces would automatically lead to the
desired downward adjustment in wages and workers’ rights across Europe. In November 2011, however, the European
Parliament and the Council adopted the so-called Six-Pack of six EU laws on
European economic governance. This new European governance regime empowers the
European Commission to give detailed policy prescriptions to national
governments and to sanction member states. In this post, Roland Erne introduces
his recorded lecture explaining why the European labor movement largely failed
to politicize the EU’s new regime of economic governance.
Monday, 31 August 2015
Labour and Transnational Action in Times of Crisis
From
August 2013 to June 2014, the trasnational labour project group came together
in Oslo to work on the project Globalization
and the possibility of transnational actors: the case of trade unions. One of the key publications resulting from
the project, the edited volume Labour and Transnational Action in Times of Crisis, has just been
published by Rowman & Littlefield International. In this post, I want to
draw out briefly the two main common themes underlying the various
contributions as well as highlight a number of key findings.
Friday, 17 July 2015
Greece, the Eurozone crisis and the end of European solidarity?
Image by Wikimedia Commons |
There is no sign
of European solidarity in this deal. It is a punishment handed down to Greece
for daring to say no to austerity. The EU was established on the principles of
cooperation and mutual support – and many are now wondering what has happened
to those aspirations. But solidarity fell by the wayside some time ago in
Europe. This is just the most recent example of how European integration today
is about profit maximisation for capital – not about cooperation between
European people.
Tuesday, 23 June 2015
Class struggle in times of crisis: conceptualising agency of resistance.
Saturday, 2 May 2015
Organising the Unorganisable? Voices from the Bottom Up.
As
a result of neo-liberal restructuring, the
informalisation of work in the global economy has been intensified. While precarious forms of labour
have always been predominant in the Global South, they have increasingly also
spread into the Global North. As a result, trade unions are under pressure, as
it is much more difficult to organise a workforce in temporary, vulnerable and
constantly changing employment relations. And yet, there are also examples of
successful organising campaigns by precarious workers. In this blog post, I
will discuss some of the key themes, which were discussed at the excellent
workshop Organising the Unorganisable, brought together by Maurizio Atzeni and held at Loughborough University on 23 and 24 April 2014.
Friday, 13 March 2015
United Voices of the World: The Struggle for Justice for Cleaners.
While London is one of the most glamorous and
expensive cities in the world, the workers who keep the British capital clean
are often overlooked and disregarded. They are paid so lowly that they can often
barely survive. And yet, cleaners are fighting back. In a seminar organised by
the Centre for the Study of
Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) at Nottingham University, Albero, Percy
and Petros from the independent union United Voices of the
World reported from their successful struggles to ensure the payment of
the living wage at the Barbican as well as Sotheby's Auction house in London.
In this post, I will report on some of the key aspects of their struggles.
Tuesday, 23 December 2014
We make our own history – A call to action!
‘As we become political subjects on our
own behalf, recognise ourselves in each other and see the connections between
our different movements, we come closer to being able not only to articulate
the hope of “another world”, but also to bring it about’ (P.209). With these
words, Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilsen conclude their latest book We make our own history: Marxism and Social
Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism (Pluto Press, 2014). In this
blog post, I will provide a critical appraisal of this important book.
Thursday, 5 June 2014
Analysing exploitation and resistance: the centrality of class struggle.
Thursday, 24 April 2014
Marxism, Social Movements and resistance to capitalist exploitation!
In the Theses On Feuerbach, Marx famously wrote that ‘the philosophers
have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it’ (Marx
1845). In their edited volume Marxism and Social
Movements, Colin Barker, Laurence Cox, John Krinsky and Alf Gunvald
Nilsen have lived up to this demand in that the
contributions are directly informed by, and related to, concrete struggles. The
collection of essays succeeds at not only assisting us in understanding, in
interpreting the role of social movements in current struggles. It also helps
us to reflect on strategies of resistance in order to improve them.
Sunday, 23 February 2014
The ‘wonderful freedom’ of neo-liberalism!
We are living in truly wonderful times.
Finally, we can choose freely our personal lifestyles without having to fear
being excluded from general society. Gender, different ethnic backgrounds, different
identities no longer matter in our neo-liberal society. Everybody has the
opportunity through the quality of his/her work to achieve their full potential
and creative capacity. We can be homosexual or heterosexual, this does no
longer matter in the public sphere. Same sex marriages are increasingly a
standard possibility, same sex couples can have children together. Life is full
of choices, which schools do we send our children to, state, religious or
private, whatever choice we make, it is possible. In which hospital do I want
to be treated? Everything is about consumer choice. Are we not living in truly
wonderful times? And yet, while the possibility of these different lifestyles is
clearly a positive step forward, at closer sight more sinister dynamics come to
the fore.
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