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.
Wednesday, 5 October 2016
Wednesday, 28 September 2016
Standing Up For Education!
On
Tuesday, 20 September, Standing Up For
Education, the latest publication by Spokesman Books, was launched in the Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham.
It provides an excellent compilation of insights from different perspectives
including students, teachers, trade unionists and parents into the devastating processes of
destruction of primary and secondary education. Emphasising the situation in
Nottingham, the volume provides a snapshot into processes affecting also other
local communities across the UK. In this blog post, I will report on the
contributions by four of the authors, who were present at the book launch.
Monday, 12 September 2016
Towards Labour Centred Development
In
2014, Ben Selwyn published the book The Global Development Crisis (Polity, 2014), in which he critically
engages with market-led and state-led developmental models alike. Importantly,
he puts forward the novel concept of labour centred development. In this blog
post, I will discuss the main contributions of this remarkable book and explore
further the possibilities of labour centred development.
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.
Sunday, 21 August 2016
Fighting for the heart and soul of Labour!
Photo by Jason |
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
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