Global Labour Journal

Human Being, Working Body, Working Day: An Introduction to Simone Weil’s “Rationalisation”

William Tilleczek — 2024-01-31

Introduction to a translation of Simone Weil's text "Rationalisation"

Rationalisation

William Tilleczek — 2024-01-31

The text translated here as “Rationalisation” is, to my knowledge, the first English version of a presentation given by Simone Weil in February 1937 and included in her complete works under the French title “Rationalisation.”

Review of Supriya RoyChowdhury (2021) City of Shadows: Slums and Informal Work in Bangalore

Tom Barnes — 2024-01-31

Review of Neva Löw (2023) Solidarität und ihre Widersprüche. Gewerkschaften im Sommer der Migration 2015 [Solidarity and its contradictions. Trade Unions in the Summer of Migration 2015]

Jannis Eicker — 2024-01-31

Racial Capitalism and Global Labour Studies – a Missed Encounter ?

Jörg Nowak — 2024-01-31

Despite of the centrality of the topic of labour in the 1983 book by Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism, global labour studies have devoted little attention to the concept of racial capitalism that became established with Robinson’s book. Robinson’s main claim is that the first proletariat formed in the plantations in colonized countries from about the 16th century, calling into question the crucial relevance of the industrial proletariat in England (and Europe) for the emergence of the labour movement. In taking up recent debates on racial capitalism that are inspired by Robinson´s work, but which also expand and criticize it, this text proposes a more integrated theorization of race and labour. It also takes up debates about the Plantationocene as a complex dispositive which connects ecological rupture, large scale production and racialised labour.

Precarious Associational Power

Felix Syrovatka — 2024-01-31

This article examines the transformation of employers’ associations in the German metal and electrical industry from the perspective of the power resources approach. It argues that, as a result of changing economic conditions and the decline of trade union countervailing power, the institutional power resources of employers’ associations have been relativised, which in turn has led to a reassessment of employers’ associations by capital. Employers’ associations have responded by extending exclusive services to their members. Using the power resources approach, the article makes a concrete determination of the relationship between companies and employers’ associations. In doing so, the article contributes to a better understanding of the function, role and development of employers’ associations. At the same time, it contributes to the debate on the further development of the power resources approach and its extension to the analysis of employers’ power.

Pandemic Necrolabour and Essential Workers in the UK and France

Sarah Waters — 2024-01-31

Drawing on recent studies on the necropolitics of Covid-19, this paper focuses on UK and French government policies towards essential workers, examining the conditions under which workers were systematically exposed to deadly harm within these two contrasting economic models. I argue that the pandemic revealed a category of necrolabour whose labour value supersedes their right to life and who could be legitimately sacrificed in the interests of the economy. Statistical recording shows that internationally, death rates amongst low-income essential workers were disproportionately high. We will see that workers’ exposure to death was as much a consequence of state authority that compelled them to continue working, at risk to their lives, as an outcome of official negligence that left many unprotected and lacking basic rights. Without legislative changes to improve employment rights and social protection, the unnecessary deaths of socially marginalised workers in essential jobs are likely to persist in the post-pandemic economy.

Editorial: Going Against the Grain: Our Commitment to Truly Global Labour Studies

Global Labour Journal — 2024-01-31