Labour

Yearbook

Focus

Blog

    After Tempe: Preconditions For Regaining Confidence in the Railways
  • Speech by Kostas Genidounias, President of the Panhellenic Association of Train Drivers (PEPE) at the conference organised by the Nikos Poulantzas Institute entitled "Safety: Countering the Argument - From Individual Responsibility to Multifaceted Collective Safety" held on 26th of April 2023.
    How Digitalisation Is Transforming the World of Work
  • The Rosa-Luxemburg-Foundation's Madrid office, in collaboration with turba! comunicación, has published an analysis entitled "Impact of digitalisation on work" to map industrial relations and labour struggles in Europe's new digital economy.
    What Is Really Behind Delhaize's Plan?
  • Workers at Delhaize (one of Belgium's largest supermarket chains) are massively protesting against implementation of the franchise model which is expected to lead to layoffs, precariousness, and lower wages, as well as to endanger national unions and set a new franchising trend in the whole retail sector in motion.
    Care Rights: A Major Agenda For the Left
  • Jose Soeiro analyses why it is important to put care at the centre of the political debate to fight inequalities, and why making care a universal social right and collective responsibility should be the aim of a demanding democracy.
    Flying and Cancer: Underestimated Risk for Flight Attendants
  • The body of evidence linking the occupation of cabin crew to an increased risk of breast cancer is steadily growing. Now that there is a chance of it gaining recognition as an occupational disease, more and more trade unions and associations are engaging with the issue.
    Dutch Port Workers Want to Retire Healthy
  • Given that port workers work shifts, under high pressure and in arduous working conditions, many of them are totally worn out long before they reach pensionable age – and on average they die six years earlier. Port workers need to retire earlier if they are to enjoy a healthy old age.
    No Peace, No Justice
  • Finally, after two years of pandemic, the trade unions of many countries, and with them members of left parties, social movements, along with other citizens, can return to the streets on May Day.
    The Spanish Labour Reform
  • Last month, Spain’s progressive government (Socialist Party and radical left Unidas Podemos) passed a comprehensive labour law that is in complete contrast to what neoliberal orthodoxy wishes to impose on labour market interventions. Spanish Professor of Labour Law Antonio Baylos gives an overview.
    What Strategy for the Left on Working From Home?
  • Being in favour and against a shift to working from home is not a strictly oppositional binary but should rest on a coherent theory of emancipatory politics. A politics which takes into account different costs and benefits of telework faced by workers per sector, strata and workers' demands, argues Giorgos Charalambous.
    Speaking of Basic Income: Four Notions of Labour in Marx
  • My main topic concerns the theoretical questions involved here which are emanating of Friedrich Engels famous essay The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, in which he basically demonstrates how labour became the principal condition of human existence. In a simplistic...
    App Workers United. The Struggle for Rights in the Gig Economy
  • A newly released study on the current situation of on-demand workers for platforms such as Uber or Deliveroo in Europe, commissioned by the Left group in the European Parliament. The study includes an analysis of the various strategies used to combat the social model imposed on platform workers, both by platform workers and trade unions.
    Why Universal Basic Income?
  • Let me start by showing where the problem lies: right now, across the EU, there are over 14 million people unemployed, and millions who have been furloughed or who are working precarious jobs. And yet we are only at the start of a global economic crisis, the extent and duration of which no one can...
    On Robots and Sheep
  • A short introduction to historical materialism and its significance for the understanding of contemporary capitalism.
    Mayday 1890 and 2020
  • Exactly 130 years ago, the first May Day was celebrated with strikes, demonstrations, and meetings called by the Second International as the Labour Day, the day of the working classes. Ever since then it has become a day like no other for progressives and socialists. The day of struggle for the...
    Work and Economy in the Climate Crisis
  • The earth is heating up faster and faster. We live, work and produce at the expense of others and at the expense of our future. What needs to change? What challenges and tasks do employees and trade unions face in order to make good work and a good life for all possible?
    The Robot, Unemployment, and Immigrants
  • For every industrial robot introduced into the workforce, six jobs are eliminated. – Since a few days, Amazon has started Amazon Go. The idea is simple: a shop where you go in, take whatever you want from the shelves, and the cost goes automatically to a magnetic card that you carry.
    Labour and Technology
  • On the first Friday of October the Institute of Labour Studies, Ljubljana in collaboration with Zavod Bunker, RLS Southeast Europe and transform! europe organized a conference on the topic of the relation between labour and technology in the 21st century.
    Strengthening Migrant Rights in Post-Brexit Britain
  • Post financial crisis, the most persistent scapegoats for many parts of society has been migrants and refugees. Used by mass media, politicians and common people alike, the problems of Europe have been condensed in the spiteful image of the ‘others’.
    European Labour Rights at a Crossroads
  • The dismantling of labour and social rights has gained in strength on the EU political agenda ever since the crisis broke out. This phenomenon, if more acute in the so-called periphery countries, is however to be witnessed everywhere in Europe.

Publication

    Life Stories, Workers' Rights, and Feminism
  • The Slovenian Institute 8th March, supported by transform! europe, presents this collection of two sets of life stories: The first one was part of a cam­paign for workers’ rights, carried out before the pandemic, the second one is dedicated to the situation of self-employed parents during the pandemic.

Calendar

    The Political Ecology of Work in Times of Disaster
  • The 2022 ITH Conference, organised by the International Conference of Labour and Social History (ITH) is held in Linz/Austria and takes from the present epidemiological crisis to also reflect on other times of disaster and their implications for workers, organised labour and labour relations.
    Transnational Forum on Alternatives to Uberisation
  • The group of the Left in the European Parliament organises the 2nd edition of the Transnational Forum on Alternatives to Uberisation. The event will aim to better understand the current issues at European level and to highlight the voice and demands of digital platform workers.
    The Role of Women in Essential Jobs
  • To draw attention to those sectors which, until now, have not been adequately recognised or remunerated and to strengthen the ties between the different feminist struggles in Europe, the Feminism Working Group of the Party of the European Left has organised this webinar.
    Shorter Working Time - Helsinki Seminar
  • This Seminar is a joint initiative of the Communist Party of Finland and the Party of the European Left, with the participation of transform! europe, presenting its current studies on labour, on Sunday 7, 13:00 to 13:30 CET (European Labour Initiatives).
    Working time reduction and climate crisis
  • The Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Brussels Office, a member of transform! europe, organises this online event focusing on the role of working time reduction when addressing climate change.

Webinars

    Labour and Just Transition(s)
  • This webinar, hosted by transform! europe and AEPF (Asia Europe People's Forum), aims to explore and discuss ways to overcome the often sterile debates between orthodox and heterodox advocates of 'change' and 'transition' in order to solve existing ecological, economic and social problems. Watch the video recording of the webinar!