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| Giulio Iocco |
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| Karin Astrid Siegmann |
SOS Rosarno, an association of farmworkers, farmers and activists in Calabria, Italy, represents an innovative response from below to the extreme exploitation and precarity of migrant farmworkers in the Mediterranean region, as well as to the retailer-driven crisis of small-scale farming.
The crisis of farmwork
Agriculture is a major employer in Rosarno, an enclave of intensive citrus fruit production in southwestern Calabria. Here, each year, growers employ about 5 000 farmworkers. Since the late 1980s, foreign migrant labourers gradually became essential within this workforce, now totalling approximately 2 500 migrants. While indispensable to value addition in the regional citrus fruit sector, they endure extremely harsh conditions.
Migrant farmworkers receive only about two thirds of the minimum wages established by local labour contracts, while commonly working longer than the stipulated limit. For specific tasks, piece-rate payment further increases the incidence of overtime. Farmworkers also experience extreme precarity in employment relations: discontinuous daily employment, informal contracts without social security entitlements, and indirect hiring through intermediaries. The latter’s fees further reduce already meagre wages. Appalling working conditions are compounded by extremely precarious living conditions. Within a highly stratified workforce, West African workers - the reserve army of seasonal farm labour – experience the worst conditions. The vast majority live either in an over-crowded tent town or in abandoned buildings where they have no or very limited access to electricity, hygienic services like clean water. Their legal precarity prevents them from exercising basic civic and human rights. Owing to the lack of adequate action by unions, this isolation further increases their vulnerability vis-Ã -vis labour intermediaries and employers (Garrapa 2016, MEDU 2017).
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| Lorenza Monaco |
After more than three years of struggle, casual teaching staff from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London, organised in the Fractionals for Fair Play (FFFP) campaign, won an impressive victory against precarious working conditions and indecently low pay. The recently signed deal, which represents a significant improvement not only in terms of remuneration but also in the way it promises to overcome an identified mechanism of exploitation, marks a crucial step in the struggle against casualisation in British higher education. The campaign’s latest outcome and the way it was organised may indeed provide inspiration for worldwide campaigns against the marketisation of universities and the deterioration of jobs which comes with it. Overall, this case shows how solidarity, collective action, and a consistent focus on struggle demands, even when challenged during dire times, can eventually win.
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| Gaye Yilmaz |
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| Sue Ledwith |
Women may migrate to escape conflict, war, poverty, family pressures and responsibilities, or fear of sexual oppression. But they also find themselves caught in the twin controlling ideologies of patriarchy and religion.
This was the case for the 120 women migrants interviewed for our book Migration and Domestic Work. All were domestic workers in private households in London, Berlin or Istanbul. Most were either Muslim (52) or Christian (44). A handful were Buddhist, Hindu or Pagan. Twenty atheists had come to disbelief from the two main religions.
Data was collected through interviews, visits and observations in all three cities. These took place in the homes where the women were employed, in ethnic and community organisations, and in employment agencies. The research was designed for women to tell their stories and to establish their agency. An allied purpose was to explore collective solidarities among the migrant women. The interviewees included Kurdish women, who are an under-researched group. A creative research reciprocity was developed: the researcher, Gaye Yilmaz, taught Marxist economics in community organisations in London and Berlin.
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| Ramon Certeza |
We are witnessing a great transformation in our times in the way things are being manufactured. Products that were crafted by humans in the past are now being manufactured by automatic machines and robots. We are now in the middle of, in today’s parlance, the ‘industrial revolution 4.0’, entailing the digitisation of the economy. This article will look at how digitisation rapidly transformed the factories of today and how unions are preparing to survive the factories of tomorrow.
Digitisation of the economy was the central theme of the World Economic Forum in Davos in December 2015, where prominent economists and European research institutions produced reports on the future of work, touching on possible consequences of digitisation on workers (IndustriALL, 2017). In May 2017, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation organised an international conference in Vietnam along the same line of inquiry that sought to answer two main questions: what is the impact of digital transformation on Asian economies, and has this transformation been made fair and inclusive? These two events catapulted the discourse to a new level, with differing views and perspectives from actors at different levels.
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| Owen Tudor |
The United Kingdom (UK) voted to leave the European Union (EU) on 23 June 2016. Since then, the government has been forced by the Supreme Court to obtain Parliament’s permission to initiate the Article 50 process to leave the EU, subsequently issuing the appropriate letter to the European Commission. Negotiations only commenced on 19 June, almost a year after the referendum, and no agreements have yet been reached. The government has introduced the EU (Withdrawal) Bill, designed to copy EU law into UK law before leaving the EU, which is due to happen, under the Article 50 process, by late March 2019.
The Trade Union Congress (TUC), with most of Britain’s largest unions, campaigned to stay in the EU[1] on the grounds that leaving risked workers’ rights and decent jobs. A legal opinion setting out the risk to workers’ rights (Ford, 2016) from a leading employment lawyer, Michael Ford, was published ahead of the referendum, as well as a TUC analysis of the effect on jobs and wages (TUC, 2016a).
According to TUC opinion polling immediately after the referendum, 60% of trade unionists voted to remain in the EU, but much larger proportions, including majorities among leave voters, wished to see EU employment laws retained after leaving, and opposed further cuts in government spending to address the economic challenges of leaving. The referendum result was strongly connected to a desire to punish the establishment, together with concerns about the effect of immigration. Generally, older voters, politically conservative voters, and those without qualifications beyond compulsory school were most likely to vote to leave (GQRR, 2016).[2]
