Prof Eddie Webster.
University of the Witwatersrand
Eddie Webster inspired generations of scholars with his vision and practice of critically engaged scholarship, in South Africa and worldwide.
Teachers striking in London, May 2023.
EPA-EFE/ANDY RAIN
The picket lines have brought surprising levels of success.
Male domestic workers earn considerably more than their female counterparts.
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Paid domestic work has a low status in South Africa. The labour of domestic workers is often undervalued and unrecognised.
The digital revolution has led to a sharp rise in casual work such as food delivery.
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Workers’ power is being recast as precarious workers in Africa experiment with new ways of organising in the digital age
Migrant workers protesting outside Euston Station in London, October 2022.
Vuk Valcic/Alamy
Since 2011, I’ve worked in more than 20 precarious workplaces in hospitality, manufacturing and logistics – and I have only seen a union once.
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Most farmworkers were not even aware that the farm they worked on was Fairtrade certified.
A demonstrator holds a placard reading “Macron, no no no no, 49,3 times no”, a reference to a French law that would allow the country’s president to pass pension reform without a vote in the National Assembly.
Christophe Simon/AFP
While the scale of the strikes in both countries is historic, a scholar in employer relations notes the legislative conditions framing industrial action in the UK are much more restrictive.
It is the first time French trade unions have shown unity since their opposition to pension reform in 2010.
Julien De Rosa/AFP
France’s trade unions have managed to galvanise the largest movement in decades in opposition to pension reform. What will happen to them once the bill has been passed or abandoned?
Striking miners face off against police in 1984.
Homer Sykes / Alamy
Workers have gradually lost all powers to take industrial action when they feel conditions are unfair.
Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Australia’s protection, even celebration, of ‘free riders’ in industrial relations is driving union membership down to US levels.
Workers such as these Starbucks employees in St. Anthony, Minn., increasingly went on strike in 2022.
Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Workers have filed the most union petitions since 2015 and the number of strikes have surged, but whether this turns into a sustained increase in membership rates is still unclear.
Is this the new Jim Callaghan?
Russell Hart/Alamy
With everyone from rail workers to civil servants going on strike over the winter, it’s hard to see this ending well.
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Poor staffing means poor care, and poor care costs taxpayers more.
Unionised RMT staff standing at a picket outside Euston station back in October.
Mark Kerrison / Alamy Stock Photo
From unions and ballots to picket-lines and sympathy strikes.
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The Albanese government’s industrial relations reforms will help avoid protracted industrial conflict, but more is needed.
A striking worker at a Fridays for Future march during COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.
Fraser Hamilton
The green movement has more to thank workers in polluting industries than you might expect.
Expatriates and locals faced similar risks and hazards but for different pay.
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In the Copperbelt the category of ‘expatriate’ recreated a dual wage structure that still persists.
More UK union members have been involved in industrial action in recent months.
Andy Rain / EPE-EFE
The rise and fall of UK trade union membership numbers can impact the instances and success of industrial action.
Trade unions in Mozambique have been weakened due to their proximity to the ruling party, Frelimo.
Photo by Gianluigi Guercia/AFP via Getty Images
Mozambique’s trade unions have not been a strong force in society – which has left a space for others to fill.
International trade hub: Hong Kong Harbour in 1922.
Strikes in the British colony 100 years ago were to provide the first flourishing of militancy that would bloom into full-scale revolution in China.