On August 31st, 2025, the Global Sumund Flotilla departed from Genoa, accompanied by 40,000 people. That same evening, one of the leaders of CALP (Autonomous Port Workers' Collective - Collettivo Autonomo Lavoratori Portuali) announced a port blockade should Israel dare to interfere with the boats. Following an assembly attended by students, workers, and solidarity groups from across the country, the grassroots union USB (Unione Sindacale di Base) proclaimed a general strike for September 22nd. After months of inertia, even the national leadership of the confederal union CGIL (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro) announced a national state of agitation for port workers in support of the Flotilla’s humanitarian mission, calling for hours of strike action and demonstrations on September 19th.
For some time now, the European Union (EU) has been facing an interlocking set of challenges aptly described as a “polycrisis,” which has only deepened in the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election to the White House. Economic stagnation, deindustrialisation, chronically high energy prices, war in Ukraine and the threat of US abandonment, ageing populations and underfunded healthcare systems, unaffordable housing, right-wing populist surges, and escalating climate breakdown are some of the key dimensions of this polycrisis. Scholarly output understandably struggles to keep pace with Europe’s rapidly unfolding predicament. Much has been written, but very little of it from a critical political economy (CPE) perspective informed by Marxism and Neo- Gramscian theory.
As Israel’s military assault on Gaza escalated in late 2023, with mounting evidence of genocidal intention, Palestinian trade unions and professional associations issued an urgent appeal to workers around the world. They called on international trade unions and workers to “Stop Arming Israel,” urging them to refuse participation in the manufacture, transport, and handling of weapons destined for the Israeli military (Workers in Palestine 2023). Although addressed globally, the call placed particular emphasis on labour movements in states supplying Israel with military and diplomatic support, including the United States, United Kingdom and countries across the European Union.
Existing research on global apparel production networks (GPNs) has focused almost exclusively on the formal sectors of such networks when discussing labour conditions and workers’ agency. Despite being part of the same network, informal post-production apparel waste-handling sectors and their workers remain largely invisible in academic discussions. Drawing on insights from the literature on GPNs and global recycling networks (GRNs), this article develops an analytical approach that connects informal apparel waste work and workers to the formal apparel industry. Using qualitative data, it explores the implications of interconnections between the two segments of an apparel GPN, showing how they relate to ‘forms of harm’ and ‘forms of living’ for workers in Bangladesh’s apparel waste-handling sector. In doing so, the article broadens the labour perspective within the GPN literature and demonstrates that such analysis is essential for any substantial understanding of sustainability in GPNs.
This article develops a theoretical framework for analysing time autonomy among marginalised workers by extending Jean-Daniel Reynaud's social regulation theory in dialogue with Southern theory, epistemologies of the South and critical border studies. It argues that time autonomy is the temporal dimension of regulatory pluralism: when workers exercise autonomous regulation over working time, they pluralise the temporal order. Drawing on 140 interviews with Portuguese posted workers, Chinese factory workers, Malaysian office workers and French teleworkers (2011-2024), the analysis shows how marginalised groups create autonomous regulatory systems that operate alongside, against or outside institutional frameworks. Three concepts emerge: the subsistence- continuity-projection complex, which integrates survival imperatives, intergenerational continuity and future aspirations; regulatory microenvironments, where multiple normative orders coexist without any single order achieving dominance; and adaptive hybridisation, through which imported workplace models are transformed rather than simply implemented. Together, these concepts extend labour sociology by surfacing collective and relational dimensions of time autonomy that Northern frameworks tend to obscure.
Organising the unorganised is an impressive account describing the plight of the India’s working classes stuck in the informal economy which denies rights of decent livelihood for the overwhelming part of India’s workforce. The compiled volume is a well-deserved tribute to the legion of organisers engaged in attempts to mobilise this exploited and subjected multitude to collective action. The assembled essays are dedicated to the memory of Sharit Bhowmik who as an academic researcher, trade unionist-cum-labour-activist was a role model in efforts to boost economic well-being and social justice for all and sundry. The book’s editor Kanchen Sarker has outlined in his introductory summary the conditions of employment of which informality and social insecurity are the pivotal features.
This article analyses the differences in organisational outcomes among rideshare drivers’ organisations in the United States — particularly their varying success in improving working conditions — by examining their internal structures, organisational resources, strategies and obstacles. It further explores how the broader political and economic environment shapes variation in rideshare drivers’ working conditions across the United States. While formal organisations have enabled more active collective actions and improved working conditions for drivers, the differences in drivers’ conditions across states underscore the critical impact of regulatory frameworks. Additionally, the analysis reveals little variation in organisational structures but highlights how external actors can shape strategic choices, in some cases narrowing organisational agendas.
This article proposes empirical insights into labour mobilisation in the entertainment industry during the pandemic, aiming to examine the intersection between government policies and workers’ demands. It also introduces methodological reflections on the “operaist” tool of “inchiesta a caldo”, through a continuous process of dialogue oriented toward the design, implementation, and analysis of the findings. The objective goes beyond mere knowledge production, seeking instead to build a shared political framework for identifying key issues and formulating the demands needed to improve working conditions in the sector. The findings show that overcoming various forms of fragmentation (contractual, hierarchical, and occupational) occurred around the shared claim for universal and continuous welfare measures, capable of ensuring income during inactivity periods and reducing contractual inequalities. This process has taken on a broader political meaning within the current neoliberal context, where solidarity among precarious workers represents an act of rupture against competitive individualism and the ideology of the “own entrepreneur”.
Since 2018, the mechanisms governing labour relations in Mexico have experienced marked transformations at both the national and transnational scales. Terms of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and reforms to the Federal Labor Law aimed at raising wages and promoting union freedom and democracy reshaped the landscape of labour regulation in the country, especially in strategic export sectors. Research on the impacts these reforms has privileged Mexican industrial manufacturing exports and the automotive industry. In this article, I examine the role of the USMCA’s Rapid Response Labor Mechanism in the Sindicato de Telefonistas de la República Mexicana (Telephonists’ Union of the Mexican Republic)’s campaign for collective representation and bargaining for Atento call centre workers in the city of Pachuca. Through a documentary review of primary and secondary source materials, I analyse the achievements and limits of this new, transnational regime of labour governance for labour rights at Atento call centres.
Recently, Bangladesh drew global attention following an unprecedented student-led uprising during July–August 2024, which culminated in the collapse of the long-standing government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of the Bangladesh Awami League (AL) in August 2024 (The Daily Star, 2024). The Anti-Discrimination Movement initially emerged in 2018, when university students mobilized to abolish the “job quota” system in government employment. Since 1972, 30% of job quotas have been reserved for the “freedom fighters1 ”. In 1997, benefits were expanded to the children of “freedom fighters”, and in 2011, their grandchildren were added (Zahid, 2024). The students' movement called for the abolition of the quota system, as they found it ineffective and discriminatory. In 2024, the movement was reactivated...
Challenging productivist approaches to Labour Process Theory (LPT) and drawing inspiration from Harry Braverman’s own call to analyse the labour process as embedded in the broader social relations of capitalism, this article advocates for a ‘life-making’ approach to the labour process, informed by plural strands of social reproduction feminism. Conceptually anchored in the idea of the ‘planetary social factory’ and its many ‘forms of exploitation’ — concepts developed through engagement with the work of Silvia Federici and Jairus Banaji—this perspective redefines the boundaries of LPT by situating work within global, gendered, racialised, and ecological circuits of production and reproduction. The article builds this argument across six sections, where it identifies the manifold ways in which life shapes the labour process and explores key links between workers’ depletion and the planetary ecological harm inflicted by globalised production. The concluding section explores the political implications of this life-making approach to LPT for organising, and calls for an articulation of life, labour, and ecological struggles as intersecting declinations of ‘value struggles’. Though primarily conceptual, the analysis draws from long-term fieldwork in India’s garment industry, offering empirical grounding to its theoretical points
This article analyses the failure of Egypt’s democratic transition between 2011 and 2013, highlighting the often-overlooked role of the labour movement. While dominant approaches in transition studies emphasise socio-economic factors, elite dynamics or the middle class, this study argues that the absence of an independent labour movement rooted in the industrial working class critically undermined Egypt’s prospects for democratic consolidation. Drawing on interviews with Egyptian trade unionists and relevant literature, the article uses process-tracing to situate the Egyptian experience within broader debates on democratisation. It contrasts this experience with transitions in Tunisia, Brazil, South Africa, Poland and South Korea—where labour movements were central actors. Challenging modernisation theory and elite-focused models, it adopts an actor-centred perspective that foregrounds organised labour. The article concludes that although Egypt’s working class played a key role in mobilising dissent, it lacked the institutional strength to shape the transition. The Egyptian case underscores the enduring relevance of labour movements, especially in an era of democratic backsliding and neoliberal fragmentation.
As labour struggles around the impact of technology on working conditions heat up across various countries and sectors, myriad studies argue that the technologically based restructuring of workplaces has contributed to increasing precariousness in the new world of work. However, technology workers themselves have often been assessed as resistant to collective organising. This article explores the work experiences of IT workers in Brazil’s banking industry, many of whom are the most sought-after workers in the country — but who, from their own testimonies, confront a range of conditions that could form a basis for strong collective action. We analyse how technology work is organised within the largest private banks operating in the country and reflect on workers’ actual experiences, based on dozens of in-depth interviews, survey responses, and secondary literature. Our primary research objective is to better understand the scope of obstacles confronted by financial sector technology workers in Brazil, wherein may lie the potential for future collective action.
This article proposes an extension of the Power Resource Approach (PRA) that systematically addresses central criticisms of the original framework. We argue that a comprehensive understanding of labour conflicts in capitalist societies necessitates at least three conceptual elaborations: (1) a relational perspective on labour conflicts and power dynamics; (2) an emphasis on the heterogeneity of (collective) interests and orientations that both enable and constrain collective action; and (3) a reconceptualisation of employers as active counterparts in labour relations, equipped with their own interests, orientations, and power resources. Particular attention is paid to bargaining processes between antagonistic actor groups and to the often contradictory interests and normative orientations that shape action and inform the mobilisation of power resources. This actor-centred perspective aims to contribute to a more differentiated and empirically grounded understanding of labour relations. The analytical potential of the extended framework is illustrated through the empirical case of resistance to port privatisation in Hamburg, Germany.
