We’re not in it together

Mosaik-Podcast

An Online Panel about Global Labour in the Pandemic organized by the Working Group on Labour Struggles of the German Association for Critical Social Research and the Global Labour Journal. The Panel is part of the AkG event series Gesellschaftsforschung in Zeiten sozialer Distanzierung (Social research in times of social distancing). The COVID-19 pandemic is intrinsically linked to the way work is organised in global capitalism. The health risks for workers are considerable, in particular for those who do not have the opportunity to work from the safety of their home. Care workers, be they paid or unpaid, are on the frontline of the efforts to contain the spread of the virus – be it by working in hospitals or nursing homes, looking after sick relatives, or schooling children. The economic fallout from the health crisis and its management hit those hardest who own nothing but their labour power. In this installment of the Mosaic podcast, we are delighted to present a recording of a panel discussion among the Working Group on Labour Struggles of the German Association for Critical Social Research and the Global Labour Journal. The discussion took place on the 16th of February 2021, as part an event series on Social Research in Times of Social Distancing. The panel consisted of Madhumita Dutta (Ohio State University, USA), Anne Engelhardt (University of Kassel, Germany) and Ben Scully (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa), and was chaired by Peter Birke (University of Göttingen, Germany) and Alexander Gallas (University of Kassel, Germany). The panelists, stemming from universities in the United States, Germany, and South Africa, discuss the effects of the pandemic on workers around the world, the forms of labour unrest and mobilisation that are emerging in its wake, and the prospects for organised labour in countries with limited state support for people who are left entirely without work. If you would like to hear other installments of the AKG event series, you can find them here, on Mosaik-Podcast.