Global Labour Institute

Latest News & Articles

  • International Summer School 2014: online archive now available!

    Jess

    #ISS14: one of the most inspiring events in the international trade union calendar! This year’s hugely successful GLI International Summer School took place from Monday 7th – Friday 11th July. The School saw over 80 labour movement delegates from 28 countries descend upon Northern College in Barnsley, UK for an…

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  • #ISS14: The radical is now the practical

    Alex Wood

    This was the message which emerged from plenary ‘What should the political vision and strategy of the international trade union movement be?‘ at the GLI International Summer School The irony of globalisation, argued Sam Gindin of York University, is that the nation-state is now more important than ever. Without coordination…

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  • #ISS14: We must question everything in order to organise precarious workers

    Alex Wood

    This article draws on the plenary ‘Organising Informal & Precarious Workers’ at the GLI International Summer School. The late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen a decline of labour movements in the global north which few would have predicted. Not only has trade union membership in many countries declined…

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  • #ISS14: ‘Democratic, libertarian, revolutionary’ – socialist unionism under neoliberalism

    Josiah

    [This article draws on the plenary “Are we socialists, and what do we mean by “socialism”?] Blair. Alex Tsipras. Pol Pot. Gramsci. Stalin. What do they have in common? Answer: they’ve all called themselves socialist at some point. Socialism is clearly a slippery thing to define, then. Khaled Mahmood, Labour…

  • #ISS14: Stay Together for the Kids or Divorce? Unions and Social Democratic Parties

    Josiah

    This article draws on the plenary Union-Party Relationships: Stay together for the sake of the children or get a divorce? There’s a few ways to think about unions and their relationship with parties. Warring lovers? Separated? Have parties already left their former union bedfellows? Here in the UK, the relationship…

  • #ISS14: Chinese workers are not passive victims of repression

    Alex Wood

    This article draws on the plenary ‘The Long March of Chinese Labour’ at the GLI International Summer School. You won’t hear much about it in the Western media but since 2010 a transformation of China’s labour relations has been gathering pace. After decades of oppression by the state and its…

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  • #ISS14: Public services under attack – international austerity and the fight-back

    Josiah

    Speaking to the Global Labour Institute’s 2014 International Summer School, Rosa Pavanelli, General Secretary of Public Services International, gave an account of the struggles public service workers are facing. This article draws on her speech to delegates in Tuesday’s opening plenary. Public service jobs used to be considered the gold…

  • #ISS14: How workers can win

    Josiah

    There’s a question every trade unionist must stop and ask at some point: ‘what am I organising for?’ For Kirill Buketov, international campaign officer of the International Union of Food and Allied Workers (IUF), the central driver behind is fundamentally that ‘we are dissatisfied with the way the world is…

  • #ISS14: The secret war on workers in Asia

    Josiah

    This article draws on the plenary ‘The Fall & Rise of Labour?’ at the GLI International Summer School. There’s a war going on in Asia – and it’s one that, unlike ISIS in Iraq or the chaos in Syria, is failing to make the headlines. It’s the war on workers…

  • #ISS14: Capitalism, anti-capitalism and the trade union movement – reviving labour amid crisis

    Josiah

    The global labour movement is at a crossroads. That’s the verdict of Bill Fletcher of the American Federation of Government Employees, speaking to the Global Labour Institute’s International Summer School in Barnsley this week. Workers are being hit by neoliberalism across the world – that much is obvious – but…