Labour in the Global South!

Mosoetsa, Sarah and Michelle Williams (eds) Labour in the Global South: challenges and alternatives for workers. Geneva: ILO Press (2012).

The twenty-first century has posed serious challenges to workers − formal and informal, organized and unorganized − around the world. It has also brought to the fore extraordinarily creative responses, forcing us to think beyond our common understandings of “labour”, effective trade union strategies and forms of power.

Challenging the global North’s dominance in the literature, this publication presents alternative approaches as well as creative responses to the challenges facing labour in the global South, in countries such as Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, South Africa and Uruguay. The volume devotes particular attention to areas often neglected by organized labour: the relationship between ecology, climate change and jobs; unionizing service work; the dynamics of trade union−political party alliances; gender; and new forms of solidarity. It brings together a group of distinguished labour scholars and practitioners who make an important contribution through their rich empirical case studies.

For more information or to find out where to purchase the publication, please follow the link that will direct you to the Publications web page of the International Labour Organization website. 

Endorsements:

'Labour in the global South is an exciting contribution to the new field of global labour studies. It identifies in ten clearly written chapters the innovative and creative responses to the challenges facing labour worldwide.' −Edward Webster, University of Kassel, Germany, and University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

'For too long research on labour has often emphasized trade unions in industrilized countries. This volume is a significant effort to redirect our focus to workers in the global South. The various contributions closey trace developments of progressive ways forward, which are ultimately also relevant for labour movements in the North. A must-read for labour academics, students and practitioners alike.'

-Andreas Bieler, University of Nottingham, UK

'Labour in the global South is an excellent contribution to our understanding of the crises and opportunities facing workers and their collective organizations under twenty-first century global capitalism. The volume not only provides a much-needed focus on the experiences of workers in countries in the golbal South, it also broadens the empirical and theoretical boundaries of how we study the changing worlds of work and labour.'

-Jennifer Jihye Chun, University of Toronto, Canada