The expansion of informal employment has been associated with increased exploitation and decent work deficits, leading to widespread poverty and growing inequalities. In response, a variety of forms of collective representation and action by and with informal workers have emerged demanding...

In South Africa a growing crisis of political legitimacy - given widening social inequality, high unemployment, persistent poverty, ecological devastation and increased corruption - has had a direct impact on the union movement. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa's (NUMSA's) 2013...

A delegation of labour scholars and practitioners first came to our university, the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, in 2006, to engage with colleagues about establishing the Global Labour University on our campus. It was to be the second site after Germany, and we were all...

There is a growing literature on global Chinese companies, but this tends to be at a very general level. There is little research to date on the effect of Chinese involvement on workers and their unions. Although focussed on one company, SINOHYDRO, this paper addresses questions of importance to...

This paper aims at contributing to the discussions on the challenge of transitioning from precarious informal employment to more protected employment. This paper looks into a rather under-researched area - the role of trade unions in facilitating this process of 'transitioning' as well as in...

Unionists and labour activists often speak about workers' education, but what does the concept really imply and does it actually play a role for political consciousness? This paper is the synthesis of empirical studies from a Global Labour University (GLU) alumni research group on Workers'...

This working paper is a combination of two reports. The first section is a report by Serrano and Xhafa and it complements the study on the second phase of the Closing the representation gap (Webster et al, 2008). The purpose of this report is to identify critical factors and variables that may...