We’re not in it together

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.