Lectures and a seminar featuring renowned labor studies scholars

We would like to invite you to theopen lectures and a seminar featuring renowned labor studies scholars: Prof. Jane Holgate (University of Leeds) and Prof. Bridget Kenny (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg), who will visit the Institute of Sociology (the visits are funded by the Initiative of Excellence – Research University Programme).

Open Seminar: “Contemporary Faces of Trade Unions”: During the seminar, we will explore the contemporary challenges faced by labor movements around the world from the perspective of labor sociology. Panelists:

• Prof. Jane Holgate (University of Leeds): “Work, employment, and society. Is there still a need for a sociology of labor?”
• Prof. Bridget Kenny (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg): “The return of labor process studies in South Africa”
• Dr. Ewan Kerr (Glasgow Caledonian University): “Explaining Contentious Trade Union Environmentalism: insights from two industrial disputes in the UK”

When? Tuesday, October 15, 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Where? Institute of Sociology, University of Wrocław, ul. Koszarowa 3, Room 234 (https://maps.app.goo.gl/LYi2kiCg1ddB29ed6)

Open lectures:

• Prof. Jane Holgate – “Agents of curiosity. Why the union movement needs political education and critical thinking?” (Presentation in English, part of the plenary session of the “Social Boundaries of Work” conference, abstract below)

When? Thursday, October 17, 2024, 2:30 PM

Where? Institute of Political Science, ul. Koszarowa 3, Auditorium A (https://maps.app.goo.gl/FbtESnibe22gGtgHA)

• Prof. Bridget Kenny – “Trade unions and logistics in South Africa: Racial capitalism returned or new routes to organizing?” (Presentation in English, part of the plenary session of the “Social Boundaries of Work” conference, abstract below)

When? Friday, October 18, 2024, 2:30 PM

Where? Institute of Political Science, ul. Koszarowa 3, Auditorium A (https://maps.app.goo.gl/FbtESnibe22gGtgHA)

Prof. Jane Holgate is one of Europe’s most renowned researchers on labor migration, inequality, and intersectionality in the context of working conditions and union activities. Since 2010, she has worked at the University of Leeds in the Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation, and Change. Prof. Holgate has led numerous international research grants, including those funded by the EU and ESRC, focusing on the impact of identity, communities, and social networks on the representation of ethnic minorities in the workplace. She is the author of numerous publications, including the book Arise: Power, Strategy and Union Resurgence (Pluto Press, 2021), as well as various chapters in collective works and articles in prestigious journals such as Economic and Industrial Democracy, Work, Employment and Society, and the International Journal of Human Resource Management. Prof. Holgate combines her academic work with close collaboration with British trade unions, pioneering innovative ways to influence the socio-economic environment.

Prof. Bridget Kenny works at the Institute of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. She is one of the leading sociologists focused on working conditions within the globalized economy, with a particular emphasis on labor in retail networks. She is the author of the acclaimed monograph published by Palgrave Macmillan, editor of three collective works, and author of 18 book chapters and over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles (including in Critical Sociology, African Studies, and Global Labour). She is a member of South African and international sociological organizations (including serving as Chair of Research Committee 44 within the ISA from 2014-2018) and sits on editorial boards (including Global Labour Journal and Work in the Global Economy). She has led or co-led over 20 research projects and is actively involved in fostering international cooperation within research networks.

Organisers: Department of the Sociology of Work and Economic Sociology, Institute of Sociology UWr; Resilience Lab of the ENDURE project, ISA RC 44 Labour Movements.

The lecture is organised as a part of the Research University Excellence Initiative (IDUB) programme – visiting professors.

Open Lectures Abstracts:

prof. Jane Holgate: “Agents of curiosity. Why the union movement needs political education and critical thinking?” (Thursday, October 17, 2024, 2:30 PM, Institute of Political Science, ul. Koszarowa 3, Auditorium A)

This session will consider the role of political education and social movements. In particular, it will address the changes to union education over time and what impact this has had on the way that trade unions function. It will begin with a historical overview and look at the factors that led to a change in direction to the type of training that union reps receive. The political education of trade unionists is no longer something most trade unions even consider to be an important part of what they do. There are many explanations of why this is the case, but I think it’s mainly due to the way trade unions have changed over the last 50 or 60 years. The movement prior to this time was led by activists in the workplace much more that it is today. Unions have been ‘professionalised’, by which I mean that recruitment, organising, negotiation, and collective bargaining are mainly done by full-time officers leaving much of union work at grass roots level to be around individual case work. Since the government-commissioned Donovan Report in 1968, which looked the reform of collective bargaining, the introduction of legal restraints on unions, the functioning of strikes and the expansion of industrial relations training, we have seen an increase in skills-based training and a decline in political education. Unions came to rely on state funding for shop stewards’ training courses, but there was a proviso on what could be taught. The focus became on handling of disciplinaries and grievances and health and safety issues––the more functional aspects of the role of a shop steward. This was at the expense of the much broader trade union education of the past that might have included the teaching of economics, politics, and society and how these impact upon the working-class both inside and outside of the workplace.

prof. Bridget Kenny: „Trade unions and logistics in South Africa: Racial capitalism returned or new routes to organising?”  (Friday, October 18, 2024, 2:30 PM, Institute of Political Science, ul. Koszarowa 3, Auditorium A)

This presentation will examine the state of labour sociology in South Africa. This sub-specialisation dominated key departments in the 1980s and 1990s. By the 2000s, interest had moved to other arenas as South Africa’s democratic transition raised a range of new challenges, confronted as well by social movements outside of the purview of trade unions. The subsequent decline and fragmentation of the once militant trade union movement as well as the reality of most South Africans to survive outside of a job also redirected student interests. It will be argued however, paradoxically, that there has been a return of the labour process in South African sociology in the last ten years. Examining current scholarship, it argues that studies of the labour process build on a longer examination of class reformation under South Africa’s democracy, which parce out the stagnation of the union movement and reflect on the enduring effervesce of working class resistance. Key to theorisations of the labour process in South Africa has been a focus on the racialisation of the organisation of work and what this means for new divisions among workers and new avenues of capital accumulation.