Articles for October 2023
Trade unions and the new economy: 3 African case studies show how workers are recasting their power in the digital age
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Has the new technology that has given rise to thousands of “digital” workers destroyed the traditional collective power of worker organisation? A new book, Recasting Workers Power: Work and Inequality in the Shadow of the Digital Age, which examines work in three sectors in South Africa and Uganda, shows that workers’ organisation has survived into the digital age, albeit in a different form from traditional trade unions. Alliances with existing unions, with civil society organisations, and with each other if they are self-employed, together with a strategic use of institutions, have enabled digital workers to flex some collective muscle.