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Past events

Platform labor as endgame or avant-garde? Opportunities and barriers of workplace democracy

22. March 2022
Online

Platform labor is the latest facet of increasingly digitized work. It is work in bits and pieces, anywhere and anytime. Potentially, it offers a glimpse of the working relationships of the future. For some, it is a new form of cooperation that transcends the capitalist economy. For others, it is seen as an extension and radicalization of precarization coupled with comprehensive digital control and surveillance via algorithms.

The presentation examines platform labor and its various forms, and discusses both the opportunities and the barriers for workers' voice and a democratically organized platform labor. Different types of fragmentation of platform workers are analysed, which lead to workers' silence and make representation unlikely. Against this background, a broad spectrum of workers' voice forms that are prevalent and emerging in platform labour is examined. The presentation thus provides an overview of the current state of research and presents challenges and perspectives for workers' voice.

Workplace and democratic innovations

24. September 2020 to 25. September 2020
Online
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Members' meeting

12. February 2020 to 13. February 2020
Centre Marc Bloch, Friedrichstrasse 191, D-10117 Berlin
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Kick-off meeting

27. September 2019
Centre Marc Bloch, Friedrichstrasse 191, D-10117 Berlin
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The Myth of Stockholder Ownership, and the new case for Workplace Democracy

10. June 2021

Workplace democracy – the perspective of sociology of work

20. May 2021

The idea of Nonpublic Reason, Revisited

15. April 2021

The Efficacy of Personnel Incentives in Democratic Enterprises: Evidence from the Lab

25. March 2021

Abstract

Democratic enterprises have long piqued the interest of a wide range of scholars who have debated their theoretical potential and shortcomings. Without more, and better, empirical evidence, however, this debate has sometimes generated more heat than light.  As Dow [2003:8] puts it, “[A]bstract modeling has outpaced the evidence. Much theoretical discussion leans toward casual storytelling rather than thoughtful analysis informed by factual knowledge.” In this talk, Philip Mellizo will show how methods from Behavioral and Experimental Economics are being used to help redress the empirical imbalance by presenting some of his work that examines first-order claims regarding how individuals respond to financial and decision-making participation.

Democracy in trade unions, democracy through trade unions?

25. February 2021

Abstract

Since the Webbs published Industrial Democracy at the end of the nineteenth century, the principle that workers have a legitimate voice in decision-making in the world of work – in some versions through trade unions, in others at least formally through separate representative structures – has become widely accepted in most West European countries. There is now a vast literature on the strengths and weaknesses of such mechanisms, and we review briefly some of the key interpretations of the rise (and fall) of policies and structures for workplace and board-level representation. We also discuss the mainly failed attempts to establish broader processes of economic democracy, which the eclipse of nationally specific mechanisms of class compromise makes again a salient demand. Economic globalization also highlights the need for transnational mechanisms to achieve worker voice (or more radically, control) in the dynamics of capital–labour relations. We therefore examine the role of trade unions in coordinating pressure for a countervailing force at European and global levels, and in the construction of (emergent?) supranational industrial relations. However, many would argue that unions cannot win legitimacy as a democratizing force unless manifestly democratic internally. Therefore, we revisit debates on and dilemmas of democracy within trade unions, and examine recent initiatives to enhance democratization.

The talk will be based on an article of the name that was published in Economic and Industrial Democracy. The article is available upon request.

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