From US car factories to public sector workers in Nigeria and South Africa, strikes by trade unions continue unabated among the established sectors of the working class. In Detroit in the US, workers are resisting contract employment. In Nigeria they are angry over the rising cost of living and in South Africa, municipal workers are striking for better wages.
But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to build sustainable worker organisations as companies employ more people on a casual basis in the digital age. Work has become more precarious and workers are easily replaceable.
In our new book, Recasting Workers’ Power: Work and Inequality in the Shadow of the Digital Age, we focus on workers’ power. The classic example of workers’ power is the strike: the collective withdrawal of labour to force an employer to do what they would otherwise not have done.
