ABSTRACT
Contemporary labour studies reveal a paradox: in a context where traditional trade unions in advanced industrialising countries are in decline, the study of global labour is flourishing. This paradox emerged at the 9th Global Labour University (GLU) conference, ‘Inequality Within and Among Nations: Causes, Effects and Responses’, held in Berlin in 2014. What the 88 papers demonstrated is the ferment of ideas, initiatives and policies that are emerging in response to deepening inequality and the growing numbers of the working poor worldwide. Jennifer Chun suggests there is a
growing interest in a new political subject of labour, women, immigrants, people of colour, low-paid service workers, precarious workers, groups that have been historically excluded from the moral and material boundaries of union membership. Rather than traditional scholarship on industrial relations, new labour scholars are exploring transformations occurring at the periphery of mainstream labour movements.
(2012: 40)