Organising in the time of COVID19

About Organising in the time of COVID19

We have been doing interviews to enable activists / organisations internationally, especially those in the global South, to share their experiences about the challenges of Organising in a time of COVID-19. Our aim is not only to open discussions about this topic, but also to enable solidarity to be nurtured between organisations and activists, as well as providing a window on experiences that rarely get light in mainstream media. You can view the interviews that we have done here https://darajapress.com/blog.

Publisher

Firoze Manji

Category

news

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

3 Apr 2020

Latest episode

17 Jul 2021

Latest episodes

26 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   17 Jul 2021

   RACIAL CAPITALISM and COVID-19

   The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief the deep structural problems affecting 'non-white', racialized workers in the core and periphery. Yet, many social scientific analyses of the global political economy, at least in the pre-COVID era, have been race neutral or wilfully indifferent to the persistent racial pattern of global inequalities. In this interview, David Austin, author of Dread Poetry and Freedom: Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Unfinished Revolution, Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal, talks with Zophia Edwards, Associate Professor of Sociology and Black Studies at Providence College, Rhode Island US and author of a brilliant analysis of Racial Capitalism and COVID-19 (https://monthlyreview.org/2021/03/01/racial-capitalism-and-covid-19/) about the unremitting super-exploitation of Black and other non-white racialized labor in the core and the periphery that has persisted throughout the COVID-19 crisis, viewed from the lens of Black radical scholarship on racism and capitalism.

2. 

   28 Jun 2020

   Trade union organising and outsourcing in the time of Covid-19

   I speak with Eurig Scandrett & Ros Walker, both active trade unionists in Scotland, UK. Eurig talks about the pandemic reaching Britain whilst UCU was in a national dispute over pay and equalities, in the context of neoliberal commercialisation and new public management throughout higher education. During the national dispute, the relationship between local branch issues and national collective bargaining became a significant point of contention (we don’t need to go into this in too much detail). At Queen Margaret University, a well organised union branch, good inter-union cooperation, and an enlightened approach by the Principal ensured that UCU and other trade unions were brought into decision making very quickly, unlike in many other universities (and at QMU only one year ago). We, along with our sister unions, have been able to raise issues of workload, impacts on contract researchers, health and safety, implementation by middle managers, spreading strike pay deductions to avoid hardship, and workers in outsourced companies. This has changed the way in which the university has responded to the crisis, and what it has demonstrated is, where the university is treated as a public service, with unions as partners, representing staff, achievements can be made. In most universities we have seen senior managers excluding unions, putting the commercial business of the university before the welfare of the staff and students, and pushing through cost-cutting, unsafe and punitive actions against staff. This would be by way of an introduction, handled by Eurig. The relatively positive industrial relations at QMU, has also enabled us to organise on behalf of the employees of outsourced companies, many of whom are on low wages, insecure contracts and little leverage with their employers, even though they provide essential services for the university. We are in the process of escalating this campaign from the local to the national level. This would be the significant portion of the webinar, handled by Ross, hopefully with input from outsourced worker. The COVID-19 pandemic will be a major challenge to the future of the university sector, as with all areas of economic life, and this will put further pressures on industrial relations. There is a risk that post-pandemic shutdown will lead to a renewed commitment to austerity, and further cuts and commercialisation of higher education. But it possibly also brings opportunities to ‘re-boot’ the economy in a transformative way, to end the process of outsourcing and bring workers in house, and to transform universities to a more collegiate, cooperative form of governance with employees organised by trade unions, in partnership with senior administrators committed to the public service ethos, to the delivery of higher education as a public good.

3. 

   28 Jun 2020

   Gacheke Gachihi, Kenya, on repression in the time of Covid-19

   I speak to Gacheke Gachihi from the Mathare Social Justice Centre in Nairobi, Kenya. Gacheke spoke to us a couple of weeks ago, and we go back to catch up on news about the coercion and repression being used against people in the time of Covid-19

Contact Organising in the time of COVID19

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.