NALSU Labour Studies Seminar Series: COVID-19 and the Working Class Movement in South Africa by Pat Horn

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COVID-19 and the Working Class Movement in South Africa
COVID-19 and the Working Class Movement in South Africa

NEIL AGGETT LABOUR STUDIES UNIT (NALSU): Labour Studies Seminar Series, Rhodes University, South Africa.

WEBINAR: Wednesday, 28rd October 2020, online via Zoom (details below), 4 pm

TOPIC & SPEAKER:

Veteran labour activist and feminist Pat Horn will speak about how organised workers in the informal economy fought for the ILO's 2014 rights-based Recommendation 204: the need for transitions from the informal to the formal economy. Since then, the battle has been to get states to implement Recommendation 204. While some parts have been fast-tracked during the COVID-19 pandemic, new forms of work such as platform work have grown during the pandemic. This has provided organising opportunities, giving rise to new formations, such as a new São Paulo -based union: established last Friday by the CUT in Brazil, it caters for workers in the informal economy and new forms of work.

This webinar is part of a monthly series hosting labour activists on the theme of "COVID-19 and the Working Class Movement in South Africa."

SPEAKER: Pat Horn is coordinator of the Collective Bargaining in the Informal Sector Project at Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), in Durban, South Africa. A veteran trade unionist, she is a founder (now Senior Advisor) of StreetNet International, with affiliated organisations from 57 countries in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Eastern Europe. She is also part of the South African National Task Team responsible for implementation of ILO Recommendation 204 on transitions from the informal to formal economy, representing the NEDLAC Community Constituency.

JOINING: register in advance for the seminar, which will use Zoom, by going to

https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcscOmoqz8iGND8kUIcfkeC6vrObgSOU8m8


After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

QUERIES: Valance Wessels on WhatsApp 082 505 7904

HOSTS: The series is run by the Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) in partnership with the Departments of Sociology & Industrial Sociology, History, and Economics & Economic History, Rhodes University.

NALSU, based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, is engaged in policy, research and workers' education. Built around a vibrant team from disciplines including Economics, History and Sociology, it has active partnerships and relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations. It draws strength from its location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and the contradictions of the post-apartheid state, are keenly felt. We are named in honour of Dr Neil Hudson Aggett, a union organiser and medical doctor who died in 1982 in an apartheid jail after enduring brutality and torture.

https://www.ru.ac.za/nalsu/