The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU), at Rhodes University, South Africa, is partnered with UN Women and Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising WIEGO in a project to support organisations of workers in the informal economy to advocate for better access to social protection. The project, headed at Rhodes by NALSU's Dr Laura Alfers, builds on research on the impact of the COVID-19 crises on women working in the informal economy, which led to the WIEGO series of publications entitled Coping in Crisis: South African Workers Lives during COVID-19, which can be read here.
This work is in line with NALSU's research commitments, ongoing engagements with workers’ movements and on workers' education, and policy interventions on areas including minimum wages, social policy and union renewal. The project includes a series of workshops to enable worker organizations to build up their demands and strategies so that the next time a crisis hits all workers will be covered by social protection. The first event was the Domestic Workers UIF/COIDA Advocacy Workshop in Johannesburg in February 2022 , learn more about it here , where NALSU and WIEGO worked with the South African Domestic Service and Allied Workers Union (SADSAWU), the Union of Domestic Workers of South Africa (UDWOSA) and Izwi Domestic Workers Alliance in Johannesburg.
Based in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, NALSU is engaged in policy, research and workers' education. Built around a vibrant team, including from the disciplines of Sociology and Economics, NALSU has a democratic, non‐sectarian, non-aligned and pluralist practice, and active relations with a range of advocacy, labour and research organisations. We draw strength from our location in a province where the legacy of apartheid and the cheap labour system, and post-apartheid contradictions, are keenly felt. NALSU is named in honour of Neil Hudson Aggett, union organiser and medical doctor who died in an apartheid jail in 1982 following brutality and torture.