Freedom of Association: the Challenges with Organising and Registration’ with Siza Milambo (a member of the Simunye Workers Forum) (26 June 2024)

E8. ‘Organising in the Platform Economy: Perspectives from Kenya and Nigeria’ with Adedamola Adeniran, Bill Mutoro and Ruth Castel-Branco (25th October 2023)

Organising in the Platform Economy: Developments in the e-Hailing Sector of South Africa with Melithemba Mnguni, Sibongiseni Shange, Omar Parker and Shane Choshane (29 November 2023)

This episode examines key legal developments in employment equity and labour law in South Africa. Meko Magida, Executive Director of Human Resources at the University of the Western Cape, discusses his role in implementing the Employment Equity Act and establishing the Commission for Employment Equity. Shamima Gaibie, Senior Director at Cheadle Thompson & Haysom Inc., and Roger Ronnie, researcher and former trade unionist, provide additional perspectives. The discussion is facilitated by Paul Benjamin, Extraordinary Professor at UWC's Faculty of Law, focusing on affirmative action, legal reform, and the future of work.

Speaker: Adelle Blackett - Prof. of Law at McGill University, Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development, Centrow Associate. Prof. Blackett served as the lead International Labour Organization (ILO) expert in a treaty-making process for Convention 189 on decent work for domestic workers, and preparing a draft Haitian labour code. Respondent: Kelebogile Khounou – Researcher: Socio-Economic Rights Institute (SERI). Ms Khounou’s Masters research was based on domestic workers’ engagement with everyday life, their social networks and the building of their political subjectivities. Ms Khounou has worked intensely on the campaign for inclusion of domestic workers under COIDA.

Speaker: Prof Edoardo Ales, Professor of Labour Law and Industrial Relations, University of Naples and Extraordinary Professor, UWC ‘ILO standards and the right to collective bargaining for self-employed workers in the EU: lessons for South Africa?’ Respondent: Mario Jacobs, Researcher and Programme Convenor Labour, Development and Governance Research Unit (LDG), University of Cape Town and former trade union official with more than 20 years’ experience

Prof Miriam Cherry obtained her doctorate at Harvard Law School after which she clerked for Justice Roderick Ireland of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and then for Judge Gerald Heaney of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. In 2001, she joined the Boston law firm of Foley Hoag LLP, where she practiced corporate law with an emphasis on mergers and acquisitions, securities compliance filings, venture capital, and private debt financing. She was also associated with the firm of Berman, DeValerio & Pease, where she took part in litigating several accounting fraud cases including those against former telecom giant WorldCom and Symbol Technologies, which resulted in a $139 million settlement. Academically, Professor Cherry has been on the faculty or visited at a number of law schools, including the University of Georgia, University of the Pacific - McGeorge School of Law, and Cumberland School of Law. In 2008, she was elected a member of the American Law Institute. Currently she is Co-Director of the William C. Wefel Center for Employment Law and Associate Dean for Research and Engagement at St Louis University School of Law. Her research is interdisciplinary, focusing on the intersection of technology and globalisation with business, contract, and employment law topics. In her recent work, she analyses crowdfunding, markets for corporate social responsibility, virtual work, and social entrepreneurship. Her publications have appeared in the North western Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Washington Law Review, Illinois Law Review, Georgia Law Review, Alabama Law Review, Maryland Law Review, and the Tulane Law Review, among others.

“The UK Status of Workers Bill, 2021 and the abolition of insecure work” The Centre for Transformative Regulation of Work (CENTROW), University of the Western Cape webinars are aimed at enabling participants in South African labour market debates to deepen their knowledge on contemporary debates from around the world on regulatory responses to the changing nature of work and the persistence of inequality and insecurity in the world of work. The Series is facilitated by Professor Paul Benjamin, Extraordinary Professor of Law, University of the Western Cape and Director, Cheadle Thompson and Haysom Inc. Prof Benjamin has more than 25 years legal drafting experience in respect of laws, constitutions and protocols.Lord (John) Hendy KC is one of the UK's most prominent industrial relations and employment law barristers and the Chair of the London-based Institute of Employment Rights (IER). John, who practices from Old Square Chambers took silk in 1987, has appeared in most of the UK’s leading collective labour law cases in the last 36 years. In his capacity as a Labour Party-appointee to the House of Lords, he introduced the Status of Workers Bill in May 2021 which aims to abolish insecure work by replacing the UK’s overcomplicated employment status system with a universal status of ‘worker’ which covers all persons who are not truly self-employed. The IER points out that the Bill would have the effect that businesses that accord workers full rights are no longer undercut by those that choose to use loopholes in the current system to deny workers their rights. The Bill has gone through three readings in the House of Lords where it has widespread support, excluding the Government, and is now in the House of Commons as a Private Member’s Bill.