This episode with David Natali (Professor of Comparative and EU politics at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies) addresses some of the key questions stemming from the pandemic. The magnitude of the crisis, in terms of both its impact on health and well-being, and its consequences on economic prospects, is enormous. The massive spread of the virus, higher mortality rates, lockdowns and the huge decline in economic activity in 2020 all seemed to bode ill for our future.

Find out more in Transfer's latest issue on Covid-19. 

What type of European social citizenship does the public across the European Union (EU) prefer on the national- and EU-levels? This episode looks into the development of public opinion towards European social citizenship from 1985 to the present from a birds-eye perspective.

Further readings: 

35 years of public opinion surveys and European social citizenship: What can we conclude?

Measuring social citizenship in social policy outputs, resources and outcomes across EU member states from 1985 to the present

Welfare chauvinism across benefits and services

The pandemic seems to have accelerated the expansion of all kinds of platform work and at the same time, platform work is being increasingly associated with difficult working conditions, health and safety risks, and inadequate levels of income for those that rely on it as a source of living. This podcast episode will shed light on some of the key insights from the second wave of the Internet and Platform work survey conducted in fourteen EU countries in Spring 2021. 

The platform economy in Europe, Results from the second ETUI Internet and Platform Work Survey (IPWS) - Agnieszka Piasna, Wouter Zwysen and Jan Drahokoupil 

The European Union is currently fighting on two main fronts, Covid-19 and climate change, though with skirmishes elsewhere – including migration and the rule of law. While science seems to be slowly gaining the upper hand in the fight against the pandemic, despite setbacks like the latest Omicron attack, Covid-19 continues to hold global society in its grip. But the second nut is even harder to crack. Climate change is rolling out its forces, in the form of floods, droughts, tornados and hurricanes, and striking indiscriminately.

Vanhercke, Spasova et al. (2022) Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2021

Sabato et al. (2022) A ‘Social Imbalances Procedure’ for the EU

In this episode, we had the pleasure of interviewing Caroline de la Porte (Copenhagen Business School), Maurizio Ferrera (Università degli Studi di Milano) and Philippe Pochet (ETUI) on the recent developments in EU Social Policy. The discussion stems from their recent contribution to Transfer. In the second half of the episode, we had the pleasure to talk to Hyojin Seo, the winner of Transfer's young scholar award and her article on labour market segmentation. 

Social Europe 2.0? New prospects after the Porto Social Summit - Maurizio Ferrera

Opening up the Pandora’s Box of EU Social Rights - Caroline de la Porte

Why politics matter - Philippe Pochet

‘Dual’ labour market? Patterns of segmentation in European labour markets and the varieties of precariousness - Hyojin Seo 

EUSocialCit project 

In this episode, we had the honour of discussing with pioneer climate activist in science: Klaus Hasselmann, who laid the foundations for linking climate change to human-made CO2 emissions and has been very recently awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics. 

Show notes:

Klaus Hasselmann und Luisa Neubauer, Kriegen wir das hin? (Zeit online) 

Hasselmann et al. Reframing the Problem of Climate Change - From Zero Sum Game to Win-Win Solutions

The ETUI Education department offers a wide range of high-quality training on key competencies and skills to European Trade Union members. The end goal? Strengthening and expanding the labour movement.

More info: www.etui.org/education

Inequality has been a growing concern in recent years. The internationalisation of production and markets, the rampant financialisation of the economy, the deregulation of labour markets, and the retrenchment of welfare systems are only some of the factors that have been feeding into increased inequality in terms of income, property, job security, and working and living conditions. The weakening of industrial relations institutions has also been regarded as part of this broad picture since trade unions and collective bargaining have usually been considered as vehicles of fairness and capable of reducing or at least containing inequality. This podcast episode revolves around Transfer's issue on Industrial relations and inequality and intends to contribute to this strand of research by investigating the analytical premises and the empirical evidence of such claims.

The issue can be viewed here: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/trsa/27/1

The Covid‑19 pandemic is still causing tremendous human suffering, with serious and long-term implications for people’s health, wellbeing and quality of life as well as for the economy, work and employment overall. In this episode, we will be exploring together with Valeria Pulignano how millions of workers especially in the creative industries have been vulnerable to layoffs and income loss. 

Valeria Pulignano et al.'s publication can be downloaded here: https://www.etui.org/publications/creative-labour-era-covid-19

International trade union organisations, like unions at national level, commonly affirm their commitment to internal democracy. But what does this mean? We will be discussing this with two academic giants, Richard Hyman and Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick.

Find out more in Rebecca's and Richard's latest article in Transfer: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1024258920938499