etui.podcast

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

In this episode of etui.podcast we will explore the whys and the hows of the Alphabet workers and what this experience means for the wider trade union movement.

Show notes:

Trabsfer article by Stan De Spiegelaere on transnational trade unionism & the Ryanair case https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1024258920921106

De Tocqueville was right about trade unions: they are the schools of democracy

https://medium.com/@ETUI_org/trade-unions-the-schools-of-democracy-93caa690ef71

Despite a spectacular economic reaction to the pandemic crisis, which stands in stark contrast to the austerity-driven response to the 2008 financial and economic crisis, Bart Vanhercke and the co-authors of Bilan Social express concerns about the so-called ‘social affairs players’ being sidelined in the new Recovery and Resilience Facility,  the fuzzy EU commitment to gender issues, the EU response to rising in-work poverty and the setting a new social-ecological contract.

The pandemic's longer-term economic consequences are not clear at this stage. No one can exclude that a real social crisis will quickly follow the vaccination campaign in the headlines. For the time being, however, it’s the unprecedented –and unexpected coordinated response by the EU’s and its 27 Members States and the European Commission that stands out. The EU’s response indeed contributed to mitigate the impact on unemployment (compared to the rest of the world) and demonstrated that the EU can react quickly and forcefully.

The EU Commission has recently released a proposal for a directive on equal pay. Kalina Arabadjieva will unpack the flaws of such a proposal and spell out why women are still, on average, paid less than men.