Co-operatives, Work, and the Digital Economy surveys recent literature on the formation of co-operatives as a strategy to improve work and livelihoods in the digital economy. The report is guided by questions such as: What groups of workers have turned to the co-operative model in the digital economy? Do co-operatives have the capacity to mitigate precarity, deepen worker engagement, and combat inequality in the gig economy and digital creative industries? If co-ops are a promising means to improve livelihoods and democratize work, what are the obstacles to increasing their uptake? And what initiatives and policies have been advanced to foster supportive co-operative infrastructure in the digital age?
Month: May 2022
The Pandemic Politics of Cultural Work: Collective Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis
The scope, unevenness, and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on cultural work has been widely acknowledged. This article turns to how sections of the cultural industries responded to the onset of this crisis. We gathered news reports, impact survey results, policy recommendations, open letters, event announcements, and other grey literature generated by a range of organizations in the cultural sector, including trade unions, professional associations, and activist groups. Framed by the concepts "labouring of culture" and "policy from below," our thematic analysis of this material reveals that cultural workers responded to the pandemic by surfacing the idea of cultural production as work; by enacting practices of care and mutual aid; and by proposing policy changes. These collective responses are marked by multiple tensions, particularly between rehabilitating the status quo in the cultural sector and radically reimagining it for a post-COVID-19 world.
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Collective Action Works: Inside the Movement to Organize Media and Culture
Labour journalist and author Sarah Jaffe hosts a virtual forum on organizing in the media and cultural sectors. As the digital media union movement has not let up for more than five years now, and as the pandemic begins to recede, it’s time to take stock of what we’ve won, to reflect on new strategies, and to frankly assess the challenges that lie ahead.
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