Essential but not empowered (Simon Black)

Essential but not empowered: reflections on the working class in Canada under COVID-19

Simon Black

Pages 130-152 | Published online: 06 Sep 2022

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• https://doi.org/10.1080/07078552.2022.2096781

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07078552.2022.2096781

Abstract

This paper focuses on the political economy of work and labour under COVID-19 in the Canadian context. It reviews the impact of the COVID crisis on employment and workers, highlighting gendered and racialized inequalities in waged and unwaged work, analyzes state responses to the crisis, and explores how organized labour has navigated COVID capitalism. It argues that, while unions have engaged in necessary defensive struggles, the labour movement has not prioritized and won class-wide demands.

Poverty and Pacification: A Conversation with Dorothy J. Solinger

Written On 12 September 2022

Dorothy J. Solinger

with Jenny Chan

Made in China Journal

https://madeinchinajournal.com/2022/09/12/poverty-and-pacification-a-conversation-with-dorothy-j-solinger/ 

Dorothy J. Solinger’s latest book, Poverty and Pacification: The Chinese State Abandons the Old Working Class (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), is dedicated to ‘all of those whose lives were wrenched’ in globalising China. Solinger is passionate about working people, including rural migrants and laid-off urban workers, as reflected in her decades-long commitment to activism and scholarship. As Chinese workers—to this day hailed as masters of the nation—were laid off during successive waves of economic restructuring in the 1990s and 2000s, they often found themselves depending on minimum livelihood allowances (最低生活保障, or dibao 低保 for short), desperate to make a decent living in a pitiless job market. With an eye on the new urban poor, Solinger offers a reassessment of China’s quest for wealth and power at the turn of the new millennium.