How is workers’ education responding to the rising precariousness of work? Some international and South African examples

ABSTRACT

Consistent with the large-scale re-emergence of precarious forms of work, in recent years literature on precarious workers and their working conditions has become one of the main strands in labour studies. However, the literature on the nexus between precarious workers and workers’ education is almost non-existent; and yet precarious work is probably the future of labour at least under global capitalism. In an attempt to fill the gap and make a contribution to the emerging literature on precarious workers and workers’ education, the article argues that the emerging workers’ education that has tended to be ignored by the literature on precarious work is beginning to respond to the fact that the workforce within South African borders has been fundamentally restructured by the current phase of capitalism. The decline of the trade union movement in South Africa in the 2000s meant that precarious workers have limited resources to advance their workers’ education agenda, but interestingly non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and advice centres are gradually fling the gap by engaging with precarious workers in education that is dialogical and emancipatory. There is a similar trend in other countries, where precarious workers are also defining their educational programmes to improve their working conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Workers’ education
• precarious workers
• black women
• migrant workers
• organising

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

National Research Foundation (South Africa) and the International Center for Development and Decent Work (Germany) funded the research leading to the production of this article.

Notes on contributors

Mondli Hlatshwayo

Mondli Hlatshwayo is a Senior Researcher in the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation at the University of Johannesburg. Hlatshwayo has written extensively on workers’ education, precarious workers, migrant and immigrant workers and trade union responses to technological changes. His Doctoral thesis, which he completed in 2012, debated trade union reactions to technological changes in a steel plant.