The Global Labour University (GLU) is pleased to announce a call for the 2018 Conference on Future of Work: Democracy, Development, and the Role of Labour. The current global conditions of rising conservative forces, the spectre of unemployment and precarization of work, due to technological change and global restructuring processes, pose enormous challenges to academics, unionists and social organizations concerned with the future of work, democracy and less asymmetrical development. 

The Conference will take place from August 7th to 9th 2018 in Brazil. The first day of the Conference will take place in São Paulo city where the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT, Unified Workers' Central) will organize the opening session, and the following days at the Economics Institute of University of Campinas (Unicamp), São Paulo State, Campinas, Brazil. 

The last four decades have been marked by neoliberal hegemony and intensification in the process of globalization and financialization, which are presented as the main components of world economic order. Unregulated global capitalism has led to instability and deep financial and productive crises, resulting in high unemployment and an increase of inequality, informalization and precariousness of labor. 

The implementation of successive structural reforms have contributed to the reduction of social protection and labor regulation, weakening the role of trade unions and hampering their struggles and strategies of organization - nationally and internationally - widening social inequality within nations and asymmetries between nations in economic development, insertion in the global value chains and in the international division of labour. Furthermore, the international agenda of our times is marked by the growth of right-wing and extreme right-wing forces in several nations. Also the profound ongoing technological changes create concerns about the future of labor, the organization and role of trade unions, public labour regulation, on the possibilities for reducing global asymmetries in global value chains and in the international division of labour. Under the general theme Future of Work: Democracy, Development, and the Role of Labour the XIII GLU Conference will debate these challenges with a focus on four sub-themes: 

1. Structural Changes and Impacts on Labour 

2. Trade Union Organization and Strategies 

3. Labour Regulation 

4. Development 

Contributions that address gender and race aspects of the above four themes are encouraged. As the conference will be held in Brazil, we will organize a special session about some themes of the conference Work, Democracy and Development, discussing the current political, social and economic context of Brazil. 

For more information please contact glu.brazil.2010(at)gmail.com

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