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Are workers back in the driving seat?

Have recent economic upheavals given workers more leverage?

Workers at an Amazon warehouse in New York have successfully set up Amazon's first ever union in the country. Staff at dozens of other US locations are said to be interested in unionising as well. There are signs workers are now increasingly in the driving seat. The pandemic has galvanised American employees with a tightening labour market providing them with more leverage. An increasing number of workers around the world are drawn to new, more flexible ways of working. But campaigners argue that while gig workers enjoy greater control over the hours they put in, the conditions and benefits they receive make them second-class citizens. And while many high-skilled staff have used the pandemic to demand greater flexibility to work from home or work over fewer days, that鈥檚 a benefit many in lower-paid professions have been denied. So as the world emerges from the economic upheavals caused by Covid-19, are workers better off?

Ritula Shah is joined by a panel of expert guests.
Producers: Natalia Rolleston and Paul Schuster.

Available now

49 minutes

Last on

Sat 9 Apr 2022 14:06GMT

Contributors

Tatiana L贸pez - Researcher for the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and for Fairwork, an Oxford-based research project

Rebecca Givan - Associate Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University

Len Shackleton - Professor of Economics at the University of Buckingham and Editorial and Research Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs think tank

Also featuring:

Kristin Sharp - CEO of Flex, a gig industry group whose members include Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Grubhub

Scott Nova - Executive Director of the Worker Rights Consortium

Photo

Amazon Labor Union president Chris Smalls celebrates with colleagues - Credit: Reuters

Broadcasts

  • Fri 8 Apr 2022 09:06GMT
  • Fri 8 Apr 2022 23:06GMT
  • Sat 9 Apr 2022 03:06GMT
  • Sat 9 Apr 2022 14:06GMT

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