Book on precarious work and worker insecurity launched

Cape Coast, Feb. 15, - The International Centre for Development and Decent Work (ICDD) and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FEF) has launched a book on the emerging work and worker insecurity and vulnerability in Cape Coast.

The book titled, “Crossing the Divide: Precarious Work and the Future of Labour” compares precarious work in India, Ghana and South Africa and shows how innovative organisational strategies are emerging in the Global South to bridge the widening divide between the formal and informal economies.

The 260 paged book is an outcome of a collaborative research project funded by the International Centre for Development and Decent Work (ICDD) of the University of Kassel, Germany.

The research was undertaken by a consortium of leading researchers based in South Africa, Ghana and India.

It was edited by professor Edward Webster, an Emeritus Professor in the Society, Work and Development (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Professor Akua Britwum, an Associate Professor at the Centre for Gender, Research, Advocacy and Documentation (CEGRAD) at the University of Cape Coast (UCC) and Professor Sharit Bhowmik, Chairperson of the Centre for Labour Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai.

Launching the book, Mr Mac Anthony Cobblah, the UCC Liberian, advised African authors to produce digitised version of their intellectual materials in order to expand their reach.

He also asked them to produce an electronic version to make it accessible to the global academic community.

Mr Cobblah stressed the importance of management of knowledge resources and urged African universities and relevant stakeholders to attach high level of seriousness to managing its knowledge resources.

Professor Britwum, Co-editor of the book, said the research documented in the book looked at the traditional unions and emerging ones, their challenges and other gender dimensions.

She said the book also addressed the question as to how informal and vulnerable workers could organise and in what form, strategise and showcase their relationship with traditional unions.

Professor Britwum said the book also identified struggling worker groups and the precarious working environment.

She said the book made it clear that informal workers were not passive victims but were building new forms of collective solidarity to promote their rights and interests.

The studies in this collection are predominantly ethnographic, drawing on the experiences of vulnerable workers through in depth interviews, observation and in some cases, large scale surveys. Together they uncover the large invisible World of the informal economy and vulnerable workers”.

Professor Edward Webster, an Emeritus Professor in the Society, Work and Development (SWOP) and also a Co-editor of the book, expressed concern at how the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) had affected industrialisation of Africa.

This, he said, was the reason why precarious work was wide spread in the informal economy of African countries.

GNA