8. May. 2019

For the first time, the International Labour Process Conference (ILPC) was held in Austria.

From 24 to 26 April, 350 delegates from 40 countries presented 245 papers on the campus of the University of Vienna. Many had made their way from outside of Europe, from Argentina, Chile, Canada, the US, Ghana, Australia, New Zealand, China or India. The conference was organised by the Department of Sociology at Vienna University, the Institute for Sociology and Social Research at the Vienna University of economics and Business, the Working Life Research Centre (FORBA), and ZSI – Centre for Social innovation.

Since the 1980s, the Labour Process Conference investigates the labour process in capitalist societies, dynamics of labour relations and changes in the labour market and in work organisation. Impacts of new technlogies at work are a recurrent subject, and many contributions on digital work mobilised interest. This year’s motto was „Fragmentations and Solidarities“. Discussions on the one hand focused on the fragmentation of work and employment through outasourcing, relocation, and the increasing variety of employment relations and contracts. On the other hand, they addressed new and emerging forms of solidarity observed across company and country borders.

ZSI’s Ursula Holtgrewe organised a Special Stream together with Bettina Haidinger (FORBA), Gabriella Alberti (Leeds University) und Devi Sacchetto (Universitá degli Studi di Padova) on “Representation and resistance: trade unions, their comfort zones and the new and hybrid forms of representation”. Ursula Holtgrewe presented a paper on “Digitalisation in the service context: European unions navigating erosion, disruption and innovation“, based on the recent ZSI/UNI Europa  project „Shaping Industrial relations in a digitalising service economy“.