Precarious Academic Labor in Germany: Termed Contracts and New Berufsverbot

The authors examines how precarity is produced in German academia and explores how labour activists are trying to combat it. The focus is on mid-level faculty. In the first part, the mechanics of precarisation are explained; in the second part, the institutional supports of the status quo blocking change in favour of labour are identified, and in the third part, the demands and strategies of two organisations are analyzed that have made headlines in recent years by exposing the proliferation of precarity in German academia: the Education and Science Workers’ Union (GEW) and the Network for Decent Work in Academia (NGAWiss)

The Exhaustion of Merkelism: A Conjunctural Analysis

Inspired by Hall et al.'s Policing the Crisis (1978), the authors provide a conjunctural analysis of present-day Germany. It is based on a periodisation of Merkelism – the dominant political mode of managing the economic, political and cultural crisis tendencies in the country from the mid-2000s onwards. This reveals that the Merkelist approach to crisis management has become exhausted. The manifestation point of this process is the 2015 'Summer of Migration'. The Merkel government decided not to prevent hundred thousands of refugees who had been walking across the Balkans for months from entering the country. Hereupon, it was identified, at the level of political discourse, with a liberal stance on the border regime. As a result, the pragmatic and depoliticising interventions typical of Merkelism lost traction; a political and cultural polarisation emerged. Importantly, this happened in the context of a socio-economic consolidation of large parts of the 'new' middle class – and a protracted decline of the working class, which was covered up by narratives of Germany as a success story. Accordingly, the conjuncture in the country is characterised by the weakening of class ties of political and cultural representation and the proliferation of nationalist interpellations. Once again, 'race is the modality in which class is lived' (Hall), which is visible in the widespread assumption that there are clearly defined, homogeneous and incompatible 'cultures' clashing with one another. In this sense, race has become a politically salient category whose discursive predominance contributes to further marginalising a language of class

Politisierte Streiks: zur Dynamik und Deutung von Arbeitskämpfen in Großbritannien

In Großbritannien werden Streiks wieder zum Gegenstand politischer Diskussionen - und zwar, ohne dass sich ihre Frequenz nachhaltig erhöht hat. Warum ist das so? Und inwiefern haben gewerkschaftliche Strategien zu dieser Wahrnehmungsverschiebung beigetragen? Dies sind die Leitfragen des vorliegenden Aufsatzes. Der Autor arbeitet eine Veränderung in der politischen Aufladung von Streiks heraus: Wurden Ausstände in der New-Labour-Ära tendenziell von außen politisiert, verschiebt sich dies in der Konjunktur der Krise. Nun sind die Streikakteure selbst diejenigen, die die Politisierung von Streiks vorantreiben. Die Gründe dafür sind einerseits die von Seiten der Regierung Cameron verfolgte Kürzungspolitik, die den öffentlichen Sektor ins Zentrum der Auseinandersetzungen mit der parlamentarischen und der außerparlamentarischen Opposition rückt, und andererseits der Schlingerkurs der Labour Party unter Ed Milibands Führung. In dieser Konstellation zeigt sich auf Seiten der britischen Gewerkschaften ein vorsichtiges Bemühen, eine eigenständige politische Stimme zu finden.In Britain, strikes have become an object of political debate again - and this has happened despite the fact that the frequency of strikes has not increased significantly. Why is this the case? And in how far did trade union strategies contribute to this shift of perception? These are the guiding questions of the article. The author shows that there is a change in how strikes are charged politically: Industrial action in the new labour era was politicised from the outside, and this is shifting in the conjuncture of crisis. Now the strikers themselves are politicising their activities. There are two reasons for this shift: (a) the politics of austerity pursued by the Cameron government, which put the public sector takes centre stage in the confrontations with the parliamentary and the extra-parliamentary opposition, and (b) the lack of direction of the Labour Party under Ed Miliband's leadership. In this situation, the unions in Britain are trying somewhat hesitantly to find their own political voice

Editorial

"Editors' Introduction." Global Labour Journal (January) 7(1). Rina Agarwala, Jenny Chan, Alexander Gallas, and Ben Scull