Unions It’s Not a Concert until Everyone Is Singing

Making companies more democratic and participatory is one of the biggest goals in the working world nowadays. This article takes a look at Germany’s worker participation and how it has caught on in Spain and Europe as a whole. 

During the Covid-19 lockdowns, the widespread use of “uberized” home delivery services threw more light on the “gig economy”, which uses digital platforms to put customers in touch with freelancers. Who works in this sector and what are these precarious jobs like?

“Alle Räder stehen still, wenn dein starker Arm es will” — “All the wheels shall stand still if thy strong arm so wills.” This line from the German labor anthem of 1863 has gained new relevance since the pandemic.

The idea of guaranteeing everyone an unconditional basic income seems tempting to many people. But laypeople and experts alike have been arguing for many years about whether – and, above all, how – it might work. A pilot project in Berlin is now looking for new answers to these and related questions, which could rekindle the debate in Germany.  

When the Covid-19 pandemic began, the Sicilian legal scholar Elena Militello was working at the University of Luxembourg. Activities were switched online for the remainder of the academic year and Militello returned to Palermo, the city of her birth.

The world of work is partly to blame for climate change, pollution, pandemics, poverty. This is why more and more people are looking for ways to work sustainably.

What makes a just transition – and what does that have to do with gender? In the interview, Dinda Yura explains why sustainable economics cannot be achieved without the involvement of workers.

Many rivers in Jakarta are heavily polluted, despite being dynamic spaces. A collective of architects, scientists, and activists, came together to turn a bamboo raft into a laboratory, joining citizen science with education and inviting people to listen to rivers. 

Algeria has one official language: Arabic. But French is an integral part of everyday life and Tamazight, a Berber language, is also designated in the constitution as a national and official language. Journalist Nourredine Bessadi takes a look at the emotional discussion about Algeria’s official languages.

What is normal? And what constitutes a normal face? Our brains are constantly analyzing and classifying every face we encounter, and we as people are not alone in this. A whole field of science and technology analyzes these sub-attentive cognitive processes and breaks them down into statistical normalities. Through machine learning, facial recognition is even being used to categorize and predict human behavior.
 

The All-Poland Women's Strike is a movement that has mobilised people from big cities and small towns throughout the country. Co-initiator Marta Lempart explains the social and political changes driven by the strike and why it has turned into an anti-government protest.

South African writer Lindokuhle Nkosi visits the Kronendal Music Academy in Hout Bay, a suburb of Cape Town, which provides musical education for children. In a personal exchange with founder Dwyn Griesel they speak about the hardships of the corona pandemic and the consequences for the children, but also about the healing power of music.