‘Securonomics’ and the Politics of Production and Distribution – Roundtable report

What can we learn from the way global unrest has changed labor relations and the debate about economic security in Germany?

The pandemic, followed by the war in Ukraine, has brought into sharp focus the way domestic/local economies down to the level of the workplace are influenced by the global security context.

Rather than the preserve of international and military experts, when global factors have a bearing on production and distribution, on wealth and welfare, they end up sitting at the center of day-to-day politics and Labour relations.

As Germany has had to make a major shift in its geopolitical outlook, the Zeitenwende, it has also been grappling with the on the ground political impact of the economic challenges this brings.

In late March, we brought together a group of social democratic policymakers, trade unionists and academic experts to discuss how global events have affected labor relations and economic security in Germany, aiming to inform the idea of a more secure Britain that is central to Labour’s progressive policy offer under Keir Starmer.

This roundtable forms part of our Progressive Britain project on Security at Work in an Uncertain World, launched in March 2022, funded and supported by the Foundation for European Progressive Studies.

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Author

  • Frederick Harry Pitts & Andrew Pakes

    Andrew Pakes is deputy general secretary of Prospect Union and Labour’s Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Peterborough. Frederick Harry Pitts is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Exeter’s Cornwall Campus in his hometown of Penryn. The authors recently produced the Foundation for European Progressive Studies/ Progressive Britain Policy Report 'A Progressive Politics of Work for the Age of Unpeace: What Labour can Learn from the European Centre-Left.'

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