You are invited to an evening of reflections on lawyering for workers’ rights co-hosted by QMUCU, QMUNISON, and the Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context .
Wednesday 7 May 5-7pm
Sign up for online or in person attendance
Speakers
- Bruce Robin Unison Senior Legal Officer on lessons from Unison’s legal support for care worker and trade unionist Fiona Mercer, who won a human rights case against her employer in the Supreme Court (but left the court without a practical remedy).
- Tanzil Chowdhury Queen Mary University of London, on insights from a legal workers’ inquiry.
- Katie Cruz University of Bristol and Tessa Herrmann (Ver.di Germany) on the sex workers rights movement and trade unionism in Europe and winning worker recognition for dancers.
- QMUCU branch committee members on community legal work countering disproportionate ASOS deductions.
Context
Trade unions and trade unionists have done all kinds of important legal work in defending workers in the workplace and beyond. It seems important to credit these activities while remaining skeptical about legal engagement, given a long history of legal suspicion of workers. We invite participants to reflect on the different dimensions of lawyering for workers’ rights and the role of legal work in transformational movements.
Lawyering in trade unions works with individual claimants, but is also accountable to the larger movement of workers. When UNISON supported Fiona Mercer in taking legal action against her employer for suspending her during strike preparation, other workers and trade unions took heart from the fightback.
Legal responses to workplace problems may use professional lawyers, but also engage the everyday stuff of claimants’ lives, case-worker support, and community self-education. As the legal workers’ inquiry has shown, the capacity of legal workers to make a difference depends on so much more than the application of legal rules.
Decisions about whether to take certain cases can have a larger strategic value even as they also seek redress for individuals who have endured harm in the workplace. Dancers gained power to negotiate with club owners and managers by seeking recognition as workers with rights.
And legal push-backs do not have to be understood as singular cases, but can be one element of a broader collective movement seeking transformation of working lives. QMUCU’s work with the UCU legal department has sought to turn the brutalising experience of ASOS pay deductions into a campaign for freedom from detriment for all trade union members.
This gathering will make some space to talk through the challenges of working with law, including by taking cases, as workers and trade union members.
Questions to include
How do trade unions decide to take on legal cases? What do trade union members want from trade union legal work? How can workers best claim, celebrate even, the solidarity work done in moving legal obstacles and making law otherwise? How do workers best build a supportive community of accountability for trade union legal work?
Wednesday 7 May 5-7pm in LAW 313 QMUL@Mile End
(number 36 on this campus map)
Sign up for online or in person attendance
Contact Ruth Fletcher for more information.
Further information about the QMUCU Legal Knowledge Project here.
qmucu.org 