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Our Labour Rights in the Face of the Onslaught of Corporate Power: Feminist Visions and Alternatives

Summary of the presentations made during the Feminist Economics School webinar on 17 November 2020

The World Social Forum on Transformative Economies, DAWN’s School of Feminist Economics organised another webinar which gave participants the opportunity to understand the debates around the role of work, using a feminist lens of the main trends imposed by global corporate power.

The Statement by Alejandra Scampini ‘Corporate capture is a feminist issue’ opened the webinar together with a thought-provoking video1 Transnational Institute on the role of transnational corporations within States and in our lives. The webinar provided an overview of the role of corporate power in global economic dynamics, its influence on the structure of global economic governance and on the delimitation of public policy spaces in countries and then focused on the implications of this power on the working conditions of workers. The COVID-19 pandemic has since intensified corporate impunity, state opacity and weakened the social contract of labour. Against this backdrop, the following questions were posed: What new forms of corporate capture exist and how are they reinforced in contexts of pandemic? How can we intersect struggles for gender justice and environmental justice in the face of the onslaught of corporate power? How do we strengthen collective advocacy work on the public sector, for the defence of human rights and democracies? And finally, what opportunities and tools do we have to move forward together to challenge these contexts and create a way out of the pandemic that places the sustainability of life at the centre?

1 – Watch the full TNI video at the following link: https://www.facebook.com/130455360339579/videos/1037729066729425/