Security at work in an uncertain world I

Together with Progressive Britain, we are partnering on a major new project on the future of work and the need for social democrats to create and promote a new politics of work.

For this second roundtable, we brought together experts and politicians from around Europe to wrest control of the debate back from technocrats and put forward a new politics of work curated by Frederick Harry Pitts of the Centre for Sociodigital Futures at the University of Bristol, and Andrew Pakes, the Deputy General Secretary and Director of Research at Prospect Union.

Work is central to most of our lives. However, due to rapid social, economic, and technological changes worldwide, it is changing at a pace that politicians and policymakers are struggling to keep up with. For the public who bear the brunt of these shifts, the causes behind them seem distant and their leaders powerless. Despite this, parties around the world have struggled to develop a politics that speaks to the mounting uncertainty and looks to the future with optimism and the prospect of a better life. 

This roundtable in Stockholm focused on the connections between national security, economic security, and security at work, and the implications for work, workers and industrial strategy of the changing geopolitical picture. We heard interventions from social democrats and trade unionists from Sweden and Europe. The specific goal of this roundtable was to learn from the Swedish model of industrial relations: how is it evolving in light of today’s challenges? And what can others learn from that? 

Find here the report of the first roundtable in London, ‘Security as means and ends. A Report from the FEPS/Progressive Britain roundtable on the future of work’, which served as the basis for the discussions at the Stockholm roundtable. You can also read more about Harry and Andrew’s thinking in a recent longread for Futures of Work, ‘Labour’s New Politics of Production?’.  

The session was a small, closed roundtable event operating on Chatham House rules. Unattributed (or attributed where agreed) insights from the discussion will feed into the project report published in spring this year after a final roundtable in Berlin.