6/2026 JT in Colombia, last chance for the LTS, commoning labour and more
http://www.azzellini.net - https://www.facebook.com/dario.azzellini
March-May 2026, Dario Azzellini's newsletter in English - approx. 4-5 times a year (also available in Spanish and German)
To unsubscribe: https://www.azzellini.net/newsletter/subscriptions
______________________________________________________________
0. Before
1. New Books and research reports (English):
2. Academic articles: Book chapters and journal articles (English, Spanish, German)
3. Videos/Audios (English, German, Spanish)
4. Interviews and journalism (English, German, Serbian, Turkish)
5. Talks/Conferences (Buggerru/Sardinia)
*****************************************************
0. Before
Hello!
Due to some last-minute cancellations, there are about 8 spots available for Labour Transfer School 5, taking place from June 3 to 10, 2026, in Buggerru, Sardinia (Italy)!
The LTS will have panels on: Social Reproduction Theory, Workers and War, Migrant Labour, Labour Law and Activism, Just Transition and Reconversion, Work and Technology, Rural Labour, Work and Technology, Labour History, Labour Activism in the times of Monsters, Haelth and Care, Art&Labour and Organizing... three concerts, hikes and a mine visit.
There will be activists from the world of work from six continents!
The final program will be available in a few days. You can apply at:
https://www.labourtransferschool.org/
Read more in 5
-----------------
On May 31, presidential elections will be held in Colombia to elect the President and Vice President of the Republic of Colombia for the 2026–2030 term. In the event of a potential runoff, it would take place on June 21. There is a strong likelihood that the left-wing candidate, Iván Cepeda, will win in the first round. A victory for Cepeda will be crucial for ensuring the continuity of the policies initiated under Gustavo Petro. Regarding the elections for the Senate and the House of Representatives, you can find an article of mine in English at link 3. And at link 1, you will find my report on the Just Energy Transition in Colombia, as well as the vision and role of trade unions.
-----------------
They want to organize a talk or a seminar based on my latest book, *Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work: When Workers Take Over*—which I co-authored with my great comrade Marcelo Vieta—covering recovered enterprises, labor as a commons, and workplace democracy around the world (see 1):
I can also offer other talks on, for example, communal democracy, workers' control, sustainable work, and so on.
-----------------
You can find several of my writing at:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dario-Azzellini?ev=hdr_xprf
-----------------
Dario
********************************
1. New Books and research reports (English)
Dario Azzellini and Marcelo Vieta. Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work: When Workers Take Over. Routledge, 290 Pages, 2025 (a more affordable paperback will follow)
This book investigates the return of workers’ self-management in recent decades as responses to recurring neoliberal crises. In particular, the book homes in on worker-recuperated enterprises (WREs), a promising form of workers’ self-organization whereby workers restart troubled, bankrupt, or shuttered companies as cooperatives or other forms of democratic workplace.
The book argues that WREs are prefigurative of new forms of work based on equality and sustainability. Framed by the concepts of autogestión, the labour commons, and prefigurative ethico-political practices, the book argues that WREs contribute to the construction of more directly democratic community economies. Drawing on a range of contemporary case studies from numerous countries in the Global South and North, as well as new theories of workers’ self-management, the book contributes a critical development, political economic, and class-struggle Marxist perspective to the re-emergent labour question within anti-systemic social movements, while theorizing the transformative nature of WREs for workers, work organizations, and communities.
Reviews:
ChuanZhi Ye reviews our book in the British Journal of Industrial Relations and ends writing
"In today’s increasingly globalized capitalism, this work undoubtedly has important reference value and guiding significance. For scholars, policy makers and practitioners who focus on labour relations, economic democratization and social justice, this book is undoubtedly a rare must read."
http://www.azzellini.net/node/3392
https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.70049
-------------------------
Azzellini, Dario. 2026. Colombia Case Report. Just Transition in Colombia: Labour unions and popular movements taking the lead. Leeds University Business School and Hans Böckler Stiftung. 55 pp.
"In August 2022 a leftist government took office for the first time in the country’s history. Newly elected president Gustavo Petro pledged to make climate policies a priority and reformulate climate and energy transition policies in order to meet the goals. He had run for president with a government program elaborated with the contributions of popular assemblies. It stated early on the aim to turn Colombia into a leading country in the fight against climate change. ... The program envisioned “gradually abandoning dependence on oil, coal and all types of mining and illegal economies, as well as agricultural production models that destroy nature and reproduce poverty”. This represents a difficult task for a country where oil and coal exports make up for more than half of total exports, the national bourgeoisie is aligned with transnational oil and mining corporations, and the government does not have the majority in the bicameral national legislature..."
Dowload at: https://justtransition.leeds.ac.uk/jt-country-report_colombia-3-0/
********************************
2. Academic articles: Book chapters and journal articles (English, Spanish)
Azzellini, Dario; Brandl, Sebastian; Matuschek, Ingo. 2025. “Sustainable work and industrial 85-107. relations in Europe.” Industrielle Beziehungen. 31:1.
The socio-ecological transformation is a key issue on the political agenda of the EU and its member states, as seen in the Green Deal. However, despite joint declarations, there are differences in the national transition paths. The UNDP Development Report 2015 calls for a transition to sustainable work, defined as work that promotes human development and reduces or eliminates negative impacts for both present and future generations. The approaches deal in different ways with elements of industrial relations as systemic orientations or ideologies that are more or less shared nationally by the specific actors (politics, business, trade unions and civil society). This article examines the extent to which there is a normative consensus in the member states on the ideas and objectives of a Green Deal or sustainable work as well as how industrial relations are addressed. The analysis is based on various literature reviews on sustainable work, socio-ecological transformation and just transition. The perspective is contextualised by industrial relations theories, which assess the inclusion of the topos of sustainable work in the Green Deal and whether it goes beyond it. To this end, the article presents different development paths preferred by actors from specific country clusters, and concludes by discussing the embedding of civil society movements in industrial relations. The result is that trade unions and civil society actors in particular must shape the content of a just transition and ensure its implementation.
https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-2779-2024-1-85
----------------------------------------
Azzellini, Dario. 2025. “Contemporary Communes and Council Democracy in Latin America.” Socialism and Democracy. DOI: 10.1080/08854300.2024.2435067.
Ideas and practices of communal self-administration are widespread in Latin America, especially among indigenous and Afro-American communities, stemming from ancestral customs. Commune-like self- administration predates the Paris Commune and has surfaced repeatedly throughout history. It was present in the wars of independence, in peasant uprisings, in revolts and revolutions in the early 20th century and in the struggles of its second half. The idea of the commune as democratically self-governed space corresponds to the framework of alternative imagination of many popular movements and the experiences of building popular power...
Article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08854300.2024.2435067
----------------------------
Azzellini, Dario. 2026. “Contemporary Communes and Council Democracy in Venezuela.” In: Kets, Gaard; van de Sande, Mathijs (eds.). Communalism as a Democratic Repertoire. From the Paris Commune to the Present. Advances in Democratic Theory series. London/New York: Routledge. 183-196.
In Communalism as a Democratic Repertoire Gaard Kets and Mathijs van de Sande bring together historians, sociologists, political scientists, theorists, and philosophers to reconstruct how "the Commune" has continued to serve as a source of inspiration to different movements and tendencies throughout the past 150 years, and how communalist thought and practices help us reimagine what radical democracy may look like today. Divided into three parts, contributors begin by exploring how the Paris Commune shaped political debates and influenced various theoretical oeuvres as well as political practices. Part II develops communalist ideas or strategies in a contemporary context. Part III sheds light on three different contemporary communalist practices in the Middle East, Europe, North America, and Latin America.
-----------------------------
Azzellini, Dario. 2025. “La democracia consejista y comunera en contra del Estado-nación.” In: Curto López, Saúl (ed.). La emergencia de la Democracia Comunal. Valencia: Tirant Lo Blanch.
"Este volumen, además de ser una compilación de estudios sobre realidades comunitarias, también es una primera aportación tanto teórica como práctico-empírica para situar la democracia comunal como un posible campo de trabajo e investigación en las próximas décadas. Pensamos que esta posibilidad, no sólo existe, sino que, además, tiene sentido y pertinencia en la situación social que vive el mundo..."
---------------------------
Azzellini, Dario. 2026. “Crowdwork-Plattformen: Kaum Kompetenzentwicklung aber wachsender Bedarf an umfassend kompetenten Freelancern.” In: Büchter, Karin; Schlömer, Tobias; Kleemann, Frank; Krzywdzinski, Martin; Eckelt, Marcus; Li-Gottwald, Jiayin (eds.). Crowdwork als Beruf? Subjektivierung, Kompetenzerwerb und Lernen in der digitalen Plattformarbeit. Leverkusen: Verlag Barbara Budrich. 116-138.
"Die empirische Beobachtung, dass zahlreiche Crowdwork-Plattformen einen Strategiewechsel hin zu komplexeren und prozessübergreifenden Dienstleistungen für Unternehmen vollziehen und damit zugleich steigende Bedarfe an qualifizierten und kompetenten Crowdworker:innen zur Erfüllung von hochqualifizierten Aufträgen haben, veranlasste Dario Azzellini zu einer umfangreichen Dokumentenanalyse. Er stellt in seinem Beitrag Befunde dieser Analyse vor und befasst sich mit der Frage, inwiefern die im Strategiewandlungsprozess befindlichen Crowdwork-Plattformen Möglichkeiten der beruflichen Kompetenzentwicklung und Qualifikation bieten und welchen Qualitätsstandards diese entsprechen." (aus der Einleitung des Buches)
https://shop.budrich.de/produkt/crowdwork-als-beruf/
Kostenloser download des gesamten Buches:
https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/bitstream/handle/document/108879/ssoar-2026-buchter_et_al-Crowdwork_als_Beruf_Subjektivierung_Kompetenzerwerb.pdf?sequence=1
*************************************
3. Videos/Audios (English, Spanish)
Just Transitions - a global exploration: Colombia
Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change, 26.1.2026 (audio)
Professor Vera Trappmann speaks to senior researcher Dario Azzellini about his research on Colombia’s approach to just transition in this latest episode of the “Just transitions – a global exploration” series. Dario gives an overview of Colombia’s holistic and community-driven approach to just transition – where unions, activities and communities push for a post-extractivist future, despite immense risks and structural challenges.
https://soundcloud.com/leedsunibschool/just-transitions-a-global-exploration-colombia
-----------------
I Seminario sobre Planificación Económica y Autogestión: Josè Luis Carretero y Dario Azzellini: Modelos, experiencias y debates para pensar la autogestión en el siglo XXI (video)
Instituto de Ciencias Económicas y Autogestión (ICEA), 13.12.2025, 15 min.
Dario Azzellini, Universidad de Duisburg Essen: Variedades de Empresas Recuperadas por sus Trabajadorxs en Europa. Los ejemplos de Francia, Grecia e Italia
Josè Luis Carretero: Cooperativismo, integración y desarrollo. Abraham Guillén en Perú.
https://www.youtube.com/live/Ivxn-a0PlMs
*************************************
4. Interviews and journalism (English, Serbian, Turkish, Spanish)
What Colombia’s new Congress could mean for the country’s plans for a Just Transition
Dr Dario Azzellini, Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change, Tuesday 24 March 2026
Colombia elected a new Congress on 8 March 2026. The elections for the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives were considered an indicator for the upcoming presidential elections taking place on 31 May 2026, particularly regarding the chances of the candidate Iván Cepeda winning the presidency and ensuring continuity of the policies of the leftist government under Gustavo Petro...
http://www.azzellini.net/node/3405
----------------
Can worker control guide the world past a neoliberal crisis?
Dario Azzellini talks to Co-op News about his new book, which goes back to ‘the idea of what co-ops were at the beginning’
Rebecca Harvey, Co-op News, March 10, 2026
Workers’ self-management is on the rise, as a response to recurring neoliberal crises: this is the central argument in a new book co-authored by Professor Dario Azzellini, senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology, University of Duisburg-Essen with previous roles at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas (Mexico) and Cornell University (USA). In particular, Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work homes in on worker-recuperated enterprises (WREs), a form of workers’ self-organisation whereby workers restart troubled, bankrupt, or shuttered companies as co-operatives or other forms of democratic workplace. ...
----------------
International personalities call for solidarity with Rojava: Attacks must be stopped immediately. Thinkers, academics, writers, and artists from the United States, India, Chile, Germany, Catalonia, and Scotland call for solidarity against the attacks on Rojava
DEVRİŞ ÇİMEN | ANF, 26.1.2026
Dr. Dario Azzellini, researcher and documentary director, holds a PhD in political science and a PhD in sociology, Berlin, Germany:
“Déjà vu in Kurdistan?
Kobanê is again besieged by jihadists from three sides and Turkey, the jihadists’ strongest ally, on the fourth side. The situation reminds of 2014-2016, when Daesh and other jihadist militias massacred the predominantly Kurdish population in the rural areas of the region, occupying more than 350 villages. Back then, Kurdish forces, supported by Western countries interested in stopping ISIS. This time, the situation is different....
Turkish:
ANF: https://anf-news.com/avrupa/rojava-bizimdir-koruyalim-223415
Yeni Yaşam Gazetesi: https://yeniyasamgazetesi9.com/aydin-ve-sanatcilardan-cagri-rojava-bizimdir-koruyalim/
Ozgür Politika: https://www.ozgurpolitika.com/haberi-rojava-bizimdir-koruyalim-208221
---------
Political Scientist Dario Azzellini on the Attack on Venezuela
“The US Is a Dying Empire”
Marko Miletić | Mašina, January 9, 2026
According to political scientist Dario Azzellini, the US attack on Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro do not merely constitute a violation of international law, but its complete collapse. In an interview with Mašina, Azzellini explains why he sees this event as a symptom of a “dying empire,” and at the same time as a prelude to a new, dangerous phase of global conflict....
https://www.masina.rs/eng/the-us-is-a-dying-empire-political-scientist-d...
http://www.azzellini.net/node/3394
----------------
Politikolog Dario Acelini o napadu na Venecuelu: „SAD su umiruća imperija“
Mašina, 06.01.2026
Napad SAD-a na Venecuelu i otmica predsednika Nikolasa Madura, prema politikologu Dariju Aceliniju, ne predstavljaju samo kršenje međunarodnog prava već njegov potpuni kraj. U intervjuu za Mašinu, Acelini objašnjava zašto ovaj događaj vidi kao simptom „umiruće imperije“, ali i kao uvod u novu, opasnu fazu globalnih sukoba...
https://www.masina.rs/sad-su-umiruca-imperija-politikolog-dario-acelini-o-napadu-na-venecuelu/
http://www.azzellini.net/node/3395
**************************************
5. Talks/Conferences (Buggerru/Sardinia)
June 3-10, 2026 in Buggerru, Sardinia (Italy)
Labor Transfer School 5 - 8 spots available!
Due to some last-minute cancellations, there are approximately 8 spots still available for the 5th Labour Transfer School, taking place from June 3 to 10, 2026, in Buggerru, Sardinia (Italy)!
LabourTransfer is an independent, not for profit, international initiative of global labour scholars interested in collaborations, synergies and knowledge exchange between academia and social organizations, aiming at producing emancipatory knowledge on labour and social issues. LabourTransfer gives participants a chance to exchange their research interests with academics, labour activists, artists, journalists and trade unionists from all over the world. LabourTransfer is not a traditional academic summer school or a training centre for trade unionists but a co-learning, strategizing, and networking place for labour activism and social justice.
The LTS serves as a venue for shared exchange and debate—where everyone learns from everyone else—bringing together labor activists (in all their forms), labor researchers, trade unionists, and students. It features the participation of over 100 individuals from approximately 30 countries spanning at least five continents. We also share meals and celebrate together; we go to the beach, visit an old mine in Buggerru, and learn about the mining town where the army killed four miners in 1904—an event that triggered Italy's first national strike...
The program will soon be available here: https://www.labourtransferschool.org/
*************************************
Dario Azzellini
https://www.azzellini.net https://www.workerscontrol.net
To unsubscribe: https://www.azzellini.net/newsletter/subscriptions
