Conference—Transformation
Jörg Flecker und Sandra Stern
Wie wir leben und arbeiten wollen

(How We Want to Live and Work)

In recent months, unemployment has reached record highs. The coronavirus crisis has clearly demonstrated that a radical change in thinking is required in the world of work and that paid and unpaid work need to be redistributed. Shortened working hours are the order of the day, but they are not nearly enough, since the removal of boundaries ushered in by digitalization increasingly blurs the lines between working and not working. How can we reduce the time worked per day, per week and per year, and what different working time models are conceivable in a rapidly changing world of work? How much should we and can we work at all in order to maintain our health and be able to participate fully in social and cultural life?

Bio
Jörg Flecker studies international employment systems, value-added chains, and work processes. He is a social scientist who holds a professorship for general sociology at the University of Vienna. In his 2017 book, Arbeit und Beschäftigung. Eine soziologische Einführung (Work and Employment: A Sociological Introduction), he systematically describes the accelerated transformation of gainful employment in connection with other forms of work.

Sandra Stern is a political adult educator, political scientist, and cofounder of the UNDOK access point for trade union support of undocumented workers. She has worked on union organizing campaigns in the USA, Germany, and Austria. Together with others, she is currently establishing and developing the Bureau für Selbstorganisierung (Office of Self-Organization).