workers stories
24 March, 2021 – 6.30 p.m.
Price: free
‘Over the past twelve months the Workers’ Stories Project has collected and published the everyday experiences of workers across Scotland. ‘
COVID-19 and the resulting lockdowns have caused significant ruptures in our working lives. The impact has been seismic and due to restrictions has unfolded in stark contrast to that of previous workers’ struggles and periods of industrial change. We have experienced these changes in fragmented, suddenly domesticated, sometimes fearful and often unseen conditions, and the ways we have adjusted to these shifts and organised against their worst effects have often been in isolated settings. Spending much time at home, and with fewer resources to collectivise, the means under which we share and build worker and community power have changed for the long term.
This is not an easily captured mass struggle, and its historical positioning is dependent on collecting the voices and testimony of those living through it. A meaningful account of this period of immense change needs to be written by workers, on their own terms, but often the space to do so in our institutions is limited. The impact of this crisis has inspired people to document their own history through sounds and images, poetry and testimony, diary and song.

Over the past twelve months the Workers’ Stories Project has collected and published the everyday experiences of workers across Scotland. The project continues to define work in its broadest terms and aims to capture the voices of those less often heard. Whether you are working from home, out of work, looking for work, being laid off, working in dangerous conditions, or doing much of the essential care work that so often goes unpaid and unacknowledged, the project wants to share your story. It wants t to hear directly from workers themselves with the aim of building a historical archive of workers’ experiences which might otherwise go unrecorded, and which will form part of the permanent collection at the National Library of Scotland for future generations.

Join this event to commemorate a year of the Workers’ Stories Project, to hear about what’s to come, and to hear contributions from a range of speakers on how they collect our own history and collectivise when usual methods are unavailable, and build worker and community power for the struggles to come.
There will be a panel of speakers and time for open discussion. All welcome.

Speakers:

Roz Foyer, STUC General Secretary
Daniel Caie, GMB British Gas striker
Caitlin Lee – Chair of Unite Glasgow Hospitality branch
Nicky MacKenzie- Teacher and Hairdresser
Kendra Briken, UCU activist and industrial sociologist
Hailey Maxwell, Workers’ Stories Project
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Douglas Stuart & Jackie Kay: Shuggie Bain

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Avatar of PatByrne Publisher of Pat's Guide to Glasgow West End; the community guide to the West End of Glasgow. Fiction and non-fiction writer.

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