WEI Seminar with visiting associate professor Jon Las Heras Cuenca
| Dates: | 13 November 2025 |
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| Times: | 14:00 - 15:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Alliance Manchester Business School |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Alumni, Current University students |
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| Speaker: | Jon Las Heras Cuenca |
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Challenges of Labour Organisations: Cooperative Paradoxes and Contradictions of Union Renewal in the Basque Country
Global capitalism continues to exacerbate social challenges, to which organised labour often struggles to respond in a coherent and effective manner. In the Basque Country, characterised by a rich tradition of labour militancy and intricate solidarity networks, both cooperative firms and trade unions face difficulties in sustaining inclusive and transformative class-based initiatives. Drawing on ongoing fieldwork and recent theoretical developments on organisational paradoxes and power resources, this seminar will first explore the paradoxes currently confronting Basque cooperative firms (among others) as they strive to balance financial viability with inclusive and sustainable membership practices. Secondly, it will examine how the two largest Basque trade unions conceptualise union renewal and the power resources they are mobilising to maintain social legitimacy and effectively advocate for the interests of the Basque working class. However, through an in-depth analysis of recent strike actions, the seminar will highlight how these power resources—when pushed to their limits—can generate strategic tensions and contradictions of their own. Ultimately, the session aims to foreground contemporary labour politics and foster a critical discussion on potential pathways forward.
Bio
Jon Las Heras is an associate professor at the University of the Basque Country and studies the Sociology and Political Economy of Labor, Critical Management Studies, Industrial Relations, and Labor Geography. Jon holds a PhD in Politics from The University of Manchester and adopts a comparative approach to working class strategies and labor organizations from a critical perspective.
This event is open to internal staff and students at The University of Manchester. Please register via Eventbrite to confirm attendance.
Speaker
Jon Las Heras Cuenca
Role: Associate Professor
Organisation: University of the Basque Country
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
3.013a
Aliiance Manchester Business School
Booth Street West
Manchester
