Another blog, is it really necessary?
Few things are truly ‘necessary’,
in the sense of ‘survival’; after all we want so much more than mere survival. Then
again, in the current day and age with mass unemployment, increasing poverty,
inequality and insecurity, daily subsistence and survival has come back as the ‘social
question’ has been reopened. As Alexis Rappas reminds us in his splendid book
on Cyprus in the 1930s, this is essentially ‘the Labour Question’.[1]
The question then is it
useful?’
I think yes. I would say that there is a serious gap in
knowledge on the subject of Labour issues in Cyprus. Of course, the trade
Unions and INEK do their work and provide their own information; and so do the employers’
associations; so do various EU bodies. Gregoris Ioannou has done a nice job to follow
and report various news, developments and to provide the links in his Labour Observatory. Other blogs and sites provide various interesting political and sociological
aspects of labour issues.
What is missing however is some specialisation
on legal, theoretical and rights-based analytical approaches relating to Cyprus
that are gathered in a blog or website; moreover, there is little done in
English that collects all the useful material and developments.
This blog hopes to be bilingual,
English and Greek; mostly English when it comes to explanation, analysis etc.
and Greek in terms of source material. Much
of work will be draw on and complement the work Corina and I do for the
European Labour Law Network.
It promises to report on ideas
and developments on labour matters, legal, sociolegal and political aspects, issues relating
to rights and struggles with Cyprus as its main (but not exclusive) focus.
Dedicated to the late Rolandos Katsiaounis, the historian who passed
away recently and to my late grandfathers, who believed that the greatest issue
in the world was the ‘labour question’
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