ISABELLE FERRERAS - #DEMOCRATIZING WORK

WI: What are the origins of #Democratizing Work?

IF: The story is actually beautiful. It was during the Covid pandemic, and we were all working from home. There were all these warm feelings towards essential workers, such as supermarket cashiers, with people feeling so grateful that they could protect themselves at home while others were at work. We came to see that our lives depended on the people who earned the least. And we thought that if we really want to express our gratitude, more than window clapping at 8pm, we needed to do something. Together with my scholar colleagues Dominique Méda and Julie Battilana, we decided to write an op-ed in response to work and the pandemic.  And we identified three key themes in the piece - how to democratize, decommodify and decarbonize work.

WI: And the momentum grew from there?

IF: Yes - we sent the piece to the Le Monde newspaper and they assured us they would publish it, but only after two weeks. So in that period, we thought why not check if there are other colleagues who agree and want to side with us? We circulated the piece, which was called Work: Democratize, Decommodify, Remediate, at first with a clear decision to check with female colleagues. We could see that the status of women was being badly affected during the pandemic, especially in terms of equality. It had a snowball effect - everybody sent the piece on to other colleagues, and there were many who were 100% aligned. We really did not anticipate this - I could not manage my mailbox!

WI: So #Democratizing Work became a global phenomenon?

IF: Yes, without it being planned! The op-ed was circulated across disciplines, and around the world. In the short space of that two-week delay requested by Le Monde, the text was signed by more than 3,000 researchers from more than 700 universities on every continent. Academics, who had signed the op-ed, took the lead in translating the piece into 27 languages. We suggested that people contact newspapers and publications in their own countries, with the idea of getting it coverage. On 16 May 2020, the op-ed was published in 43 newspapers in 36 countries around the world, including the Guardian, the Boston Globe, newspapers in India, in China - across five continents.

WI: Your essential message focuses on how work can be democratized, decommodifed and decarbonized. Why do you think this has such a universal appeal?

IF: These are not just Western values, or from the global north - any worker round the world will recognise these principles. Everybody deserves decent work, and to be involved in the decisions that govern that work, and for the planet to be protected in the process. These principles need to be supported. We engage with those who are practicing or studying these principles; it’s a way of bringing people together, to give that extra dose of strength - you might think you are the only one protecting or defending this view, but actually there are many. This is very important in terms of community building.

WI: And now, post the pandemic, how are you moving forward?

IF: We’ve established multi-disciplinary network of both academics and practitioners. We saw the enthusiasm that was generated by the op-ed, and the principles it conveyed, and we feel a responsibility to nurture that. Usually in the academic sector you are pushed to specialise on a micro problem or issue. But how does that illuminate the bigger picture? How is science going to do that? You need to organise across the scientific field, so that so people can learn from each other. There are super-specialists in certain fields - and we need to work with these specialists, to share knowledge and learn across boundaries. So, for example, we have an ongoing workshops series, we have a newsletter, we have a mailing list, we use our website to draw people together.

WI: Why is this so important?

IF: We live in an economy that has commodified labour. But there is recognition that if we want social peace we must stop treating workers as commodities. Otherwise they will become so precarious and insecure due to the market forces in their lives, that they will vote for the “strong man” to protect them. We are seeing exactly that in the USA, they have that “strong man” and he is going to rule that country exactly as we fear. In the world of Donald Trump we are going to have to fight even more.

WI : There is an emphasis on working with women academics in #Democratizing Work. Is this a consciously feminist approach?

IF: It really started from this very vivid feeling, during the pandemic, that women worldwide were going to be very badly affected. As women academics in the West we felt extremely privileged, and thought we had a role to highlight the roles of women everywhere. We work on strengthening ties with other female academics and specialists, and on getting authentic voices. We are inclusive of the LGBTQI+ community as well, we want to raise the profile of the under-represented.

There is a core group of women who were involved in #Democratizing Work right from the beginning, and we meet every second Friday of the month for a review of things that are going on. And we published a book , Democratize Work, in which all the authors are women.

WI: How did you get involved with the WageIndicator Foundation, collaborating on webinars?

IF: Actually, my link to WageIndicator goes back nearly twenty years! I was doing my post-doc at Harvard with Richard Freeman, who was Head of the Research Centre. Paulien (Osse) and Kea (Tijdens), the original founders of WageIndicator, asked us to work on a US version of the WageIndicator website, which we did, and we managed to get it launched. This was important for the vision of Paulien and Kea, and I am glad to know the website is still doing well!

• The next webinar with WageIndicator Foundation and #Democratizing Work is on 13 March 2025 on Voices from the Brink: Unveiling the Human and Environmental Cost of Vale’s Mining Disaster. You can visit our events page

Isabelle Ferreras is a senior tenured fellow of the Belgian National Science Foundation and a Professor of Sociology at the Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) where she teaches at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, at the Institut des sciences du travail and at the Economics School of Louvain. Isabelle is involved as a permanent researcher of the Centre de recherches interdisciplinaires Democracy, Institutions, Subjectivity)  and since 2004, she has been an associate of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School where she is now a Senior Research Associate. In the Spring 2017, Ferreras was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts of Belgium.