This workbook by Precarious Workers Brigade, with a Foreword by Silvia Federici, is a critical resource pack for educators teaching employability, ‘professional practice’ and work-based learning.
Design by Evening Class Published by Journal of Aesthetics & Protest Press 96 pages, black and white with color cover ISBN 978-0-615-59011-0
For many years the members of the Precarious Workers Brigade have been developing insightful analyses, tools and actions questioning wageless and other exploitative forms of labour in the arts and education sectors. ‘Training for Exploitation?’ is no exception. As an educator I support the effort the book makes to provide the analysis and the tools needed to challenge the conversation, now predominant in the classroom, concerning ‘employability’. As a feminist I recognise many of these tools from past and contemporary practices of consciousness raising. They are effective and I encourage readers to use them. – Silvia Federici
This publication provides a pedagogical framework that assists students and others in deconstructing dominant narratives around work, employability and careers, and explores alternative ways of engaging with work and the economy. Training for Exploitation? includes tools for critically examining the relationship between education, work and the cultural economy. It provides useful statistics and workshop exercises on topics such as precarity, employment rights, cooperation and solidarity, as well as examples of alternative educational and organising practices. Training for Exploitation? shows how we can both critique and organise against a system that is at the heart of the contemporary crises of work, student debt and precarity.