Challenges for Work and Workers in the Knowledge Economy: Introduction

[...]little, if any, research devotes itself to the inter-relation among unions, professional societies and other forms of worker collectivity. [...]despite the growth of dependent self-employment (Muehlberger, 2007), the vast majority of work on labour regulation assumes a direct legal employment relationship between a worker and the institution that provides him with the work opportunity and payment for it. [...]there is a further form of worker interest representation which has received scant attention from students of work – the co-operative, and especially the worker co-operative. [...]worker collectivity and its various forms, and the relationship among trade unions and those various forms, cry out desperately for further study and theory. [...]I eschewed the use of the term “employer,” which would imply a legal employment relation- ship only, and preferred to denote the provider of work opportunities as the “deployer.”