With the run-up to Christmas, retail workers are preparing to face a tsunami of abuse and even violence. Unions representing shop workers in dozens of countries where Christmas is celebrated are campaigning to protect workers from over-stressed shoppers.

Here's our take on Christmas shopping - and a very merry and kind Christmas from all of us at LabourStart!

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"60 seconds on ..." is a new podcast series hosted by LabourStart and aims to provide the international trade union movement with bite-size nuggets of information about important campaigns and news. In today's episode, we focus on Lee Cheuk-yan, the jailed leader of the Hong Kong Trade Union Confederation, whose trial starts next month. To learn more about the International Trade Union Confederation's campaign in solidarity with Lee, click here.

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Professor Yiran Zhang is a prominent emerging voice in the field of labor and employment law, focusing on how care work is governed at the complicated intersection of informal labor markets, the welfare state, and the household. At Cornell’s ILR School, where she is also an Associate Faculty Member at Cornell Law School, she examines the rapidly shifting terrain of U.S. care-subsidy programs and what these changes mean for workers, families, and the law.

Her scholarship, which spans top journals including Boston University Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, and Stanford Law & Policy Review, explores fundamental questions about gender, caregiving, and the very boundaries of what society counts as “work.”

In this interview, Professor Zhang discusses her current research, the rise of paid family caregiving, and the new forms of worker organizing emerging in home-care labor. She closes with powerful reflections on why care workers, often overlooked, are central to the future of the labor movement.

The interview was conducted by Joanne Lee, a LabourStart intern.

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