Meet our Guest Speaker: Dr Freek Schiphorst

Dr Freek Schiphorst

Dr. Freek Schiphorst is a Dutch national and specialist in the area of Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment. He is Senior Lecturer and current Chairman of the Board of Examiners at the prestigious Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, Holland. He has taught there for over 20 years and has teaching thousands of students from all regions of the world in labour and development.

His areas of interest include, Organising the Working Poor in the Informal Economy by trade unions, Industrial Anthropology & Labour Organisation, Global Production Systems, Trade Unions and Labour Rights (incl. including the role of the ILO, Corporate Social Responsibility; etc), Participative Management, Employee Involvement and Labour Response and the Labour Movement in Zimbabwe.

Dr Schiphost obtained a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Social Antropology from the University of Amsterdam in 1977, a Doctorandus in Social Anthropology from the Univeristy of Amsterdam in 1982 and a Doctor in Social Sciences from Leiden University in 2001.

Dr. Schiphorst currently teaches in the areas of labour and human resource management, qualitative methodology. Dr. Schiphorst has travelled extensively to Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe and presented numerous academic papers to International Industrial Relations fora and trade union confederations. He is highly respected as a leading scholar, policy maker and advisor on labour and trade unionism as a well as a friend of the labour movement. His publications include:

Schiphorst, Freek B. (2008) “Defending Vulnerable Workers in South Africa: Which Role for Trade Union, NGO and the State?” Paper prepared for the 5th IIRA Regional Conference, Cape Town, 26-28 March 2008.

• Schiphorst, Freek (2008) “Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.” in Graig Phelan (ed.) Trade Unionism Since 1945: Towards a Global History. Oxford: Peter Lang (forthcoming).
• Schiphorst, Freek B. (2005) “Making Shift With What One Has…Enabling Policies, Trade Unions and the Organisation of Producers in the Informal Economy.” Paper prepared for the 4th IIRA African Regional Conference, Mauritius, 28-30 November 2005.
• Abbas Abdelkarim & Freek Schiphorst (eds.) (2002) Laboured Efforts: The Political Economy of Labour and Employment. Maastricht: Shaker.
• Schiphorst, Freek (2002) “How Collective Bargaining has Failed to Serve Workers and Their Unions in ZImbabwe.” In Abdelkarim & Schiphorst (eds.) Laboured Efforts: The Political Economy of Labour and Employment, 254-83. Maastricht: Shaker.
• Schiphorst, Freek B. (2001) “Strength & Weakness: The Rise of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and the Development of Labour Relations, 1980-1995.” Ph.D. Thesis, University of Leiden, Leiden.
• Ramaswamy, E.A. & F.B. Schiphorst (2000) “Human Resource Management, Trade Unions and Empowerment: Two Cases From India.” International Journal of Human Resource Management 11:664-81.

COMBAT welcomes Dr Schiphorst to GAWU and Guyana.