Marco Rocca

Comrades, the moving labour collective is oraganising its third summer camp, this time in Malmö: June 14-17.

We are hoping to create a space where labour scholars, lawyers, activists, unionists will collectively work on intersectional solidarity praxis and organising strategies.

Come join us!

Is AI making job recruitment less meritocratic? We're getting some v interesting research studies on this question now, and the news is... not good. @jburnmurdoch.ft.com & I dive in, in the latest edition of our newsletter The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/e5b7...

A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.

A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.

A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.

The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

Temporary Labour Migration in Europe This webinar will present findings from the ERC-funded project 'European Birds of Passage', which examines how EU and national laws shape the rights and perceptions of temporary migrant workers. The d...

📺 If you missed our European Birds of Passage seminar "Temporary Labour Migration in Europe" the video is now available on the ILO website here: www.ilo.org/meetings-and...

#labourmigration #ILO #EUlaw

I've been investigating the huge levels of exploitation faced by workers on the seasonal worker visa for the last few years, and have often asked myself why the trade union movement has ignored these workers.

So I spoke to unions, big and small, to try and answer that question.

Minimum Wages: Directive put beyond all doubt by today’s ruling of the Court of Justice.

@estherlynch.bsky.social 📢 "this judgment confirms that the Minimum Wage Directive stands firm – the EU can and must act for fair wages."

The Moving Labour Collective is pleased to invite applications for our biennial Labour Law Summer Camp, taking place in Malmö, Sweden, from 14–17 June 2026. Applications close on 1 December—please feel free to reach out with any questions!

co-organised by The Faculty of Legal and Political Sciences – Hassan First University of Settat (Morocco), the Department of Law, Political, Economic and Social Sciences – University of Eastern Piedmont (Italy), and my research unit @umr7354dres.bsky.social in Strasbourg (France)

📢 Call for papers
« #Migration in times of crisis: Legal Insights and Humanitarian Challenges » (1-3 April 2026, Settat)

Call here : dres.unistra.fr/websites/mis...

Deadline for submission : 30 November 2025

Informal Workers, Vulnerability and Human Rights: An Inter-American Story ABSTRACT . Informality is a defining feature of labour markets in Latin America and the Caribbean, where nearly half of the workforce remains excluded from

Important new article on informality under the IASHR by @mauropucheta.bsky.social and @renanbkalil.bsky.social, open access in the ILJ. Exploring the potential for a rights-based model and calling for a more systematic recognition of informal workers by the Court. academic.oup.com/ilj/advance-...

💡 A NEW PUBLICATION IS OUT!

Policy Brief - Relations between immigration and labour policies.
The Role of the State Labour Inspectorate in Preventing Irregular Employment of Migrant Workers in Poland.

👉 www.dignityfirm.eu/policy-brief...

The E-BoP seminar at the ILO takes place tomorrow!

A year or two ago, I started keeping a list of cases where attorneys had been disciplined for submitting court documents with fake AI-generated filings. Figured it would be a short-lived phenomenon as attys became aware

I had to stop, because the number is growing faster than I could keep up

Temporary Labour Migration in Europe This webinar will present findings from the ERC-funded project 'European Birds of Passage', which examines how EU and national laws shape the rights and perceptions of temporary migrant workers. The d...

📢 The European Birds of Passage team will present our preliminary findings at the International Labour Organization (Geneva) in the seminar “Temporary Labour Migration in Europe” (28 October, 1PM - 3PM CEST)

#labourmigration #ILO #EUlaw

www.ilo.org/meetings-and...

Workers' rights need protection and reinforcement - and international #HumanRights standards can play an important role in achieving this aim ⚖️

We had a full room at our recent launch of the new book 'The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Employment Relation'
🧵👇

Temporary agricultural worker policy has exploitation baked in - FreedomUnited.org Immigration raids have devastated the agricultural workforce in the US but Americans don’t want the jobs. To bring in affordable guest workers a new rule has been added that is full of exploitation lo...

With immigration raids across the US devastating the agricultural workforce, the conditions for bringing in new guest workers have been made even more exploitative by allowing employers to charge for housing, on top of employer tie and prohibition on organising www.freedomunited.org/news/agricul...

💡 NEW PUBLICATION IS OUT

📌 The DignityFIRM project aims at understanding of and improving policies related to irregular migrant work (IMW) in the Farm to Fork (F2F) sector.

👉 www.dignityfirm.eu/the-governan...

She managed to get a farmworker visa. Once in the U.S., she endured abuse. A Prism investigation reveals that women are routinely shut out of the H-2A program. Those who get in report doing non-agricultural labor and facing sexual violence and trafficking

I want to do a little breakdown of this investigation I published today for @prismreports.org about gender-based violence in the H-2A agricultural visa program.

Isn’t it Ironic?

Aren't silencing attempts against a symposium highlighting academic silencing ironic? Khaled El Mahmoud, Anna Sophia Tiedeke & Sissy Katsoni think so! In their contribution to the symp., the eds. of #Ö share the silencing attempts they faced while organising it. voelkerrechtsblog.org/isnt-it-ironic

With @gemmagasseau.bsky.social we have a new short piece in Capital & Class, where we analyse continuties and changes in European economic governance. We argue that, despite the changes since the pandemic, EU integration remains centered on neoliberalism (1)

E-GRUiEN consortium is composed of representatives from from 11 academic and research centers, led by Prof. Nathan Lillie, Professor of Social and Public Policy, and the Head of the Social and Public Policy unit in the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy (Jyvaskylan Yliopisto, Finland).

Subcontracting and algorithmic management in e-commerce are turning the logistics sector into a laboratory for labour abuses, warns academic Silvia Borelli Driven by e-commerce and the radical changes that technology has brought about in European consumption habits, logistics has become one of the fastest growing sectors in the EU economy. But it is also...

🗨️ Labour law professor Silvia Borelli talks to @equaltimes.bsky.social about substandard working practices in the #logistics sector, which she documents in her recent study for the ETUI, 'Sorry we subcontracted you'

🔗 www.equaltimes.org/subcontracti...

Read the full study here 🔗 etui.org/ZRM

Interested in coming to work with us at the ETUI?

Background in economics?

We are seeking a full-time researcher to bring quantitative skills to questions of European economic and employment policies

See here for more info 🔗 etui.org/ZR5

📆 Deadline: 31 August

Everything is ready for our conference (it's on Monday!) 🔥. You can still register for online attendance here ep-events.secure.europarl.europa.eu/lincstrasbou...

Deadline for registration for in-person attendance is next Monday (23 June) ⌛

Conference spotlight n° 5 🔦: I will present the results of two systematic analyses of EU law (focusing on "labour market" and "temporariness") to explore the legal chronotope of temporary labour migration in/to the EU.

just as the Summer heat, our conference is fast approaching (📅 30 June 📌 European Parliament in Strasbourg)

Conference spotlight n° 4 💡: Audrey Deverson will present her research, based on field interviews in France and Spain, on the challenges faced by temporary migrant women in agriculture

Join us in Strasbourg or online on 30 June 📅

Conference Spotlight n° 3 💡: Justyna Hejman will present a study using multiple sources of administrative data to explore the relationship between outgoing postings and incoming temporary labour migrants in the Polish road transport sector

Our latest on the seasonal worker visa.

What jumped out at me when reading this government-commissioned report is that farm-owners will quite openly say that they prefer migrant workers to accrue huge levels of debt, because this pushes them to work harder so that they can pay it off.

We still have 15-ish places for in person attendance ! ⌚

Conference Spotlight n° 2 💡: Daniel Elanga Mendogo will examine the impact of the changes in the EU legal framework for posting of workers on intra-EU trade in services and on the employment outcomes of posted and local workers

Our conference is in one month-ish!
Spotlight 1: Catharina Lopes Scodro will present her research on 𝗺𝗶𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝘂 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗿𝘀, comparing the regulatory framework in France and Ireland through a socio-legal perspective based on interviews in both countries. Her discussant will be Vera Pavlou
#EU #Migration