The latest news from BUIRA
22 June 2021, 9.00 AM - 5.00 PM
The Lady Hale Moot Court, 8-10 Berkeley Square
The Centre for Law at Work are hosting a workshop on Tuesday 22nd June 2021 entitled 'Labour, strategy, and the constitutional protection of work: On the potential effectiveness of legal mobilisation'.
The central concern of this workshop is to explore the ways that contemporary labour movements have engaged strategically with law as a means to realise legal and political demands. This workshop aims to bring together the insights about legal mobilisation as a tool of struggle in socio-legal scholarship with contemporary labour’s specific experience of both litigation and legislative practices. This interdisciplinary and collaborative workshop seeks to comprehend the social, political, economic, and legal factors that shape the effectiveness of legal mobilisation and the extent to which it is possible to extract general lessons about the ways labour movements engage strategically with law. While this analysis will involve focusing on the prospects for re-interpreting specific areas of labour law, the workshop is equally concerned with the context of labour’s engagement with law in constitutionalism. This opens up the investigative remit to include the role legal mobilisation plays in giving a voice to worker’s political demands and the potential for these strategic actions to have a longer-term impact on the constitutional protection of labour.
The official agenda will be available for viewing very soon.
To register for this event please visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/centre-for-law-at-work-workshop-tickets-154690640871 (in person availibility will be limited due to COVID restrictions).
15th June 2021
Has a standard contract of employment ever existed? An historical overview from the UK
17.00-18.45 Thursday 17 June 2021 (through Zoom)
The aim of this seminar is to establish the antecedents of casual employment in the history of IR in the light of the Uber case. Many people still see the full-time open-ended employment contract as 'standard', which of course it often is, but the accompanying assumption - that casual employment is somehow anomalous - is clearly misplaced. In this seminar we explore the development of both ‘standard’ and casual employment in a longer-term time frame, going back to the 19th century.
For further details or to reserve a place, please e-mail Michael Gold (m.gold@rhul.ac.uk) or Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk). We’ll send you the Zoom link a few days before the seminar.
Programme:
17.00-17.15: Welcome and introduction: Michael Gold and Linda Clarke (Chairs)
17.15 – 17.45: Simon Deakin
The genealogy of the contract of employment
Legal concepts are linguistic artefacts which have a function (classification for the purposes of legislation and adjudication) and a history (they are shaped by path dependent forces). The English legal term ‘employment’ has a history that helps us to understand the uses it is being put to today. A comparative overview, taking into account mainland European ‘work’ relationships (contrat de travail, Arbeitsverhältnis) and the US ‘ABC’ test of employment status, are also helpful for putting into perspective recent developments, including the Supreme Court judgment in Uber (Feb. 2021).
17.45 – 18.15: Noel Whiteside
Back to the Future? Forms of employment in historical perspective
This presentation re-examines assumptions about ‘standard’ employment and its prevalence. Reappraising forms of employment found in the UK since the late nineteenth century, it demonstrates how casual working practices and flexible hours characterised substantial sections of the UK economy prior to the second world. From this perspective, the 1950s and 1960s appear exceptional. The presentation concludes, with recent legal judgements, that work contracts do not necessarily reflect the realities of precarious employment; that security of job tenure does not equate to security of earnings; that official categories of labour market analysis are, at best, misleading - and that multiple problems face those who would reform the situation. For finally, what does ‘employment’ mean?
18.15 – 18.45: Discussion and Close
*****
Our speakers:
Simon Deakin: Professor of Law at Cambridge University and Director of the Centre for Business Research (www.cbr.cam.ac.uk). He is co-author of Deakin and Morris on Labour Law which will appear in a new edition (the 7th) in the summer of 2021 (https://bloomsburyprofessional.com/uk/deakin-and-morris-labour-law-9781509943548/).
Recent publications include: ‘Decoding employment status’ (2020) King’s Law Journal 31:2, 180-193, https://doi.org/10.1080/09615768.2020.1789432
Noel Whiteside: Professor at the University of Warwick Institute for Employment Research, an emerita Professor in sociology (Warwick) and a visiting Professor at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment (University of Oxford). Her research focuses on labour markets and labour market policies in historical and comparative perspective, previously assisted by a variety of European and UK research awards. Recent publications include: ‘Casual employment and its consequences: an historical appraisal of recent labour market trends’ Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 40, 2019: 1-26.
15th June 2021
15th June 2021
The Jimmy Reid Foundation's new paper critiquing the Scottish Government's 'Fair Work' is now available at
https://reidfoundation.scot/2021/06/critique-of-scottish-governments-fair-work-policy-published/
A summary of the paper is:
‘Fair Work’ has been the flagship programme of the SNP Scottish Government on employment matters since 2016. The accompanying ‘Fair Work Framework’ sets out to make Scotland a ‘fair work’ nation by 2025 so the new Scottish Parliament elected on 6 May 2021 will take responsibility for that as it runs until 2026. And, it is the SNP minority government in particular that will be measured against this goal. The findings of this paper are that the measures taken to make progress towards attaining this goal are weak and limited because there is no compulsion placed upon employers to implement them; that the rhetoric of SNP Scottish Government of 2016-2021 is not matched by its actions; and that it is improbable that the goal will be reached without significant changes in approach, specifically requiring the use of statutory compulsion, especially in regard of public procurement. Within the conclusion, a number of recommendations are made to address and ameliorate these issues.
8th June 2021
The application deadline for the Digit Summer School has been extended until 15 June 2021
The Digit Summer School on Global Value Chains & Digit Transformations is open to Early Career Researchers (ECRs), who we define as individuals that are currently undertaking a PhD or working in a postdoctoral researcher capacity, and are within 5 years of submitting their PhD.
The theme for Digit’s 2021 Summer School reflects the way that digital transformations are changing the organisation, quality and location of work along Global Value chains.
The school will have four parallel tracks:
· Digital transformation in Global Value Chains and future skill needs
· The Changing Nature and Location of Work along Global Value Chains
· Digital Transformation for organisations and the wider society
· Emerging entrepreneurship through evolving Digital infrastructures for GVCs
Applicants should submit a 1000 word abstract by 15 June 2021. All details can be found on the Digit Summer School webpage.
· Deadline for 1000 word abstract submission: extended to 15/06/2021
· Notification of abstract acceptance and invitation to submit full paper: 30/06/2021
· Deadline for full paper submission: 31/08/2021
This year’s School will be held online on 14th, 15th & 16th September 2021.
Please do share with anyone you think would be interested and eligible.
Digital Futures at Work Research Centre
University of Sussex Business School
Jubilee 301
University of Sussex
Brighton
BN1 9SL
United Kingdom
Website: https://digit-research.org/
Twitter: @digitcentre
8th June 2021
Dear BUIRA members,
Please register for the FREE online BUIRA annual conference 2021 (13 - 15 July 2021):
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/buira-conference-2021-tickets-158582643957
BUIRA 2021 Online Conference: The past, present and future of industrial relations and the politics of work
About this event
BUIRA turning 70 last year presents a good opportunity to reflect on the past, present and future of industrial relations. This was the topic of the postponed 2020 conference, and, if anything, is more salient than ever. Despite facing recent challenges, the field of industrial relations continues to be a vital topic of academic and practitioner enquiry. Issues that have long been central within the study of industrial relations, such as pay, collective bargaining, rights at work, employee representation, national and transnational forms of regulation, health and safety, job (in)security, precarity, equality and diversity, and workplace conflict are highly prominent within many current political and academic debates. Understanding the politics of work, grounded in a critical social science tradition, is crucial for academics and policy makers alike.
Where are we now? How have we got here, and what should the future of the field look like? Reflecting on historical developments in industrial relations is crucial in order to ground and contextualise current developments in the world of work. History matters in helping us to understand the changing nature of industrial relations, and yet is often overlooked in modern accounts of work relations. It is also important to reflect on pressing current issues. Most notably, what has/will continue to be the implications of Coronavirus for employment relations and the future of work? This was the subject of the BUIRA Special Seminar on November 4th 2020, and an ongoing research issue for BUIRA members. What about the continuing impact of austerity and the 2008 financial crisis in a more financialised world, increasing inequality, as well as economic and social challenges caused by the Covid pandemic and Brexit? What have been the consequences for public sector industrial relations? What is the impact of patterns of precarious work and non-standard employment relationships on the changing nature of work and employment, skills and the quality of work? Across all of these questions, issues of social class, equality and diversity remain more relevant than ever before. Looking to the future, one key question concerns the extent to which unions can play an active role with social movements to tackle climate breakdown. How is power deployed and distributed at work? How much voice and influence do employees have? Whither economic and industrial democracy at work?
Plenary Speakers:
Judy Wajcman http://www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/people/judy-wajcman
Anne McBride https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/a.mcbride.html
Jenny K Rodriguez https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/jenny.rodriguez.html
Sian Moore https://www.gre.ac.uk/people/rep/faculty-of-business/sian-moore
The conference will also feature an 'Early Career Researcher Plenary Panel' (with Jean Jenkins as Discussant) and a 'Work in the Real World' Special Session with the Manchester Trades Union Council.
We look forward to welcoming you to our FREE online conference. All we ask is that you ensure your BUIRA membership is up-to-date before registering (https://buira.org/membership/join). If you have any questions, please get in touch: admin@buira.org.
The full conference programme will be published shortly.
8th June 2021
The BUIRA Executive Committee will have 2 vacancies as from July 2021. We will be announcing the results of these elections at a forthcoming online Annual General Meeting to be held in 7th July 2021.
As agreed at the AGM in Leeds 2016, the voting system for vacancies on the Executive Committee will be conducted differently.
We now invite all members to forward their interest in becoming a member of the BUIRA Exec Committee to the BUIRA Stewards. Please complete your nomination form here: https://bham.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8unplDT687Cc9QG
All members are welcome to apply regardless of career stage (i.e. early career or otherwise). However, we would strongly encourage women and black and minority ethnic members to apply for these positions, as they remain to be under-represented in BUIRA. Following the motion passed at the 2019 AGM in Newcastle, to ensure the Executive Committee has an equal gender balance, only one of the vacant positions can be filled by an individual identifying as male.
Due to the lack of a physical conference this year, we are conducting the voting online through Qualtrics. The selection process is still via the membership, not the Stewardship or the Executive Committee. The results will be announced at the Online AGM.
On the application form, you must include a short biography of no more than 300 words and your reasons for applying for the vacant position.
Please submit your application by Friday 11th June 2021.
27th May 2021
At the 2020 BUIRA AGM, it was agreed to hold a special session to discuss the draft BUIRA Code of Practice. This document was prepared by Laura William and Jenny Rodriquez and discussed at previous BUIRA meetings in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
The draft is available for comment here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1poIpyJEfq1HMOXRDlzCBK00ZW_z55tTu6EkJ2HOLDOg/edit?usp=sharing
Please make all comments by Friday 11th June.
There will be a special session to gain more feedback and agree the document on Tuesday 15th June 2pm-3pm. Register for this event here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/buira-code-of-practice-discussion-event-tickets-157068878243
27th May 2021
Has a standard contract of employment ever existed? An historical overview from the UK
17.00-18.45 Thursday 17 June 2021 (through Zoom)
The aim of this seminar is to establish the antecedents of casual employment in the history of IR in the light of the Uber case. Many people still see the full-time open-ended employment contract as 'standard', which of course it often is, but the accompanying assumption - that casual employment is somehow anomalous - is clearly misplaced. In this seminar we explore the development of both ‘standard’ and casual employment in a longer-term time frame, going back to the 19th century.
For further details or to reserve a place, please e-mail Michael Gold (m.gold@rhul.ac.uk) or Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk). We’ll send you the Zoom link a few days before the seminar.
Programme:
17.00-17.15: Welcome and introduction: Michael Gold and Linda Clarke (Chairs)
17.15 – 17.45: Simon Deakin
The genealogy of the contract of employment
Legal concepts are linguistic artefacts which have a function (classification for the purposes of legislation and adjudication) and a history (they are shaped by path dependent forces). The English legal term ‘employment’ has a history that helps us to understand the uses it is being put to today. A comparative overview, taking into account mainland European ‘work’ relationships (contrat de travail, Arbeitsverhältnis) and the US ‘ABC’ test of employment status, are also helpful for putting into perspective recent developments, including the Supreme Court judgment in Uber (Feb. 2021).
17.45 – 18.15: Noel Whiteside
Back to the Future? Forms of employment in historical perspective
This presentation re-examines assumptions about ‘standard’ employment and its prevalence. Reappraising forms of employment found in the UK since the late nineteenth century, it demonstrates how casual working practices and flexible hours characterised substantial sections of the UK economy prior to the second world. From this perspective, the 1950s and 1960s appear exceptional. The presentation concludes, with recent legal judgements, that work contracts do not necessarily reflect the realities of precarious employment; that security of job tenure does not equate to security of earnings; that official categories of labour market analysis are, at best, misleading - and that multiple problems face those who would reform the situation. For finally, what does ‘employment’ mean?
18.15 – 18.45: Discussion and Close
*****
Our speakers:
Simon Deakin: Professor of Law at Cambridge University and Director of the Centre for Business Research (www.cbr.cam.ac.uk). He is co-author of Deakin and Morris on Labour Law which will appear in a new edition (the 7th) in the summer of 2021 (https://bloomsburyprofessional.com/uk/deakin-and-morris-labour-law-9781509943548/).
Recent publications include: ‘Decoding employment status’ (2020) King’s Law Journal 31:2, 180-193, https://doi.org/10.1080/09615768.2020.1789432
Noel Whiteside: Professor at the University of Warwick Institute for Employment Research, an emerita Professor in sociology (Warwick) and a visiting Professor at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment (University of Oxford). Her research focuses on labour markets and labour market policies in historical and comparative perspective, previously assisted by a variety of European and UK research awards. Recent publications include: ‘Casual employment and its consequences: an historical appraisal of recent labour market trends’ Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 40, 2019: 1-26.
25th May 2021
Webinar Book Launch:
Work and Labor Relations in the Construction Industry: An International Perspective (Routledge, February 2021)
Wednesday 16th June 2021
TIME: 11:30 – 14:00 GMT
Register: for free by 14th June 2pm, here at Eventbrite (A Zoom link will be sent to you).
The need for a skilled, motivated and effective workforce is fundamental to the creation of the built environment across the world. Known in so many places for a tendency to informal and casual working practices, for the sometimes-abusive use of migrant labor, for gendered male employment and for a neglect of the essentials of health and safety, the industry and its workforce face multiple challenges. This new book, edited by Dale Belman, Janet Druker and Geoffrey White, considers the different contexts, processes and outcomes in the construction industry in ten countries and draws out the similarities and differences in practice. Our webinar brings together authors of three of the ten chapters in the new book. These cover Australia, Russia and Sweden/Denmark. The three presentations provide contrasting pictures of employment relations in the three countries.
Our Presentations:
Alex Veen and Susan McGrath-Champ: ‘Evolving Employment Relations in the Australian Construction Industry.’
Olga Cretu, Claudio Morrison and Ekaterina Serezhkina: ‘The Russian Construction Sector: Informality, Labor Mobility and Socialist Legacies’.
Christian Lyhne Ibsen and Jens Arnholtz: ‘Sustaining ‘high road’ employment relations in the Swedish and Danish construction industries’.
Introducing the speakers:
Dr. Alex Veen is an employment relations scholar at the University of Sydney in Australia in the discipline of Work and Organizational Studies.
Professor Susan McGrath-Champ was until recently Professor in the Work and Organizational Studies Discipline at the University of Sydney Business School, Australia.
Dr. Olga Cretu is a Lecturer in the Department of Management and Human Resources at Coventry University UK since May 2020.
Dr. Claudio Morrison is Senior Research Fellow at Middlesex University Business School (London UK).
Dr. Ekaterina Serezhkina is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology of the National Research University - Higher School of Economics (HSE) of Moscow (RF) -Russia.
Asst. Professor Christian Lyhne Ibsen is Assistant Professor at the School of Human Resources and Labor Relations at Michigan State University and Associate Professor at FAOS at the University of Copenhagen.
Asst. Professor Jens Arnholtz is an Associate Professor at the Employment Relations Research Center (FAOS), University of Copenhagen.
Other authors and chapters in the book are as follows: -
Hernán Ruggirello and Janet Druker (Argentina), Marcella Piccoli and Carlos Diehl (Brazil), Gerhard Syben and Christian Beck (Germany), Divine Kwaku Ahadzie, Yaw Debrah and George Ofori (Ghana), Samar Kleib, Fida Afiouni and Issam Srour (Lebanon), Janet Druker and Geoffrey White (UK), Dale Belman and Russell Ormiston (USA).
25th May 2021
19 May 2021
Appreciation to Emeritus Professor Ed Heery for sharing his many insights from over 40 years as an Industrial Relationist, and thank you to all who joined a very enjoyable BUIRA Special Webinar. For those that could not join us, here is a link to the recording:
25th May 2021
Keith Sisson (Emeritus Professor of Industrial Relations, Industrial Relations Research Unit, University of Warwick) has written a new paper calling for a ‘new social contract’:
Building Back Better: the why and wherefore of the ‘new social contract’ agenda
25th May 2021
BUIRA members may also be interested in Prof. Sisson’s Employment Relations Matters text on the IRRU website.
He has concluded the updated chapter on public policy with a section on the 'new social contract' agenda.
25th May 2021
Due to local industrial action over job losses in Health Sciences at the University of Liverpool, the first BUIRA paper development session will now be held on: June 22nd 12:00-12:45pm
Presenter: Dr Alex Wood (University of Birmingham): “Platform Precarity: surviving algorithmic insecurity in the gig economy “
Co-author: Vili Lehdonvirta
Digitalization and the use of algorithms have raised concerns regarding the future of work; the gig economy being identified by some as particularly concerning. Yet academic research is inconsistent as to whether this sector constitutes precarious work. We attempt to reconcile contrasting existing accounts by developing a new model for gig economy precarity. In doing so we draw on 81 interviews in addition to participant observations to highlight the role of platform reputation in shaping experiences of traditional socio-economic insecurity. We also demonstrate that gig economy platforms produce a novel form of insecurity, which we term, ‘algorithmic insecurity’. This relates to the vulnerability and fear that workers experience as a result of working in an unstable and opaque environment in which platforms use customer-generated ratings to score workers, and algorithms to amplify the consequences of those scores. We also detail how workers respond to this capricious environment through unpaid labor, digital communities, and individual resistance. The aim of this qualitative research is to generate a model that can be tested quantitatively, as a first step towards this aim we draw on European survey data to provide tentative support for the existence of algorithmic insecurity beyond our interview participants.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3795375
|
papers.ssrn.com Digitalization and the use of algorithms have raised concerns regarding the future of work; the gig economy being identified by some as particularly concerning. |
Zoom details:
https://liverpool-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/91407813891?pwd=TUhFUVk0QXRmd3FmL0pzOXlYUWpTUT09
Meeting ID: 914 0781 3891
Passcode: BUIRA2021!
If you would like to present in the future, or have any questions at all about the sessions please contact Emma Hughes: E.S.Hughes@liverpool.ac.uk
18th May 2021
Wednesday 2 June – Friday 4 June
Participants include Diamond Ashiagbor, Tonia Novitz, Brishen Rogers, Noel Whiteside, Manoj Dias-Abey and members of the WorkOD team (Ruth Dukes, Gregoris Ioannou and Eleanor Kirk).
Papers will be given on the following topics: the Legal Constitution of Labour Markets, the Legal Constitution of Working Relations, Gig Work and the Law.
Visit Work on Demand Events for further details including a timetable, titles and abstracts: https://workondemand.co.uk/events/
Please register via: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/work-on-demand-seminar-series-tickets-153951496069
18th May 2021
We are delighted that this year’s Adam Smith Lecture in Jurisprudence will be given at 3pm on Friday 21 May by Kathleen Thelen, Ford Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The topic of the lecture is Employer Organization in the United States: Historical Legacies and the Long Shadow of the American Courts.
All welcome!
You can register via eventbrite here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/adam-smith-lecture-in-jurisprudence-professor-kathleen-thelen-tickets-153983634195?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
Further information can be found here: https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/law/newsandevents/headline_454331_en.html
11th May 2021
New Book: Special Offer!
International & Comparative Employment Relations: Global Crises & Institutional Responses, new edition, Greg J Bamber, Fang Lee Cooke, Virginia Doellgast & Chris F Wright, editors
The standard reference for a worldwide readership of students, scholars & practitioners in international agencies, governments, employers & unions, this book offers a new & systematic overview. Experts examine the practice and context of employment relations in 13 countries: economic, historical, legal, social & political. The authors consider roles of various players; processes of employment relations including: collective bargaining, arbitration & employee involvement; as well as multinational enterprises; global supply chains; implications of digitalisation & new technologies; climate change & the COVID-19 pandemic.
Authors & contents: Guy Ryder, Foreword; The editors, Introduction: Internationally Comparative Approaches to Employment Relations, & Conclusions: Globalisation, Crises & Institutional Responses; Stewart Johnstone & Tony Dobbins, UK; Harry C. Katz & Alexander J.S. Colvin, USA; Scott Walsworth, Sean O’Brady & Daphne G. Taras, Canada; Chris F. Wright & Sarah Kaine, Australia; Lisa Dorigatti & Roberto Pedersini, Italy; Élodie Béthoux & Patrice Laroche, France; Berndt K. Keller & Anja Kirsch, Germany; Søren Kaj Andersen, Nana Wesley Hansen, Jørgen Steen Madsen & Jesper Due, Denmark; Katsuyuki Kubo & Kazuya Ogura. Japan; Byoung-Hoon Lee, South Korea; Fang Lee Cooke, China; Ernesto Noronha & Premilla D’Cruz, India; Johann Maree, Gilton Klerck & Asanda-Jonas Benya, South Africa.
Special 25% discount if ordering within 10 days, then only £35.24. Use promo. code BAMBER25
Other currencies' prices reflect exchange rates. Please suggest to the library. Review copies and e-copies available. 2021. ISBN: 9781526499653
The 7th edition is all updated with new examples and discussion questions to engage students and encourage critical thinking. Website includes slides for use in teaching and web links to enhance learning. Proceeds from the book contribute to charities that foster health-related research and hunger-relief.
Some of the book’s contributors will participate in the webinar below: You’re invited too!
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
10 - 11:30 am Eastern Time (New York Time)
New International and Comparative Labor and Employment Challenges: A Four Country Discussion
Sponsored by LERA International Interest Section
This webinar will include insights from Canada, Germany, South Africa and the USA. Speakers will discuss employment relations issues in global supply chains, climate change and restructuring of sectoral employment, digitalisation, and national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. How are such issues posing new and potentially transformative challenges for employment relations systems and stakeholders?
Co-Chairs:
Panelists:
Discussant: Thomas A. Kochan, George M. Bunker Professor, Institute for Work and Employment Research, MIT Sloan School of Management, USA
There is no charge for this webinar, but please register for it. The Zoom link for the webinar will be sent to those registered after they register and also on the day of the webinar. A recording will be available to everyone who registers, even if they were not able to attend then.
At the registration site, you will be asked to input your name, email, affiliation (university/organization), and optionally other information. You will then receive a confirmation email that will include a unique link and additional information to join the meeting.
11th May 2021
BUIRA History of Industrial Relations Study Group
Has a standard contract of employment ever existed? An historical overview from the UK
17.00-18.45 Thursday 17 June 2021 (through Zoom)
The aim of this seminar is to establish the antecedents of casual employment in the history of IR in the light of the Uber case. Many people still see the full-time open-ended employment contract as 'standard', which of course it often is, but the accompanying assumption - that casual employment is somehow anomalous - is clearly misplaced. In this seminar we explore the development of both ‘standard’ and casual employment in a longer-term time frame, going back to the 19th century.
For further details or to reserve a place, please e-mail Michael Gold (m.gold@rhul.ac.uk) or Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk). We’ll send you the Zoom link a few days before the seminar.
Programme:
17.00-17.15: Welcome and introduction: Michael Gold and Linda Clarke (Chairs)
17.15 – 17.45: Simon Deakin
The genealogy of the contract of employment
Legal concepts are linguistic artefacts which have a function (classification for the purposes of legislation and adjudication) and a history (they are shaped by path dependent forces). The English legal term ‘employment’ has a history that helps us to understand the uses it is being put to today. A comparative overview, taking into account mainland European ‘work’ relationships (contrat de travail, Arbeitsverhältnis) and the US ‘ABC’ test of employment status, are also helpful for putting into perspective recent developments, including the Supreme Court judgment in Uber (Feb. 2021).
17.45 – 18.15: Noel Whiteside
Back to the Future? Forms of employment in historical perspective
This presentation re-examines assumptions about ‘standard’ employment and its prevalence. Reappraising forms of employment found in the UK since the late nineteenth century, it demonstrates how casual working practices and flexible hours characterised substantial sections of the UK economy prior to the second world. From this perspective, the 1950s and 1960s appear exceptional. The presentation concludes, with recent legal judgements, that work contracts do not necessarily reflect the realities of precarious employment; that security of job tenure does not equate to security of earnings; that official categories of labour market analysis are, at best, misleading - and that multiple problems face those who would reform the situation. For finally, what does ‘employment’ mean?
18.15 – 18.45: Discussion and Close
*****
Our speakers:
Simon Deakin: Professor of Law at Cambridge University and Director of the Centre for Business Research (www.cbr.cam.ac.uk). He is co-author of Deakin and Morris on Labour Law which will appear in a new edition (the 7th) in the summer of 2021 (https://bloomsburyprofessional.com/uk/deakin-and-morris-labour-law-9781509943548/).
Recent publications include: ‘Decoding employment status’ (2020) King’s Law Journal 31:2, 180-193, https://doi.org/10.1080/09615768.2020.1789432
Noel Whiteside: Professor at the University of Warwick Institute for Employment Research, an emerita Professor in sociology (Warwick) and a visiting Professor at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment (University of Oxford). Her research focuses on labour markets and labour market policies in historical and comparative perspective, previously assisted by a variety of European and UK research awards. Recent publications include: ‘Casual employment and its consequences: an historical appraisal of recent labour market trends’ Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 40, 2019: 1-26.
11th May 2021
Wed, May 19, 2021 4:00-5.30 pm
Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/buira-special-webinar-reflections-40-years-as-an-industrial-relationist-tickets-145713152963
This Special BUIRA Webinar welcomes Professor Emeritus Ed Heery, who will discuss his reflections of 40 years as an 'Industrial Relationist'.
Ed Heery is Professor Emeritus of Employment Relations at Cardiff Business School
Ed proposes to cover three topics:
Professor Edmund Heery - Biography
Edmund Heery is Professor Emeritus at Cardiff Business School, where he worked for 25 years before retiring in December 2020. Ed began his career at North East London Polytechnic (now UEL) in 1980, working as a researcher on payment systems in the coalmining industry, led by Christine Edwards. Subsequently, we worked at the LSE, City University, Imperial College, and Kingston University before joining Cardiff in 1995. Over a long career Ed Heery has researched a variety of issues within UK industrial relations and published widely. He is the author of three monographs, Management Control and Union Power: A Study of Labour Relations in Coalmining (with Christine Edwards), Working for the Union: British Trade Union Officers (with John Kelly), and Framing Work: Unitary, Pluralist and Critical Perspectives in the 21st Century. A fourth monograph, The Real Living Wage: Civil Regulation and the Employment Relationship (with Deborah Hann and David Nash) will be published shortly by Oxford University Press. Ed continues to be an active researcher, despite retirement, and this latest book will present the findings of an extended case study of the UK’s Living Wage campaign.
11th May 2021
Wednesday 12th May 2021
TIME: 14:00 – 16:30
Register: for free by 12th May 1:30pm, here at Eventbrite (a Zoom link will be sent to you).
Last autumn, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, announced a pay freeze for the public sector in 2021/22, with an exemption for NHS staff. The Government has proposed a 1% rise for NHS staff. Meanwhile the Scottish Government has offered pay rises of 4% to NHS staff in Scotland. All this follows a decade of pay controls on the public sector: a pay freeze from 2010, then a 1% limit from 2013/14 to 2017/18. From 2018 to 2020 this policy was relaxed.
The stated rationale for the Chancellor’s reimposition of severe pay restraint was the impact of the pandemic on official figures for earnings growth, which went negative in the private sector last summer as hours worked fell and a large number of workers were placed on furlough, in many cases on 80% of pay. But since then earnings growth has recovered.
Our panel of experts will discuss what is happening to pay across the public sector. It will also focus on Government and employer policies and trade union responses. It will also look at different methods of pay determination across the public sector including the Pay Review Bodies. Other issues include comparisons of public and private sector pay, and a focus on the gender pay gap, the ethnicity pay gap, and the future of pay progression. The impact of the pandemic on the labour market will also be considered, especially in the context of recruitment and retention across the public sector.
Our speakers:
Ken Mulkearn, Director, Incomes Data Research - ‘Freezes for some but not all: the outlook for pay in the public and private sectors in 2021’.
Nicola Allison, Remuneration Adviser, Office for Manpower Economics – ‘Recruitment, retention and the public sector pay pause’.
David Powell, Head of Salaries, National Education Union – ‘Teacher Pay - the impact of Government policy in the 2010s and prospects for the 2020s’.
Garry Graham, Deputy General Secretary, Prospect (union) – ‘After a decade of pay austerity in the public sector and the government’s announcement of a pay “pause”- what is the UK governments “strategy” on pay and reward and the challenge for unions?’
Introduction to our Speakers:
Ken Mulkearn: is the Director of Incomes Data Research , Ken Mulkearn is the Director of Research at Incomes Data Research. Together with IDR colleagues, he has led a range of research projects for clients such as the Low Pay Commission, the Office for Manpower Economics and employers in both the private and
public services. Ken writes and speaks about pay to a wide range of audiences, including academics and students as well as practitioners.
Nicola Allison: is the Remuneration Adviser for the Office for Manpower Economics. Nicola leads on research and economic issues for the public sector pay review bodies, which set pay increases for the NHS, school teachers, the police, prison officers, the armed forces, senior civil servants and judges.
David Powell: is Lead Officer for Pay Policy and Negotiations at the National Education Union (NEU). David has lead responsibility for pay policy. He also has responsibility for national and other collective negotiations on behalf of the NEU and its members. This includes work relating to the School Teachers’ Review Body in
England. Originally from Stockton-on-Tees, David is a graduate of the University of Oxford where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. David worked in the Civil Service after graduating, before joining the National Union of Teachers in 1993.
Garry Graham: is the Deputy General Secretary of Prospect (the union) and has responsibility for representing over 31,000 professionals, managers and specialists working in the civil service and wider public sector. He has previously worked for the CPSA (a predecessor of PCS) and the FDA. He leads discussions on behalf of Prospect with the Cabinet Office on pay, pensions, redundancy compensation and a range of HR issues. Garry has wide experience of negotiating pay and pay and reward systems in the public and private sector.
This is a free online webinar, open to the public and all are invited, register via Eventbrite.
11th May 2021
6th May 2021
BUIRA is launching new paper development sessions for any member post-PhD to Professor who want a digital platform to present a paper or paper idea at any stage of development.
How does it work?
1) Contact Emma Hughes – E.S.Hughes@liverpool.ac.uk to arrange a suitable time/date to present your paper or paper idea.
2) The platform link will be set up for you and advertised through BUIRA communications and social media.
3) Emma will chair the session which will run for 45 minutes and will ideally be a lunchtime slot UK time, but individual circumstances and different time-zones can certainly be catered for.
4) You can present for up to 20 minutes to cater for papers at different stages of development, followed by questions and a discussion. Feedback on particular aspects of your paper (e.g., theoretical framework, methodology, conclusions etc) can be requested.
If you have a paper idea to present or any questions at all about the sessions please contact Emma: E.S.Hughes@liverpool.ac.uk
Many thanks.
First session – paper presentation
May 25th 12:00-12:45pm
Presenter: Dr Alex Wood (University of Birmingham): “Platform Precarity: surviving algorithmic insecurity in the gig economy “
Co-author: Vili Lehdonvirta
Digitalization and the use of algorithms have raised concerns regarding the future of work; the gig economy being identified by some as particularly concerning. Yet academic research is inconsistent as to whether this sector constitutes precarious work. We attempt to reconcile contrasting existing accounts by developing a new model for gig economy precarity. In doing so we draw on 81 interviews in addition to participant observations to highlight the role of platform reputation in shaping experiences of traditional socio-economic insecurity. We also demonstrate that gig economy platforms produce a novel form of insecurity, which we term, ‘algorithmic insecurity’. This relates to the vulnerability and fear that workers experience as a result of working in an unstable and opaque environment in which platforms use customer-generated ratings to score workers, and algorithms to amplify the consequences of those scores. We also detail how workers respond to this capricious environment through unpaid labor, digital communities, and individual resistance. The aim of this qualitative research is to generate a model that can be tested quantitatively, as a first step towards this aim we draw on European survey data to provide tentative support for the existence of algorithmic insecurity beyond our interview participants.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3795375
Zoom details:
https://liverpool-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/91407813891?pwd=TUhFUVk0QXRmd3FmL0pzOXlYUWpTUT09
Meeting ID: 914 0781 3891
Passcode: BUIRA2021!
6th May 2021
Revised Submission Deadline May 24th, 2021
Registration is now open https://www.ileraworldcongress2021.se
The congress fee is 300 SEK (cc. 30 EURO) excl. VAT. There is a reduced fee of 150 SEK (cc.15 EURO) excl. VAT for PhD-students and students.
The Study Group will meet online 11-12.30 (CET) Monday 21st June 2021. All Congress participants are invited to attend and present at the meeting.
The Group covers all types of flexible working and includes part-time, telework, home/distance working, shift work, flexible hours, compressed working week, zero hours contracts, freelance, agency and other temporary arrangements. The aim is to bring together scholars with an interest in this area to network, present, and discuss work in progress or recently completed.
When the group started over 25 years ago, flexible working was considered ‘non-standard’ work. Since then, flexible working practices have proliferated to the extent that they are no longer considered atypical in many economies. Events such as the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 accelerated the spread of home and reduced hours working, and the longer-term economic consequences have implications for this trend towards flexibility. However, while the context is changing, many issues remain the same, including who benefits from these arrangements, how are they are regulated, the social and economic impact, and the role of governments and organisations.
Papers presented at the congresses are theoretical and empirical and address the topic at the macro, organisational or individual level, and in specific national, regional, sector or organisational settings. In common with much research into employment relations, they largely draw on studies carried out in the West. However, research in other regions is growing and we also look forward to learning more about this and the insights it gives from a variety of national contexts. The next few years will be an interesting time for research in this area.
Abstracts of papers on any aspect of flexible working are invited. They should be about 500 words and include:
Please send the abstract as a word file to c.edwards@kingston.ac.uk; clare.kelliher@cranfield.ac.uk by May 24th, 2021 at the latest.
4th May 2021
Karlstad University are advertising a vacancy for a Senior Lecturer in Working Life Science.
Eligibility for the post includes a PhD and a track record in research and teaching in industrial relations/HRM or other work and employment related areas.
For informal enquiries, please contact Robert MacKenzie (robert.mackenzie@kau.se)
Closing date for applications is 31st May 2021.
Full details can be found at: https://kau.varbi.com/en/what:job/jobID:395772/
4th May 2021
Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation & Change
Climate change, just transition and the workplace –
Results of a survey with UK workers
presented by Jo Cutter and Vera Trappmann
(CERIC, Leeds University Business School)
Wednesday, 5th of May, 14:00 - 15:30
Moving to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will require fundamental shifts in technological and economic systems, socio-political structures and modes of organizing with consequential impacts on work and employment.
Jo Cutter’s research focuses on organisational change, systems of skill formation and worker representation. She is currently undertaking research on these themes in relation to two areas: the impact of climate change mitigation strategies on work, jobs and skills and the re-shaping of UK labour mobility and workers’ rights resulting from the 2016 EU ‘Brexit’ Referendum.
Vera Trappmann has a strong record in research on the transition process from socialism to capitalism in Central and Eastern Europe. Her research covered business elites, company restructuring, individual workers’ responses to systemic change, as well labour market policies and civil society reorganisation. Her work is of comparative nature. The interplay between institutions and actors’ choices interests her in a number of areas: Precarious Work, Voice and Labour Contestations, Responses to Climate Change, Restructuring, or Corporate Social Responsibility. Vera is the founder of the cross-faculty Research Network on Work Labour and Climate Change.
4th May 2021
Book for teaching:
Arise: Power, Strategy and Union Resurgence
Message from Jane Holgate, j.holgate@leeds.ac.uk
Dear colleagues
I have a book due out in August and I have been asked by the publisher for a lists of colleagues who might be interested in an e-copy for teaching purposes. If that applies to you can you let me know the following
1. your name
2. your email
3. your institution
4. your role
5. the course you teach on
Many thanks
Jane
Arise: Power, Strategy and Union Resurgence - Wildcat (Paperback)
Jane Holgate (author)
https://www.waterstones.com/book/arise/jane-holgate/9780745344027
In Arise, Jane Holgate argues that unions must revisit their understanding of power in order to regain influence and confront capital. Drawing on two decades of research and organising experience, Holgate examines the structural inertia of today's unions from a range of perspectives: from strategic choice, leadership and union democracy to politics, tactics and the agency afforded to rank-and-file members.
In the midst of a neoliberal era of economic crisis and political upheaval, the labour movement stands at a crossroads. Union membership is on the rise, but the 'turn to organising' has largely failed to translate into meaningful gains for workers. There is considerable discussion about the lack of collectivism among workers due to casualisation, gig work and precarity, yet these conditions were standard in the UK when workers built the foundations of the 19th-century trade union movement.
Drawing on history and case studies of unions developing and using power effectively, this book offers strategies for moving beyond the pessimism that prevails in much of today's union movement. By placing power analysis back at the heart of workers' struggle, Holgate shows us that transformational change is not only possible, but within reach.
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745344027
Number of pages: 272
Dimensions: 215 x 135 mm
4th May 2021
CENTRAL LONDON BUIRA SEMINAR: The transforming employment relation
Prof Valeria Pulignano (KU Leuven) on Emerging ‘Grey Zones’ at the Interface of Work and Home: Advancing Research and Theory on Precarious Work (with Glenn Morgan, Univ. Bristol)
Prof Patricia Leighton (University of South Wales) on Precarious working: causes, compexities and responses, but maybe better ways forward?
Thursday 20th May 2021, 16.30pm – 18.00pm virtual Zoom seminar
For further details and to reserve a place, contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk), who will send you a link before the seminar
This virtual London BUIRA seminar is focused on the transformation of the employment relation and we are fortunate to have two expert speakers. Valeria Pulignano addresses the challenge posed by the growth of precarious work to generate significant rethinking of the future directions of work. Especially, it requires to focus on the increasing importance of ‘grey zones’ at the interface between the sphere of public (paid) work and private home (domestic) work. Between these two spheres, a series of ‘grey zones’ is emerging, characterized by work that is unpaid but necessary to engage in the public sphere of paid work. At the same time, this work relies on a private sphere that can support such ‘grey zones’, often by making the domestic sphere more oriented to the marketability of its participants. A distinctive framework is presented for understanding the reconfiguration of precarious work.
This is followed by Patricia Leighton, who will speak about her recent book with Tui McKeown, Work in Challenging and Uncertain Times: the changing employment relationship (2020) (see https://www.routledge.com/Work-in-Challenging-and-Uncertain-Times-The-Changing-Employment-Relationship/Leighton-McKeown/p/book/9780367897482).This identified a range of issues, from ‘fragmentation’ in relationships, health and wellbeing, insecurities, skills development and the use of technology. COVID-19 has worsened the position of those already precarious in areas such as hospitality, ‘bank nurses’, supply teachers and interpreters. The Taylor Report, 2017, proposed new ‘rights’ to redress the situation but legislation has had limited effect, especially with COVID and with contract law limiting protections and liabilities. This raises the question: Is it better to impose duties and responsibilities on the beneficiaries of labour markets than provide hard to enforce rights and will new types of unionism have a key role to play?
Valeria Pulignano is Professor of Sociology at the Center for Sociological Research (CESO) at KU Leuven. Her research lies in employment (industrial) relations and labour markets, their changing nature and implications for voice at work and inequality as differences in wages, working conditions, job quality and wellbeing. She is currently coordinating an ERC AdG ResPecTMe research project on “Resolving Precariousness: Advancing the Theory and Measurement of Precariousness Across the Paid/Unpaid Continuum” see https://soc.kuleuven.be/ceso/wo/erlm/respectme and she is also Partner in the EU WorkYP “Working and Yet Poor”. Among her recent books Shifting Solidarities. (2020, Palgrave-MacMillan) with I. Van Hoyweghen and G. Meyers.
Patricia Leighton is Professor Emeritus at the University of South Wales, UK – former Jean Monnet Professor of European Law. She is currently Professor of European Law at the IPAG Business School, France and a member of their research group. Her research and publishing interests are employment relationships, atypical contracts and self-employment. She has undertaken a wide range of projects funded by governmental and public bodies including the European Commission and ILO, and is the author of several books on employment contracts and their management,
The seminar is an opportunity to air and discuss these issues in an open forum and consider their implications for industrial relations. Anyone interested is welcome to attend.
27th April 2021
We invite you to join us in commemorating the life and work of Robert Taylor, former labour editor of the Financial Times and the Observer, who sadly passed away on 6 August 2020.
In a career spanning more than thirty years, Robert made notable contributions to journalism, research and policy analysis. He produced a series of highly regarded papers for the ESRC’s Future of Work Programme (1998-2005) and two influential volumes on trade unions and work: The Future of the Trade Unions (1994); and The TUC: From the General Strike to the New Unionism (2000).
The webinar in Robert’s memory is hosted by the Industrial Relations Research Unit, University of Warwick. The event on Wednesday 26 May 2021, 10:00 – 12:00 will address the following themes, all of which reflect Robert’s interests:
- Developments in the world of work during Robert’s career as a journalist, commentator and researcher: the changing role of trade unions and collective bargaining; the role of the TUC and the capacity of organised labour to influence public policy; trade unions and the Labour Party – the role of organised labour in a social democratic economy
- The state of the UK labour market: with a particular emphasis on Robert’s contribution to the ESRC Future of Work Programme, and the extent of change, challenges and opportunities in the world of work.
- Restoring dignity to labour: meeting the challenges of globalisation, Brexit, technology and climate change.
The webinar will reflect Robert’s contribution to academic/practitioner discussions with particular reference to the values that he expressed in his work: commitment to a social democratic economy, industrial democracy and the need to recast the UK’s economic and social settlement to reflect changing circumstances.
Speakers include: Rt Hon Alan Johnson; Lord John Monks; John Cruddas MP; Kate Dearden, Head of Research, Policy and External Relations, Community; Professor Peter Nolan, University of Leicester; and Dr Manuela Galetto, Industrial Relations Research Unit.
Given the constraints of the Covid-19 restrictions, the event will take the form of a two hour webinar, with speaker contributions of around 10 minutes and an opportunity for discussion.
If you would like to join us on Wednesday 26 May 2021, 10:00 – 12:00 please register your interest via the Eventbrite page here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/robert-taylor-memorial-webinar-tickets-151948216205
27th April 2021
This year BUIRA organises a one-day pre-conference Doctoral Workshop, which will take place in online on Monday 12th July 2021 (the afternoon prior to the main BUIRA Annual Conference: Time TBC). This workshop offers a unique opportunity to get to know fellow academics and postgraduate research students in the field, exercise critical thinking and receive constructive feedback to your ideas from an expert outside of your supervisory team.
Please submit abstracts to register your interest by Tuesday 18th May 2021. We will then be in touch to confirm your place. The deadline for the ‘full paper’ or any written work you intend to submit is Friday 18th June 2021. Please see full guidelines on the BUIRA website and submit via e-mail: admin@buira.org.
The session will be chaired by Professor Miguel Martínez Lucio, co-director of the Work & Equalities Institute (AMBS, University of Manchester) and Co-editor in Chief of New Technology Work and Employment. Miguel will be joined by several critical friends and experts in their respective fields including: Robert MacKenzie (Karlstat University, Sweden); Peter Prowse (Sheffield Hallam University); Tony Dundon (AMBS and University of Limerick); Jane Holgate (University of Leeds); Peter Turnbull (University of Bristol); Jo McBride (University of Durham); Vera Trappmann (University of Leeds); Chris Forde (University of Leeds) and others TBC.
We are also now accepting submissions for the Doctoral Prize linked to the 2021 BUIRA conference, sponsored by the BJIR (full guidelines on the BUIRA website). Please also note that we are happy to accept the same submission for both the Doctoral Workshop and the Doctoral Prize (max. 4,000 words).
22nd April 2021
Central London BUIRA Seminar: The transforming employment relation
Prof Valeria Pulignano (KU Leuven) on Emerging ‘Grey Zones’ at the Interface of Work and Home: Advancing Research and Theory on Precarious Work (with Glenn Morgan, Univ. Bristol)
Prof Patricia Leighton (University of South Wales) on Precarious working: causes, compexities and responses, but maybe better ways forward?
Thursday 20th May 2021, 16.30pm – 18.00pm virtual Zoom seminar
For further details and to reserve a place, contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk), who will send you a link before the seminar
This virtual London BUIRA seminar is focused on the transformation of the employment relation and we are fortunate to have two expert speakers. Valeria Pulignano addresses the challenge posed by the growth of precarious work to generate significant rethinking of the future directions of work. Especially, it requires to focus on the increasing importance of ‘grey zones’ at the interface between the sphere of public (paid) work and private home (domestic) work. Between these two spheres, a series of ‘grey zones’ is emerging, characterized by work that is unpaid but necessary to engage in the public sphere of paid work. At the same time, this work relies on a private sphere that can support such ‘grey zones’, often by making the domestic sphere more oriented to the marketability of its participants. A distinctive framework is presented for understanding the reconfiguration of precarious work.
This is followed by Patricia Leighton, who will speak about her recent book with Tui McKeown, Work in Challenging and Uncertain Times: the changing employment relationship (2020) (see https://www.routledge.com/Work-in-Challenging-and-Uncertain-Times-The-Changing-Employment-Relationship/Leighton-McKeown/p/book/9780367897482).This identified a range of issues, from ‘fragmentation’ in relationships, health and wellbeing, insecurities, skills development and the use of technology. COVID-19 has worsened the position of those already precarious in areas such as hospitality, ‘bank nurses’, supply teachers and interpreters. The Taylor Report, 2017, proposed new ‘rights’ to redress the situation but legislation has had limited effect, especially with COVID and with contract law limiting protections and liabilities. This raises the question: Is it better to impose duties and responsibilities on the beneficiaries of labour markets than provide hard to enforce rights and will new types of unionism have a key role to play?
Valeria Pulignano is Professor of Sociology at the Center for Sociological Research (CESO) at KU Leuven. Her research lies in employment (industrial) relations and labour markets, their changing nature and implications for voice at work and inequality as differences in wages, working conditions, job quality and wellbeing. She is currently coordinating an ERC AdG ResPecTMe research project on “Resolving Precariousness: Advancing the Theory and Measurement of Precariousness Across the Paid/Unpaid Continuum” see https://soc.kuleuven.be/ceso/wo/erlm/respectme and she is also Partner in the EU WorkYP “Working and Yet Poor”. Among her recent books Shifting Solidarities. (2020, Palgrave-MacMillan) with I. Van Hoyweghen and G. Meyers.
Patricia Leighton is Professor Emeritus at the University of South Wales, UK – former Jean Monnet Professor of European Law. She is currently Professor of European Law at the IPAG Business School, France and a member of their research group. Her research and publishing interests are employment relationships, atypical contracts and self-employment. She has undertaken a wide range of projects funded by governmental and public bodies including the European Commission and ILO, and is the author of several books on employment contracts and their management,
The seminar is an opportunity to air and discuss these issues in an open forum and consider their implications for industrial relations. Anyone interested is welcome to attend.
20th April 2021
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on working women
Date: Tuesday 27 April 2021
Time: 13:00 – 14:30
Registration is via Eventbrite. https://bit.ly/Covid-19-and-working-women
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on work and working lives, and there is a recognised need to consider the issue of differential impacts across demographic groups. During this event hosted by the Work and Equalities Institute Isabel Tavora (Work and Equalities Institute), Ros Bragg (Director of Maternity Action), Zoe Young (Director of Half the Sky) and Sian Elliott (Women’s Equality Policy Officer at the TUC) will consider the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on working women looking at issues such as equality at work, flexible work, parental support, and pregnant workers.
Please feel free to circulate this more widely.
Lindsay Endell, Work and Equalities Institute Manager
20th April 2021
OBITUARY - Professor Mick Marchington
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1748-8583.12345
Mick Marchington, emeritus Professor of Human Resource Management at Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS), University of Manchester, and former Editor‐in‐chief (2005–2010) of the Human Resource Management Journal (HRMJ), died suddenly on February 24, aged 71, while doing something he loved—walking the Derbyshire hills. He was born in the Derbyshire hills and returned to live there in the 1990s with his wife Lorrie and two children Lucy and Jack, who all survive him along with his two grandchildren, Noah and Sophie.
Mick's academic career was very much forged in Manchester. Following a first‐class degree in Chemical Engineering at UMIST, he opted for a Master's in Management Science, also in UMIST. After a spell as a researcher at Aston and 8 years at the University of Central Lancashire, he returned to UMIST in 1986, where he was promoted to professor in 1995. He remained in Manchester until his retirement in 2011. Mick was an active and committed teacher and scholar, building research teams and the FairWork Research Centre, which is now merged into the Work and Equalities Institute (WEI). At retirement, he took a part‐time professorship at the University of Strathclyde but remained living in the North West and very much connected to the research group at AMBS and WEI that he had been so committed to developing during his 25 years at Manchester.
Mick was a significant contributor to the establishment of HRM as a central teaching and research subject in business schools. His interest in developing the subject is evident in his two stints as journal editor, first as Editor of the Employee Relations (1988–1991), second as Editor‐in‐chief of HRMJ. It was under his leadership that HRMJ achieved entry into the all important Web of Science rankings, establishing it as a top‐ranked international journal.
His approach to HRM was firmly in the more pluralist school of HRM that rooted the subject in a strong critical and social science tradition and considered it very much a complement to and not a substitute for the study of employee or industrial relations. Mick's positon as friendly critic to dominant trends in HRM is evident not only in, for example, his effective demolition of best practice HRM in the International Journal of Human Resource Management in 2000 but also in his 2015 conceptual piece in HRM Review where he warns that HRM could end up withering away unless it stopped being overly concerned with pleasing top management by narrowing its focus to talent and leadership management and short‐term performance issues, to the neglect of other stakeholders and the organisation's wider social responsibilities. Towards the end of Mick's career, he researched and published on the need to locate HRM within a stronger understanding of the changing contextual forces. Drawing on data he collected in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, he pointed to both opportunities and constraints emerging from softer forms of regulation by voluntary agencies and consultancies. Mick's critiques of aspects of HRM were motivated by his passion for and contribution to the study of employee voice and engagement. Evident throughout Mick's work is a deep caring and pluralist ontology connecting multiple networks and alliances in pursuit of a fairer voice agenda. His approach was also notable for recognising that those employed in supply chains or under complex contractual arrangements are even more at risk of being deprived of fair access to voice and decent working conditions.
Mick was widely regarded as the UK's leading expert on issues of employee voice, the author of choice for all handbook reviews of the subject area as well as a co‐editor of an Oxford Handbook of Participation. His most renowned contributions stem from a large‐scale project for the Employment Department in 1989–1991. He became particularly well known for his development of the ‘waves concept' of employee involvement and participation. In contrast to the then dominant cycles of control thesis, where opportunities for voice were argued to rise and fall with the extent to which management felt under threat, the waves approach helped to explain the multiple schemes developing at the firm‐level through the 1980s–1990s, at a time when labour was in retreat in terms of union density and collective power. He showed that the ‘form and depth' of voice varied across contexts and time, combining individualistic initiatives running alongside (not necessarily in opposition to) collective structures of participation, but often wrapped around a new right‐wing political discourse that reinforced managerial power, and not always for the better. His research tradition fostered the development of systematic case study evidence that charted a shift to newer configurations of both direct and indirect forms of social dialogue and managerial influence.
Mick's second major research contribution stems from his leadership of an innovative project under the ESRC's future of work programme, to widen the HRM lens beyond the typical single organisation with strong borders, to the more fuzzy and complex networks of relationships in which organisations are embedded and which affect both the management of and the experience of employment. Together with a large team of Manchester colleagues, Mick authored an influential book on Fragmenting Work, a topic arguably of increasing relevance in today's employment landscape fractured by the growth of outsourcing, offshoring, agency contractors and the growing gig economy.
Collaboration was always a key characteristic of Mick's approach to research. The opportunities it provided to develop his more junior colleagues and his doctoral students for Mick were as important as the research itself. Mick was a dedicated and extremely effective teacher and mentor. He was able to pass on his own infectious passion and enthusiasm to his colleagues and students while also demanding of everyone a commitment to meet expected standards of excellence and timekeeping. His passion for pedagogy saw him taking on two major leadership roles, first at UMIST where as a young professor he became the Dean of Management Studies, responsible for academic quality and delivery of all management teaching in UMIST. The second leadership role was outside the university at the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD), where his outstanding contributions as both Chief Examiner (1994–2002) and Chief Moderator for Standards (2002–2006) led to him being made a Chartered Companion of the CIPD in 2003. Mick strived for more than 30 years to establish and maintain standards of excellence in the HR profession, taking on major tasks of both curriculum development and monitoring of standards. He was also the main author of a key textbook on HRM at Work, now in its seventh edition that has been used as a basis for CIPD education since 1996. At the time of Mick's sad passing, he was still working with and advising the CIPD on its new educational map and standards.
Just as Mick held a broad range of posts in his academic career, so he had a broad range of interests in his private life, many of which he actively shared with his partner Lorrie and his children. He had three lifelong passions: first sport, particularly football which he played until he was over 50. Being a Derbyshire lad, he supported Derby County football club; then when his children both became Manchester City supporters—so did he. Nothing ever replaced playing football—but in his later life golf played a frustrating part. Travel also loomed large. From heading out on the hippie trail overland to India in the early 1970s, Mick together with Lorrie was a frequent traveller and explorer, often combining adventures with academic placements and posts. These expeditions also often involved his third passion walking, pursued not only in his much loved Derbyshire hills, but also right across the world—from New Zealand, to Peru, with many places in between.
Mick had a huge number of personal friends—from both work and from his active personal life. He was a loyal, entertaining and humble man who will be much missed.
Acknowledgements
By Jill Rubery (Work & Equalities Institute, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester) and Tony Dundon (Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick; and Work & Equalities Institute, University of Manchester).
20th April 2021
Wanted: reviewers of the below books (please note they may only be e-books). If you are interested in reviewing then please let Jane Holgate - e-mail j.holgate@leeds.ac.uk - know when you could complete the review - and, if a physical copy is available, an address where you would like the book to be sent.
The Cambridge International Handbook of Lean Production. Diverging Theories and New Industries around the World
Editors:Thomas Janoski, University of Kentucky, Darina Lepadatu, Kennesaw State University, Georgia
Experiencing the New World of Work
Edited by Jeremy Aroles, Durham University, François-Xavier de Vaujany, Université Paris-Dauphine, Karen Dale, Lancaster University
What about the workers?
The Conservative Party and the organised working class in British politics
By Andrew Taylor
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526103611/
Sarosh Kuruvilla's new book Private Regulation of Labor Standards in Global Supply Chains: Problems, Progress, and Prospects from Cornell Press.
20th April 2021
13th April 2021
13th April 2021
CENTRAL LONDON BUIRA SEMINAR:
Higher education, marketisation, REF/TEF & employment relations
Prof Dorothy Bishop (Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford) on REF and TEF: Whose interests do they serve?
Dr Olga Kuznetsova (Manchester Metropolitan University) on Employee Relations in Marketising Universities: a case study
Thursday 15th April 2021, 16.30am – 18.00pm virtual Zoom seminar
For further details and to reserve a place, contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk), who will send you a link before the seminar
This virtual London BUIRA seminar is focused on changes in higher education and their implications for employment relations and we are fortunate to have two expert speakers. The seminar begins with considerations by Dorothy Bishop of the history of how the Research Excellence Framework and Teaching Excellence Frameworks came into being, the rationale for their development and their subsequent evolution into their current forms. Public accountability and transparency in the allocation of funds was the stated motivation for developing the REF, but it has since taken over other roles, and now is used as a management tool. The stated reason for needing a Teaching Excellence Framework was to force universities to take teaching more seriously, and to provide information for prospective students. In practice, both REF and TEF have had unintended consequences, and in both cases, there are reasons to question the validity of the processes used to allocate rankings.
Dorothy will be followed by Olga Kuznetsova who will speak about her research with Prof Andrei Kuznetsov, published as: ‘And then there were none: what a UCU Archive tells us about employee relations in marketising universities’ in Studies in Higher Education. The study engages evidence from a University and College Union branch archive to explore developments in employee relations (ER) that reflect the organisation-level effects of marketisation of UK universities. The evidence exposes points of strain in ER at a level of professional divide between managers and academics, and helps to understand their root. It also reveals new ethical challenges (some of which are connected to the demands and constraints put by REF and TEF) faced by the academic profession and individual academics. Some recent reflections will be drawn on the meaning of 'distant' and 'distance' in management.
Dorothy Bishop, FRS, FBA, FMed Sci is a member of the executive committee of the Council for Defence of British Universities, which she joined after becoming concerned about the way in which the REF was distorting academic life in the UK. With the advent of TEF in 2018 her concerns multiplied, with evidence that the statistical framework behind the evaluation was deeply flawed – concerns which have since been amplified by the Royal Statistical Society. She has blogged about these issues: relevant posts can be found by Googling 'Bishopblog catalogue'. She also discusses academic life on Twitter, as @deevybee.
Dr Olga Kuznetsova is Reader in Comparative Business Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.
The seminar is an opportunity to air and discuss these issues in an open forum and consider their implications for industrial relations. Anyone interested is welcome to attend.
13th April 2021
The next meeting in the UCS work-in commemoration series of meetings, organised by the Jimmy Reid Foundation and supported by UNTE Scotland, is on the eve of the 2021 STUC Congress at 6pm on Sunday 18 April.
It is called 'We are not rats! From UCS to BiFab and beyond - the struggle for decent work'.
The speakers are Mary Alexander, UNITE Scotland deputy regional secretary, Linda Hamill, a UCS work-in veteran, and Bob MacGregor, the UNITE Scotland officer who led on the BiFab occupation of 2017.
Further details here including where to sign up to are here:
7th April 2021
The Virtual Conference is on the theme COVID-19 and the world of work: Towards a human-centred recovery from 6-9 July 2021.
The Conference is organized by the International Labour Office (ILO) in collaboration with:
To access the Call for Abstracts and for further details please visit the conference website at: https://www.ilo.org/rdw2021
The deadline for abstract submission is 15 April 2021.
We hope you will participate this year in the RDW Conference!
7th April 2021
Reflections by Ed Heery - 40 Years as an Industrial Relationist
Sign up here:
This Special BUIRA Webinar welcomes Professor Emeritus Edmund Heery, who will discuss his reflections of 40 years as an 'Industrial Relationist'.
Edmund Heery is Professor Emeritus of Employment Relations at Cardiff Business School
Ed proposes to cover three topics:
1. Review his own work and identify the main themes within it focusing on the work he has done on a) pay, b) unions, c) new actors, d) reviewing the field.
2. Reflect on changes in the field that he has encountered in his 40 years as an Industrial Relationist.
3. Some speculation on current developments in the real world of IR: a) neo-paternalism amongst employers, b) the resilience of the labour movement and its imperviousness to arguments about renewal, c) the possible emergence of a more active state - identifying where we are seeing this and what form it takes.
Prof. Edmund Heery - Biography
Edmund Heery is Professor Emeritus at Cardiff Business School, where he worked for 25 years before retiring in December 2020. Ed began his career at North East London Polytechnic (now UEL) in 1980, working as a researcher on payment systems in the coalmining industry, led by Christine Edwards. Subsequently, we worked at the LSE, City University, Imperial College, and Kingston University before joining Cardiff in 1995. Over a long career Ed Heery has researched a variety of issues within UK industrial relations and published widely. He is the author of three monographs, Management Control and Union Power: A Study of Labour Relations in Coalmining (with Christine Edwards), Working for the Union: British Trade Union Officers (with John Kelly), and Framing Work: Unitary, Pluralist and Critical Perspectives in the 21st Century. A fourth monograph, The Real Living Wage: Civil Regulation and the Employment Relationship (with Deborah Hann and David Nash) will be published shortly by Oxford University Press. Ed continues to be an active researcher, despite retirement, and this latest book will present the findings of an extended case study of the UK’s Living Wage campaign.
New BUIRA members welcome! https://www.buira.org/membership
7th April 2021
The Work and Equalities Institute invite you to their upcoming PGR seminar "Conducting remote research" which will be held on 9th April from 1pm to 2:30 pm. Questions that will be asked are: ‘How to build rapport without being physically present?’ ‘How to deal with access when interviewing remotely?’ The session will discuss inclusive approaches to remote research during the pandemic led by Professor Lee-Ann Fenge (University of Bournemouth) who will discuss inclusive approaches to research and Dr Alberta Giorgi (University of Bergamo) who will suggest alternative digital approaches in times of remote research. The spaks will highlight how to conduct participative and co-productive methods with vulnerable groups during the crisis and choose the appropriate qualitative methods. Event Registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/conducting-remote-research-pgr-work-equalities-institute-tickets-147143400873
30th March 2021
We are holding a Manchester Industrial Relations Society meeting on 6 May. On Tuesday 23 March, the Court of Appeal overturned the criminal convictions of the Shrewsbury 24, a group of trade unionists in the construction industry who were convicted and in some cases imprisoned on charges of unlawful assembly, conspiracy to intimidate, and affray following the 1972 national building workers strike. A 47 year campaign for justice has resulted in the judgements being overturned, and on 6 May MIRS will be holding a meeting to mark this historic result. Ralph Darlington, Professor Emeritus in Employment Relations, University of Salford (and the author of a chapter on the 1972 building workers strike in his co-authored book with Dave Lyddon, Glorious Summer), Eileen Turnbull (the researcher for the Shrewsbury 24 campaign who discovered all of the crucial evidence that saw the convictions overturned), and Terry Renshaw (one of the 24 pickets, who was convicted of unlawful assembly in 1973) will be speaking at the event. The meeting will be held over Zoom at 6pm-7.30pm on 6 May – the link is available on booking through the following Eventbrite link.
30th March 2021
To mark a year since millions of workers began to leave the workplace and work remotely from home. The STUC is releasing preliminary findings of the Covid-19 and Working from Home Survey undertaken by Professors Phil Taylor, Dora Scholarios (University of Strathclyde) and Professor Debra Howcroft (University of Manchester).
Read the report here http://www.stuc.org.uk/files/Policy/Research-papers/WFH_Preliminary%20Findings.pdf
The survey reveals a very mixed picture, with winners and losers over the past year. There are widely differing views about more permanent working from home (WFH) arrangements post-pandemic. The majority of the respondents were those who normally worked in office environments. Respondents were from Telecoms (24%), Local Government (18%), Financial Services (15%) and Civil Service (15%). Nearly all were unions members (thus likely to generally experience better protected environments). This suggests that negative experiences and worries might be higher among the entire cohort currently WFH.
Responding to the survey findings STUC General Secretary Roz Foyer said:
“This work reflects what we have been hearing from unions across Scotland. The experiences of working from home and attitudes toward future home working are very varied. Significant numbers of workers have experienced work intensification and stress over the past year, yet for many others the overall experience has been positive.
“Foyer warned against blanket changes to work arrangements or sweeping office closures
“A key conclusion is that many workers are positive about some degree of future home working, but this must be optional, flexible and only undertaken through negotiation. Millions of workers were not initially employed to work from home and have a right to resist imposed changes. There has never been a more important time for these workers to join a union.”
Professor Phil Taylor said:
“There is a majority preference from workers of wanting to spend two days or less in the workplace. However, a ‘blanket’ approach is inappropriate.
“There is also compelling evidence that WFH is not desirable for a significant minority. The reasons are many and complex, but include inadequate domestic workstation arrangements, space constraints, compromised work-life balance, gendered experiences of domestic and household burdens and loneliness and isolation.
“Employers will need to accommodate, and unions to represent, multiple, often contrasting, worker interests and preferences. The development of agile or hybrid arrangements should follow best practice by being fully negotiated with unions.”
Experience of WFH
Attitudes towards post-pandemic WFH
Contract and job security fears
30th March 2021
Work and Labor Relations in the Construction Industry:
30th March 2021
CENTRAL LONDON BUIRA SEMINAR:
Higher education, marketisation, REF/TEF & employment relations
Prof Dorothy Bishop (Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford) on REF and TEF: Whose interests do they serve?
Dr Olga Kuznetsova (Manchester Metropolitan University) on Employee Relations in Marketising Universities: a case study
Thursday 15th April 2021, 16.30am – 18.00pm virtual Zoom seminar
For further details and to reserve a place, contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk), who will send you a link before the seminar
This virtual London BUIRA seminar is focused on changes in higher education and their implications for employment relations and we are fortunate to have two expert speakers. The seminar begins with considerations by Dorothy Bishop of the history of how the Research Excellence Framework and Teaching Excellence Frameworks came into being, the rationale for their development and their subsequent evolution into their current forms. Public accountability and transparency in the allocation of funds was the stated motivation for developing the REF, but it has since taken over other roles, and now is used as a management tool. The stated reason for needing a Teaching Excellence Framework was to force universities to take teaching more seriously, and to provide information for prospective students. In practice, both REF and TEF have had unintended consequences, and in both cases, there are reasons to question the validity of the processes used to allocate rankings.
Dorothy will be followed by Olga Kuznetsova who will speak about her research with Prof Andrei Kuznetsov, published as: ‘And then there were none: what a UCU Archive tells us about employee relations in marketising universities’ in Studies in Higher Education. The study engages evidence from a University and College Union branch archive to explore developments in employee relations (ER) that reflect the organisation-level effects of marketisation of UK universities. The evidence exposes points of strain in ER at a level of professional divide between managers and academics, and helps to understand their root. It also reveals new ethical challenges (some of which are connected to the demands and constraints put by REF and TEF) faced by the academic profession and individual academics. Some recent reflections will be drawn on the meaning of 'distant' and 'distance' in management.
Dorothy Bishop, FRS, FBA, FMed Sci is a member of the executive committee of the Council for Defence of British Universities, which she joined after becoming concerned about the way in which the REF was distorting academic life in the UK. With the advent of TEF in 2018 her concerns multiplied, with evidence that the statistical framework behind the evaluation was deeply flawed – concerns which have since been amplified by the Royal Statistical Society. She has blogged about these issues: relevant posts can be found by Googling 'Bishopblog catalogue'. She also discusses academic life on Twitter, as @deevybee.
Dr Olga Kuznetsova is Reader in Comparative Business Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.
The seminar is an opportunity to air and discuss these issues in an open forum and consider their implications for industrial relations. Anyone interested is welcome to attend.
30th March 2021
23rd March 2021
BUIRA History of Industrial Relations Study Group
Working Mothers: 150 Years of Unpaid Care Work and Paid Employment
17.00-18.45 Thursday 25 March 2021 (through Zoom)
A McKinsey Report (2020) recently concluded that women’s jobs were globally more at risk as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic than men’s, first because women are more likely to act as unpaid carers than men, and second because women work disproportionately in those sectors most vulnerable to decline (such as retail, hotels and catering).
This seminar examines the division commonly made between unpaid care work and paid employment in historical and global perspective, particularly in the light of the pandemic, and its implications for equality at work. It also investigates the perception of unpaid care work as lacking value and esteem.
For further details or to reserve a place, please e-mail Michael Gold (m.gold@rhul.ac.uk) or Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk). We’ll send the Zoom link a few days before the seminar to those who have reserved a place.
Programme:
17.00-17.15: Welcome and introduction: Michael Gold and Linda Clarke (Chairs)
17.15 – 17.45: Helen McCarthy
Gender, Maternalism and Intellectual Biography: Beatrice Webb and Women’s Work, c. 1880s – 1919
This paper focuses on the thought of Beatrice Webb (1858-1943) and how it related to the life she led as the daughter of an upper-class industrialist who moved through the worlds of philanthropy, social investigation and socialist agitation between the 1880s and the end of the First World War. The paper suggests the value of adopting a biographical lens for understanding how beliefs about gender and the family become embedded in labour markets and social policies. Drawing together the genres of feminist life-writing and intellectual biography, it explores the formation of such beliefs at the level of the individual, from the psychic processes shaping Webb’s interior self to the political and intellectual cultures through which she made her public mark.
17.45 – 18.15: Eileen Boris
‘Indispensable to All Working Women and to Mothers in the Home’: Global Labour Standards and the Care Work Economy, 1919-2021
‘Indispensable to All Working Women and to Mothers in the Home’: that is how the French organizer of garment outworkers Jeanne Bouvier characterized a proposal for an eight-hour day, forty-eight-hour week which a century ago became Convention No.1 of the newly formed International Labour Organization (ILO). In differentiating ‘mother in the home’ from ‘all working women,’ she reinforced the separation of mother work (care) from the world of employment that has haunted the formulation of global labour standards. Until the 2000s, paid care work mostly stood outside of ILO deliberations, while unpaid family care was seen predominantly as a special kind of activity, one performed out of love or duty. Whether the new care work economy, especially during COVID times, touted by the ILO as central for gender equality, merely relabels the old inequalities will depend on the struggles waged in its name.
18.15 – 18.45: Discussion
18.45: Close
*****
Our speakers:
Eileen Boris: Hull Professor of Feminist Studies (University of California, Santa Barbara). Most recent book: Making the Woman Worker. Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards, 1919-2019 (Oxford University Press, 2019).
Helen McCarthy: Reader in Modern and Contemporary British History (University of Cambridge). Most recent book: Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2020).
Reference:
McKinsey Global Institute (2020) Covid-19 and Gender Equality: Countering the Regressive Effects, 15 July. Available at:
23rd March 2021
Blissett, E. (2021) The Two-Hundred-Million Pound Strike: The 2003 British Airways Walkout. Bern and Oxford, Peter Lang.
Book synopsis: The Two-Hundred-Million pound Strike: The 2003 British Airways Walkout describes and analyses the 2003, British Airways, Customer Service Agents (CSA), 24-hour unofficial strike. It examines the lead up to the dispute, in which negotiations failed to reach an agreement over the launch of BA’s Automatic Time Recording and Integrated Airport Resource Management systems, before focusing on the dispute itself and its eventual resolution.
Central to the book is the question: why did a group of union members, the majority of whom were young women, become so incensed at an imposed change to their working practices that they took unofficial strike action? This they did in the knowledge that they could all have been, legally, dismissed.
In analysing the strike, the book explores why BA’s management imposed such a controversial change to working practices on the company’s busiest weekend of the year. A decision which, allegedly, cost the company over £200,000,000, tarnished its reputation, and saw numerous senior managers lose their jobs.
How and why the CSAs three trade unions (the GMB Union, the Transport and General Workers Union and Amicus) reacted in such different ways to the unofficial strike, and then behaved so differently in the subsequent negotiations, is also central to this study.
Ed Blissett (PhD) is Senior Research Fellow in Employment Relations at the University of Hertfordshire. Prior to taking up this post Ed was, for over 20 years, a lay activist and then a senior Regional and National officer for three of Britain’s largest trade unions. His roles included six years as the Regional and National Officer for British Airways (BA) and then four years as Regional Secretary of the GMB London Region. These positions saw him play a central part in local and national union negotiations with BA, which granted him extensive first-hand knowledge of the 2003 strike and all the negotiations that preceded and followed the unofficial walkout. His background as a senior union officer at BA also assisted him in gaining unprecedented access to the unions lay reps, full-time officers and the airline’s managers, who played central roles in the 2003 strike and the ensuing negotiations.
23rd March 2021
The Impact of New Technologies on Warehouse Work and Beyond: Thursday 1st April at 17.00pm
Lisa Kresge (Researcher, UC Berkeley Labor Center)
Liz Blackshaw, Director of Global Campaigns, ITF
Craig Gent (Novara Media)
Kirsty Newsome (Professor of Employment Relations, University of Sheffield)
Contemporary Labour Issues in the Global Maritime Industry: Thursday 15th April at 17.00pm
Book talk: "Capitalism and the Sea" (Verso 2020)
Liam Campling (Professor of International Business and Development, Queen Mary University)
Alejandro Colas (Professor of International Relations, Department of Politics, Birkbeck)
If you would like to share and receive information on upcoming events, new publications and research projects, relevant news reports and worker organising in the logistics sector, please join our listserv through google groups or by emailing katy.fox-hodess@sheffield.ac.uk.
23rd March 2021
Durham University have received funding to undertake a project looking at the experience of mothers working in any area of Higher Education during the Covid-19 pandemic. Colleagues are from different academic departments and professional support services teams at Durham University who are part of the Mothers and Mothers-to-be Support (MAMS) Network.
The brief is:
The research will help to understand how all mothers working in HE with children aged 18 or under at home have experienced the pandemic, and the impact it has had on their health, wellbeing, and career. We are also looking at intersectional factors, such as ethnicity and disability, which put many women at a significant additional disadvantage. Our results will be used to try to influence policies at universities that address the institutionalised inequalities which the pandemic has magnified.
The UK-wide survey is open until Wednesday 24 March 2021. The short timeline is short due to funding constraints, and we can use all the help we can get to reach mothers in HE across the UK. Our survey only takes around ten minutes to complete. Here is the link: https://durham.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/covid19
23rd March 2021
23rd March 2021
To mark a year since millions of workers began to leave the workplace and work remotely from home. The STUC is releasing preliminary findings of the Covid-19 and Working from Home Survey undertaken by Professors Phil Taylor, Dora Scholarios (University of Strathclyde) and Professor Debra Howcroft (University of Manchester).
Read the report here http://www.stuc.org.uk/files/Policy/Research-papers/WFH_Preliminary%20Findings.pdf
The survey reveals a very mixed picture, with winners and losers over the past year. There are widely differing views about more permanent working from home (WFH) arrangements post-pandemic. The majority of the respondents were those who normally worked in office environments. Respondents were from Telecoms (24%), Local Government (18%), Financial Services (15%) and Civil Service (15%). Nearly all were unions members (thus likely to generally experience better protected environments). This suggests that negative experiences and worries might be higher among the entire cohort currently WFH.
Responding to the survey findings STUC General Secretary Roz Foyer said:
“This work reflects what we have been hearing from unions across Scotland. The experiences of working from home and attitudes toward future home working are very varied. Significant numbers of workers have experienced work intensification and stress over the past year, yet for many others the overall experience has been positive.
“Foyer warned against blanket changes to work arrangements or sweeping office closures
“A key conclusion is that many workers are positive about some degree of future home working, but this must be optional, flexible and only undertaken through negotiation. Millions of workers were not initially employed to work from home and have a right to resist imposed changes. There has never been a more important time for these workers to join a union.”
Professor Phil Taylor said:
“There is a majority preference from workers of wanting to spend two days or less in the workplace. However, a ‘blanket’ approach is inappropriate.
“There is also compelling evidence that WFH is not desirable for a significant minority. The reasons are many and complex, but include inadequate domestic workstation arrangements, space constraints, compromised work-life balance, gendered experiences of domestic and household burdens and loneliness and isolation.
“Employers will need to accommodate, and unions to represent, multiple, often contrasting, worker interests and preferences. The development of agile or hybrid arrangements should follow best practice by being fully negotiated with unions.”
Experience of WFH
Attitudes towards post-pandemic WFH
23rd March 2021
As part of our 'Reflections' series, we are very proud to announce that in March we will be joined by:
Salma Yaqoob, former leader and vice president of the Respect Party, former Birmingham City Councillor, a leading figure in the Stop the War coalition, a community engagement practitioner and occasional spokesperson for Birmingham Central Mosque.
Taranjit Chana, is a GMB Branch Secretary, BAME officer for London Labour, fromer Labour MEP candidate and passionate about defeating hatred and division wherever it surfaces.
David Braniff-Herbert , is the National Organiser for LGBT and Digital Organising at the National Education Union, a former organiser for HOPE not hate and a movement builder, trainer and speaker.
We will be asking each of these organisers about their experiences in the social justice arena and how we get to 'win', there will then be break out sessions followed by a final Q&A.
This event will take place via video meeting on Zoom. Join us from the comfort of your own home to hear these great organisers reflect on what it takes to win and then get the chance to put your questions to them!
This event is part of the Ella Baker School of Organising's 'Reflections on Organising' series organised in association with: Independent Working Class Education Network, the National Education Union, the University and Colleges Union, and Manchester Trades Union Council
Sign up here - https://actionnetwork.org/events/reflections-on-organising-no7
If we really want to change the world, rather than merely protest at injustice, we need to have a strategic path to winning. This course introduces a number of tools that can help us devise a winning theory of change.
Sign up here: https://actionnetwork.org/events/theory-of-change-session-sunday-march-21
16th March 2021
16th March 2021
Critical Thinking and the Business School.
16th March 2021
CENTRAL LONDON BUIRA SEMINAR:
Higher education, marketisation, REF/TEF & employment relations
Prof Dorothy Bishop (Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford) on REF and TEF: Whose interests do they serve?
Dr Olga Kuznetsova (Manchester Metropolitan University) on Employee Relations in Marketising Universities: a case study
Thursday 15th April 2021, 16.30am – 18.00pm virtual Zoom seminar
For further details and to reserve a place, contact Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk), who will send you a link before the seminar
This virtual London BUIRA seminar is focused on changes in higher education and their implications for employment relations and we are fortunate to have two expert speakers. The seminar begins with considerations by Dorothy Bishop of the history of how the Research Excellence Framework and Teaching Excellence Frameworks came into being, the rationale for their development and their subsequent evolution into their current forms. Public accountability and transparency in the allocation of funds was the stated motivation for developing the REF, but it has since taken over other roles, and now is used as a management tool. The stated reason for needing a Teaching Excellence Framework was to force universities to take teaching more seriously, and to provide information for prospective students. In practice, both REF and TEF have had unintended consequences, and in both cases, there are reasons to question the validity of the processes used to allocate rankings.
Dorothy will be followed by Olga Kuznetsova who will speak about her research with Prof Andrei Kuznetsov, published as: ‘And then there were none: what a UCU Archive tells us about employee relations in marketising universities’ in Studies in Higher Education. The study engages evidence from a University and College Union branch archive to explore developments in employee relations (ER) that reflect the organisation-level effects of marketisation of UK universities. The evidence exposes points of strain in ER at a level of professional divide between managers and academics, and helps to understand their root. It also reveals new ethical challenges (some of which are connected to the demands and constraints put by REF and TEF) faced by the academic profession and individual academics. Some recent reflections will be drawn on the meaning of 'distant' and 'distance' in management.
Dorothy Bishop, FRS, FBA, FMed Sci is a member of the executive committee of the Council for Defence of British Universities, which she joined after becoming concerned about the way in which the REF was distorting academic life in the UK. With the advent of TEF in 2018 her concerns multiplied, with evidence that the statistical framework behind the evaluation was deeply flawed – concerns which have since been amplified by the Royal Statistical Society. She has blogged about these issues: relevant posts can be found by Googling 'Bishopblog catalogue'. She also discusses academic life on Twitter, as @deevybee.
Dr Olga Kuznetsova is Reader in Comparative Business Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.
The seminar is an opportunity to air and discuss these issues in an open forum and consider their implications for industrial relations. Anyone interested is welcome to attend.
16th March 2021
The Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru commissioned a new report on homeworking which updaes the previous report on the same subject published in August 2020.
16th March 2021
Reflections by Ed Heery - 40 Years as an Industrial Relationist
Wednesday May 19th – 4pm-5.15pm
This Special BUIRA Webinar welcomes Professor Emeritus Edmund Heery, who will discuss his reflections of 40 years as an 'Industrial Relationist'.
Edmund Heery is Professor Emeritus of Employment Relations at Cardiff Business School
Ed proposes to cover three topics:
Here is the link to register on Eventbrite:
Biography
Edmund Heery is Professor Emeritus at Cardiff Business School, where he worked for 25 years before retiring in December 2020. Ed began his career at North East London Polytechnic (now UEL) in 1980, working as a researcher on payment systems in the coalmining industry, led by Christine Edwards. Subsequently, we worked at the LSE, City University, Imperial College, and Kingston University before joining Cardiff in 1995. Over a long career Ed Heery has researched a variety of issues within UK industrial relations and published widely. He is the author of three monographs, Management Control and Union Power: A Study of Labour Relations in Coalmining (with Christine Edwards), Working for the Union: British Trade Union Officers (with John Kelly), and Framing Work: Unitary, Pluralist and Critical Perspectives in the 21st Century. A fourth monograph, The Real Living Wage: Civil Regulation and the Employment Relationship (with Deborah Hann and David Nash) will be published shortly by Oxford University Press. Ed continues to be an active researcher, despite retirement, and this latest book will present the findings of an extended case study of the UK’s Living Wage campaign.
15th March 2021
Universal Basic Income: A concept which time has come?
Wednesday 17th March 2021
TIME: 14:00 – 16:30
Register: for free by 16th March 2pm, here at Eventbrite (A Zoom link will be sent to you).
The pedigree of the Universal Basic Income concept, which means that all citizens receive a basic subsistence level of income irrespective of their personal circumstances (employed or unemployed), is a long one. Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’ (1515) proposed a guaranteed basic income as early as the 16th century while Tom Paine’s ‘Agrarian Justice’ (1797) also envisaged a basic income for all citizens, paid for through a one-time inheritance tax on landowners. A century later the American economist Henry George also called for a similar device to tackle poverty. The 1960s saw another revival of the concept in the USA and the idea has more recently re-entered mainstream economic debates in the USA and in Europe, particularly concerning its role as a palliative to the potential impact of automation on employment and incomes.
In this seminar we examine the UBI from the perspectives of those promoting the idea and those who hold a critical position. Professor Guy Standing (SOAS), who recently produced a report on the subject for the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, will promote the policy while Dr Jane Lethbridge (Greenwich) will provide a critique. Professor Heikki Hiilamo (Helsinki) will provide details of her research on Finland’s basic income experiment.
Our Speakers:
Professor Guy Standing: ‘Basic Income: Battling Eight Giants in an Era of Pandemics’.
Professor Heikki Hiilamo: ‘Inside Finland's Basic Income Experiment: What Can We Learn From the Results?’
Associate Professor Jane Lethbridge: 'Can a Universal Basic Income address the problems of precarity?’
Introducing the speakers:
Professor Guy Standing is Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London. An economist with a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, he is a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences, and the Royal Society of Arts, co-founder and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), and member of the Progressive Economy Forum. In 2016-19, he was an adviser to Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, John McDonnell. He was professor in SOAS, Bath and Monash Universities, and Director of the ILO’s Socio-Economic Security Programme. He has been a consultant for many international bodies, was Research Director for President Mandela’s Labour Market Policy Commission, and has implemented several basic income pilots.
Professor Heikki Hiilamo is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Helsinki and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare.
Associate Professor Jane Lethbridge is Associate Professor in Public Policy in the Business Faculty, University of Greenwich. She was the Director of Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU) from 2013-2018 and is now a Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Employment and Work (CREW). Jane specialises in the analysis of global commercialisation of health and social care and its impact on health and social care workers, social dialogue in health and social care in Europe, the role of government in the professional development of public sector professionals and democratic professionalism. She has undertaken research for a wide range of trade unions at national and global levels. She wrote Democratic Professionalism in Public Services (Bristol: Policy Press/ Bristol University Press) in 2019.
This is a free online webinar, open to the public and all are invited, register via Eventbrite.
15th March 2021
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College of Business, Tech. & Engineering |
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Academic |
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Grade 7 - £34,804 to £39,152 (pro rata) per annum dependent on experience |
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Sheffield Business School is Britain’s largest modern business school. Over the last few years, the Organisational Behaviour and Human Resource Management (OB/HRM) subject group has experienced a sustained increase in activity across undergraduate, postgraduate and consultancy activities.
We are looking for Lecturers to join our team, contributing to either our CIPD accredited courses or our MBA/Higher Degree Apprenticeship courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels as well as our wider organisational behaviour and HRM portfolio activities.
You'll have a broad remit that includes teaching preparation and delivery, leading modules, contributing to dissertation supervision and research and knowledge exchange. You'll also contribute to the development of new and exciting programmes and help to shape the curriculum through your substantial professional experience and your critical, practical and theoretical understanding of organisational behaviour/ human resources management.
Experience of delivering high quality learning to students is essential, although this doesn't need to be within higher education. You will have a doctorate or be nearing completion and ideally you will hold an academic qualification in HRM or associated discipline or equivalent professional experience.
We welcome teaching experience in all areas of OBHRM. This could include interest in subjects such as Employee Relations, Employee Experience, Diversity and Inclusion, Well-being, International HRM, Leadership, Coaching and Mentoring, Learning and Development, Organisational Development and Design, Talent Management and Performance, Resourcing and Reward and People Analytics.
The University may be able to sponsor the employment of international applicants in this role; this will depend on a number of factors specific to the individual applicant.
For this job we particularly welcome applications from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) applicants who are underrepresented in this area at Sheffield Hallam.
We welcome applications for part-time and flexible working arrangements. The application link is http://bit.ly/37XTPGD. |
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Contact Person : |
Sarah Fidment |
Contact Number : |
0114 225 3368 |
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Date Advertised : |
02-Mar-2021 |
Closing Date : |
18-Apr-2021 |
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Employment Type : |
Permanent - Full Time |
Location : |
City Campus |
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Job number : |
064526 |
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9th March 2021
New Technology and Industrial Relations presented by Simon Joyce and Mark Stuart (Leeds)
Wednesday, 17th March, 14:00 - 15:30
Abstract
The central argument of the paper is that contemporary industrial relations research has contributed very little to current debates about how new technology may be reshaping the world of work. Contemporary analysis of technological change tends to be split between economic estimates of the extent of likely job loss and more sociological studies of workers’ experiences of digital work and new forms of contracting. Where industrial relations scholars do look at technological change it tends to be in terms of worker resistance, especially in relation to platform labour, and challenges for unions and collective bargaining. Such research is clearly important, but we would argue that by confining attention to a relatively narrow research agenda industrial relations scholars are limiting the contribution that they can make. Our understanding of the contemporary impact of technology at work is missing the valuable insights that can be uncovered if we return to concerns of more historical industrial relations scholarship. Scanning the field of Industrial Relations over the last forty years or so, the paper offers a revised agenda for how the field can contribute to understanding contemporary dynamics in, at and beyond work.
Presenters
Dr Simon Joyce is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change. His main research interest is in processes of change in employment relations: how changes in state policy, political economic conditions, employer strategy, and management systems affect the everyday experience of work, and how responses to those changes from the people affected by them in turn generate resistances and reshaping of management approaches. He is currently researching platform work and the gig economy.
Professor Mark Stuart is the Founding Director of CERIC, Montague Burton Professor of Human Resource Management and Employment Relations, Leeds University Business School Pro Dean for Research. He has published more than 150 monographs, articles, chapters and reports in the field of employment relations and has attracted more than £10 million of external research income. His current interests focus on Digital innovation and the future of work, and, from 2020, he will co-direct, in collaboration with the University of Sussex, a new research centre Digital Futures at Work (Digit), funded by a £8 million grant from the ESRC. A Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Mark is past President of the British Universities Industrial Relations Association (BUIRA), past Editor-in-Chief of Work, Employment and Society and past Chair of the International Section of the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA). He is a sub panel 17 member for the 2021 Research Excellence Framework exercise, and editorial board member for Human Resource Management Journal and Labour and Industry. He has held visiting positions in Australia (Sydney, Monash, Griffith), America (Cornell), Sweden (NIWL) and France (Toulouse).
9th March 2021
Human Resource Management Journal (impact factor:3.816, ranked 1/30 for Industrial Relations & Labor on 2019 Journal Citation Reports) has two current calls for papers which BUIRA members might be interested in. More details about the journal and these calls can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/17488583?tabActivePane=. For regular updates on the journal please follow us on Twitter (@HRMJournal) or on LinkedIn.
Current open calls for papers:
Special Issue - Relevant, rigorous and reflective knowledge creation in HRM through scholar-stakeholder collaborative research
Guest Editors: Marco Guerci, Tony Huzzard, Giovanni Radaelli & Abraham B. (Rami) Shani
Our special issue calls for empirical studies that have employed a collaborative research methodology in the HRM field. Our intention is to provide visibility to empirical applications of academic-practitioner collaborations that contribute to HRM theory and practice in original ways.
To read the full call for papers, please see here.
Submission Period: 31st March - 30th April 2021
Special Issue -Managing Gender Equity and Equality across Borders: Research, Practice, and Evidence-based Recommendations
Guest Editors: Katharina Bader (Northumbria University, UK), Lena Knappert (VU Amsterdam, The Netherlands), Mila Lazarova (Simon Fraser University, Canada), Eddy Ng (Bucknell University, USA)
Given the emerging state of the field, this special issue invites papers that generate theoretical insights, empirical findings, and evidence-based recommendations on how organizations can effectively tackle the challenges arising from managing gender equity and equality in and across different country contexts.
To read the call, please see here.
Submission Period: 1-30 May 2021
9th March 2021
We are saddened to announce the death of Professor Mick Marchington on the 24 February. Mick worked for over 25 years at Manchester, initially joining the Manchester School of Management, UMIST, in the 1980s where he was appointed a Professor of Human Resource Management in 1995, and continued in that role at Manchester Business School after the merger with the University of Manchester until his retirement in 2011. For those 25 years he was a leading member of the HRM, Employment Relations and Law (HRMERL) Group and its teaching and research agenda. He published widely on HRM and was one of the key contributors to the development of this subject in the UK, and in particular to the rooting of the subject in a strong critical and social science tradition. With 12 books, over 100 journal articles and 50-plus book chapters to his name, he was best known for his work on employee voice, making a very major contribution to industrial relations and the humanising of HRM. He was a pioneer in stretching and broadening our understanding of involvement and participation at work, rethinking how we approach questions of voice at work during the transformations of recent decades. He was Editor-in-Chief of HRMJ, and earlier was the Editor of Employee Relations; and editor (with Paul Thompson and Gibson Burrell) for the Palgrave series Critical Studies in Management. He was a leading academic figure in the CIPD, acting as one of its first Chief Examiners, then Chief Moderator for Standards and eventually appointed as a Companion of the CIPD for his lifetime contributions. He was President of Manchester Industrial Relations Society from 2002-2006. He was a champion and key supporter of his colleagues, especially mentoring and supervising early career researchers and doctoral students, many of whom have gone on to successful academic careers of their own. Mick will be missed as both a colleague and a good friend.
4th March 2021
2nd March 2021
2nd March 2021
Working Mothers: 150 Years of Unpaid Care Work and Paid Employment
17.00-18.45 Thursday 25 March 2021 (through Zoom)
A McKinsey Report (2020) recently concluded that women’s jobs were globally more at risk as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic than men’s, first because women are more likely to act as unpaid carers than men, and second because women work disproportionately in those sectors most vulnerable to decline (such as retail, hotels and catering).
This seminar examines the division commonly made between unpaid care work and paid employment in historical and global perspective, particularly in the light of the pandemic, and its implications for equality at work. It also investigates the perception of unpaid care work as lacking value and esteem.
For further details or to reserve a place, please e-mail Michael Gold (m.gold@rhul.ac.uk) or Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk). We’ll send the Zoom link a few days before the seminar to those who have reserved a place.
Programme:
17.00-17.15: Welcome and introduction: Michael Gold and Linda Clarke (Chairs)
17.15 – 17.45: Helen McCarthy
Gender, Maternalism and Intellectual Biography: Beatrice Webb and Women’s Work, c. 1880s – 1919
This paper focuses on the thought of Beatrice Webb (1858-1943) and how it related to the life she led as the daughter of an upper-class industrialist who moved through the worlds of philanthropy, social investigation and socialist agitation between the 1880s and the end of the First World War. The paper suggests the value of adopting a biographical lens for understanding how beliefs about gender and the family become embedded in labour markets and social policies. Drawing together the genres of feminist life-writing and intellectual biography, it explores the formation of such beliefs at the level of the individual, from the psychic processes shaping Webb’s interior self to the political and intellectual cultures through which she made her public mark.
17.45 – 18.15: Eileen Boris
‘Indispensable to All Working Women and to Mothers in the Home’: Global Labour Standards and the Care Work Economy, 1919-2021
‘Indispensable to All Working Women and to Mothers in the Home’: that is how the French organizer of garment outworkers Jeanne Bouvier characterized a proposal for an eight-hour day, forty-eight-hour week which a century ago became Convention No.1 of the newly formed International Labour Organization (ILO). In differentiating ‘mother in the home’ from ‘all working women,’ she reinforced the separation of mother work (care) from the world of employment that has haunted the formulation of global labour standards. Until the 2000s, paid care work mostly stood outside of ILO deliberations, while unpaid family care was seen predominantly as a special kind of activity, one performed out of love or duty. Whether the new care work economy, especially during COVID times, touted by the ILO as central for gender equality, merely relabels the old inequalities will depend on the struggles waged in its name.
18.15 – 18.45: Discussion
18.45: Close
*****
Our speakers
Eileen Boris: Hull Professor of Feminist Studies (University of California, Santa Barbara). Most recent book: Making the Woman Worker. Precarious Labor and the Fight for Global Standards, 1919-2019 (Oxford University Press, 2019).
Helen McCarthy: Reader in Modern and Contemporary British History (University of Cambridge). Most recent book: Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2020).
Reference:
McKinsey Global Institute (2020) Covid-19 and Gender Equality: Countering the Regressive Effects, 15 July. Available at:
2nd March 2021
Manfred Elfstrom
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/workers-and-change-in-china/2343B17E63CF3F55FFD4072325D3EF85
https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/work-and-personality-change-1
2nd March 2021
On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation declared a global Coronavirus pandemic. From the outset, workplaces were recognised as a major source for the spread of the disease. Yet the UK government downplayed the dangers, with Prime Minister Johnson announcing that workplaces were ‘Covid-secure’ thanks in part to HSE ‘spot-checks’. Yet, throughout this period, the Health and Safety Executive, the agency responsible for securing compliance with health and safety regulations at work, has been notable by its absence.
The analysis contained in this report, partly based on data gathered via Freedom of Information requests, reveals the extent to which the HSE failed in its duties to protect workers, promote relevant health and safety laws and prosecute rule-breaking employers. It also failed to highlight the rights and functions of the 100,000 trade union health and safety representatives and the role they could play in securing compliance with the law and appropriate health and safety practices at work. Instead, tax-payers money was used by the HSE to outsource inspection to private companies to undertake phone call checks to employers.
This is a timely and informed report highlighting the failings of the HSE and the UK’s framework of laws. It concludes with a list of recommendations – the first of which is the need for a major independent inquiry into the future of health and safety in the UK.
No. of copies TU price (each) Others (each)
1-9 £8.00 £30.00
10-24 £6.50 £24.00
25-49 £5.50 £20.00
50-74 £4.50 £16.00
75-99 £3.50 £12.00
100+ £3.00 £9.00
*Please add £1.50 p&p per item (up to a maximum of £15)
(Spec: A5; 52pp: ISBN 978-1-906703-50-9; February 2021)
Order form
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Return this form to IER, 4th Floor, Jack Jones House, 1 Islington, Liverpool L3 8EG.
23rd February 2021
International Labour and Logistics Research Network
The International Labour and Logistics Research Network brings together scholars, researchers, labour activists, and organisers from around the world in order to promote critical research and dialogue on contemporary labour issues facing logistics workers, unions,
and the international labour movement. The International Labour and Logistics Research Network seeks to identify and confront the complex challenges impacting workers in the global logistics industry, while simultaneously producing collaborative research
advancing international workers’ rights, solidarity, worker power, and economic/social justice.
The network is co-ordinated by Dr Katy Fox-Hodess and Professor Kirsty Newsome, Centre for Decent Work, Sheffield University Management School, and Professor Jake Alimahomed-Wilson, California State University Long Beach.
To launch the network a series of webinars are being hosted by the Centre for Decent Work, Sheffield University Management School.
Labour Issues Facing Amazon's Global Workforce: Thursday 4th March at 17.00pm
Book talk with contributors from: "The Cost of Free Shipping: Amazon in the Global Economy" (Pluto Press 2020)
Jake Wilson (Professor of Sociology, California State University - Long Beach)
Ellen Reese (Professor of Sociology and Chair of Labor Studies, University of California at Riverside)
Amazon Workers International (a cross-border coalition of Amazon workers)
Jörn Boewe (politologist and journalist with “Work in Progress”), Johannes Schulten (doctoral student in Sociology, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena and journalist with “Work in Progress”)
Francesco S. Massimo (doctoral student in Sociology, Sciences Politiques and founding editor of Jacobin Italia)
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/labour-issues-facing-amazons-global-workforce-tickets-141944617171
Building Worker Power through Supply Chain Organising: Thursday 18th March at 17.00pm
Peter Olney (Former Director of Organising, International Longshore and Warehouse Union and faculty member at Building Trades Academy, School of Human Resources and Labour Relations, Michigan State University)
Glenn Perusek (Former Director of the AFL-CIO's Center for Strategic Research and faculty member at Building Trades Academy, School of Human Resources and Labour Relations, Michigan State University)
Ben Norman (Researcher, Unite the Union)
Katy Fox-Hodess (Lecturer in Employment Relations, University of Sheffield)
The Impact of New Technologies on Warehouse Work and Beyond: Thursday 1st April at 17.00pm
Lisa Kresge (Researcher, UC Berkeley Labor Center)
Liz Blackshaw, Director of Global Campaigns, ITF
Craig Gent (Novara Media)
Kirsty Newsome (Professor of Employment Relations, University of Sheffield)
Contemporary Labour Issues in the Global Maritime Industry: Thursday 15th April at 17.00pm
Book talk: "Capitalism and the Sea" (Verso 2020)
Liam Campling (Professor of International Business and Development, Queen Mary University)
Alejandro Colas (Professor of International Relations, Department of Politics, Birkbeck)
If you would like to share and receive information on upcoming events, new publications and research projects, relevant news reports and worker organising in the logistics sector, please join our listserv through google groups or by emailing katy.fox-hodess@sheffield.ac.uk.
23rd February 2021
Colleagues may be interested in recommending the free on-line course about ‘Power, Politics and Influence at Work’ of interest and relevant to you and your networks (approx. 4 hours of learning per week, for 5 weeks, February 2021). The course has been created by Tony Dundon, Miguel Martínez Lucio, Emma Hughes and Roger Walden, academics and researchers from the universities of Manchester, Limerick and Liverpool. It includes contributions from several academics, activists, interactional agencies such as the ILO, Oxfam, CSOs/NGOs, and trade unions. The short course is globally accessible and geared towards labour and union activists, policy advocates and those interested in employment (in)equalities and debates about the future of work. It is free to anyone and accessible here: Power, Politics & Influence at Work - Online Course - FutureLearn
16th February 2021
This is an invitation to attend a webinar hosted by the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) on Tuesday 2 March from 11am-1pm, which may be of interest to some BUIRA colleagues.
The GLAA (www.gla.gov.uk) regulates labour providers in certain industries including agriculture; investigates labour abuse working across all sectors alongside bodies such as the Minimum Wage enforcement team and operates with other law enforcers to deter and disrupt criminality around forced labour.
During the pandemic regular GLAA liaison meetings with its licence holders and labour users, and with NGO and worker representative bodies have moved to webinars. These allow for a much large (virtual) attendance.
The webinar on 2nd March will be discussing a range of issues focusing on labour exploitation. These include working with partners to prevent exploitation in the poultry industry; support given to victims through legitimate employment opportunities, and research undertaken by the University of Nottingham into the impact of the Covid pandemic on Rumanian seasonal workers.
To register, simply click on the link below – further details and joining instructions will follow in the run up to the webinar.
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4345384714985946124
16th February 2021
16th February 2021
Join the Industrial Relations Research Unit for their seminar series - Spring 2020/21.
Bruce Kaufman will be speaking at our fifth seminar discussing Using Unitarist, Pluralist, and Radical Frames to Map the Cross-Section Distribution of Employment Relations Across Workplaces on Wednesday 24th February 2021, 14:00 – 15:30 (GMT) via Microsoft Teams meeting.
Please see attached PDF for details of their abstract.
Register your place via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/irru-seminar-with-professor-bruce-kaufman-tickets-140037296323 and you will be sent a confirmation email with the Teams Meeting joining details.
16th February 2021
The BUIRA Scotland Study group launched in 2021 and is based at the Department of Work, Employment and Organisation at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. The group exists to bring together academics and other stakeholders to promote the academic field of employment relations in Scotland and beyond. The group is interested in pressing employment relations matters in Scotland, the UK, and internationally. We hold events and meetings each academic year, driven by contemporary issues and member interests.
For more information about the study group please follow us on Twitter @buirascotland, look out for updates in the BUIRA newsletter or contact stewart.johnstone@strath.ac.uk
16th February 2021
Date: Friday 26 February 2021
Time: 11:00 – 12:30
Register for attendance details on Eventbrite
This second session continues the interdisciplinary discussion of critical issues confronting human labour under Covid-19.
The Covid-19 pandemic is having a profound impact on work and working lives. This has ignited an important debate on the value of human labour, which has increased awareness of the criticality of a wide range of jobs, many of which have been traditionally undervalued, both politically and socially.
Conflicting Covid narratives: The value of supermarket work and implications for the future
Abbie Winton is a final year doctoral researcher at the Work and Equalities Institute. Her research explores retail work and sociotechnical change, with a current focus on the crisis and the shaping impact this could have on the future of work within the sector.
Debra Howcroft is Professor of Technology and Organisation at the Work and Equalities Institute and is the Editor of New Technology, Work and Employment’.
Sharing the load: How work sharing can reduce unemployment, improve gender equality, and benefit mental health
Jill Rubery is Professor of Comparative Employment Systems and Director of the Work and Equalities Institute. Her current research interests include inequality in the labour market, digitalisation in the workplace, and the related effects of COVID-19.
Isabel Tavora is a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management at Manchester Alliance Business School and a member of the Work and Equalities Institute. Her research focuses on comparative employment policy, collective bargaining, gender equality and work-family reconciliation. Isabel chairs the School’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee.
Beyond work intensification – the contradictions and ironies of the changing nature of cleaning work in a context of austerity and organisational change
Jo McBride is a Professor at the University of Durham and has worked on a range of issues related to collectivism at work, the nature of skills and in work poverty, and the role of decent work initiatives.
Miguel Martinez Lucio is a Professor at the Work & Equalities Institute and is the Editor of New Technology, Work and Employment. He has worked on questions of change within work, the transformation of worker representation and the development of regulation and the state.
Job value during COVID-19 pandemic: Recognising migrants as ‘critical’ but neglected workers
Anthony Rafferty is a Professor of Employment Studies at the University of Manchester and a Deputy Director of the Work and Equalities Institute (WEI).
Stefania Marino is a Senior Lecturer in Employment Studies at the University of Manchester. Her research interests are in the field of labour sociology, industrial relations and labour market studies with a specific focus on international comparative analysis. Stefania has worked extensively on the relationship between labour migration and labour market and in particular on trade union representation of migrant workers across countries.
9th February 2021
Video of the memorial symposium for Professor Willy Brown “Striving for a Fairer World”. Featuring: Catherine Barnard; Thomas Kochan; Lord Adair Turner; Sir George Bain and chaired by Professor Russell Lansbury https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/3416898
9th February 2021
16 Feb. 2021, 5 - 6pm, Melbourne, Australia Time
You are invited to our webinar with award-winning guest speaker IR Professor Peter Turnbull from the University of Bristol, UK.
This event is co-hosted by the International Consortium for Research on Employment and Work (iCREW) and the Department of Management at Monash Business School, jointly with the Department of Management and Marketing, University of Melbourne.
Why is the impact and engagement agenda increasingly important in business schools and other elements of universities? What is the ‘rigor-relevance’ gap in IR/HR and management research?
Such long-standing controversies are variously attributed to a lack of incentives and the unwillingness – or perhaps the inability – of many academic researchers to ‘translate’ their insights for practitioners.
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9th February 2021
3rd February 2021
The Work and Equalities Institute at the University of Manchester is advertising for a research associate. Please would you circulate the details to anyone you think might be interested.
The Work and Equalities Institute is seeking to employ a Research Associate to join its team on a part-time basis (0.8 FTE) for a total of 24 months (2021 to 2023, start date 1/5/2021) with the possibility of extension. The successful candidate will conduct research on an international project ‘Decent Work and the City’ led by Dr Mathew Johnson. The project will investigate decent work initiatives in six cities (Manchester, Bremen, Buenos Aires, Montreal, New York City, and Seoul). This is a broad and ambitious project with significant opportunities for the appointed researcher to develop their qualitative and quantitative research skills, to work collaboratively with international partners, to contribute to high quality academic outputs, and to gain experience of impact and engagement activities.
The post is part-time (0.8 FTE) for 24 months (with the possibility of extension), although there will be scope to negotiate flexible work patterns over the course of the project.
Full details are on the University job site.
2nd February 2021
Get your conference abstracts in by the end of Friday 5th Feb.
Virtual (with potential for some hybrid participation at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, if public health allows)
July 13th to 15th 2021
Plenary Speakers:
Judy Wajcman http://www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/people/judy-wajcman
Anne McBride https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/a.mcbride.html
Sian Moore https://www.gre.ac.uk/people/rep/faculty-of-business/sian-moore
Kirsty Newsome https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/management/staff/kirsty_newsome/index
Jean Jenkins https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/610450-jenkins-jean
The conference will also feature an 'Early Career Researcher Plenary Pannel' and a 'Work in the Real World' Special Session with Ian Allinson (President of the Manchester TUC) and others.
Call for Abstracts
Due to Covid, the 2021 conference will be a virtual online event, but with potential for some hybrid participation at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, if public health allows. A decision regarding on campus activities will be communicated no later than 30 April 2021. Information about plenary speakers and non-paper sessions will be provided once confirmed.
The 2021 conference will be FREE to BUIRA members. Non-members will only need to pay the £40 BUIRA (£20 for PhD students and associate members) membership fee.
Call for papers
BUIRA turning 70 last year presents a good opportunity to reflect on the past, present and future of industrial relations. This was the topic of the postponed 2020 conference, and, if anything, is more salient than ever. Despite facing recent challenges, the field of industrial relations continues to be a vital topic of academic and practitioner enquiry. Issues that have long been central within the study of industrial relations, such as pay, collective bargaining, rights at work, employee representation, national and transnational forms of regulation, health and safety, job (in)security, precarity, equality and diversity, and workplace conflict are highly prominent within many current political and academic debates. Understanding the politics of work, grounded in a critical social science tradition, is crucial for academics and policy makers alike.
Where are we now? How have we got here, and what should the future of the field look like? Reflecting on historical developments in industrial relations is crucial in order to ground and contextualise current developments in the world of work. History matters in helping us to understand the changing nature of industrial relations, and yet is often overlooked in modern accounts of work relations. It is also important to reflect on pressing current issues. Most notably, what has/will continue to be the implications of Coronavirus for employment relations and the future of work? This was the subject of the BUIRA Special Seminar on November 4th 2020, and an ongoing research issue for BUIRA members. What about the continuing impact of austerity and the 2008 financial crisis in a more financialised world, increasing inequality, as well as economic and social challenges caused by the Covid pandemic and Brexit? What have been the consequences for public sector industrial relations? What is the impact of patterns of precarious work and non-standard employment relationships on the changing nature of work and employment, skills and the quality of work? Across all of these questions, issues of social class, equality and diversity remain more relevant than ever before. Looking to the future, one key question concerns the extent to which unions can play an active role with social movements to tackle climate breakdown. How is power deployed and distributed at work? How much voice and influence do employees have? Whither economic and industrial democracy at work?
We welcome empirical (both quantitative and qualitative), analytical, conceptual and methodological papers that concern any area of industrial relations, or fields cognate to industrial relations. We would particularly appreciate submissions from early career researchers and doctoral students. Papers concerning topics under the following headings will be particularly welcome:
Abstracts of papers should be submitted here
Abstracts should be a maximum of up to 4000 characters including spaces in length (around 500 words) and cover the following headings:
Deadline for submission of abstracts: Friday 5th Febuary 2021.
All abstracts are refereed anonymously by BUIRA Executive Committee members. Please note that abstracts previously submitted to the cancelled 2020 BUIRA conference can be ‘rolled-over’ without being refereed a second time (providing there are not major changes – if there are substantial revisions, abstracts should be re-submitted). The BUIRA committee will be in contact shortly with those who were accepted in 2020. If you submitted an abstract and have not heard from us, please contact Genevieve Coderre-LaPalme (g.coderre-lapalme@bham.ac.uk).
2nd February 2021
We know this is a very difficult and stressful time for everyone and have therefore extended the BUIRA Conference Deadline until Friday 5th February. Read the call for papers here: http://www.buira.net/admin/conferences/14
27th January 2021
The British Universities Industrial Relations Association (BUIRA) was established in 1950 and is the preeminent academic association for those researching in the field of industrial relations broadly defined. BUIRA is administered by a team of stewards, who take on the governance and strategic oversight of the association for a period of three years.
Typically, the Stewards are made up of the BUIRA President, Secretary, Treasurer, Membership Secretary, Conference and Events Secretary and Communication Secretary. Recent teams of stewards have based at University of Birmingham (2019-2022), Newcastle University (2016-2019), Leeds University (2013-16), Strathclyde University (2010-13), Manchester Metropolitan University (2007-10), University of West of England (2004-2007), Keele (2001-4) and Warwick (1998-2001).
The current BUIRA Stewards at the University of Birmingham complete their three-year stewardship term in July 2022. The BUIRA Executive would welcome applications to succeed Birmingham from any UK university with a significant presence of BUIRA members, for the period July 2022- July 2025. New teams of Stewards typically take on their term of office following the appropriate Annual BUIRA conference.
Written proposals are invited for a new team of BUIRA stewards. Proposals, which should be no longer than 3 pages, should be submitted to the BUIRA Executive, by 30th April 2021: admin@buira.org.
Proposals should contain the following details:
It is worth noting a number of recent developments. BUIRA dedicates a small annual budget to its doctoral network, which primarily supports an annual doctoral conference. Membership of the doctoral conference has increased significantly over the last 9 years, with plans to grow this further in the years to come. In addition to this, reflections on new income streams to assist the professionalisation of BUIRA would be particularly welcome.
The BUIRA website is currently being redesigned, with a focus on improving the immediate visual impact, increasing its level of interactivity, ensuring ease of access of continual updating and integrating membership databases. This should provide a platform to increase BUIRA external visibility in years to come.
All proposals received by the Executive will be circulated to members at the 2021 BUIRA Annual Meeting, held during the Annual BUIRA Conference (to be held online in July). Each candidate institution will have the opportunity to make a brief presentation at the Annual Meeting in support of their proposed stewardship. The meeting will then vote to decide which candidate institution will assume the stewardship for the following three years.
For further information, please contact Dr Andy Hodder, BUIRA Secretary: a.j.hodder@bham.ac.uk
27th January 2021
Join the authors - Tony Dundon, Miguel Martinez Lucio, Emma Hughes, Debra Howcroft, Arjan Keizer and Roger Walden - of Power, politics and influence at work to celebrate the launch of their new book.
The event will include a discussion on the book and a Q&A session.
About the book: This book explores how power operates in workplace settings at local, national, and transnational levels. It argues that how people are valued in and out of work is a political dynamic, which reflects and shapes how societies treat their citizens. There has been growing pressures affecting worker voice due to deregulation, neoliberal economic policies, new technologies and a weakening of the role of the state and national protective institutions. How these pressures have emerged, and what impact they have, are the source of much debate. The book contextualises these developments, while also outlining potential future responses for new voices at work and a greater interest in questions of equality and fairness. The book shows that worker influence is changing and there are new spaces and a more complex set of outcomes and issues that need to be understood. The authors of the book will discuss these different dimensions at the event and outline the need to realise that outcomes may be more varied and contested.
Link to registration: Registration (gotowebinar.com)
25th January 2021
While the COVID-19 pandemic has generated a myriad of uncertainties, the AIRAANZ (Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand) Conference remains a beacon of certainty. The organizing committee has been working tirelessly to ensure that AIRAANZ 2021 will go ahead. This year the conference will run as an online event from Wednesday 3rd to Friday 5th February 2021 (Australian Eastern Daylight Time).
The program is smaller than usual, but nonetheless, reflects the breadth and quality of research in the field of industrial relations in Australia, New Zealand and beyond. There are themed sessions on equality law, workplace domestic violence policy, trade union training, and ‘transformational’ employment relations in New Zealand, as well as longer workshops on ideas and employment relations, and on recent research and emerging issues in care and support work.
Afternoon symposiums will examine a range of issues. Three symposiums explore COVID-related matters, in the context of first, public employment, second, women’s work, and third, labour activism in the pandemic. A fourth symposium will explore wage theft, description, explanations and policy responses to it. AIRAANZ 2021 also includes several sessions in which PHD and Early Career researchers will present papers on their research, followed by Discussants providing feedback and other comment.
You can download the full program here.
We will further maintain some of AIRAANZ's traditions albeit in online format, including our Awards Ceremony (jacket or glitter dress code), book launches, the Annual General Meeting, and, of course, the Presidential Address.
We do hope you will be able to join us and enjoy AIRAANZ 2021. Please note that although the conference is FREE, pre-conference registration is essential to gain access to the sessions.
25th January 2021
We’re looking for people who are completing or have completed their PhDs, and who are interested in gig economy / future of work / digital economy / work and employment topics.
The Fairwork Project, based at the University of Oxford, conducts action-research on working conditions in the gig economy. We are recruiting a researcher to work with the Fairwork Ghana team, housed within the University of Ghana Business School. This is a full-time, fixed-term position starting as soon as possible until (at least) June 2022. Reporting to Fairwork Ghana’s Principal Investigator (PI), Prof. Richard Boateng, the post-holder will act as a Researcher on the Fairwork project, assessing digital labour platforms against our principles of fair work and pushing for positive change in the Ghanaian gig economy. The Researcher will be a central figure in Fairwork’s upcoming work in Ghana, and will also work closely with its central team based at the University of Oxford. The deadline to apply to this job is January 31st. Further details on how to apply can be found here: https://fair.work/en/fw/blog/open-position-for-a-researcher-to-join-the-new-fairwork-team-in-ghana/#continue
25th January 2021
Please find the below details for the Memorial Symposium in memory of Professor Willy Brown, former Master of Darwin College, on 'Striving for a Fairer World' which will be held as a virtual webinar event on Thursday 4 February 2021 at 09.00am -11.30am (GMT).
Registration details will be sent out shortly please save the date and email Janet Gibson jg323@cam.ac.uk to recieve the details when available.
For those who cannot make the event it will be also be recorded and made available online.
The Memorial Service at Great St Mary's Church will be rescheduled when it becomes possible to do so.
Online Symposium in memory of Professor William (Willy) Brown CBE MA
“Striving for a Fairer World”
Thursday 4 February 2021, 0900 - 1130 GMT
Welcome: Dr Michael Rands, Master, Darwin College
Introduction: Professor Sir George Bain
Chair/Moderator: Professor Russell Lansbury
Speakers:
Professor Catherine Barnard
Brexit, Migration and Labour Rights
Professor Tom Kochan
Our Generation’s Challenge: Restoring Fairness and Respect at Work through a New Social Contract
Lord Adair Turner
Fairness and Efficiency in the Labour Market
Speaker Bios
Professor Sir George Bain
A Canadian, who after studying economics and politics at the University of Manitoba, pursued his career primarily in the United Kingdom as: a doctoral student and research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford; a professor at UMIST; a professor, director of the Industrial Relations Research Unit, and chairman of the School of Industrial & Business Studies at the University of Warwick; principal of London Business School; and president and vice-chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast. Although primarily an academic, his interests and activities have extended far beyond the academy as: a mediator and an arbitrator in numerous industrial disputes; a consultant for many public- and private-sector organisations; and a non-executive director of several companies in the United Kingdom and Canada. He has engaged extensively in public service, particularly by chairing commissions and inquiries for governments in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, including being the founding chair of the Low Pay Commission that introduced the National Minimum Wage. He has received several prizes and honours, including twelve honorary doctorates, and was knighted by the Queen.
Professor Catherine Barnard
Catherine Barnard is Professor of EU law and Employment Law and senior tutor and fellow of Trinity College. She is the author of EU Employment Law (Oxford, OUP, 2012, 5th ed.), The Substantive Law of the EU: The Four Freedoms, (Oxford, OUP, 2019, 6th ed), and (with Peers ed), European Union Law (Oxford, OUP, 2017, 2nd ed). She is a member of the European Commission funded European Labour Law Network (ELLN). She is also a Senior Fellow in the UK in a Changing Europe (http://ukandeu.ac.uk/) project. This is an authoritative, nonpartisan think tank which does research and provides information about all aspects of Brexit, including on employment law matters. She has appeared on the main media channels - BBC, ITV and Sky - as well as some of the more specialist programmes such as Law in Action, Woman's Hour, Question Time and the Briefing Room. She has also written for the Guardian and the Telegraph. She has given evidence to a large number of select committees on the legal issues connected with Brexit, immigration and the European Union (Withdrawal) Act. She has her own podcast, 2903cb, and she blogs on Brexit, mainly for the http://ukandeu.ac.uk/.
Professor Tom Kochan
Thomas Kochan is the George Maverick Bunker Professor of Management, a Professor of Work and Employment Research and the Co-Director of the MIT Sloan Institute for Work and Employment Research at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Kochan focuses on the need to update America's work and employment policies, institutions, and practices to catch up with a changing workforce and economy. His recent work calls attention to the need for a new social contract at work, one that anticipates and engages current and future technological changes in ways that build a more inclusive economy and broadly shared prosperity. Through empirical research, he demonstrates that fundamental changes in the quality of employee and labor-management relations are needed to address America's critical problems in industries ranging from healthcare to airlines to manufacturing. His most recent book is entitled, Shaping the Future of Work: A Handbook for Action and a New Social Contract (MITx Press, 2018). He is a member of the MIT Task Force on Work of the Future. Kochan holds a BBA in personnel management as well as an MS and a PhD in industrial relations from the University of Wisconsin.
Professor Russell Lansbury
Russell Lansbury is Emeritus Professor of Employment Relations at the University of Sydney Business School where he was Associate Dean (Research). He gained a PhD in Industrial Relations from the London School of Economics. He has been a Senior Fulbright Fellow at MIT and Harvard University as well as a Visiting Fellow at the ILO and at the Swedish National Institute for Worklife Research. He is a joint founding editor, with Professor Greg Bamber, of International and Comparative Employment Relations (Sage Books) now in its 7th edition. His latest publications include Contemporary Issues in Work and Organisations: Actors and Institutions (Routledge, 2020) and Crossing Boundaries: Work and Industrial Relations in Perspective (2021). He has received honorary doctorates from the Lulea Technical University in Sweden and Macquarie University in Australia. He is a past President of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association (ILERA).
Lord Adair Turner
Adair Turner is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Chair of the Energy Transitions Commission and Chair of Chubb Europe. He is Board Adviser, Shanghai Group Envision Energy. Among his many previous roles, he was Chair of the Low Pay Commission (2002-2006), Chair of the Pensions Commission (2003-2006), Chair of the Financial Services Authority (2008-2013) during the Financial Crisis, and inaugural Chair of the Climate Change Committee (2008-2012). He writes for Project Syndicate and his recent publications include: Economics After the Crisis (MIT, 2012) and Between Debt and the Devil (Princeton, 2012). Lord Turner became a crossbench peer in 2006
22nd January 2021
Virtual (with potential for some hybrid participation at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, if public health allows)
July 13th to 15th 2021
Plenary Speakers:
Judy Wajcman http://www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/people/judy-wajcman
Anne McBride https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/a.mcbride.html
Sian Moore https://www.gre.ac.uk/people/rep/faculty-of-business/sian-moore
Kirsty Newsome https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/management/staff/kirsty_newsome/index
Jean Jenkins https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/610450-jenkins-jean
The conference will also feature an 'Early Career Researcher Plenary Pannel' and a 'Work in the Real World' Special Session with Ian Allinson (President of the Manchester TUC) and others.
Call for Abstracts
Due to Covid, the 2021 conference will be a virtual online event, but with potential for some hybrid participation at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, if public health allows. A decision regarding on campus activities will be communicated no later than 30 April 2021. Information about plenary speakers and non-paper sessions will be provided once confirmed.
The 2021 conference will be FREE to BUIRA members. Non-members will only need to pay the £40 BUIRA (£20 for PhD students and associate members) membership fee.
Call for papers
BUIRA turning 70 last year presents a good opportunity to reflect on the past, present and future of industrial relations. This was the topic of the postponed 2020 conference, and, if anything, is more salient than ever. Despite facing recent challenges, the field of industrial relations continues to be a vital topic of academic and practitioner enquiry. Issues that have long been central within the study of industrial relations, such as pay, collective bargaining, rights at work, employee representation, national and transnational forms of regulation, health and safety, job (in)security, precarity, equality and diversity, and workplace conflict are highly prominent within many current political and academic debates. Understanding the politics of work, grounded in a critical social science tradition, is crucial for academics and policy makers alike.
Where are we now? How have we got here, and what should the future of the field look like? Reflecting on historical developments in industrial relations is crucial in order to ground and contextualise current developments in the world of work. History matters in helping us to understand the changing nature of industrial relations, and yet is often overlooked in modern accounts of work relations. It is also important to reflect on pressing current issues. Most notably, what has/will continue to be the implications of Coronavirus for employment relations and the future of work? This was the subject of the BUIRA Special Seminar on November 4th 2020, and an ongoing research issue for BUIRA members. What about the continuing impact of austerity and the 2008 financial crisis in a more financialised world, increasing inequality, as well as economic and social challenges caused by the Covid pandemic and Brexit? What have been the consequences for public sector industrial relations? What is the impact of patterns of precarious work and non-standard employment relationships on the changing nature of work and employment, skills and the quality of work? Across all of these questions, issues of social class, equality and diversity remain more relevant than ever before. Looking to the future, one key question concerns the extent to which unions can play an active role with social movements to tackle climate breakdown. How is power deployed and distributed at work? How much voice and influence do employees have? Whither economic and industrial democracy at work?
We welcome empirical (both quantitative and qualitative), analytical, conceptual and methodological papers that concern any area of industrial relations, or fields cognate to industrial relations. We would particularly appreciate submissions from early career researchers and doctoral students. Papers concerning topics under the following headings will be particularly welcome:
Abstracts of papers should be submitted here
Abstracts should be a maximum of up to 4000 characters including spaces in length (around 500 words) and cover the following headings:
Deadline for submission of abstracts: Friday 29th January 2021.
All abstracts are refereed anonymously by BUIRA Executive Committee members. Please note that abstracts previously submitted to the cancelled 2020 BUIRA conference can be ‘rolled-over’ without being refereed a second time (providing there are not major changes – if there are substantial revisions, abstracts should be re-submitted). The BUIRA committee will be in contact shortly with those who were accepted in 2020. If you submitted an abstract and have not heard from us, please contact Genevieve Coderre-LaPalme (g.coderre-lapalme@bham.ac.uk).
18th January 2021
Please follow this link for a BUIRA survey that you are invited to complete: https://forms.gle/eCJhu5deaf7myiff6
The aim of the survey is to make sure BUIRA continues to facilitate and support your work and the field of industrial relations in the changed circumstances we find ourselves
18th January 2021
Join the WBS Industrial Relations Research Unit for their seminar series - Spring 2020/21.
Virginia Doellgast, Christian Lyhne Ibsen and Lisa Sezer will be speaking at our fourth seminar discussing Coordinated vs. Organized Employers: Diverging Service Liberalization Trajectories in Denmark and Sweden on Wednesday 20 January 2021, 14:00 – 15:30 (GMT) via Microsoft Teams meeting.
Abstract:
Employers and their associations have become increasingly important actors
promoting labor, product, service, and financial market liberalization – even
in once highly coordinated European economies. In this paper, we ask how
differences in employer association structures relate to liberalization policies
and outcomes, based on a comparison of the Danish and Swedish telecom
industries. We argue that different representation structures encouraged
telecom firms to adopt distinct approaches to institutionalized cooperation in
the two countries. In Denmark, inter-firm cooperation was based on a more
unstable logic of coordination, with employers often switching between
competing associations to pursue particularistic interests. In contrast,
Swedish telecom employers were compelled to adopt a logic of organization,
via a more centralized association that aggregated diverse company interests.
These logics were associated with distinct trajectories in (mutually
reinforcing) patterns of liberalization in service markets and employment
relations. Danish employers benefited from a market-enabling ‘regulatory
approach’ to telecom liberalization and used threatened exit across
competing agreements to discipline unions. In contrast, telecom liberalization
in Sweden was characterized by a more ‘developmental approach’, giving
employers access to state investments in infrastructure and technology,
while they faced limited exit options from encompassing collective
agreements. Findings contribute to debates on possibilities for alternative,
mutual-gains approaches to collective regulation in liberalizing markets.
Register your place via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/irru-seminar-with-professors-v-doellgast-c-lyhne-ibsen-l-sezer-tickets-136250493895 and you will be sent a confirmation email with the Teams Meeting joining details.
18th January 2021
Marketization: How Capitalist Exchange Subverts Democracy
and Disciplines the Working Class
presented by Ian Greer (Cornell) and Charles Umney (Leeds)
Wednesday, 27th January, 14:00 - 15:30
In this talk we present a theory of marketization and its effects. By marketization, we mean the creation, extension, and intensification of price-based competition, whether through government initiatives or business decisions. While the empirical effects of marketisation are often immediately evident, various academic traditions understate its importance. For example, comparative institutional theory has tended to focus on delineating areas where marketization is presumed to be unlikely (as in the well-worn distinction between “coordinated” and “liberal” market economies). Polanyians and believers in “Social Europe” have argued that marketization is always likely to be limited or pushed back by social countermovements. Classical Marxist theory has generally emphasised concentration and centralisation of capital rather than the intensification of market competition. But in fact marketization is more prevalent, persistent, and pernicious than these theories may lead us to expect.
Certainly, there is plenty of discussion of “the market” as an abstract entity. For instance, advocates of value theory have often presented it as a totalising social force from which there is little escape. For many liberals the market is invoked as a benign organising principle. But these sources often leave no room for a more empirical study of the concrete ways in which price competition is actually engineered in the real world. Who creates markets, through which mechanisms, and with what outcomes?
We base our argument on five years of interviews in five European countries and with EU-level administrators, concentrated in healthcare, welfare-to-work services, and the arts. We show how dedicated European states have been in engineering market competition. They have laboriously created new institutions and procedures to instigate and govern competition, persisting in the face of escalating costs and bureaucratic complexity, not to mention various damaging social outcomes.
We argue that marketization initiatives can be understood as a means of class discipline: they have subjected workers to the effects of competition while protecting capital from them. Class discipline is important to capitalist states, and this partially explains why marketisation remains on the agenda despite its evident problems. Moreover, marketization has created new procedures and mechanisms which are insulated from democratic accountability, while also disorganising existing institutions that might limit price competition. Nonetheless, plenty of examples suggest that marketisation remains a dysfunctional and brittle process which can be effectively challenged “from below”.
Presenters
Dr Ian Greer is Director of the ILR Ithaca Co-Lab at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. From 2006 to 2011 he was a research fellow in CERIC, and from 2011 to 2016 he was professor of comparative employment relations at the University of Greenwich. He has published numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and co-authored ‘The Marketization of Employment Services: Dilemmas of Europe’s Work-First Welfare States’, published in 2017 by Oxford University Press.
Dr Charles Umney is an Associate Professor in Work and Employment Relations. His research areas focus on international trade unionism and the digitalization of live music labour markets. His recent funded collaborative research includes work on the social protection of ‘platform economy’ workers. Charles is also involved in a large comparative project “The Effects of Marketization in Europe”.
18th January 2021
We are very pleased to announce that 'BUIRA Conference 2021: The past, present and future of industrial relations and the politics of work' will feature plenary contributions from:
Judy Wajcman http://www.lse.ac.uk/sociology/people/judy-wajcman
Anne McBride https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/a.mcbride.html
Sian Moore https://www.gre.ac.uk/people/rep/faculty-of-business/sian-moore
Kirsty Newsome https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/management/staff/kirsty_newsome/index
Jean Jenkins https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/610450-jenkins-jean
The conference will also feature an 'Early Career Researcher Plenary Pannel' and a 'Work in the Real World' a Special Session with Ian Allinson (President of the Manchester TUC) and others.
Call for Abstracts
Due to Covid, the 2021 conference will be a virtual online event, but with potential for some hybrid participation at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, if public health allows. A decision regarding on campus activities will be communicated no later than 30 April 2021. Information about plenary speakers and non-paper sessions will be provided once confirmed.
The 2021 conference will be FREE to BUIRA members. Non-members will only need to pay the £40 BUIRA (£20 for PhD students and associate members) membership fee.
Call for papers
BUIRA turning 70 last year presents a good opportunity to reflect on the past, present and future of industrial relations. This was the topic of the postponed 2020 conference, and, if anything, is more salient than ever. Despite facing recent challenges, the field of industrial relations continues to be a vital topic of academic and practitioner enquiry. Issues that have long been central within the study of industrial relations, such as pay, collective bargaining, rights at work, employee representation, national and transnational forms of regulation, health and safety, job (in)security, precarity, equality and diversity, and workplace conflict are highly prominent within many current political and academic debates. Understanding the politics of work, grounded in a critical social science tradition, is crucial for academics and policy makers alike.
Where are we now? How have we got here, and what should the future of the field look like? Reflecting on historical developments in industrial relations is crucial in order to ground and contextualise current developments in the world of work. History matters in helping us to understand the changing nature of industrial relations, and yet is often overlooked in modern accounts of work relations. It is also important to reflect on pressing current issues. Most notably, what has/will continue to be the implications of Coronavirus for employment relations and the future of work? This was the subject of the BUIRA Special Seminar on November 4th 2020, and an ongoing research issue for BUIRA members. What about the continuing impact of austerity and the 2008 financial crisis in a more financialised world, increasing inequality, as well as economic and social challenges caused by the Covid pandemic and Brexit? What have been the consequences for public sector industrial relations? What is the impact of patterns of precarious work and non-standard employment relationships on the changing nature of work and employment, skills and the quality of work? Across all of these questions, issues of social class, equality and diversity remain more relevant than ever before. Looking to the future, one key question concerns the extent to which unions can play an active role with social movements to tackle climate breakdown. How is power deployed and distributed at work? How much voice and influence do employees have? Whither economic and industrial democracy at work?
We welcome empirical (both quantitative and qualitative), analytical, conceptual and methodological papers that concern any area of industrial relations, or fields cognate to industrial relations. We would particularly appreciate submissions from early career researchers and doctoral students. Papers concerning topics under the following headings will be particularly welcome:
Abstracts of papers should be submitted here
Abstracts should be a maximum of up to 4000 characters including spaces in length (around 500 words) and cover the following headings:
Deadline for submission of abstracts: Friday 29th January 2021.
All abstracts are refereed anonymously by BUIRA Executive Committee members. Please note that abstracts previously submitted to the cancelled 2020 BUIRA conference can be ‘rolled-over’ without being refereed a second time (providing there are not major changes – if there are substantial revisions, abstracts should be re-submitted). The BUIRA committee will be in contact shortly with those who were accepted in 2020. If you submitted an abstract and have not heard from us, please contact Genevieve Coderre-LaPalme (g.coderre-lapalme@bham.ac.uk).
11th January 2021
It is with great sadness that we convey the news that Emeritus Professor Willy Brown passed away unexpectedly on Thursday evening at his home near Cambridge.
Willy’s achievements in the industrial relations and labour economics fields were exceptional. For many decades Willy was an eminent scholar in these fields, not only in the United Kingdom but also internationally. He was arguably one of the most influential academics of his generation in both research and policy formulation.
Willy was Emeritus Master of Darwin College and Emeritus Professor of Industrial Relations at the University of Cambridge. He was previously the Director of the Industrial Relations Research Unit at the University of Warwick, which gained an international reputation for excellence and influence under his leadership, before becoming the Montague Burton Professor of Industrial Relations at the University of Cambridge from 1985 to his retirement in 2012.
Willy provided academic leadership through various senior administrative roles at Cambridge. He also served as President of the British Universities Industrial Relations Association from 1986 to 1989 and as a member of the Executive of the International Labour and Employment Relations Association (formerly the International Industrial Relations Association) from 1989 to 1995.
Willy held a number of significant government appointments in the UK including foundation member of the Low Pay Commission from 1997-2007 and as a senior member of the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service Council and Panel of Arbitrators.
Willy was the author of many seminal journal articles and books including Piecework Bargaining (1973), The Changing Contours of British Industrial Relations (1981), The Evolution of the Modern Workplace (2009) and The Emerging Industrial Relations of China (2017). In 2002 he was made Commander of the British Empire for services to employment relations.
Willy was an Honorary Professor at Renmin University in Beijing and was instrumental in bringing together international and Chinese scholars to examine developments in Chinese employment relations. In 2015 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Sydney in recognition of his significant contributions to industrial relations scholarship and policy in Australia and internationally.
Notwithstanding Willy’s considerable academic accomplishments, his greatest impact may have been through his personal connections and friendships. Willy strived to make the world not only a better place but also a fairer place. In this respect he lived by example. Willy was a truly magnificent person with a unique capacity to speak with anyone on equal terms. He was so selfless, so humble, so generous, and so kind. Willy was greatly loved and will be sorely missed.
- Willy’s former doctoral students
4th August 2019
Elections to the two vacant places on the BUIRA Executive Committee took place at the association's Annual General Meeting earlier this month in Newcastle.
Eleanor Kirk (University of Glasgow) and Yvonne Rueckert (Portsmouth University).
21st July 2019
Following a successful conference hosted at Newcastle University, we're pleased to announce that a team from the University of Birmingham have become the BUIRA Stewards.
Many thanks to Jo McBride, Ana Lopes, Stewart Johnstone, Stephen Procter and Michael Brooks for their hard work running the association.
The Birmingham team is as follows:
Tony Dobbins – President
David J Bailey – Membership Officer
Genevieve Coderre-LaPalme – Events and Conference Officer
Andy Hodder – Secretary
Paul Lewis – Treasurer
Alex Wood – Communications Officer
21st July 2019
Alcan PhD Studentship in the Future of Work (Newcastle University, UK)
Newcastle University Business School invites applications for a three-year PhD studentship in the Future of Work. The studentship commences in September 2021.
This studentship offers an opportunity to be part of a new major research programme in the Future of Work led by Professor Stephen Procter, the Alcan Chair of Management.
Full details of the studentship are available at: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/postgraduate/funding/sources/allstudents/alcan21.html.
Informal enquiries are welcome, and can be directed to Professor Procter at: stephen.procter@newcastle.ac.uk.
The closing date for applications is July 7 2021
15th June 2021