Deadline for submission of BUIRA abstracts: Friday 29th January 2021.

BUIRA Conference 2021: The past, present and future of industrial relations and the politics of work

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:

•         The implications of Covid for employment relations and futures of work
•         The implications of Brexit for work and employment relations
•         Reflections and challenges for Equality and Diversity, and challenging the gender pay gap
•         The consequences of new technology, digitalisation and the growth of platforms for work and industrial relations
•         Climate emergency and industrial relations
•         Comparative and international industrial relations
•         Political economy of work (e.g. austerity, financialisation, fragmentation, flexibilisation and inequality)
•         New forms of collective action in the workplace and beyond, and new agents of resistance
•         The rise of populism/nationalism and industrial relations
•         Power, politics, voice and influence at work

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:

•         Brief outline
•         Methodology
•         Key findings
•         References

• 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

BUIRA Membership Survey

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

IRRU Seminar: Coordinated vs. Organized Employers: Diverging Service Liberalization Trajectories in Denmark and Sweden

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

CERIC webinar: Marketization: How Capitalist Exchange Subverts Democracy and Disciplines the Working Class

Marketization: How Capitalist Exchange Subverts Democracy
and Disciplines the Working Class

 presented by Ian Greer (Cornell) and Charles Umney (Leeds) 

Wednesday, 27^th January, 14:00 - 15:30

REGISTER HERE 

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

BUIRA Conference Plenary Announcement

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:

•         The implications of Covid for employment relations and futures of work
•         The implications of Brexit for work and employment relations
•         Reflections and challenges for Equality and Diversity, and challenging the gender pay gap
•         The consequences of new technology, digitalisation and the growth of platforms for work and industrial relations
•         Climate emergency and industrial relations
•         Comparative and international industrial relations
•         Political economy of work (e.g. austerity, financialisation, fragmentation, flexibilisation and inequality)
•         New forms of collective action in the workplace and beyond, and new agents of resistance
•         The rise of populism/nationalism and industrial relations
•         Power, politics, voice and influence at work

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:

•         Brief outline
•         Methodology
•         Key findings
•         References

• 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

Vale Professor Robert H (Bob) Fryer, CBE 1944-2020

It is with great sadness that I heard that Bob Fryer died on 6 December 2020.

Bob was a BUIRA member and spoke well at several BUIRA conferences.

As his family announced in the Guardian: "It is with fondness and pride that we remember him as a loving husband, father and grandfather. He dedicated his working life to education and lifelong learning, having a major and lasting inspirational influence on many. Extremely knowledgeable and perceptive with a penetrating intellect, sharp wit and good humour, he was caring, compassionate and a lifelong socialist who firmly believed in equal opportunities for all."

Attendance at his funeral service was limited during the pandemic, so was mostly his family. However, a few friends were also involved including Lord Tom Sawyer of the Labour Party, formerly of the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE).

Bob graduated from Cambridge University in 1966; in the following year Oxford University awarded him a distinction in its graduate diploma in administration and social studies, when he was much influenced by the late Alan Fox. From 1967 he was a research assistant at Imperial College, London and from 1968 he was a research officer attached to Oxford University, but based in Lancaster. He also taught at Plater College, Oxford, which was the start of his lifelong pleasure of teaching, particularly with people whose previous experience of education had been limited.

In 1969 he moved to Manchester University where he worked with George Bain. In 1971, Bob followed George (long before George was knighted) to Warwick University. Initially, Bob was in the Industrial Relations Research Unit, but in 1973, he moved to the Sociology Department, where his teaching included industrial relations. In 1983 he became the second Principal of the Northern College for Residential Adult Education for 15 years. In 1998 he became Assistant Vice Chancellor at Southampton University where he was responsible for its New College. He was subsequently the founding Vice Chancellor of the National Health Service (NHS) University, which began in 2003. But the government closed it in 2005 and moved its programmes to the Skills for Health organisation. Then Bob moved into the Department of Health as National Director for Widening Participation. The Report that he wrote there was praised in Parliament in 2007 by the then Minister of Health (Andy Burnham).

Lord Blunkett recently wrote “what a phenomenal contribution Bob made to the lives of so many people.  He was a force of nature and had been transformative in so many roles, not least of course in the whole field of adult learning and his commitment to lifelong opportunity.”  

Bob was an inspirational teacher and a brilliant public speaker. His many other roles included membership of the Labour Government's National Advisory Group for Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning.  He served on the advisory boards of Investors in People UK, National Institute of Adult and Continuing Education, Campaign for Learning UK, as well as Chair of the Learning and Skills Council’s Distributed and Electronic Learning Group. He had a far-reaching impact internationally, as well as in the UK. His contribution to adult and continuing education was recognised in 1999 by the award of a CBE.

Fields of research in which Bob made lasting contributions include redundancy (with Roderick Martin and the late Dorothy Wedderburn) and unions (with Richard Hyman, Steve Williams and others). His most significant research was with NUPE, which was influential in changing the structure and strategies of the union, as well as helping to change the lives its members who were low-paid workers. His research also analysed the emerging dialectic between the union's appointed full-time officials and lay activists, which he termed “sponsored democracy”.[1] Bob had a lasting affection for NUPE; he advised it in the merger discussions with two other unions that led to the creation in 1993 of UNISON, which became the largest UK union.

As Steve Williams wrote in an obit., put it “Bob spent most of his early years in Oxford, where his family were very much 'town' rather than 'gown'.”  His mother, father and brother all worked in different capacities in the motor industry.

Bob had been unwell for a few years and his health deteriorated during 2020. His family were all with him when he died (his last smile was when heard the result of the England v. France rugby match). A few days before he last went into hospital in his beloved NHS, he asked Ann, his darling wife since 1967, to let friends know why he had not been in touch. He was finding it difficult to hit the right key on his phone and was losing his speech.

Ann received many messages with words that were oft repeated including “supportive and generous leader; a powerful commitment to fairness; a true intellect; funny, generous and intelligent…”. He is survived by Ann; three children Kate, Tim and Dominic; and four grandsons. 

—————

[1] Fryer, R. H. & Williams, S., “Latecomers to Trade-Union Democracy: The Emergence, Growth, and Role of Union Stewards in the National Union of Public Employees”, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations (2019), 40, (1), 117–152. DOIhttps://doi.org/10.3828/hsir.2019.40.5

17th December 2020

CfP Special Issue Gender, Work & Organization: Old norms in the new normal: Exploring and resisting the rise of the ideal pandemic worker

Guest Editors

Frederike Scholz, Hasselt University, Belgium Liz Oliver, University of Leeds, UK

Jennifer Tomlinson, University of Leeds, UK Robert MacKenzie, Karlstad University, Sweden Jo Ingold, Deakin Business School, Australia

Acker’s (1990; 1998) ideal worker concept has captured the intellectual imagination of contributors to Gender Work and Organisation (GWO) for decades (Adkins, 2019; Pocock, 2005; Pullen et al. 2019). The concept has been used to understand how gendered workplaces prioritise and reward certain abilities over others. Under capitalism, this disembodied, ideal worker is an unencumbered male worker, who is able to undertake full-time work, whereas women are assumed to have ‘non-job’ work responsibilities, such as housework and childcare, beyond those associated with the abstract job. The ideal worker concept was later extended to an intersectional analysis though ‘inequality regimes’ to understand gender, race and class as processes of difference and inequality within organisations (Acker, 2006). The concept of inequality regimes has been widely used to understand the creation and recreation of inequalities in organisations and occupations across national contexts (Healy et al. 2011; Wright, 2016).

Similarly the concept of a disembodied worker which rejects certain bodies as ideal workers has also been used to explain the experiences of workers with impairments and the devaluing of their skills and abilities in relation to ableist expectations of working (Foster and Wass, 2013; Scholz and Ingold, 2020). The ideal worker concept informs understanding of the processes of individual divergence from established organisational practices and processes (Acker, 2006). Women and men’s negotiation of flexible working options has been described as an affront to the ideal worker norm (Williams, 2000) since it challenges many of the gendered work expectations that underpin it, similarly disabled peoples’ negotiation of reasonable adjustments has been found to clash with organisational logic.

However what is less well understood is how ideal worker norms interact with larger-scale changes in organisational practices and processes of the sort demanded by Covid-19 crisis management. Could societal events like pandemics open up possibilities for organisational imaginations to evolve? We think that the ideal worker concept, used within wider analytical frames such as inequality regimes, has the potential to expose and challenge the assumptions that inform organisational expectations of workers in response to Covid-19 and other crises, the management of which demand rapid organisation-wide changes.

We think that engagement with the ideal worker within an intersectional frame can generate important knowledge of how sudden large-scale changes to ways of doing work, interact with existing processes of difference and inequality within organisations, across different national contexts, to alter or maintain perceptions, meaning and expectations (the fabric of the ideal worker). Acker (2006:442) argued that such an analysis should be attentive to the intersections of “at least” race/ethnicity, gender, and class; we posit that, particularly in the context of a pandemic, other dimensions of inequality such as disability, age and sexuality should also form part of the analysis. In some workplaces, once hard-fought access to remote access and working, seemingly fell from the sky as organisational logic gave way to the conditions of a pandemic; potentially paving the way to “new normal” remote working in certain sectors. But changed practices do not translate into equality outcomes; remote working is underpinned by an assumption that home spaces are already set up for

individual’s needs and can be converted to a workplace unproblematically. Likewise, for many women, the ‘boundaries’ between the work sphere and private sphere have been suddenly and brutally redrawn. This creates a rise of an ‘ideal pandemic worker’ who is a man, able-bodied, able to do full- time work in the private sphere by delegating their family and other responsibilities to women. This call for multidisciplinary papers encourages scholars to consider the role of feminist concepts of ideal worker and inequality regimes within the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and other ongoing global social and economic challenges. We encourage submissions that reflect cultural diversity and experiences across a full range of countries and contexts.

Submissions may address questions such as:

• Are we witnessing an entrenchment, reformulation or rejection of the ideal worker norm? Who is able to conform to the ideal worker, and how have assumptions about presenteeism and availability for work altered through the pandemic?
• How tenacious are ideal worker norms when organisation-wide working practices are disrupted?
• When organisations implement wide-spread and sudden changes, how do different workers respond and what are the consequences for (in)equalities within organisations?
• Is greater use of technology beneficial to organisational practice? How will use of technology shape workplace inclusion and exclusion?
• Will working from home become the ‘new norm’ or will more traditional workplace practices

resume? How might this vary across occupations and sectors?

• What is the potential for critical theory, postmodern, poststructuralist, new materialism, decolonizing approaches and feminist theory to advance our understanding of the ideal worker and inequality regimes during this COVID-19 pandemic?
• Studies or theoretical papers that engage with scientific innovations that are blurring the lines between the public and private sphere of

Submissions

Submissions should be made electronically through the Scholar One submission system: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/gwo. Please refer to the Author Guidelines at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/14680432/homepage/forauthors.html prior to submission.

Please select the ‘Special Issue’ article type on submission and select the relevant Special Issue title

from the dropdown list where prompted.

For questions about the submission system please contact the Editorial Office at gwooffice@wiley.com

For enquiries about the scope of the Special Issue and article suitability, please contact Frederike Scholz (Frederike.scholz@uhasselt.be), Liz Oliver (e.a.oliver@lubs.leeds.ac.uk) and Jennifer Tomlinson (J.Tomlinson@leeds.ac.uk).

Deadline for Submissions: 31 January 2021

References

Acker, J. (2006). Inequality regimes: gender, class, and race in organizations. Gender and Society, 20(4), 441-464.

Adkins, L. (2019). Work in the shadow of finance: Rethinking Joan Acker's materialist feminist sociology. Gender, Work & Organization, 26(12), 1776-1785.

Foster, D., & Wass, V. (2013). Disability in the Labour Market: An Exploration of Concepts of the Ideal Worker and Organisational Fit that Disadvantage Employees with Impairments. Sociology, 47(7), 705-721.

Healy, G., Bradley, H., & Forson, C. (2011). Intersectional Sensibilities in Analysing Inequality Regimes in Public Sector Organizations. Gender, Work and Organization, 18(5), 467-487.

Pocock, B. (2005). Work/Care Regimes: Institutions, Culture and Behaviour and the Australian Case.

Gender, Work & Organization, 12(1), 32-49.

Pullen, A, Kerfoot, D, Rodriguez, J, Lewis, P. (2019). Remembering Joan Acker through friendship, sociological thought and activism. Gender, Work & Organization, 26: 1669– 1675.

Scholz, F. & Ingold, J. (2020). Activating the ‘ideal jobseeker’: Experiences of individuals with mental

health conditions on the UK Work Programme. Human Relations.

Williams, J. (2000). Unbending gender: Why family and work conflict and what to do about it. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wright, T. (2016). Women's Experience of Workplace Interactions in Male-Dominated Work: The Intersections of Gender, Sexuality and Occupational Group. Gender, Work & Organization, 23(3), 348-362.

17th December 2020

CREW seminar: Prospects for the labour market in 2021

Wednesday 27th January 2021

TIME:  14:00 – 17:00

Via ZOOM Link  here: https://eu01web.zoom.us/j/64920005093

We face growing unemployment from the Corona virus recession combined with further threats to jobs following Brexit. Young people in particular are facing a bleak new year. Women workers from retail to hospitality have lost jobs. Despite Government intervention, jobs have also gone in transport, aviation, financial services and manufacturing.

Our speakers will assess the current situation and offer insights into possible developments in 2021. Policy options to  support young workers and women workers through training and investment will be examined. How does the UK avoid the 'scarring' effects of high unemployment?

Our Speakers:

Tim Butcher, Chief Economist at the Low Pay Commission: The impact of the pandemic on the labour market and the implications for low-paid workers. Tim will look at how the labour market has coped with the fall-out from the pandemic and what that might mean going forwards.

Anjum Klair  and Nikki Pound of the TUC's economics department: ‘The impact of the jobs crisis and how do we prevent mass unemployment?’   Anjum and Nikki will discuss what is happening to young workers, women workers, and the real level of unemployment, together with a discussion of insights into developments of government and trade union policies.

Mary-Ann Stephenson from the Women's Budget Group: Covid19 and the crisis in women’s employment.  In this talk Mary-Anne discusses the way in which the pandemic has exposed and exacerbated women’s inequality in the workplace, the links between economic inequality and the gendered division of unpaid work and set out some ideas for a care-led recovery from Covid19.

Introducing the speakers:

Tim Butcher - Chief Economist and Deputy-Secretary at the Low Pay Commission. He provides economic and statistical advice to the Commission and is responsible for its research programme.

Ms Anjum Klair - Policy Officer at the TUC on the labour market and social security  

Ms Nikki Pound - Policy and Campaigns Support Officer at the TUC with a focus on the labour market   

Mary-Anne Stephenson, Director, Women's Budget Group - She has previously been Director of the Fawcett Society and a Commissioner on the Women’s National Commission. She is a trustee of the social and economic rights charity Just Fair and of Coventry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre.

This is a free online seminar, open to the public and all are invited.

17th December 2020

PhD scholarship The Centre for Research on Employment and Work

The Centre for Research on Employment and Work currently has a PhD scholarship looking at current challenges facing nurses

The current global pandemic has shed a fresh light on the importance and challenges for healthcare systems and professional staff who work within them. Nurses comprise the largest sector of the health care workforce with this workforce facing key ongoing challenges, including those related to training, recruitment and retention, staff turnover, staff shortages, work intensification and stress, the recruitment and registration/ validation of overseas nurses, discrimination and bullying (The Health Foundation, The King's Fund and the Nuffield Trust, 2018). These problems are not confined to the UK nursing workforce and are common across many countries.

We are seeking a fully-funded PhD student (3 years) to develop and conduct a program of research related to one of current challenges facing the nursing workforce. The project may include cross -national comparisons.

For further information please contact the supervisor: Dr Alexandra Stroleny, A.E.Stroleny@greenwich.ac.uk

About the Project
MPhil/PhD Scholarship
(Ref:) VCS-BUS-03-20
Faculty of Business, Centre for Research on Employment and Work (CREW), Human Resources & Organisational Behaviour Department Greenwich Maritime Campus
https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/the-nursing-profession-contemporary-challenges/?p123696

10th December 2020

BUIRA Conference 2021: The past, present and future of industrial relations and the politics of work

July 13th to 15th 2021

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:

•         The implications of Covid for employment relations and futures of work
•         The implications of Brexit for work and employment relations
•         Reflections and challenges for Equality and Diversity, and challenging the gender pay gap
•         The consequences of new technology, digitalisation and the growth of platforms for work and industrial relations
•         Climate emergency and industrial relations
•         Comparative and international industrial relations
•         Political economy of work (e.g. austerity, financialisation, fragmentation, flexibilisation and inequality)
•         New forms of collective action in the workplace and beyond, and new agents of resistance
•         The rise of populism/nationalism and industrial relations
•         Power, politics, voice and influence at work

Submission details

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:

•         Brief outline
•         Methodology
•         Key findings
•         References

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).

4th December 2020

Launch Event #Legalsupportmatters Whistleblowing with Discrimination at Work

26th November 2020

The Work and Equalities Institute webinar: The Value of Human Labour

Date: Monday 7 December 2020
Time: 1pm – 2.30pm.

Register for attendance details on Eventbrite. (https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-value-of-human-labour-tickets-128777156943)

This session, the first of two, presents an 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.

The UK government’s definition of ‘key workers’ amount to 7.1 million adults, many of which are underpaid, working in insecure jobs and operating in public-facing roles. Among key workers, Black, Asian, and working-class groups make up a disproportionately large share, leaving them far more exposed to infection. Additionally, sectors dominated by female workers, such as retail and hospitality, have been hit hard by variations of lockdown, placing them at increased risk of both job loss and furlough. Uncertainty surrounding schooling and childcare provision adds an extra burden.

Gender, growth and devolution: policy problems and political possibilities.
Francesca Gains: Professor of Public Policy, Academic Co-Director of Policy@Manchester and member of the Greater Manchester Women and Girls’ Equality Panel.

Bogus self-employment and Covid-19: an added layer of insecurity.
Martí López-Andreu: Senior Lecturer in HRM and Employment Relations, Newcastle University, and an associate member of the Work and Equalities Institute.

#HereToDeliver: Valuing food delivery workers in the future.
Cristina Inversi: Research Fellow in Labour Law at Università Statale di Milano and a member of the Work and Equalities Institute Institute.
Tony Dundon: Professor of HRM and Employment Relations at Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick, and Visiting Professor at the Work and Equalities Institute.

Transport and logistics during the Covid-19 pandemic: Keeping goods in the UK moving.
Sheena Johnson: Professor of Work Psychology and Wellbeing at the University of Manchester. She heads up the Fair Treatment at Work theme in the Work and Equalities Institute, and the Social Change and Ageing theme in the Thomas Ashton Institute, University of Manchester.

26th November 2020

Acas Research Partnership: Call for proposals to undertake research on Staff Race Networks

Deadline: please send your proposal and costs to Acas by 7 December 2020

Acas is seeking expressions of interest to undertake a partnership research project on workplace internal staff race networks. In addition to understanding the coverage, prevalence and patterns of their use, we seek to review the purpose of these networks and identify the factors that underpin their success.

There is an increasing recognition of the importance of employee network groups - particularly BAME or race networks - in helping employers act on equality issues in the workplace, especially those around recruitment and progression.  Acas wish to gain a greater understanding of these networks and would like to commission research that: reviews the purpose of race networks and explores their role in the contemporary British workplace, and; identifies best practice and the factors that determine their success (in terms of how these groups are conceived, structured and maintained).

We would like to develop a small research programme that combines a systematic evidence review with multiple organizational case studies, the latter taking account of multiple perspectives: HR (via D&I leads); the Chairs and Champions of the networks (including trade unions), and; the network participants. (There may also be a benefit in additionally capturing broader management/leadership perspectives beyond those of HR depending on the structure of the organizations at issue).  That said, we welcome proposals from respondents to this call, on both the scope of the enquiry and methodologies used.

We are also interested in collecting quantitative data on the coverage, prevalence and patterns of networks and have plans to include a limited number of questions relating to this in a future employer poll provisionally scheduled for 2021. We would seek to work with the appointed project team to design questions that complement the wider study outlined here.  This polling would be funded separately as a discrete piece of work, but we would hope to integrate findings with those of the wider study.

This research will be used in three ways by Acas:

1. To widen Acas’ understanding of the topic in order to supporting future policy activity in this area, aimed at ‘influencing employment policy and debate’ (one of Acas’ strategic aims)
2. To inform future written guidance by Acas on setting up and maintaining staff race networks (supporting another Acas strategic aims viz. ‘advising on good practice in everyday working life’)
3. To enable Acas to review the effectiveness and guide the support we give to our own internal staff race network (and other internal staff networks)

We therefore expect to use the outputs arising from this work to make an impact on raising Acas’ profile in this subject area as well as to add to our evidence base.  We anticipate that the output will take the form of a research report and/or written case studies suitable for publication (although we are happy for you to suggest other outputs you think may be applicable).  Publication would be on the Acas website in our Research Papers series (https://www.acas.org.uk/research-and-commentary) although we would also be supportive of parallel publication within academic literature.

Tender selection

This partnership project will be managed by social researchers in the Research, Analysis and Insight team in Acas. Acas’ approach to developing research partnerships is not limited to work with academics and we regularly work with other organisations to sponsor and conduct research.  It may be possible for Acas to help with access to employers/employees, but we would prefer that potential bidders also think about other ways to gain access to employers/employees if this is part of their research design. In some cases Acas colleagues play a role in elements of data collection, and this can lead to co-ownership of outputs. In all instances, we anticipate close working on the design of projects and outputs.  Our funding contribution will capped at a maximum of £20,000 which we cannot exceed.

Applications (in the form of written, short proposals) will be considered and scored on the basis of the merits and credentials of proposals received. Additionally, all bids should signal their agreement to Acas’ standard terms and conditions.  We welcome more than one proposal if you have more than one suggestion for research.

If you are interested in working with Acas and carrying out research in this area, please email research@acas.org.uk stating your interests. We will then provide details of how to apply (including scoring criteria for bids and a copy of Acas’ standard short form terms and conditions of contract).

Please note that any projects commissioned under this scheme will need to be substantively underway by March 2020 and completed as soon as possible thereafter. The deadline for receipt of proposals is 10.00am on Monday 7 December 2020.

19th November 2020

Covid-19 - Work, Employment and the Labour Process

19th November 2020

Lecturer postion in employment relations or industrial relations Cardiff Business School

Cardiff Business School Cardiff Business School are looking for a new lecturer in employment relations or industrial relations.

https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/CCM673/lecturer-in-management-employment-and-organization

19th November 2020

CfP 'The State and the railways: 'Rail transport through: the prism of the public authorities 20-21 May,2021, Brussels'

This conference (unclear whether it will be physical or online) is being organised by the 'International and Interdisciplinary meeting Research network "Ferinter - International Railway Studies" and the Faculty Philosophy and Social Sciences (Université libre de Bruxelles).

Presentations will be in either French or English, but there will be no translation.

Send expressions of interest to ferinterfrance@gmail.com

19th November 2020

CRED webinar: Does widespread homeworking offer equality benefits or entrench inequality? 8 December 4-5.30pm

Please see details of a forthcoming webinar hosted by the Centre for Research in Equality & Diversity (CRED), School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London

Does widespread homeworking offer equality benefits or entrench inequality?

Tuesday 8 December 2020 4pm – 5.30 pm

Enormous numbers of people have experienced working at home for the first time as a result of the COVID-19 restrictions. Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) advocates have long called for a variety of flexible working arrangements, including homeworking, to broaden employment opportunities for disadvantaged labour market groups. Therefore this period of altered work practices has forced employers in sectors previously resistant to flexible or homeworking to introduce change, possibly leading to long‐term alterations that benefit working parents, carers or disabled workers, for example. On the other hand, many studies have highlighted the additional labour of childcare and homeschooling undertaken by working women while schools were closed. Furthermore, as periods of homeworking are extended and become the norm for increasing numbers of workers, there are serious concerns about the impact of social isolation on workers’ mental health, as well as questions of staff management, workload and performance monitoring that may have consequences for equality and inclusion.

This CRED webinar, chaired by Prof Tessa Wright, brings together new academic research on the topic, with views from key actors in the word of work:

• Dr Suki Sian, Queen Mary, University of London, New experiences of homeworking in the auditing profession
• Prof. Abigail Marks, University of Stirling, Findings from the Working @Home project
• Claire McCartney, View from the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD)
• Natasha Owusu, Trades Union Congress, View from the trade unions

Followed by a Q&A

To attend, register at the following link: https://qmul-ac-uk.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_dCK5N_8tS5KNr4GkkZRGxw

19th November 2020

CERIC webinar After the social crisis: The transformation of employment relations at France Télécom

presented by Virginia Doellgast (Cornell University, USA) and Elisa Pannini (LSE) 

Wednesday, 18 November, 14:00-15:30

REGISTER HERE 

Abstract 

France Télécom long appeared to fit the stereotype of the low-trust, hierarchical French organization. In the mid-2000s, management implemented restructuring measures aimed at downsizing, centralizing decision-making, and reorganizing work via consolidation and increased specialization. These measures became the focus of negative media attention and state intervention following a wave of employee suicides in 2007-2009. Management responded by negotiating a series of social accords with France Télécom's labor unions, which launched initiatives aimed at reducing worker stress and improving psychosocial health. This led to ongoing, institutionalized social dialogue about restructuring policies and work organization practices, reversing a trend toward increasing marginalization of worker voice.  

In this talk, we will discuss how union actions and campaigns contributed to this significant change in France Télécom's approach to employment relations. We argue that union initiatives to study and publicize the negative effects of restructuring on worker stress prior to and following the suicides played a crucial role in encouraging a shift from labor exclusion to more meaningful social dialogue. At the time of the social crisis, the unions were able to draw on their past research and mobilization efforts to influence how the causes of the suicides were interpreted or framed, both within the firm and among the broader public. These initiatives became a source of communicative power, allowing worker representatives to successfully assert the value and legitimacy of worker well-being as a central concern in decision-making.   

Virginia Doellgast is Associate Professor of Comparative Employment Relations in the ILR School at Cornell University. Her research examines the relationship between labor market and collective bargaining institutions, inequality, and job quality, with a focus on the US and Europe. She is co-editor of International and Comparative Employment Relations (Sage, 2021) and Reconstructing Solidarity: Labour unions, precarious work, and the politics of institutional change in Europe (Oxford University Press, 2018); and author of Disintegrating Democracy at Work: Labor Unions and the Future of Good Jobs in the Service Economy (Cornell University Press, 2012). 

Elisa Pannini obtained her PhD in Employment Relations from the LSE, where she teaches in the Management and International Development departments. Her current research focuses on precarious workers and union organising. 

Forthcoming webinars:

25 November, 12.00 – 14.00  

(joint with Northern Exposure)

Stories from a migrant city: living and working together in the shadow of Brexit 

Ben Rogaly (Sussex) 

30 November, 16.00 – 18.00 

(joint with LESS Group) 

What's wrong with the food system? From extractive to regenerative practices 

Steffen Böhm (Exeter) 

2 December, 15.00 – 16.30 

TBC 

Judy Fudge (McMaster University, Canada) 

9 December, 12.00 – 13.30 

The end of the sweatshop age or a new race to the bottom? 

Ashok Kumar (Birkbeck) 

16 December, 13.00 – 14.30 

Marketization: How Capitalist Exchange Subverts Democracy
and Disciplines the Working Class 

Ian Greer and Charles Umney  

13th November 2020

The Diversity Interest Group and Women's Network at the University of Greenwich mark equal pay day with an online seminar: Gender Pay: The Yawning Gap and COVID-19

13th November 2020

Digit Debates

A new seminar series from the Digital Futures at Work Research Centre will run on Wednesdays, 1-2pm.  For information on the whole series please click here. 

Wednesday 18 November 2020

Digit Debates – What do platforms do? Beyond the pro-con debate on gig labour

Speaker: Professor Juliet Schor (Boston College)

Online

 For further details and to register please click here.

Wednesday 25 November 202

Digit Debates – A typlology of crowdwork platforms

Speaker: Professor Debra Howcroft (University of Manchester)

Online

For further details and to register please click here.

Wednesday, 2 December 2020

 Digit Debates – Perspectives on the future in the sociology of work

Speaker: Professor Duncan Gallie (Nuffield College, Oxford)

Online

For further details and to register please click here.

Wednesday, 9 December

Digit Debates – How can online employee reviews help firms to innovate?

Speaker: Professor Nachiappan Subramanian (University of Sussex)

Online

For further details and to register please click here.

13th November 2020

Recoding BUIRA Special Seminar: Covid-19 and the employment relationship

A recording of the 'BUIRA Special Seminar: Covid-19 and the employment relationship' is now available: 

https://bham-ac-uk.zoom.us/rec/play/s5RcF8H05GmFHrNkYC8U-KeKIo3GIgQkdfjgzdILlYKpLMmepYrH5GEbFwGFut2TY1xYBwlz4tiRLq_F.b7nn2caPfa2-mYIP?continueMode=true&_x_zm_rtaid=CUCcr6YTTR2W_wHuAP4NWg.1604582144515.b78e71708570e55896e7a0b17119b5a6&_x_zm_rhtaid=410

5th November 2020

IRRU Seminar: Matthew Bidwell 'Stepping Sideways to Step Up'

Join the Industrial Relations Research Unit at Warwick Business School in their seminar series for 2020/21. At the second seminar, Matthew Bidwell (The Wharton School, The University of Pennsylvania) will discuss:

Stepping Sideways to Step Up.

Speaker: Matthew Bidwell, Associate Professor of Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Title: Stepping Sideways to Step Up

Date: Wednesday 11 November 2020

Venue: Microsoft Teams Meeting (email irruoffice@wbs.ac.uk if you have not received a calendar invitation already)

Time: 14:00 – 15:30 GMT

Abstract: There is growing evidence that many job moves within organizations take people sideways, into jobs that are at the same hierarchical level as the one that was left. Despite the prevalence of these lateral moves, though, we have little evidence on what role they play in workers’ careers. We use an abductive approach to explore that role. We first use matching and career theories to outline the variety of different ways in which lateral moves might affect workers’ careers, based both on how the moves take workers into jobs with different skill demands and jobs with different rewards. We use this framework to guide our empirical exploration of eight years of personnel data from a large US healthcare company. Our analyses show that those employees who move laterally achieve substantially higher pay growth than those that do not, even though we do not find any evidence of performance improvements. We draw on these findings to suggest that lateral mobility may be a means for organization to continue rewarding those who are not able to be promoted.

5th November 2020

Exploring the international frontiers of labour regulation

Exploring the international frontiers of labour regulation

Date: 4^th November 2020

Time: 1.30-4.00pm (GMT)

Centre for the Political Economy of Labour - Global Labour Reform Seminar Series

Hosted by Strathclyde Business School, Department of Work, Employment & Organisation

You are warmly invited to an online event exploring the international frontiers of labour regulation in Uzbekistan, Brazil and Mauritius. Considering changes in government policy and employment regulation and the global experience and spectrum of labour, this event is a space for sharing stories of work and labour contestation, making new connections, and informing the future research agenda of the Centre for the Political Economy of Labour.

We are delighted to confirm participation from:

• The Uzbek Forum for Human Rights
• The Federal University of Mato Grosso (Brazil)
• The confederation of trade unions in the Republic of Mauritius, The Confederation des Travailleurs des Secteurs Public et Prive (CTSP)

Registration is free: sign up here

30th October 2020

Extended deadline 1 December 2020: Call for Papers for the 19th ILERA World Congress and Covid-19 Congress Adaptation

We have extended the deadline for submissions of paper abstracts and special session proposals for the 19th ILERA World Congress to 1 December 2020.

The theme of the 19th ILERA (the International Labour and Employment Relations) World Congress is 'Making and Breaking Boundaries in Work and Employment Relations' and the congress
will be held on 21-24 June 2021 in Lund, Sweden.

Covid-19 Congress Adaptation
We closely monitor the development in relation to the current Covid-19 pandemic, and collaborate with the ILERA Executive Committee. We follow recommendations from international organizations and government authorities, and take all necessary measures to ensure a safe and responsible congress, and to prevent the spread of the Corona virus.
The upcoming World Congress will provide excellent opportunities for presentation and discussion of new research results and discourses, policy debates, exchange of best practices, and research and social networking.
We strive for a ‘two track’ congress-approach, i.e. to combine an on campus congress with robust digital solutions to ensure a broad and global participation at the congress. A final decision regarding on campus congress activities will be communicated no later than 1 March 2021.
Registration will open 18 January 2021. Principles for cancellation and refunding of registration fees will reflect participants’ needs in the Covid-19 pandemic situation.

The Call for Papers can be found at the congress website: www.ileraworldcongress2021.se

For questions, please contact: ilera2021@jur.lu.se

30th October 2020

Online seminar for Postgraduate Researchers Tackling contemporary research challenges in uncertain times: ‘Re-framing your research’ 6th November 2020 (2pm-3pm)

PGR Seminar Series hosted by the Work and Equalities Institute (University of Manchester):  

Speaker: Professor Valeria Pulignano (KU Leuven) 

Every research project evolves and changes, as new challenges and new questions present themselves, the current pandemic is one such situation. In this online session we will hear from Professor Valeria Pulignano about her  experiences reshaping research projects throughout her career and how she has tackled constraints of researching within the current context in her role as the principal investigator for ResPeTMe a major Horizon 2020 project. This session will also provide an opportunity for PGRs to share some of their concerns and talk through practical solutions on how to re-thinking their projects within the current context. This session will be tailored to your interests hence we will be collecting questions before 26th October, please submit them here: shorturl.at/nsCU9. Registration here (OPEN TO ALL PGRS!): http://bit.ly/reframe-your-research

Please get in touch if you have any questions work and equalities institute wei@manchester.ac.uk

23rd October 2020

Webinar: Building a New Social Contract: Lessons from the COVID Pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and Renewed Worker Activism

19th October 2020

Professor Irena Grugulis has been awarded Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS)

Many congratulations to Professor Irena Grugulis (Professor of Work and Skills, University of Leeds) for being awarded Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS). BUIRA nominated Irena for her long-standing contribution to industrial relations scholarship, notably in the area of work and skills.

19th October 2020

Robert Taylor Guardian Obituary

9th October 2020

Special Issue: Trade Unions, Climate Change and Just Transition EJIR

NOW PUBLISHED:

European Journal of Industrial Relations: Volume 26 number 4 2020 https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/ejda/current

Special Issue: Trade Unions, Climate Change and Just Transition

This special issue presents articles about the strategies and actions adopted by labour and unions to reduce carbon emissions. Industrial relations scholarship, which has been slow to address the climate emergency, has focussed on the jobs versus environment dilemma, the role of unions, technical innovation versus social unionism, and just transition approaches. While labour and union approaches in different sectors across Europe are largely confined to variants of ecological modernization, a more proactive transformative strategy opening up an alternative eco-socialist vision for the future is emerging. The issue highlights the contradictions in union strategies, the drivers of change and the way forward in pursuance of a green economy through a focus on the roles of government and the public sector, the organization of labour and the labour process, and education and training in different sectors and European countries.

Articles

• Future conditional: from just transition to radical transformation? Linda Clarke and Carla Lipsig-Mummé
• Just transition on the ground: Challenges and opportunities for social dialogue. Béla Galgóczi
• Trade union strategies on climate change mitigation: Between opposition, hedging and support. Adrien Thomas and Nadja Doerflinger
• Unions and the green transition in construction in Europe: Contrasting visions. Linda Clarke and Melahat Sahin-Dikmen
• Innovating for energy efficiency: digital gamification in the European steel industry. Dean Stroud, Claire Evans and Martin Weinel
• From treadmill of production to Just transition and Beyond. Paolo Tomassetti

9th October 2020

Deadline extended: Call for papers to a special issue of NTWE journal

9th October 2020

Worker Voice, Representation, and Implications for Public Policies WEDNESDAY 21 OCTOBER

Join the Industrial Relations Research Unit in their new seminar series for 2020/21. At the first seminar, Thomas Kochan (MIT Sloan School of Management) will discuss

Worker Voice, Representation and Implications for Public Policies.

Speaker: Thomas Kochan, MIT Sloan School of Management, Co-Director MIT Sloan Institute for Work and Employment Research 

Title: Worker Voice, Representation, and Implications for Public Policies

 Date: Wednesday 21 October 2020

Venue: Microsoft Teams Meeting (invitation emailed when you confirm your interest)

Time: 14:00 – 15:30

Registration: Please email irruoffice@wbs.ac.uk

Abstract: There is growing evidence that shaping work of the future to achieve a more broadly shared prosperity will require rebuilding worker voice and representation, rebalancing power in employment relations, and making fundamental changes in American labor and employment policies. The enormous impacts that the COVID-19 virus and the rising protests against racism are having on work and employment increase the urgency to rethink policies and institutions supporting worker voice at all levels of the economy. Industry and workers/labor representatives are in the throes of the biggest changes in workplace practices, workforce redeployments, and job losses since the Great Depression. The devastating effects of the COVID-19 crisis laid bare the weaknesses in both the safety net governing work and in the policies governing worker voice. Together with the broad-based calls to address longstanding racial disparities, these two developments demonstrate that American workers need a stronger voice in determining when and under what conditions it is safe to work through the duration of the health crisis and in deciding what changes in workplace practices and policies will make their workplaces and the overall economy more inclusive, resilient, safe, productive, and equitable in the future. Labor, industry, and government leaders need to work together at national, state, and local levels of the economy to help determine and facilitate the massive changes taking place that will shape work of the future.

9th October 2020

A Regime of ‘Flexible Despotism’ Reigns Over Retail Work – Can It Last?

Novara media have published an article 'A Regime of ‘Flexible Despotism’ Reigns Over Retail Work – Can It Last?' based on my (Alex Wood) book 'Despotism On Demand: How Power Operates in the Flexible Workplace'

https://novaramedia.com/2020/09/30/a-regime-of-flexible-despotism-increasingly-reigns-over-retail-work-can-it-last/

30th September 2020

PhD Network update

The BUIRA PhD Network are currently hoping to plan a series of sessions aimed to re-engage our PhD network after the break during Covid. You will receive updates throughout the next semester but the current aim is to run one methods workshop (possibly in collaboration with the UKDS) aiming to explore issues such as accessing and using national data sets but also providing a forum to discuss issues with research during a pandemic, covering the practical and ethical concerns which arise from this. We are also hoping to run informal, self-run PhD sessions to offer a platform (Zoom/Teams/Facebook) whereby PhD researchers can share ideas within thematic areas, practice presentations and peer review abstracts, methods and papers in a supportive setting. If you are a PhD researcher and would like to be more involved please let our PhD representatives know. If you are a supervisor and you think this is something which your PhD’s may be interested in then please also get in-touch or encourage them to become a member of our network. Many thanks, Abbie Winton (abbie.winton@manchester.ac.uk) and Eva Herman (eva.herman@manchester.ac.uk).

25th September 2020

Changing Dimensions of Work and Employment Relations: Emerging Paradigms

T

25th September 2020

New edition of Historical Studies in Industrial Relations

As with so much else, the 2020 issue of Historical Studies in Industrial Relations (no. 41) has been delayed by Covid 19 but it is about to go into production. At over 120,000 words long, it is of book-length. Individual subscriptions remain affordable. We still have a few almost complete sets of back-issues to 2012 for sale at £1 (single issue) or £2 (double issue/annual) each.  

A number of the articles in the new issue develop themes explored by Huw Beynon in his seminal paper, ‘After the Long Boom: Living with Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century’, published in HSIR 40 (2019) – how work and industrial relations have changed since the 1970s. This includes a valuable discussion of the Bullock Report on Industrial Democracy and its contemporary relevance. Other articles discuss the role of master and servant law in enforcing coerced labour on women workers, 1960s’ attempts to limit the role of the Truck Acts in requiring the payment of wages in cash, and the 1910 lockout the German construction industry.   

Articles are invited for the 2021 issue. Contact Paul Smith: paulsmithhsir@outlook.com  

HSIR 41 (2020): Contents                                                        

Madeleine, Chartrand, ‘A Great Number of … Women’?: The Changing Involvement of Female Workers in Master and Servant Cases in England, 1685–1860’.                                                                                                

Martin Upchurch, ‘Time, Tea Breaks and the Frontier of Control in UK Workplaces’.                                                                                                      

Jörn Janssen ‘After the 1910 Eight-Week Lockout: ‘Flächentarifvertrag’ in the German Construction Industry’.                                               

Christopher Frank ‘Cash Wages, the Truck Acts, and the 1960 Payment of Wages Act’                                                                                                        

Harriet Bradley, ‘Crisis at Work: Gender, Class and the Dehumanization of Jobs’  

Bob Carter, ‘After the Long Boom: The Reconfiguration of Work and Labour in the Public Sector’                                                                                          

Hugh Clegg, ‘The Bullock Report and European Experience (1977).’                   

Peter Ackers, ‘Reading Hugh Clegg’s 1977 ‘The Bullock Report and European Experience’ in Historical Context (1977)’.                                                        

Michael Gold, ‘“The Bullock Report and European Experience (1977)”: What We Can Still Learn about Worker Directors from Hugh Clegg’.                    

John Edmonds, ‘The Bullock Committee, Industrial Democracy and the Trade Unions: The Revolution that Never Was’.                                                   

Neil Ritson, ‘Backwards in time? Reflections of an Industrial Relations Officer in the Coventry and District Engineering Employers’ Association, 1977–1979  

Alan Tuckman, ‘Then and Now: Vulnerable Workers, Industrial Action, and the Law in the 1970s and Today’.  

25th September 2020

Deadline Submission of Papers NTWE The ‘new’ social relations of digital technology and the future of work

25th September 2020

Equality and Diversity special edition: 'Intersections, Institutions and Inequities: Axes of Oppression in the Cultural Sector

Release of interdisplinary perspectives of Equality and Diversity special edition: 'Intersections, Institutions and Inequities: Axes of Oppression in the Cultural Sector'  that has just been published online and is available via this link: http://journals.hw.ac.uk/index.php/IPED/issue/view/21

25th September 2020

Manchester Industrial Relations Society - 2020 meetings

We have two meetings of Manchester Industrial Relations Society coming up this Autumn. These will be held online over Zoom given the current restrictions, but we have three further meetings in the first half of 2021 which we hope to be able to hold in our normal venue at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Our first meeting is our annual Arthur Priest Memorial Lecture, held jointly with the CIPD and the Work and Equalities Institute, University of Manchester, at 6pm-7.30pm on Thursday 15 October. Emmanual Ogbonna, Professor of Management and Organization at Cardiff University, will present on his research, followed by Wilson Wong, Head of Insight & Futures/ Interim Head of Research at the CIPD as a discussant. A short description of the meeting is below - to attend, please sign up on Eventbrite via this link and the joining details for the meetings will follow

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/manchester-industrial-relations-society-meeting-15-october-tickets-122013679199

'Managing organisational culture: Lessons from Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter'.

Prof. Emmanuel Ogbonna

My talk will look at existing understanding of culture management in the context of recent developments in organisations and society that have been brought about by Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. The aim will be to show how these different but linked environmental forces have helped to destroy any remaining credibility of the culture management school, and to highlight the implications for theorists and practitioners. 

Our second meeting will be held at 6pm-7.30pm on Thursday 12 November, again to be held jointly with the Work and Equalities Institute, University of Manchester. Steve Tombs, Professor of Criminology at the Open University, and Janet Newsham of the Hazards Campaign, will present on the impact of Covid on health and safety at work – details of the talk and presenter biographies are below.

Covid at Work: the rich get richer, the poor get sick 

Janet Newsham and Steve Tombs 

In this presentation, Janet Newsham and Steve Tombs will discuss aspects of the ongoing health crisis as it impacts upon health and safety at work.   Steve Tombs will begin by providing the broader and longer-term contexts of the Government management of the crisis, with specific reference on already existing trajectories in terms of social protection in general and health and safety at work in particular. Janet Newsham will then discuss various aspects of these trends and trajectories as they affected workers and workplaces during the crisis, and continue to impact detrimentally as the UK Government seeks to restore ‘business as usual’.  The net effect of the processes outlined here is to further exacerbate pre-crisis economic and social inequalities.

Janet Newsham is Chair of the national Hazards Campaign and Coordinator at Greater Manchester Hazards Centre.  She has worked in Trade Union Education and been a trade union activist for nearly 40 years.

Steve Tombs is Professor of Criminology at The Open University. He has a long-standing interest in the incidence, nature and regulation of corporate and state crime and harm. He has long worked with the Hazards, and is a Trustee and Board member of Inquest. 

 An Eventbrite page and Zoom link will be available for this meeting nearer the time

The meetings cover very timely subjects and there will be plenty of opportunity for open debate and discussion following the presentations – while we actively encourage people to join Manchester Industrial Relations Society if possible (see https://www.mirs.org.uk/ ), all who are interested are welcome.

25th September 2020

CREW RESEARCH SEMINAR SERIES 2020/21 (University of Greenwich)

Sustainability in the Fast Fashion Value Chains? The Role of Worker Opposition and Local Activism

Date: Wednesday 30^th September 2020

Time:  2 - 4 pm

Online meeting link in Zoom: https://eu01web.zoom.us/j/64199103411

he demand for cheap and fast fashion and the associated tragic human disasters have driven into public debate the issue of the human and environmental cost of the garment industry. The low and decreasing prices we pay in stores are indicative of an industry that exploits workers, including paying unfair wages. Global brands lack transparency about working conditions in their global production networks, so labour costs remain hidden in the global garment industry. While it is suggested that global brands should take more responsibility to stop worker rights violations in their supply chains and improve workers’ situations, including monitoring their lower-tier garment factories, of growing importance is the need to understand the position and value of labour in different countries. Understanding  labour as workers having active agency (Rainnie et al., 2011) opens up research and debates about  the relationship between the labour process and supply chains (Hammer and Plugor, 2019), the role of workers’ actions and activism in reshaping global production networks (Newsome et al. 2015; Coe and Hess, 2013; Anner, 2015; Bain and Palpacuer, 2012) and the ethical positioning of key players in the industry.

This seminar brings together researchers working in the area with expertise in several countries, to open a discussion about the possibilities of a sustainable industry and the role and cost of labour, in a critical context. 

Speakers:

Dr Jean Jenkins, Professor in Employment Relations, Cardiff University: ‘Meaningful access to remedy denied

Dr Nikolaus Hammer, Associate Professor in Work and Employment, University of Leicester: ‘Restructuring and resilience in UK apparel'

 Dr Safak Tartanoglu Bennett, CREW, University of Greenwich: ‘Formulating local activism in the supplier countries in global garment value chains’

About the Speakers:

Professor Jean Jenkins is a Professor in Employment Relations at Cardiff University. Her teaching, research and writing is concerned with employment relations in the global economy. She focuses mainly on labour rights, collective representation and conditions of work and working time in low paid employment, with a specialism in the international garment sector. A commitment to social justice in work and employment informs her teaching and research. 

Dr Nikolaus Hammer is an Associate Professor in Work and Employment at University of Leicester. His research investigates the impact of globalisation, notably the restructuring of global value chains and production networks, on work and employment. This includes aspects such as the labour process in fast fashion production in the UK as well as the role of social standards in the governance of global value chains (e.g. International Framework Agreements and social standards more broadly).

Dr Safak Tartanoglu Bennett is a Research Fellow at CREW, University of Greenwich. Her research focuses on aspects of work and employment relations, control and resistance mechanisms in organisations and informal ways of worker representation. Her current research interests include worker opposition, collective actions and resistance mechanisms in global garment production networks. She is contributing to the debate with a supplier country (Turkey) perspective and investigating the issue with an understanding of collective actions in their political and social context.

This is a free seminar, open to the public and all are invited, but please can you inform us if you are planning to attend as numbers are currently limited to 100 by the online platform. Please email:   Dr Safak Tartanoglu Bennett, s.tartanoglubennett@greenwich.ac.uk

14th September 2020

BUIRA Special online seminar: COVID and the centrality of the employment relationship

Tony Dobbins (University of Birmingham, BUIRA President): the context of Covid-19 and the relevance of employment relations.

Abbie Winton and Debra Howcroft (University of Manchester): What Covid-19 tells us about the value of human labour.

Jo McBride (University of Durham) and Miguel Martínez Lucio (University of Manchester): Recognising the value of cleaning work.

Phil Taylor (University of Strathclyde): Call Centres and Coronavirus report 

Followed by Q & A

Please register on Eventbrite:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/buira-special-seminar-covid-19-and-the-employment-relationship-tickets-120223795609

Date And Time

Wed, November 4, 2020

4:00 PM – 5:30 PM GMT

14th September 2020

Work in Challenging and Uncertain Times The Changing Employment Relationship by Patricia Leighton and Tui McKeown

Written as the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic began to have a devastating  effect on employment a cross the globe, the crisis served to highlight many deep-seated, often longstanding challenges to employment relationships. These include uncertainties and fears about the impact of technological advances, concerns about safety and wellbeing and controversies around emerging business and employment models. It is difficult to avoid the fear that  the combination of these and other practices will lead to a ‘ race to the bottom ’ . The book calls for a radical rethink and reassessment of the core values underlying employment relationships.

20% Discount Available - enter the code SOC20  at checkout* Hb: 978-0-367-89747-5 | $112.00/ £88.00 Pb: 978-0-367-89748-2 | $31.96/ £23.99

https://www.routledge.com/Work-in-Challenging-and-Uncertain-Times-The-Changing-Employment-Relationship/Leighton-McKeown/p/book/9780367897482

8th September 2020

Bug fixed in AGM Eventbrite

If you had trouble booking a place for the AGM due to Eventbrite saying it was soldout please try again as this bug has been fixed. 

The 2020 BUIRA AGM will take place on Wednesday 16^th September at 2pm. The meeting will last no longer than 1 hour. The meeting will take place on Zoom. Please register for the 2020 BUIRA AGM by Monday 14^th September 2020 on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/buira-annual-general-meeting-tickets-119439764551 The Zoom meeting link and papers will be circulated via email to those who have registered on Tuesday 15th September.

8th September 2020

Virtual BUIRA AGM Wednesday 16th September at 2pm

The 2020 BUIRA AGM will take place on Wednesday 16^th September at 2pm. The meeting will last no longer than 1 hour. The meeting will take place on Zoom. Please register for the 2020 BUIRA AGM by Monday 14^th September 2020 on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/buira-annual-general-meeting-tickets-119439764551 The Zoom meeting link and papers will be circulated via email to those who have registered on Tuesday 15th September.

3rd September 2020

Vote now in the BUIRA Executive Committee Elections

Vote now in the BUIRA Executive Committee Elections. We need to elect 4 candidates (out of 7) to be members of the BUIRA Executive Committee. Those elected will be members for 3 years. Please vote online here: https://bham.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0c5J4sS9gMDq43b Voting will close on Monday 14^th September. Successful candidates will be announced at the AGM.

3rd September 2020

Work, employment and society editors’ collection and event: The Industrialisation of Mental Health

 Work, employment and society editors’ collection and event: The Industrialisation of Mental Health 

Dr Elizabeth Cotton, co Editor in Chief of WES has curated a selection of WES papers looking at mental health and the link to work in preparation for a debate hosted by the BSA and WES on the 8th October 2020 looking at the social and professional crises in mental health services. For more information and to register for the event, please see here: https://journals.sagepub.com/topic/collections-wes/wes-1-editors-collection-mental-health/wes

3rd September 2020

CfP Extended Deadline: Comparative Impacts of the COVID-19 Crisis on Work and Employment

Comparative Impacts of the COVID-19 Crisis on Work and Employment

Call for Papers for Special Issue

Deadline Extension for Submission of Long Abstracts: September 30, 2020 Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/pb-assets/assets/1468232x/IR%20Call%20for%20Papers-%20COVID%20and%20Work%20-%20Extended%20Deadline-1599061217253.pdf

3rd September 2020

'Homeworking in the UK: before and during the 2020 lockdown’, WISERD Report

1. 1.       Before the pandemic, homeworking was on a gradual, but slow, upward trajectory.  It was relatively rare in 1981 when only 2% of those in employment reported working mainly at home, but by 2019 it had risen to 5%.  However, it rose dramatically and suddenly in lockdown.  The proportion reporting that they worked exclusively at home rose eight-fold from 6% of workers in January/February 2020 to 43% in April 2020 and, even though it had fallen by June 2020, it remained high (37%).

2.      Many employees do not want to return to the office and would prefer to work at home.  The results suggest that nine out of ten of employees who have worked at home during the lockdown would like to continue working at home in some capacity with around one in two employees wanting to work at home often or all of the time. This suggests that a key characteristic of the new normal will be much higher levels of homeworking than in the past if employers allow staff to have their way.

3.      A common fear among employers is that without physical oversight employees will shirk and productivity will fall.  However, homeworking on the whole in the lockdown did not appear to have had a significant effect on productivity levels either way. Two-fifths of homeworkers reported that they were able to get as much work done in June 2020 as they were six months earlier.  The remainder were split fairly evenly between those who said that they got more done per hour and those who said they were able to do less.

4.      However, the survey data suggest that homeworking in the future is likely to boost rather than reduce productivity; employees who felt more productive while working at home in lockdown were among the keenest to work at home when social distancing rules no longer apply. This ‘selection effect’ is likely to be advantageous to employers keen to bounce-back strongly from the impact of Covid-19. 

These findings come from an analysis of three online surveys carried out towards the end of April, May and June 2020.  These are part of the Understanding Society Covid-19 Study which has carried out three online surveys and will carry out another three throughout the remainder of this year.  The surveys are carried out by researchers at the University of Essex and are designed to examine the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in real time.

The report is: Felstead, A and Reuschke, D (2020) ‘Homeworking in the UK: before and during the 2020 lockdown’, WISERD Report, Cardiff: Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research. Available for download from: https://wiserd.ac.uk/publications/homeworking-uk-and-during-2020-lockdown

3rd September 2020

Research Fellow Trade union strategies on digital technologies and job quality

Research Fellow (Leverhulme Project)

The Faculty of Business and Law at De Montfort University, Leicester are seeking to recruit a Research Fellow to work on a two-year research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust: 'Digital Technology and Job Quality: Do Trade Unions Make a Difference?' The project is led by Professor Jonathan Payne at De Montfort University and Professor Caroline Lloyd at Cardiff University.

The  Research Fellow will be involved in organising the research project, conducting fieldwork in the UK and Norway, disseminating research findings to stakeholders, and writing project reports and publications.

Requirements: A PhD in industrial relations, politics, sociology of work or related subject, excellent qualitative research skills and an ability to work with academic and non-academic stakeholders.

The post is 2 years full-time, from 2 November 2020. For an informal discussion, contact Jonathan Payne, Professor of Work, Employment and Skills, at jpayne@dmu.ac.uk<jpayne@dmu.ac.uk>.

Salary: Grade F £ 34,804 - £ 38,017

The deadline for all applications is Wednesday 9 September 2020  Further information<https://dmuhub.dmu.ac.uk:444/sap/bc/webdynpro/sap/hrrcf_a_posting_apply?PARAM=cG9zdF9pbnN0X2d1aWQ9MDA1MDU2QTU1QzY5MUVFQUI2REQwNzM2NjUwMUNBN0UmY2FuZF90eXBlPUVYVCY9&saml2=disabled&sap-client=900&sap-language=EN>


Project Summary

There is considerable debate around the impact of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) on employment. Doom-laden reports warn of widespread technological unemployment that will disproportionately hit the low skilled. Others, however, stress the potential for a variety of outcomes, raising the question of whether these technologies could instead be used to improve job quality. This project focuses on trade unions as potentially important actors in shaping public policy and technological change at the workplace. It compares the UK and Norway, two countries with contrasting institutional and policy environments, to explore whether, and under what conditions, trade unions 'make a difference'.

The project addresses three research questions:
1.      How far do unions at national and workplace level agree on how to respond to robotics/AI?
2.      How far are unions able to influence their implementation in the workplace?
3.      What opportunities and constraints do unions encounter in seeking to deliver better outcomes for workers?

The project focuses on four sectors: hospitals; food/drink manufacturing; financial services; retail in the UK and Norway. As well as allowing comparison across manufacturing, private services and the public sector, these sectors have been chosen to cover occupations at different skill levels. The project probes different levels of union activity, focusing on one main union in each sector in each country. For each union, interviews will be conducted at national, regional/sector and workplace level.

3rd September 2020

Free online course ‘Power, Politics and Influence at Work’

You may find the following free on-line course about ‘Power, Politics and Influence at Work’ of interest and relevant to your networks (approx. 4 hours of learning per week, for 5 weeks, starting 12^th October 2020). The course has been created by Tony Dundon, Miguel Martinez Lucio, Emma Hughes and Roger Walden, academics and researchers from the universities of Manchester, Limerick and Liverpool. The course 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 (click here).

An optional short book with the same title,  Power, Politics and Influence at Work, published by Manchester University Press supports the course (click here).

We hope you find it of some interest.

3rd September 2020

Employment Relations Matters

Message from Keith Sisson:

I don't know if anyone still uses Employment Relations Matters for teaching. If you do, you might like to know that I’ve used the reading opportunity of the lockdown etc to revise four of the chapters. Just follow the links below. Changes to Chapters 2, 3 and 10 are fairly extensive, those to Chapter 1 less so, albeit there’s a longish intro to ‘financialisation’. 

Chapter 1    Introduction: studying employment relations

Chapter 2    Why employment relations matter

Chapter 3    Coming to terms with the employment relationship

Chapter 10  Public policy - a new social contract?

The chapters are in docx format. If you have problems downloading, let me know and I’ll try sending them as a PDF.

3rd September 2020

Job Opportunities: Postdoctoral Researchers University of Oxford

Join our team. We are hiring two Postdoctoral Researchers.

25th August 2020

BUIRA History of Industrial Relations Study Group

Popular Unity: The Lessons of Chile - 50 Years On

Salvador Allende, Chile’s first Socialist President, was elected 50 years ago, in September 1970. Supported by Popular Unity governments, he embarked on a radical programme to socialise his country’s economy and redistribute its wealth, while fully respecting its democratic institutions and rule of law. However, powerful opponents both inside and outside Chile soon began to destabilise the country, and his government was overthrown in a brutal coup in September 1973, which led to the murder, torture, disappearance and exile of tens of thousands of Chileans.

 To mark the momentous anniversary of Allende’s election, and to celebrate the enduring hope of democratic socialism, we are delighted to announce our next Seminar which we shall conduct through Zoom/ MS Teams:

 17.00-18.45 Tuesday 22 September, on line

For further details and/or to reserve a place, please e-mail Michael Gold (m.gold@rhul.ac.uk) or Linda Clarke (clarkel@wmin.ac.uk). We will then send you the link shortly before the seminar.
 
Programme:
17.00-17.15: Welcome and introduction: Michael Gold and Linda Clarke (Chairs)

17.15 – 17.45: Francisco Dominguez 

Allende's Chile: State and Revolution

Since the coup against Allende in 1973, Latin American has experienced decades of turmoil, neoliberal transformation, regional integration efforts, and massive economic and political aggression from the United States. Popular Unity's defeat notwithstanding, the Chilean experience under Allende continues to be inspirational with key Latin American political and social agents for change who draw both negative and positive lessons for revolutionary transformation processes elsewhere in the region. The argument is no longer focused on peaceful or armed revolution, but on the constitutional transformation of state bodies as enabling legitimate acts conducive to the desired revolutionary change in the economy, society and polity. This talk will examine these issues.

17.45 – 18.15: Fernando Duran-Palma and Miguel Urrutia

Opening up the great avenues: workers, unions, and the struggle against neoliberalism in Chile (1979-2019)

After four decades of neoliberalism, and echoing the prophetic words of Salvador Allende in his last address to the nation,¹ millions of Chileans took to the streets in October 2019 to demand the construction of a better, more equal, and dignified society. We argue that Chile’s current social upheaval is, in no small measure, a mass uprising of the world of work which, in turn, can be traced back to the protracted development of what we call ‘insurgent unionism,’ or the variety of emerging forms of collective action and organisation that remarkable groups of ‘precarious’ workers have built from below, and with which they have routinely challenged the neoliberal order, ever since the dark days of the Pinochet dictatorship. In this presentation, we will examine the origins, main features, as well as the promises and limitations of this alternative form of unionism.

¹ “Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again where free men will walk to build a better society. Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!” (Salvador Allende, 11 September 1973)

18.15 – 18.55: Discussion

18.45: Close

*****

Our speakers:

Dr Francisco Dominguez is head of the Research Group on Latin America at Middlesex University. He is Secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign. Francisco came to Britain in 1979 as a Chilean political refuge and has been active on Latin American issues, about which he has written and published extensively. He is co-author of Right -wing politics in the New Latin America, Zed Books.

Dr Fernando Duran-Palma is Senior Lecturer at the School of Organisations, Economy and Society, University of Westminster. He has published on Chilean industrial relations, trade unionism, and labour reform. He was Principal Investigator of the project ‘Varieties of Collective Action and Organisation by Atypical and Precarious Workers in Latin America’ funded by the University of Westminster’s Strategic Research Investment Fund, and upon which this presentation is partly based. He coordinates the Argentina-Chile research Network on Collective Action and Organisation by Precarious Workers, and is currently involved in a comparative study of forms of collective action in the recycling networks of Chile and Argentina.

 Dr Miguel Urrutia is Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology of the University of Chile. He has published more than 20 scientific papers and book chapters on Chilean trade unionism and politics, and recently directed the translation of Workers and Labor in Globalized Capitalism (Maurizio Atzeni, ed.). In 2019, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Workforce Futures, Macquarie University, and is currently Principal Investigator of the project ‘Trade Union Action in Chile and its Insertion in Global Production Networks.’

Michael Gold/ Linda Clarke

24th August 2020

NTWE CfP 'The ‘new’ social relations of digital technology and the future of work'

24th August 2020

New Technology, Work and Employment in the era of Covid-19: the contribution of the journal and its past publications to the current debate

New Technology Work and Employment have published a virtual special issue 'New Technology, Work and Employment in the era of Covid-19: the contribution of the journal and its past publications to the current debate'. The special issue includes a new introductory review article by Andy Hodder 'New Technology, Work and Employment in the era of COVID‐19: reflecting on legacies of research' and 15 key past articles which are now free to access.  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1111/(ISSN).0268-1072.New-Technology-Work-and-Employment-in-the-era-of-Covid-19

18th August 2020

The 39th International Labour Process Conference ‘Security in Work? The workplace after COVID-19’ University of Greenwich, 12-14 April 2021

The International Labour Process Conference 2021 will be hosted by the University of Greenwich on April 12-14^th (with online contingency plans) - details can be found on https://www.ilpc.org.uk/.

Submission of new abstracts will open on 23rd August 2020 -  The final deadline for new abstract submission is 31st October 2020.

18th August 2020

New film out about the United Voices of the World union

18th August 2020

Book: International & Comparative Employment Relations

18th August 2020

Webinar Invitation from China University of Labor Relations, Beijing: The COVID-19 Pandemic: Implications for Labour Policies & Labour Markets in Australia -- Perspectives on Governmental, Employer & Union Policies & Practices.

We invite you to a webinar: The COVID-19 Pandemic: Implications for Labour Policies & Labour Markets in Australia -- Perspectives on Governmental, Employer & Union Policies & Practices. It might be of interest to some of your students, including your Chinese ones.

Speaker Professor Greg Bamber, Director, International Consortium for Research in Employment & Work, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.

20 Aug 2020 at 12.00 hrs BST; 19.00hrs China time; 21.00hrs Melbourne time.

Webinar will use VooV software that is similar to Zoom; if you do not already have, get at: https://voovmeeting.com/download-center.html?from=1001

Install the software in advance, enter your mobile phone number to get a code to complete the installation. To log in, enter meeting number: 832773009.

Meeting is at: https://meeting.tencent.com/s/NgUO4P9hnXVX

Webinar will be in English, with Chinese translation. 

China University of Labor Relations Host: JeffQiao@sina.com

18th August 2020

Professor Frank Burchill OBE

In very sad news for the industrial relations community, Professor Frank Burchill passed away on Saturday, 18 July 2020, after a short illness.
Frank was highly respected by his colleagues in the academic, practitioner and wider industrial relation community.

In 1989, after 22 years with the Department of Adult Education, Frank was appointed Keele’s first Professor of Industrial Relations and established a Department of HRM and Industrial Relations and ultimately a full-time undergraduate programme, full-time Masters’ degrees and a Doctorate programme. Many people from the industrial relations community benefited and, indeed, had their lives changed, by being educated and enlightened as students in Frank’s Department. The Department provided a proper robust social science education, in the best sense of the meaning.

In 1999, Frank stepped down from the Headship of the Department because he had been appointed by the Secretary of State at the Home Department – then Jack Straw – to conduct an inquiry into industrial relations procedures in the then UK Fire and Emergency Service.

Frank also conducted extensive practical industrial relations work as a Deputy Chairman of the UK Central Arbitration Committee, and with Acas.

In 2009 he went to Tasmania, where his wife Alice had been appointed to work for the Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services, later becoming CEO.
Frank returned to the UK in 2012, and continued to teach at various universities and to do Acas work. In 2009 he was awarded an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List for Services to Acas.

Sincere condolences to Alice and the family from BUIRA.

21st July 2020

William Arthur (Willy) Brown, 22 April 1945 – 1 August 2019

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

Executive committee election results

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

Change in BUIRA Stewardship Team

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