Launch Event #Legalsupportmatters Whistleblowing with Discrimination at Work

Equality and Employment Law Centre and the Centre for Research in Employment and Work launch their new report on whistleblowers who also experience discrimination at work.

This new research report finds that whistleblowers who also suffer workplace discrimination fare worse at Employment Tribunal, are less likely to have legal representation, more likely to lose their case and experience inequality of arms.

The seminar will be live (via MS Teams) on Thursday 3rd December from 6:30pm-7:30pm.

This seminar features the below, who will each discuss the background of the report, which will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A.

Chaired by Chris Topping, Solicitor, Director of Jackson Lees Solicitors and Chair of the Liverpool Law Society Access to Justice Committee

Dr Laura William, University of Greenwich: ”#legalsupportmatters”

Pam Kenworthy, OBE, Equality and Employment Law: ”What happens on the frontline”

Martin Mensa- Barrister, Head of Employment Practice Group, Atlantic Chambers Liverpool: “In the tribunal”

Julie Ehle, CEO, Equality and Environment Law: “Workplace impact”

To sign up click here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/launch-event-whistleblowing-with-discrimination-at-employment-tribunal-tickets-130399581659

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:

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)
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’)
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

Stream Organiser

Professor Phil Taylor, University of Strathclyde

The consequences of Covid-19 for labour markets, work organisation, labour process, employment relations and the experience(s) of work have been - and remain - momentous, far-reaching and unprecedented. The organisers of this stream welcome papers of diverse kinds, ranging from conceptually-informed empirical studies, to theoretical reflections or interdisciplinary contributions that, for example, may meld epidemiological with sociological, geographical, political-economic and other disciplinary orientations. Specific foci might be; occupational health studies, where the nature of work organisation and the labour process may have contributed to exposure to SARS-CoV-2, whether front-line workers or workplace clusters (e.g. textile factories, food processing plants, contact/call centres, transport); organisational restructuring; homeworking and its manifold implications, for example, for managerial control, gender and domestic work, work life balance, collectivism, trade unionism and resistance); BAME experiences, given disproportionate levels of infection and morbidity; the future of work including the loci of work, the future of the office, automation and new technologies.

https://www.ilpc.org.uk/ILPC-2021/Streams/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

20th November 14:00-15:30pm on MS Teams

To register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gender-pay-the-yawning-gap-and-covid-impact-tickets-128747391915

Keynote: Unfinished Business: Professor Susan Corby:

Sue will talk about the gender and equal pay gaps and the flaws in the regulations.

Research Insight: The Gender Pay Gap in Europe in the context of austerity – what we can expect under recession? Professor Sian Moore

Sian will present the key findings from her gender pay gap research.

Industry Focus: Culture of an open dialogue: Reflections on women’s career development in hospitality. Dr Maria Gebbels

Maria will present her work on gender in the hospitality industry, and share some insights on the impact of COVID-19 in this arena on women

Panel discussion (all presenters)

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

You are invited to attend ‘Building a New Social Contract: Lessons from the COVID Pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and Renewed Worker Activism’.

This event is organised by the Centre for Global Business’ International Consortium for Research in Employment and Work (iCREW) at Monash Business School, together with the Australian Labour and Employment Relations Association and the Industrial Relations Society of Victoria, Australia.

There is a long-recognised need for a new social contract that better fits the workforce and economy. However, the emergence of the COVID-19 crisis and the Black Lives Matter movement makes action all the more necessary and urgent.

Join Speaker Professor Thomas A Kochan, MIT Sloan School of Management and Moderator Professor Margaret Gardner AC, Vice-Chancellor of Monash University as they discuss how to move forward by incorporating these issues into a new social contract at work and in a society that is more productive, equitable, inclusive and resilient.

The webinar convenor is Professor Greg Bamber, Director, iCREW (CGB), Monash Business School; President, Australian Labour and Employment Relations Association (ALERA)

Register here

WEBINAR DETAILS:

26 Oct. 2020:

10.30pm UK time;

5.30pm NY time;

27 Oct. 2020

8.30-9.30am AEST [Melbourne, Australia]

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

The Guardian has published an obituary of Robert Taylor who members may know from his attendances at BUIRA conferences (as FT employment editor and a writer/researcher himself): https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/24/robert-taylor-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

Please note, deadline extended until 20th November 2020

New Technology, Work and Employment Journal invites submissions for an upcoming special issue entitled “The 'new' social relations of digital technology and the future of work", with a deadline of 30th November 2020. More information on the content of the call and submission details below.

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

Rationale

There is increasing interest in the effects of digital technology on work, although opinion has been sharply divided over just how transformational digitalisation will prove. Utopian visions see in digital technologies the potential for post capitalist futures, with more liberating options for the meaning of work (e.g. Bastani, 2019; Mason, 2015), while dystopian visions predict a bleaker future, where robots and automated processes led to mass casualization, surveillance or even human irrelevance (e.g. Ford, 2015). In contrast, much academic analysis has tended to tread a more cautious path, noting that digital technologies are most likely to impact on the nature and quality of work rather than replacing it per se (e.g. Thompson and Briken, 2017; Spencer, 2018). Nevertheless, the future is difficult to predict, and the likely effects of different dimensions of digitalisation are still to be fully understood. The scope of the impact of digital technologies, the number of contrasting pronouncements about what they mean for the future, and the volume of new evidence that is emerging, all present researchers with significant empirical and theoretical challenges in understanding its impact on the world of work, and differentiating between radical and incremental change.

Technology is not, of course, just a factor to be input into production processes, free from the wider dynamics that surround the world of work. How technologies develop, the forms they take and their manner of implementation (or not) into specific workplaces are all shaped by wider capitalist social relations. It is thus essential to maintain a sharp focus on the agency of employers, state actors, workers and representative bodies in analysing digital technology. As Baldry (2011) notes , in an era of weakened trade unions, the introduction of new technology often coincides with the introduction of new management methods and new forms of work organisation. Moreover, different forms of capital- from venture capital, state capital, to more “impatient” forms of financialised capital- have different imperatives and orientations which alter their relationship with technological development. Likewise, workers are rarely powerless in the face of managerially-imposed technology and their collective agency also guides its implementation.

New technologies of work thus arrive enmeshed in managerial systems and are shaped by different, often conflicting, imperatives. These coinciding dynamics have to be disentangled if we are to fully grasp the specific impact of technology. The aim of this special issue is to put social relations back at the heart of our analysis, at a moment when mainstream discourse on digital technologies at work is in danger of being dominated by determinist and managerialist claims (or fantasies) about the transformative or disruptive capacities of these technologies.

New Technology, Work and Employment has a long-standing record of critiquing attempts to sever technology from social forces, repeatedly emphasising the social relations in which technological change is embedded (Howcroft and Taylor, 2014). The aim of this special issue is to put social relations back at the heart of our understanding of digital technologies by asking: how does the agency of actors within the labour-capital relationship drive, reshape, and even limit, the development and dissemination of new technologies? In this question, we hope to develop accounts of the impact of digital technology on work that avoids the incipient dangers of technological determinism, and which go beyond the persistent but overly dichotomised debate between technological utopias and dystopias.

More information can be found here.

Submission guidelines

Please read carefully the aims and scope of the journal.

Further details on all aspects of the submission process.

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

New Technology, Work and Employment Journal invites submissions for an upcoming special issue entitled “The 'new' social relations of digital technology and the future of work".

Timeline Submission of Papers: 30th September 2020

Special Issue Publication: Autumn 2021

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

Rationale

There is increasing interest in the effects of digital technology on work, although opinion has been sharply divided over just how transformational digitalisation will prove. Utopian visions see in digital technologies the potential for post capitalist futures, with more liberating options for the meaning of work (e.g. Bastani, 2019; Mason, 2015), while dystopian visions predict a bleaker future, where robots and automated processes led to mass casualization, surveillance or even human irrelevance (e.g. Ford, 2015). In contrast, much academic analysis has tended to tread a more cautious path, noting that digital technologies are most likely to impact on the nature and quality of work rather than replacing it per se (e.g. Thompson and Briken, 2017; Spencer, 2018). Nevertheless, the future is difficult to predict, and the likely effects of different dimensions of digitalisation are still to be fully understood. The scope of the impact of digital technologies, the number of contrasting pronouncements about what they mean for the future, and the volume of new evidence that is emerging, all present researchers with significant empirical and theoretical challenges in understanding its impact on the world of work, and differentiating between radical and incremental change.

Technology is not, of course, just a factor to be input into production processes, free from the wider dynamics that surround the world of work. How technologies develop, the forms they take and their manner of implementation (or not) into specific workplaces are all shaped by wider capitalist social relations. It is thus essential to maintain a sharp focus on the agency of employers, state actors, workers and representative bodies in analysing digital technology. As Baldry (2011) notes , in an era of weakened trade unions, the introduction of new technology often coincides with the introduction of new management methods and new forms of work organisation. Moreover, different forms of capital- from venture capital, state capital, to more “impatient” forms of financialised capital- have different imperatives and orientations which alter their relationship with technological development. Likewise, workers are rarely powerless in the face of managerially-imposed technology and their collective agency also guides its implementation.

New technologies of work thus arrive enmeshed in managerial systems and are shaped by different, often conflicting, imperatives. These coinciding dynamics have to be disentangled if we are to fully grasp the specific impact of technology. The aim of this special issue is to put social relations back at the heart of our analysis, at a moment when mainstream discourse on digital technologies at work is in danger of being dominated by determinist and managerialist claims (or fantasies) about the transformative or disruptive capacities of these technologies.

New Technology, Work and Employment has a long-standing record of critiquing attempts to sever technology from social forces, repeatedly emphasising the social relations in which technological change is embedded (Howcroft and Taylor, 2014). The aim of this special issue is to put social relations back at the heart of our understanding of digital technologies by asking: how does the agency of actors within the labour-capital relationship drive, reshape, and even limit, the development and dissemination of new technologies? In this question, we hope to develop accounts of the impact of digital technology on work that avoids the incipient dangers of technological determinism, and which go beyond the persistent but overly dichotomised debate between technological utopias and dystopias.

More information can be found here.

Submission guidelines

Please read carefully the aims and scope of the journal.

Further details on all aspects of the submission process.

CERIC Editorial Team

Simon Joyce, S.Joyce1@leeds.ac.uk
Mark Stuart, M.A.Stuart@lubs.leeds.ac.uk
Charles Umney, C.R.Umney@leeds.ac.uk
Xanthe Whittaker, X.Whittaker@leeds.ac.uk

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

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. 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.

The Fairwork Project is hiring for the following two positions:

Postdoctoral Researcher I (Grade 8: £41,526 – £49,553 p.a; fixed term contract until 30 June 2022 in the first instance, with the possibility of renewal thereafter; deadline: 12.00 midday on 27 August 2020)
Postdoctoral Researcher II (Grade 8: £41,526 – £49,553 p.a; fixed-term until 31 December 2021 in the first instance, with the possibility of renewal thereafter; deadline: 12.00 midday on 10 September 2020)

About Fairwork

Fairwork is an action-research project based at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. We research working conditions in the gig economy, in order to develop ‘fairness ratings’ for digital labour platforms like Uber, Helpling and Deliveroo (see examples here). We use these ratings as a lever to improve pay and conditions for platform workers, through media and consumer pressure.

Fairwork’s programme of action research intends not just to understand the world, but to change it. By bringing workers, platforms, scholars, labour researchers and policymakers to the table, we work to collaboratively develop and embed principles of fair work into the script of the gig economy. Fundamental to the project is a commitment to being participatory and non-hierarchical within our communities: we are all—workers, unions, platforms, regulators, academics—the experts, and we all have co-developed this project. Our ultimate aim is to understand, and counter, some of the forces that disempower gig workers across the world.

Over the past three years, we have mobilized a unique and growing transnational network of social justice minded scholars from over ten countries in pursuit of this planetary goal. In order to effectively advocate for gig workers everywhere, we believe it necessary for our team too to reflect a diversity of backgrounds, cultures, perspectives and more. In growing our team, we value and welcome the unique contributions that applicants can bring in terms of their education, opinions, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, ethnicity, race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, national origin, age, religion, disability, and beliefs. We actively strive to build and nurture a culture of empathy, inclusiveness, and respect.

About the Postdoctoral Researchers

The ideal candidates will have:

A postgraduate degree in sociology, geography, economics, law, development, or related fields;
Academic or professional experience and specialist knowledge relating to the gig economy, platform work, the digital economy, decent work, or precarious/temporary work;
Excellent project management skills, including the ability to develop and execute granular work schedules and coordinate diverse stakeholders; and,
Excellent communication abilities, including the ability to write for diverse audiences, present research proposals and results, and represent the research group at meetings.

See details of essential and desirable applicant criteria in the full job descriptions (Postdoctoral Researcher I and Postdoctoral Researcher II).

The team welcomes applications that reflect diverse modes of knowledge production and traditions of scholarship.

Structure and Primary Responsibilities

As the successful candidate for one of the positions of Postdoctoral Researcher, you will be based at Fairwork Foundation within the Oxford Internet Institute. You will be a core part of a team led by Professor Mark Graham, and will play a key role in conducting research and guiding the Fairwork partners in the research that they conduct. You will be based at the University of Oxford, and will work with partners in Brazil, Bangladesh, Chile, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, South Africa, and the UK. The primary aims of this position will be to:

Conduct research with platform workers and platform managers about job quality on digital labour platforms;
Use that research as part of action research strategies to leverage change in the gig economy;
Play a coordination role with some of the project’s international partners; and,
Collaborate on publications and research outputs to disseminate the evaluations of platforms against principles of fair work.

Duration and Deadline

These posts are available immediately.

The post of Postdoctoral Researcher I is fixed-term until 30 June 2022 in the first instance with the possibility of renewal thereafter. Only online applications received before 12.00 midday on 27 August 2020 will be considered for this position.

The post of Postdoctoral Researcher II is fixed-term until 31 December 2021 in the first instance, with the possibility of renewal thereafter. Only online applications received before 12.00 midday on 10 September 2020 will be considered for this position.

To be considered for both positions, please submit applications for both calls.

Learn more about and apply for the positions of Postdoctoral Researcher I and Postdoctoral Researcher II.

Contact

If you have any questions about these roles, please email info@fair.work.

The Fairwork project endorses the wider call from the Oxford Internet Institute community to advance anti-racist initiatives in higher education. We commit to upholding the values it espouses in our recruitment processes, to the best of our capacities.

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'

New Technology, Work and Employment Journal invites submissions for an upcoming special issue entitled “The 'new' social relations of digital technology and the future of work".

Timeline Submission of Papers: 30th September 2020

Special Issue Publication: Autumn 2021

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

Rationale

There is increasing interest in the effects of digital technology on work, although opinion has been sharply divided over just how transformational digitalisation will prove. Utopian visions see in digital technologies the potential for post capitalist futures, with more liberating options for the meaning of work (e.g. Bastani, 2019; Mason, 2015), while dystopian visions predict a bleaker future, where robots and automated processes led to mass casualization, surveillance or even human irrelevance (e.g. Ford, 2015). In contrast, much academic analysis has tended to tread a more cautious path, noting that digital technologies are most likely to impact on the nature and quality of work rather than replacing it per se (e.g. Thompson and Briken, 2017; Spencer, 2018). Nevertheless, the future is difficult to predict, and the likely effects of different dimensions of digitalisation are still to be fully understood. The scope of the impact of digital technologies, the number of contrasting pronouncements about what they mean for the future, and the volume of new evidence that is emerging, all present researchers with significant empirical and theoretical challenges in understanding its impact on the world of work, and differentiating between radical and incremental change.

Technology is not, of course, just a factor to be input into production processes, free from the wider dynamics that surround the world of work. How technologies develop, the forms they take and their manner of implementation (or not) into specific workplaces are all shaped by wider capitalist social relations. It is thus essential to maintain a sharp focus on the agency of employers, state actors, workers and representative bodies in analysing digital technology. As Baldry (2011) notes , in an era of weakened trade unions, the introduction of new technology often coincides with the introduction of new management methods and new forms of work organisation. Moreover, different forms of capital- from venture capital, state capital, to more “impatient” forms of financialised capital- have different imperatives and orientations which alter their relationship with technological development. Likewise, workers are rarely powerless in the face of managerially-imposed technology and their collective agency also guides its implementation.

New technologies of work thus arrive enmeshed in managerial systems and are shaped by different, often conflicting, imperatives. These coinciding dynamics have to be disentangled if we are to fully grasp the specific impact of technology. The aim of this special issue is to put social relations back at the heart of our analysis, at a moment when mainstream discourse on digital technologies at work is in danger of being dominated by determinist and managerialist claims (or fantasies) about the transformative or disruptive capacities of these technologies.

New Technology, Work and Employment has a long-standing record of critiquing attempts to sever technology from social forces, repeatedly emphasising the social relations in which technological change is embedded (Howcroft and Taylor, 2014). The aim of this special issue is to put social relations back at the heart of our understanding of digital technologies by asking: how does the agency of actors within the labour-capital relationship drive, reshape, and even limit, the development and dissemination of new technologies? In this question, we hope to develop accounts of the impact of digital technology on work that avoids the incipient dangers of technological determinism, and which go beyond the persistent but overly dichotomised debate between technological utopias and dystopias.

More information can be found here.

Submission guidelines

Please read carefully the aims and scope of the journal.

Further details on all aspects of the submission process.

CERIC Editorial Team

Simon Joyce, S.Joyce1@leeds.ac.uk
Mark Stuart, M.A.Stuart@lubs.leeds.ac.uk
Charles Umney, C.R.Umney@leeds.ac.uk
Xanthe Whittaker, X.Whittaker@leeds.ac.uk

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

A new film out about the United Voices of the World union has been released:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/aug/12/united-voices-an-inspiring-story-of-workers-grassroots-resistance

This might make a useful teaching resource for many IR/ER courses.

18th August 2020

Book: International & Comparative Employment Relations

In this pandemic, several members have asked about the availability of an eBook version of International & Comparative Employment Relations, 6th edn, Bamber, G.J., Lansbury, R.D., Wailes, N. & Wright, C.F. (eds).

Routledge, vitalsource.com and other e-book sellers can supply an eBook version; ISBN 9781003116158.

SAGE publishes the paper version of the 6th edn ISBN: 9781473911550 for all countries except that Routledge publishes it in Australia & NZ. Free videos & PPT slides are also available from SAGE.

A 7th fully revised edn of the book will be published in early 2021 by SAGE in all formats and all countries. The 7th edn is edited by Bamber, G.J., Cooke, F.L., Doellgast, V. & Wright, C.F. Its format is similar to the 6th edn, but it will include also a new chapter Employment Relations in South Africa. The 7th edn includes several other contributors who are new to this edn, including our own Stewart Johnstone & Tony Dobbins who wrote the chapter Employment Relations in the UK.

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

BUIRA Executive Committee Elections and virtual Annual General Meeting

The BUIRA Executive Committee will have 4 vacancies as from July/August 2020. We will be announcing the results of these elections at a forthcoming virtual Annual General Meeting to be held in August 2020 (exact date to be confirmed).

As discussed and agreed at the AGM in Leeds 2016, the voting system for vacancies on the Executive Committee will be conducted differently. We now invite all members to forward their interest in becoming a member of the BUIRA Exec Committee to the BUIRA Stewards.

Please complete by Friday 7th August your nomination form here: https://bham.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_a5Aa7sSdvPQtABD

All members are welcome to apply regardless of career stage (i.e. early career or otherwise). However, we would strongly encourage women and black and minority ethnic members to apply for these positions, as they remain to be under-represented in BUIRA.

Due to the lack of a physical conference this year, we are conducting the voting online through Qualtrics. The selection process is still via the membership, not the Stewardship or the Executive Committee. The results will be announced at the Virtual AGM.

On the application form, you must include a short biography of no more than 300 words and your reasons for applying for the vacant position. Deadline Friday 7th August.

20th July 2020

Homeworking Rockets: New Evidence

Alan Felstead (Cardiff) and Darja Reuschke (Southampton) have published new evidence on the scale of the growth of homeworking in lockdown, its nature and its effect on mental well-being.

https://www.propelhub.org/homeworking-rockets-new-evidence/

https://wiserd.ac.uk/publications/effect-great-lockdown-homeworking-united-kingdom

20th July 2020

Fair Care Work: A Post Covid-19 Agenda for Integrated Employment Relations in Health and Social Care

Researchers at King's Business School, Kings' College, London- Ian Kessler, Stephen Bach, Richard Griffin and Damian Grimshaw- have published a discussion paper entitled Fair Care Work: A Post Covid-19 Agenda for Integrated Employment Relations in Health and Social Care. The paper can be accessed at:

http://kcl.ac.uk/news/dont-just-clap-for-carers-change-policy-ensure-fair-employment-care-workers

13th July 2020

CfP 'Comparative Impacts of the COVID-19 Crisis on Work and Employment' IR: A Journal of Economy and Society

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

Call for Papers for Special Issue

Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society

Guest Editors

Tony Dobbins, University of Birmingham, UK t.dobbins@bham.ac.uk

Stewart Johnstone, University of Strathclyde, UK Stewart.johnstone@strath.ac.uk

Marta Kahancová, Central European Labour Studies Institute, Slovakia marta.kahancova@celsi.sk

Ryan Lamare, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA rlamare@illinois.edu

Adrian Wilkinson, Griffith University, Australia Adrian.wilkinson@griffith.edu.au, Visiting Professor, University of Sheffield, UK

COVID-19 is a global public health and socioeconomic crisis (Dobbins, 2020). As such, it is distinct from economic crises like the Great Depression or the 2008 global financial crisis (Johnstone et al., 2019), not least of which is because work had to be primarily reduced or reallocated, not expanded (Barrero, Bloom, and Davis, 2020). Notable exceptions are among those workers able to work from home, and essential front-line workers in health, food production and retail who continue to expose themselves to the virus (Koebel and Pohler, 2020) to keep society functioning by supporting human life (Winton and Howcroft, 2020).

The crisis has had devastating effects on the world of work, globally. Many countries experienced massive shocks to employment, rising unemployment, and decreased labor force participation (Eurofound, 2020; ILO, 2020). However, effects of the crisis have been unevenly distributed across societies, and likely vary according to country institutions, cultures, politics, demographics, and other characteristics (Adolph et al., 2020; Hale et al., 2020; Mora and Schickler, 2020). For example, Adams-Prassl et al., (2020) outline survey data from the UK, US and Germany revealing that the labor market impacts of COVID-19 differ considerably across these countries. Employees in Germany, with its Kurzarbeit short-time work scheme, were less likely to lose their jobs due to the crisis; at least in the short-run. Within countries, impacts vary by sector, and accentuate existing racial, gender, and class inequalities. Workers in alternative work arrangements and in jobs not conducive to working from home are more likely to experience cuts in working hours and income, or redundancy. Early analyses suggest less educated workers and women (Adams-Prassl et al., 2020) as well as low-income workers (Koebel and Pohler, 2020) are most affected by the crisis.

Looking to the future, COVID-19 could lead to widespread restructuring of the way work is performed. The crisis may accelerate the use of technologies in industries and occupations that were not previously impacted by digitalization. The crisis could also facilitate emergence of new jobs because of growing demand for particular services and/or new approaches to organization of the economy. 2

The purpose of this Special Issue is to focus attention on the work- and employment-related implications of the COVID-19 crisis. We have a preference for papers that adopt a comparative lens by exploring the heterogeneous impacts of the crisis and responses to the crisis across different countries, sectors, organizations, employers and workers. We invite papers that make novel theoretical and/or empirical contributions that help us understand the current crisis and papers that develop insights to help navigate future crises and the future of work and employment post-crisis.

Some questions that may be explored in this special include, but are not limited to:

▪ What are the implications and impact of the crisis on the world of work from the perspective of different groups of workers?

▪ What have been the implications of the crisis on key aspects of the employment relationship, such pay and working conditions, workforce reduction, employee voice, health and safety, and labor-management relations?

▪ How did employers restructure and reorganise employment practices during the evolving crisis, and which of these practices are likely to remain post-crisis?

▪ How have trade unions and employee representatives responded to changing employment practices? What has been the involvement of trade unions and employee representatives in the design of policy measures to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on workers? How do their responses differ across countries with different industrial relations systems and welfare states?

▪ How and why have employer responses to the crisis varied in relation to economic, political, social, cultural, and other contextual issues?

▪ How have government, employer and worker responses to the work and employment-related impacts of the crisis compared with previous economic downturns?

▪ How have the effects of the crisis and government policy responses varied internationally, reflecting different labor market and employment relations institutions? Are there differences, for example, between co-ordinated market economies and liberal market economies, or countries severely/mildly impacted by the pandemic?

▪ Which employment relations theories and frameworks can best help us explain and understand the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on work and employment?

▪ What are the implications for the future of work and employment, especially for workers?

▪ What are the possibilities for a new politics, and related, labor and social policies, that can improve workers’ lives?

Submission Process

Interested contributors will first submit a long abstract (max. 1,000 words). The abstract should clearly outline the research question or purpose of the proposed paper, as well as how the paper contributes to our understanding of the impacts of COVID-19 on work and employment. The abstract should also include a brief description of the empirical analysis used and/or an illustration of the theoretical/conceptual model to be developed. Questions or any other communication about the purpose and process of the special issue should be directed to any of the guest editors via email. However, we will not provide editorial 3

assistance for long abstracts. The long abstracts should be sent via email to Dr. Ryan Lamare (rlamare@illinois.edu) by August 31, 2020.

Guest editors will then choose a subset of abstracts and invite full papers from authors. The deadline for submission of full papers will be December 31, 2020, via Manuscript Central. All invited papers submitted by this date will undergo double-blind review by two reviewers. Note that there is no guarantee that invited papers will be accepted for publication. Based on the blind reviews and extent to which the papers meet the aims and scope of the special issue, a subset of invited papers will be selected for the special issue. Because publication of the special issue is scheduled for the second half of 2021, only papers that can be accepted with minor revisions will be considered.

References

Adams-Prassl, A., Boneva, T., Golin, M. and Rauh, C. (2020). Inequality in the Impact of the Coronavirus Shock: Evidence from Real Time Surveys. Cambridge-INET Working Papers, No 18.

Adolph, C., Amano, K., Bang-Jensen, B., Fullman, N., & Wilkerson, J. (2020). Pandemic politics: Timing state-level social distancing responses to COVID-19. medRxiv Working Paper. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.20046326v1.full.pdf

Barrero, J., Bloom, N., & Davis, S.J. (2020) COVID-19 is also a reallocation shock. NBER Working Paper #27137. https://www.nber.org/papers/w27137.pdf

Dobbins, T. (2020). COVID-19 and the Past, Present and Future of Work. Futures of Work, Issue 13, 5th May. Bristol: Bristol University Press.

https://futuresofwork.co.uk/2020/05/05/covid-19-and-the-past-present-and-future-of-work/

Eurofound (2020). COVID-19. Dublin: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/topic/covid-19

Hale, T., Angrist, N., Kira, B., Petherick, A., Phillips, T., & Webster, S. (2020) Variation in government responses to COVID-19. Oxford: BGS Working Paper Series. https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2020-04/BSG-WP-2020-032-v5.0_0.pdf

ILO (2020). ILO Monitor 2nd edition: COVID-19 and the world of work. April 7. Geneva: ILO.

Johnstone, S., Saridakis, G., & Wilkinson, A. (2019). The Global Financial Crisis, Work and Employment: Ten Years On. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 40(3), 455–468.

Koebel, K., and Pohler, D. (2020). Labor markets in crisis: The causal impact of Canada’s COVID-19 economic shutdown on hours worked for workers across the earnings distribution. Canadian Labour Economics Forum Working Papers Series, No. 25 (Spring/Summer).

Mora, C.G., & Schickler, E. (2020) Racial minorities more at risk in the workplace and the economy. Berkeley IGS Release #2020-06. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1kd7h0sc

Winton, A. and Howcroft, D. (2020. What COVID-19 tells us about the value of human labour. Manchester Policy Blogs, April 7th. University of Manchester.

13th July 2020

Engaging with employers to reduce workplace inequalities for parents and carers: the case of the flexible working toolkit

WEI webinar on Wednesday 15^th July at 3pm

Engaging with employers to reduce workplace inequalities for parents and carers: the case of the flexible working toolkit

Liz Atkinson, Senior project officer

Rebecca Harris, Employer engagement officer

Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisations

Hosted by the Work and Equalities Institute, in this webinar Liz Atkinson and Rebecca Harris from the Greater Manchester Centre for Voluntary Organisation will discuss the approach of the GMCVO to promoting flexible working for parents and carers who are returning to the workforce in Greater Manchester. The session will introduce the flexible working toolkit that GMCVO have co-produced with a range of employers and Returners in the Greater Manchester region. Issues of how the content and design of the toolkit were developed as well as future issues of how to measure its impact, and its increased relevance in the post-lockdown workplace, will all be discussed. This will be an interactive session and will be of interest to anyone interested in gender inequality, flexible working and how to increase the impact of their research using co-production methods with employers.

You can learn more about the toolkit here.

Please register on Eventbrite. You will receive a Zoom invitation closer to the webinar.

6th July 2020

The CIPD Applied Research Conference is going digital and the call for papers has been extended to 31 July 2020!

We're delighted to announce that the CIPD Applied Research Conference (ARC) is going digital, and the call for papers has been extended to 31 July 2020.

The digital conference will take place on 20-21 January 2021. The conference is an annual meeting place for academic researchers and practitioners working in people management, employment policy and related fields.

Benefits of taking part

By submitting a paper, you can help shape the content of the conference. You'll be able to share your research with peers and HR practitioners, publish your research following the conference, and be eligible for the Professor Ian Beardwell Prize with £1,000 for best applied research paper.

Submission and selection

We welcome papers on a wide range of subjects around the themes of work, employment and people management, including:

COVID-19 - impact on work and employment
Equality, diversity and inclusion
Employee voice and empowerment
Health and well-being
New technologies at work
and more!

We invite two types of submissions:

Research paper:original empirical research
Evidence review:systematic review or rapid evidence assessment

Papers will be selected for:

relevance to the contemporary world of work, employment and people management;
appropriate and robust methods;
contribution to knowledge and understanding of the field;
and drawing out practical implications of the research.

Details of the submission process are available here.

6th July 2020

Ending Despotism at Work after the Coronavirus: How Power Operates in Flexible Workplaces

You and your network are invited to the above webinar by Dr Alex J. Wood , University of Birmingham & University of Oxford, Tuesday 21 July 2020 at 16:00 - 17:00 PM Melbourne time (GMT+10) i.e. 07.00-08.00 BST.

If you wish to attend by Zoom, please register ASAP via this LINK or paste into your browser: https://www.monash.edu/business/events/webinar-how-power-and-despotism-works-in-flexible-workplaces# .

Organisers: International Consortium for Research in Employment & Work and Monash Business Digitalisation Research Network , Monash Business School, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.

Co-hosts: Professors Greg Bamber & Fang Lee Cooke.

This Webinar considers the impact of flexible scheduling on managerial power and workplace control. When we understand paid work as a power relationship, Alex argues, we see how precarious scheduling constitutes flexible despotism. He has published a book, Despotism on Demand: How Power Operates in the Flexible Workplace. The Webinar and the book are in memory of University of Cambridge Faculty of Economics Montague Burton Emeritus Professor of Industrial Relations William Brown CBE (1945–2019); a former BUIRA President; a former visitor to Monash University.

6th July 2020

Call for proposals to host the next ILERA European Regional Congress in 2022

Dear ILERA Executive Committee members, representatives of European ILERA National Associations, and colleagues,

I hope that this e-mail finds you all well. In this difficult time of the Covid-19 pandemic, research and dialogue on labour and employment relations and current challenges in the labour market is more important than ever. ILERA strives to maintain its activities, and only last week the ILERA Regional Congress for the Americas was held, after an impressive transition from a regular congress to be held in Toronto to a stimulating and active online conference.

I contact you know with a call for proposals to host the next ILERA European Regional Congress in 2022. The last, 12th, European Regional Congress was successfully organized in Düsseldorf, Germany, in September 2019 on the theme of 'Perspectives of Employment Relations in Europe'.

Previous European Congresses have taken place as follows:

· 11th ILERA European Regional Congress, Milan, Italy, 8-10 September 2016

·   10th ILERA European Regional Congress, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 20-22 June 2013

·         9th IIRA European Regional Congress, Copenhagen, Denmark, 28 June - 1 July 2010

·         8th IIRA European Regional Congress, Manchester, UK, 3-6 September 2007

·         7th IIRA European Regional Congress, Lisbon, Portugal, 7-11 September 2004

·         6th IIRA European Regional Congress, Oslo, Norway, 25-29 June 2001

·         5th IIRA European Regional Congress, Dublin, Ireland, 26-29 August 1997

·         4th IIRA European Regional Congress, Helsinki, Finland, 24-26 August 1994

·         3rd IIRA European Regional Congress, Bari, Italy, 23-26 September 1991

·         2nd IIRA European Regional Congress, Herzlia, Israel, 13-17 December 1987

·         1st IIRA European Regional Congress, Vienna, Austria, 25-27 September 1984

The proposal should contain a maximum of 10 000 characters including spaces, and cover at least the following:

- tentative congress theme, programme and structure
- organization (organizers/organizing team and related associations, and organizational experience and capacity)
- location, possible venue, size/number of participants, and other logistics
- tentative timing of the congress

If you have any questions you are welcome to contact the ILERA Secretariat at ilera@ilo.org.

The proposal should be sent to ilera@ilo.org by August 26 at the latest.

The ILERA Executive Committee will assess the proposals, and make a decision on the host and location of the next European Regional Congress in September.

With thanks in advance and very best wishes,

Mia Rönnmar,
President of ILERA

6th July 2020

Women in Industrial Relations: Wine and Webinar

The Industrial Relations Society of Victoria (IRSV), Australia, invites you to attend our Women in Industrial Relations event - Wine and Webinar - with guest speaker:

Sharan Burrow
General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation

Thursday 9 July 2020 17:00 hrs Melbourne time (GMT+10).

08:00hrs BST, so in the UK it might be a cuppa and Webinar!

Sharan Burrow was elected General Secretary of the ITUC in 2010 and was re-elected in 2014 and 2018. Prior to this, she held the position of ITUC President since its Founding Congress in 2006 and the position of ICFTU President since 2004. Sharan is the first woman to have held any of these positions.

In 2000, Sharan was the second woman to be elected President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the first woman to be elected President of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions Asia Pacific Region Organisation. She has served as a member of the Governing Body of the International Labour Organisation and a member of the Stakeholder Council of the Global Reporting Initiative. As part of her ILO responsibilities, Sharan chaired the Workers’ Group of the Sub-Committee on Multinational Enterprises.

From the ITUC's headquarters in Brussels, Sharan will be speaking on the gendered impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which will be followed by a Q and A session. This will provide the opportunity for IRSV members and friends to ask Sharan any questions.

Although we can't meet in person, please grab a wine or a cuppa and join IRSV members online for what promises to be an engaging discussion with Sharan Burrow. Although this is an IRSV Women in Industrial Relations event, all are welcome to register.

For further details and to register click here

or paste into your browser: irsv.asn.au/Public/Events/Event_Display.aspx?EventKey=77F3BDFA-16A1-493A-BFD8-2FB851534520

Organiser: Industrial Relations Society of Victoria,

Australia

Katie Sweatman <ksweatman@irsv.asn.au> may be able to help with registration, if necessary.

6th July 2020

Covid-19 : Contact/Call Centre Workers in Scotland

This report analyses the responses of 510 contact centre workers in Scotland and the hazards they face from exposure to SARS-CoV-2 and the disease Covid19. Extensive evidence of serious dangers, including no or inadequate social distancing, face-to-face contact, hotdesking, problems with HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning) systems. The report combines primary evidence with a critical review of including an extensive literature consisting of reports, academic articles, practitioner and government guidance. It concludes with an extended discussion section exploring the implications, Finally, a recommendations' chapter identifies important steps that should be taken to ensure contact workers' safety.

Read the report by Phil Taylor here: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/72600/

25th June 2020

CfP 'Climate Change and Industrial Relations’ Special Issue: Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol.64(4), September 2022

Journal of Industrial Relations (JIR)

CALL FOR PAPERS

‘Climate Change and Industrial Relations’

Special Issue: Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol.64(4), September 2022

Organisers and Special Issue Guest-Editors:

Dr Frances Flanagan, University of Sydney Business School, Australia

Dr Caleb Goods, University of Western Australia, Australia

The objective and aim of the special issue

Industrial relations and anthropogenic climate change are deeply entwined phenomena. Climate change is the product of work. Human labour is necessary at the point of fossil fuel extraction and is crucial in its manufacture into the products and infrastructures that underpin modern, emissions-intensive societies. Future shifts to low-carbon societies are similarly dependent on human labour, without which the vast programs of reconfigured transportation, housing, energy, cities, health and agricultural systems that are necessary to return humanity into a ‘safe operating space’ cannot be realised. Questions of how different forms of work are valued, organised, and regulated are thus inseverable from environmental policy: we can neither understand the environmental and social contexts for the continued promulgation of emissions-intensive practices, nor imagine and promote their alternatives, without grappling with industrial relations.

Industrial relations, in turn, have been profoundly shaped by fossil extraction processes, and the vast global production networks such fuels underpin, in the past and the present. Modern trade unions were born with the industrial revolution, and with them practices for the exercise of collective power and paradigms of rights, law, value and regulation that continue to inform the organisation of work today. More than two centuries of emissions are also shaping the nature of work in a direct physical sense, by destabilising the ecological conditions for its safe performance, changing the places that are available for human habitation and labour, and rendering the myriad systems that are crucial to work – from food supply to stable geopolitics – more precarious and crisis-prone. 2/

The scope, themes and topics to be addressed by the special issue

For this special issue, ‘Climate Change and Industrial Relations’, we invite papers that aim to advance scholarship on the mutuality of climate change and industrial relations, and add to our understanding of the ways in which climate changes shapes industrial relations, and the ways in which industrial relations shapes climate change.

We encourage authors to develop their own interpretations of this mutuality, but they may consider the following:

Labour, capital and states in the making and maintenance of fossil fuel hegemonies

• How have unions, employers and states participated in the making and sustaining of fossil fuel hegemonies?
• In what ways do fossil fuel identities, gender, worker solidarities and class interrelate?
• What role have ‘crises’ played (including environmental, industrial, health, financial and their inter-relation) in enabling actors to create and sustain fossil fuel hegemony?
• How has control over the labour process, and IR laws around issues such as bargaining, industrial action, health and safety been used to potentially sustain fossil fuel hegemonies?
• What are the main drivers of the fossil economy?

Labour, capital and states in contesting fossil fuel hegemonies

• What challenges and opportunities do unions face in forging solidarities with environmental organisations in contesting fossil fuel hegemonies?
• How do environmental, gender, industrial and class identities interrelate?
• What role can international labour movements and institutions play around climate issues?
• What are the strengths and limitations of concepts which attempt to bridge labour and environmental issues, such as ‘just transitions’; ‘energy democracy’, ‘climate justice’, the Green New Deal and the UN Sustainable Development Goals?
• What solidarities and strategies have been most effective in engendering change for the benefit of workers and the environment?

Rethinking labour regulation for climate-changed workplaces: rights, responsibilities and institutions

• What does attentiveness to climate change mean for the way states can and should regulate the employment relationship?
• Where and how can workers be empowered to act collectively in response to environmental issues at work? (e.g. workplace health and safety, bargaining, ‘emergency leave’, relative work value, ability to bargain for environmental issues, heat stress).
• How is ‘green’ labour (including the work involved in ecological repair and maintenance) valued, organised and regulated?
• Has the climate emergency triggered changed perspectives on work value and ‘skill’?

3/5

Varieties of (fossil) capitalism? States and regulation of labour and environment in comparative perspective

• How does fossil extraction and emissions complicate our view of comparative political economy?
• Are there emerging political economic patterns as to how climate change and labour are embedded in fossil fuel capitalism?
• How do regimes of migration, gender, labour and environmental regulation interact?
• What is happening to industrial relations in the peripheries and borderlands that are made by capital and climate?
• How are global production networks changing in the face of climate and other crises?

Submission to the special issue process:

Abstracts of between 500-1,000 words should be submitted to the Guest Editors (see contact details below) by 30 September 2020. The full paper to be submitted online to the JIR for peer review by 14 May 2021. All submitted abstracts will be examined by the Guest Editors for suitability for the special issue.

All submitted papers must be based on original material and not under consideration by any other journal or outlet. All manuscripts are reviewed initially by the Guest Editors and only those papers that fit within the aims and scope of the special issue and meet the academic and editorial standards of the journal, are sent out for external review. All papers will undergo a full double-blind review process and will be evaluated by the Guest Editors of the special issue and at least two independent reviewers.

Symposium:

Questions related to the content and logistics of the symposium should be directed to the Guest Editors (see contact details below). While participation in the symposium is not a mandatory condition for submissions to this special issue, we strongly encourage it. The guest editors aim to host a digital symposium on 17 February 2021 (exact format to be determined).

Those who are successful will be expected to submit their full paper (formatted to JIR standards) for discussion by 3 February 2021 so that papers can be distributed (in pdf format) to other participants to read prior to the symposium. 4/5

Special issue – Timeline:

• 30 September 2020 – Submission of abstracts to the guest editors
• 16 October 2020 – Confirmation/acceptance of abstract and invitation to submit full paper
• 3 February 2021 – Full paper submission for presentation at Symposium
• 17 February 2021 – Symposium
• 14 May 2021 – Full original papers to be submitted online to the JIR for peer review
• 31 March 2022 – Accepted papers to be finalised/submitted online to the JIR

 Publication of the special issue, JIR Vol. 64(4), September 2022

Guidelines for contributors – Summary:

− The length of the full manuscript (including references, tables etc.) should be around 10,000 words (max). Please note that it would not be possible for us to consider papers for publication unless they are within the standard length (so longer papers are not possible to publish nor is a large number of tables/figures possible to include).

− The anonymised manuscript should include a separate title page: with the author(s) affiliation and full contact details: full name of author(s), institutional affiliation, postal and email addresses (noting the corresponding author). Authors to also provide a brief biographical note (100 word limit/author) to the title page.

− The manuscript should include a brief abstract (150-200 words) and keywords (4-5 words).

− The manuscript should follow the Harvard (author, date) system of referencing, with ‘endnotes’ (if necessary and kept brief) rather than ‘footnotes’.

− For the full JIR submission guidelines and style guide, please consult the JIR website at http://jir.sagepub.com

5/5

JIR online submission process:

The Journal of Industrial Relations (JIR) is hosted on SAGE Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne Manuscripts. Simply visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jir to login and submit your article online.

How to submit a manuscript to the JIR online?

1. Navigate to the JIR’s ScholarOne Manuscripts site at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/JIR

2. If you are not already registered, you will need to register with the system first to submit a manuscript.

3. To register, click the Create Account tab for new users.

4. Supply the requested information.

5. You will need to enter information in fields marked with a "req."

6. Please take note of the user ID and password you create, for future use to log into the system.

7. Once your account is created, click the link to log in.

8. To submit a manuscript, click the Author Center link, and then select Click here to submit a manuscript.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created.

Contact details:

Organisers and Special Issue Guest-Editors:

Dr Frances Flanagan

University of Sydney Business School, Australia

Email: frances.flanagan@sydney.edu.au

Dr Caleb Goods

UWA, Australia

Email: caleb.goods@uwa.edu.au

Journal of Industrial Relations (JIR):

JIR Editorial Office

Email: business.jir@sydney.edu.au

***

25th June 2020

Virtual symposium honouring Bruce Kaufman

A virtual symposium was held on June 17, 2020 honouring the contributions of Bruce Kaufman (Georgia State University), and featured presentations by John Kelly, Dionne Pohler, Mark Bray, David Lewin, and Daphne Taras. An edited video has been made available for anyone to watch: https://youtu.be/rgFx74QXEfo . This symposium was organized by John Budd, Rafael Gomez, and Daphne Taras as part of the the 10th International Labour and Employment Relations Association Regional Congress of the Americas.

25th June 2020

Work on Demand workshop, 2nd July 2020

The Work on Demand team is delighted to announce an upcoming online workshop on the 2nd of July 2020. The workshop features papers on two main themes: The Legal Characterisation of Working Relations and Law, Legal Consciousness and Precarious Work. The participants at the event will include Diamond Ashiagbor (University of Kent), Emily Rose (University of Strathclyde), Ruth Dukes (University of Glasgow), Gregoris Ioannou (University of Glasgow), Alessio Bertolini (University of Oxford) and Eleanor Kirk (University of Glasgow).

For the presentations’ abstracts, the programme and to register: https://workondemand.co.uk/events/

15th June 2020

Making Britain the best place in the world to work; how to protect and enhance workers' rights after Brexit ... and coronavirus

The final version of this policy discussion paper by Keith Sisson has now been published and is available at:

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/wbs/research/irru/wpir/

15th June 2020

Survey: People’s Experiences of the Lockdown in the UK and Belgium During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This collaboration between Hasselt University, the University of Leeds and Atlas Data Analysis and Consultancy aims to explore the effects of the recent government lockdown measures on workplaces and the life and work experiences of people aged 15 and older, during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are interested in understanding how employed and unemployed people have been affected by the sudden changes to their life and working patterns.

Please distribute the survey https://uhasselt.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6fDFNZev5kZeBMh as widely as you can. We want to hear as many experiences as possible.

9th June 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

News Room

Launch Event #Legalsupportmatters Whistleblowing with Discrimination at Work

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

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

Covid-19 - Work, Employment and the Labour Process

Lecturer postion in employment relations or industrial relations Cardiff Business School

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

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

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

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

Keynote: Unfinished Business: Professor Susan Corby:

Digit Debates

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

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

Exploring the international frontiers of labour regulation

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

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

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

WEBINAR DETAILS:

26 Oct. 2020:

10.30pm UK time;

5.30pm NY time;

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

Robert Taylor Guardian Obituary

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

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

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

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

PhD Network update

Changing Dimensions of Work and Employment Relations: Emerging Paradigms

New edition of Historical Studies in Industrial Relations

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

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

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

Manchester Industrial Relations Society - 2020 meetings

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

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

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

Bug fixed in AGM Eventbrite

Virtual BUIRA AGM Wednesday 16th September at 2pm

Vote now in the BUIRA Executive Committee Elections

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

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

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

Research Fellow Trade union strategies on digital technologies and job quality

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

Employment Relations Matters

Job Opportunities: Postdoctoral Researchers University of Oxford

Join our team. We are hiring two Postdoctoral Researchers.

About Fairwork

About the Postdoctoral Researchers

Structure and Primary Responsibilities

Duration and Deadline

Contact

BUIRA History of Industrial Relations Study Group

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

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

New film out about the United Voices of the World union

Book: International & Comparative Employment Relations

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.

Professor Frank Burchill OBE

BUIRA Executive Committee Elections and virtual Annual General Meeting

Homeworking Rockets: New Evidence

Fair Care Work: A Post Covid-19 Agenda for Integrated Employment Relations in Health and Social Care

CfP 'Comparative Impacts of the COVID-19 Crisis on Work and Employment' IR: A Journal of Economy and Society

Engaging with employers to reduce workplace inequalities for parents and carers: the case of the flexible working toolkit

The CIPD Applied Research Conference is going digital and the call for papers has been extended to 31 July 2020!

Ending Despotism at Work after the Coronavirus: How Power Operates in Flexible Workplaces

Call for proposals to host the next ILERA European Regional Congress in 2022

Women in Industrial Relations: Wine and Webinar

Sharan BurrowGeneral Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation

Thursday 9 July 2020 17:00 hrs Melbourne time (GMT+10).

For further details and to register click here

or paste into your browser: irsv.asn.au/Public/Events/Event_Display.aspx?EventKey=77F3BDFA-16A1-493A-BFD8-2FB851534520

Organiser: Industrial Relations Society of Victoria,

Covid-19 : Contact/Call Centre Workers in Scotland

CfP 'Climate Change and Industrial Relations’ Special Issue: Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol.64(4), September 2022

Virtual symposium honouring Bruce Kaufman

Work on Demand workshop, 2nd July 2020

Sharan Burrow
General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation